Real Climate Records

Isaac Levine, writing for an American paper says so:

There is alarm in the Kremlin. The muddle that the triumvirate has made in the handling of the famine has strikingly vindicated one of Trotsky’s main charges. Trotsky charged the triumvirate with lack of unity and foresight, claiming that important decisions were taken in haste, without sufficient preparatory information and knowledge.

This year’s famine has brought to the surface the muddle existing in the ruling spheres of the Soviet Government.

Last summer it was announced that there was a famine and that there would be no export of grain. Three months, later it was declared in Moscow that there was only a partial crop failure, whereupon 30,000,000 poods of grain were exported abroad in the autumn. And now the Soviet Government has ordered the purchase in Canada and the United States, of 30,000,000 poods of grain to be imported into Russia, this operation involving an obvious loss of many millions of dollars..

At last, however, the famine has been recognised by the Communist. leaders. The prospects of a second devastating crop failure next summer, of which there are many signs, have aroused the triumvirate sufficiently to buy grain abroad.

But in face of the growing calamity, the internal strife continues, the Trotsky baiting goes on unchecked, the policy of antagonising the capitalist states is in force, and the outlook for securing credits abroad, thanks to the puerile procrastination in recognising in some form the minimum of the foreign debts and claims is darker than ever.

The famine of this year has strikingly demonstrated the lack of a strong and courageous hand at the helm of the Soviet ship of State. Four years ago Lenin showed how to brave and to over come an impending catastrophe. He recognised the reality of the famine in 1921, and acted immediately in his big way.

The present rulers of Russia ran away from the menacing facts of this year’s famine. They deceived themselves by confusing statistics, suppressing the fact in the hope that things might somehow right themselves, especially if credits were secured in Western Europe- or America. Eight months ago American correspondents in Moscow were not allowed by the censorship to transmit abroad officially published facts concerning the famine.

Six months ago the writer provoked the ire of the Communist propagandists in America for stating in these columns that Russia had no grain to export this year, and that the famine threatened the stability of the new Russian gold currency. Premier Rykov was even quoted to the effect that the Soviet Government would export grain this winter.

Now Premier Rykov cautiously broached the news to the Russian people that “ten to fifteen, at the most 20,000,000 poods of grain,” would have to be imported into the Soviet Republic. Several days later, Tchutakaier reported to the Central Control Committee of the Communist Party that 30,000,000 poods were being purchased abroad. And students of Russian affairs assert that before long double that amount would be imported into the country. The follower of Trotsky are inquiring why it was necessary to sell abroad four months ago grain which the Soviet Government compelled the peasants to surrender to it’s agents at forty cents per pood and to import grain from Canada now costing three times that much upon delivery in Russian ports.

But the triumvirate makes to answer. Meanwhile the horrors of the famine of three years ago are being duplicated in the most starved districts.

At that time the first cases of cannibalism, of mothers eating their children, occurred in the winter, when the famine really becomes acute. This year, in spite of the suppression of the news, reports of cannibalism are already beginning to arrive.