The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1922-02-09
HUMAN SKELETONS
LIE THICK IN RUSSIA
THOUSANDS DIE FROM HUNGER
AS THEY PRESS ON IN
SEARCH OF BREAD.

An. Associated Press report from
Volga region of Russia says: When
the SHOWS melt next spring the Rus
sian steppes will be strewn with
skeletons. They will resemble the
high prairies of the American COW
country in the days when big cat
tie outfits Had insufficient hay to car
~ 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 po-
licital upheaval which made this fam
inc more terrible than that of 1891.
They wandered, and millions Of
them are still wandering. There was
nothing to eat in their homes, so
they started on the trek for bread.
Some drifted Westward to the Volga
and found death in the typhus-ridden
railway centers, Or among the hor-
rors of refugee camps along the
Volga; others started for Turkestan;
still others moved Eastward toward
Siberia, the land of gold and wheat
which has always been so alluring to
the Russian Moujik, who heard lit
tic of it's vastness, it's hardships and
its heartlessness. The peasants knew
nothing of modern ways. They were
unable to get rides on the trains
burdened with the Red army and food
fer Moscow and Petrograd. When
their animals dropped dead the fam
lilies walked on always hoping that
food lay over the knoll.
But the country districts have no
grain, or if peasants families have
small supply they conceal it in
the effort to proiong their own lives
until another crop is harvested. In
the larger towns there is food for
sale at fabulous prices but the starv-
ing refugees 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 haul
ed to centers where they are piled
in frozen, snow-covered heaps to
await burial. Freezing refugees re-
move all garments from the dead, so
the frozen bodies are nude when the
scavengers collect them.
Families drift apart and wander
aimlessly on to their inevitable fate.
Human instincts are lost and they
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. q
From Perm and Ekaterinburg to
the Caspian death is stalking over
the steppes. Russians, Cossacks, Kali
mucks, Kirghiz and Tartars alike
are meeting their end with hopeless
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.
Entire village populations have died
in the provinces East of the Volga
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 food stations.