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By WALTER DURANTY
Special Cable to The New York Times
New York, New York, Monday, August 21, 1933, Front Page
[This story by Walter Duranty immediately follows a story on
the front page of the NYT entitled "Moscow Doubles Price of Bread"
by the Associated Press]
MOSCOW, Aug. 20 [1933].---Reports from abroad that the
Vatican wants to relieve "millions of victims of the Russian famine"
are greeted here with the same scorn and indignation that met earlier
news that German Nazis were collecting funds for "starving German
Volga colonists" and the appeals of emigre Russian newspapers in
the Baltic States for "relief of a worse famine in Russia than that of
1921."
(There has been no report that the Vatican has made an appeal
for "millions of victims of the Russian famine," but Cardinal Innitzer,
Archbishop of Vienna, did make such an appeal, which was
announced in a dispatch printed in THE NEW YORK TIMES
yesterday.)
The writer pointed out in uncensored dispatches from Berlin
recently that such parallels as existed between considerations in
Russia in the Spring of 1921 and this year were completely
obliterated by the fact that the 1921 crop was ruined in the chief
grain-producing regions by a forty-day drought, whereas the present
crop is so abundant that whatever shortcomings and losses in
harvesting--and the Soviet newspapers frankly admit they exist--
the national food supply is fully assured for the coming year.
Conditions have been bad in many sections prior to the harvest
--although, at that, the badness was exaggerated abroad and the
Bolsheviki do not fail to stress the significance of the fact that most
of the pessimistic reports about the situation in Russia emanated
from quarters that are naturally the most hostile to the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there has been a
growing tendency here in recent months to try to cover up or minimize
the difficulties--for foreign consumption. The censorship in particular
seems unable to realize that the United Stated Department of
Commerce, to take a single instance, has efficient representatives
in countries bordering on the Soviet Union, who not only collect and
carefully sift reports from people visiting Russia, but are able to read
accurately between the lines of Soviet newspapers, which those
representatives receive a day or two after publication.
The newspapers, as well as high Soviet leaders, do not fear to
reveal and face the facts about agriculture and industry. For example,
the recent attack on the mismanagement of the Magnetogorsk steel
plant, issued by G. K. Ordzhonikidze, member of the Communist
Political Bureau and Commissar for Heavy Industry, and published
in the Industrial Gazette, was followed by the summary replacement
of the Magnetogorsk director.
FIGURES ON GRAIN DELIVERIES
Until this harvest the picture was dark enough. The Kremlin had
ruthlessly carried through the agrarian revolution of collective farming,
and the costs had been heavy for the Russian [Ukrainian] people,
but it looks now as if the revolution is complete because the harvest
is really good.
In the Ukraine, for instance, the year's grain delivery program had
been accomplished 25 per cent by Aug. 16 [1933], as compared with
3.4 per cent up to the same day last year. The Tartar Republic up
to Aug. 16 had fulfilled its program 40 per cent, the North Caucasus
and lower and middle Volga regions 25 and 35 per cent, while in one
section of the Ukraine more than 400 collectives had fulfilled their
whole annual delivery.
In a North Caucasus industrial town the price of bread dropped on
the open market from 15 rubles a kilogram (2.20 pounds)--this price
indicates the severity of the "shortage"--to 2 rubles in a fortnight after
the harvest.
The New York Times, NY, NY, Monday, August 21, 1933, Front
Page. This historical material researched, transcribed and posted from
The New York Times on microfilm by the www.ArtUkraine.com
Information Service (ARTUIS)
FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
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