Evening star., 1933-05-21
BY ALEXANDER NAZARoFF.

in Russia. 1t Is not easy to graSI
~ them or to visualize their pos
sible consequences. 1t is obvious
however, that the country's tempera'
ture is rising and that it is desperately
battling with a grave and acute disease
What strikes the observers attention
first is this: During the last few years
and especially in 1882 and 1888. the
Soviet Union, to large extent has been
transformed into nomadic country. AS
though seized with some strange mass
insanity, millions of its people, formerly
firmly settled suddenly have been up
rooted, torn from their accustomed
villages and cities and set in motion by
some invisible force.
Without explanation or notice. work
men leave their factories by the
thousand, flee from one industrial area
to another and, before they have had
the new area, they are of again to
still other cities and areas. These mi
grations hopelesSly disorganize indus
trial production; having no time to ac-
quire experience in any line of industry,
the "nomads' work badly, wreck valu-
eble machines and prove to be infinitely
mere harmful than any English
sabotagers."
hCStACSSuOoS AbNhShCS ShhhaA'
Still more alarming. in a sense, is the
newly developed nomadiSm of the Rus
sian peasant. Since 1929 peasants have
been abandoning their farms and flock
ing in masses to the cities in search
of industrial work Yet it is only re-
Gently that their restlessness has
reached its climax. At the beginning
of 1882. a mass exodus from the Uk-
raine took place. About 100000
peasants left that country. Travelling.
bag and baggage, on foot. by rail and by
boat cramming trains and railroad sta
tions, dying in large numbers from lack
of food, exhaustion and infectious dis
eases, and yet pushing on and on. they
or most of them-swept east, to the
Northern Caucasus. And only four or
five months later similar exodus be-
gan from the Northern Caucasus to
Turkestan and Siberia.
But such nonadic movements are by
no means confined to these regions
Hard railroad wagons of all Russian
trains are overcrowded. All of Russia
seems to be rushing somewhere -
chiefly to the cities. As some one has
said, it is ''the second great migration
of peoples" Agriculture is affected by it
as badly as industry; on thousands of
collective farms there is an acute short
age of labor.
The Soviet government has been
alarmed by these facts for long time.
And recently it took drastic measures
to check them.
Four months ago it decreed that
every workman who leaves his factory
without permission will be deprived of
his food card. This is serious threat
To have no food card with which to
buy foodstuffs in governmental CO.
operatives at low prices means to be
doomed TO starvation. Next. peasants,
by similar decree. were tied to their
land; in keeping with this measure, a
peasant who abandons his collective
farm has no right to join any other
such farm.
But the Soviets have not stopped
there. AS a result of these recent mi
grations Russian cities have enor-
mously expanded. And quite recently,
the Council Of the Peoples Commissars
announced its decision to effect re-
distribution of population unprece-
dented in extent and ruthlessness.
Millions of "superfiuous" inhabitants
will be deported from large cities, from
important industrial areas and from
a 62-mile line along the Soviet Unions
western frontier-even if such de-
portation means loss of livelihood and
starvation. Those who will be moved
are the politically undesirable ele-
ments, the members of the former priv
ileged classes and chiefly the peasant
immigrants" who have failed to be-
come indispensable industrial work.
men" Passports will be issued to
Nhose permitted to remain in the cities.
But the inhabitants of rural areas
the peasants-will receive no pass
ports. And thus they will be def
nitely confined to their villages. for
no one without a passport viii be per-
mitted to enter the cities.
These measures gave a finishing
touch to the establishment of what
may be described as the regime of
state serfdon in Russia Peasants and
workmen now definitely cease to be
freemen. Not only are they not al
lowed to own property; not only can
any portion of the fruit of their labor
be taken from them by Communists,
the feudal barons of Red Russia; not
only may they be ordered to SOW wheat
instead of barley or barley instead of
wheat, etc.-now they lose even the
right of freely choosing their place of
residence, the last earmark of freedom
Ever growing nomadism of the pop
ulation on the one hand, brutal at
eNAAPOo " NAlSl6NC lAldb pOPuldILOll dllN
nail 1t to places and professions. on
the other-such are the two factors
struggling in the Soviet Union. What
does this struggle mean?
Famine Ignored Officially.
The major fact lying behind it is
the famine
America and Europe have long ig-
nored the fact that l93l-1932 and 1882
1888 were famine years in the Soviet
Union. This is only natural Not a
word has been officially spoken in Mos
COW about the famine
Since 1929 or 1880 the Russian peas
ants, exasperated by the violent col
1ectiviza ton of their farms and by the
pitiless levying Of grain needed for the
financing of the industrialization have
been killing and selling their cattle
reducing the area under cultivation and
otherwise "sabotaging" the Sovets. In
1881 the results of this began to make
themselves felt. Russias crops that
year were a failurc-they sank about
IS per cent below the average of pre-
ceding years. The fertile Ukraine
where the grain collectors had dis
played an especial ruthlessness. was
especially badly hit. mis- was the
cause Of the aforementioned migra-
IiOl VI Uni iduidIl ptASdIlLS 10 Jfle east
Compelled by the food shortage to eat
a good part Of their seed grain in 1881
the peasants had to restrict their SOW
ings still further the following Spring
and the crops of 1882 were still more
inadequs se, sinking probably 25 pei
cent below the average This meant
disaster. And 1t was again the Ukraine
as well as the Caucasus and the Volga
regions, that suffered the most.
Special reports received from the
Northern Caucasus by Posliednia No,
vosti, Russian daily in Paris de.
scribe the situation in that country a:
follows:
In some regions of the Northern eau.
casus there has been virtually no grair
since the Summer of 1882. Peasant:
drank tea" made of dried grass, att
rats and mice and used dried fruit a!
sugar. Thin, emaciated children, lik,
little animals. grazed in the fields over
grown with weeds irving to dig I'D straI