The Chesterfield advertiser. [volume] (Chesterfield C.H., S.C.) 1884-1978, 1922-02-09
HUMAN SKELETONS
MARK PATHS ARoSS RUSSIAN
SNOW FIELDS

Ola, Volga Region, Russia, Feb
5.-When the SHOWS melt next spring
the Russian stepes will be strewn with
skeletons They will resemble the
high prairies of the American COW
country in the days when big cattle
outfits had insufficient hay to carry
their stock through hard winter.
But among the skeletons of cat.
tie and camels there will be bones
of hundreds of thousands of men,
women and children, who fell ex.
hausted in their quest for bread; who
lived the simple lives their peasant
ancestors lived for centuries and had
little conception of the political up.
heaval which made this famine more
terrible than that Of 1891.
They wandered, and millions of
them are still wandering. There was
nothing to eat in their homes so thew
started on the trek for bread. Some
drifted Westward to the Volga and
found death in the typhus-riddcn rail-
way centers, or among the horrors of
refugee camps along the Volga; 9TH
ers started for Turkestan, still 9TH
ers moved Eastward toward Siberia.
the land of gold and wheat which has
always been so alluring to the Rus
sian moujik, who heard little of its
vastness, its hardships and it's heart
lessness. The peasant knew nothing
of modern ways. They were unable to
get rides on the trains burdened with
the Red army and food for Moscow,
and Petrogad. When their animals
dropped dead the families walked on
always hoping that food lay over the
next knoll.
But the country districts have no
grain, or if peasant families have a
small supply they conceal it in the
effort to prolong their own lives until
another crop is harvested. In the larg-
er towns there is food far sale at
fabulous prices but the starving refu-
gees have neither money nor goods
to exchange and can only sit down to
await death or trudge on until they
sink of exhaustion.
The bodies that lie along the rail-
roads are collected on cars and hauled
to centers where they are piled in
frozen, snow-coyered heaps to await
burial Freezing refugees remove all
garments from the dead, so the bodies
are nude when the scavengers collect
them
Families drift apart and wander
aimlessly on to their inevitable fate.
Human instincts are lost and become
little better than beasts. The cities
and town populations are so hardened
to suffering that they are little moved
by the misery which lies all about
them. Death seems more merciful in
the country for the refugees; they
sink into the white covering of the
endless plain, and wolves strip their
bones.
From Fern and Ekaterinburg to
the Caspian sea death is stalking over
the steppes. Russians, Cossacks, Kali
mucks, Kirghiz and Tartars alike are
meeting their end with hopelessness
and patience begotten of centuries Of
unequal struggle against political ex-
tortion and unfavorable climatic con-
ditions, made worse by ignorance of
scientific methods of tilling the soil.
American corn will be too late to
save many of these wanderers
through the stepes as we'll as the
families who have elected to make
their fight in their villages remote
from the railways rather than en-
dure the hardships and deaths their
neighbors have suffered along the
main lines of transportation.
Entire village populations have
died in the provinces East of the Vol
ga and the animals which survive are
so weak it is impossible to get ade-
quate horsepower to deliver food to
the thousands of snowbound destitute
settlements far from the food sta
tions.