Richmond times-dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1914-current, 1922-02-12
AMERICAN GRAIN
TOOLATE TO SAVE
STARVING SLAVS
Melting Shows This Spring
Will Uncover Unburied
Thousands.
MYRIAD TRAGEDIES
ON RUSSIAN STEPPES
Skeletons Scattered Over
Great Area After Wolves
Strip Them.
GBy Associated Press |


YEA. VoLGA REGION. RUSSIA.
req. ll.-When the SHOWS mel, next
spring the Russian steppes will be
strewn with skeletons. They will
resemble the high prairics OF the
American COW country In the days
when big cattle ou,n,s had INSULT
cicnt hay 10 carry their stock
through hard winter.
hut among the skeletons of cattle
and cameis there will be the bones
OF hundreds Of thousands OF men.
women and children who fell cx-
haustcd in their quest for bread:
who lived the simple lives their peas
ant ancestors lived for centuries and
had little conception OF the political
npheaval which made this famine
more terrible than that OF 1881.
Millions Are Wandering.
They wandered. and millions OF
them arc 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- riddle n
railway centers. or among the hor-
rors OF refugees camps along the
Nolga; others started for Turkeatan:
still others moved eastward toward
Siberia, the land OF gold and wheat
which has always been SO alluring
to the Russian moujik. who heard
lIttlo of It's vastncss. its hardships
and Its heartlesAness. The peasants
knew nothing OF modern ways. They
were unable to buy tickets on the
railways, unable to set permits to
ride on trains burdened with the Red
army and food for Moscow and Petro-
grad. 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 II peasant families have n
small supply they conceal II In the
effort to prolonG their own lives un-
III another crop is harvested. In
the larger towns there is food for
sale mt fabulous prices. but the starv-
ing refugees have neither money nor
goods TO exchange and can only sit
down and await death or trudge on
until they sink Of exhaustion.
Await Burial in Snow.
The bodies that lie along the rail-
roads are collected on cars and
hauled TO centers. where they nre
piled In frozen. snow-covered heaps
to await burial. Freezing refugees
remove all garments from the dead,
go tho frozen bodies are nude when
the scavengers collect them.
Families drift apart and wander
nimlessly on to their Inevitable fate.
Human instincts are lost, and they
become little better than beasts. The
city 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 refu-
gees. They sink into the white COW
erinE OF the endless plain. and wolves
strip their bones.
Death Stalks on Steppcs.
From Perm and Ekaterinburg to
the Caspian Sea death is stalking
over the steppes. Russians. Cos
sacks, KalmuclSs. Kirghiz and Tar
tars alike are meeting their end with
hopelessness and patience begotten
OF centuries of unequal struggle
against political extortion and un-
favorable climatic conditions, made
worse by Ignorance of scientific
methods of filling the soil
AmeFcan corn will be too late to
save many of these wanderers
through the steppes. 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 death their
neighbors have suffered along the
main lines of transportation.
Entire village populations have
died in the provinces east OF tho
Folga. and tho animals which sur
vive are so weak il Is impossible to
get adequate horse power to deliver
food to the thousands OF snow
bound, destitute settlements fan
from food stations.