Hungry

Was big Russia talking peace with tiny Finland (see p. 19) partly because last week the Soviet Union was again approaching famine?

In past years Soviet famine news has proved too dangerous for Moscow correspondents even to smuggle out. But last week to London from Moscow went a onetime Utica, N. Y. journalist. Spencer Williams, who at last could talk freely--even of famine--after spending some ten years in the Soviet Union as secretary of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce. His Moscow office recently "closed until further notice."

Almost every U. S. business bigwig who has been to Moscow knows slender, dry, efficient Spencer Williams. Most of them have rushed to him at one time or another for help in dealing with Bolshevik mountains of red tape.

Interviewed in London by reporters and Columbia Broadcasting System last week. Spencer Williams said: "A general rise of 35% in all food prices was decreed about the middle of January. That's a story no newspaper correspondent was allowed to send. Naturally every citizen in Moscow knew of this except the censors, who professed to be in such ignorance that they could not pass this news on the ground that they had never heard of it.

"There's still bread in Russia and as long as there is bread there is no famine. My experience in Russia goes back to periods of relative plenty and virtual famine, and in my opinion the food supply when I left Moscow was worse than at any time since the famine of 1933. Most of the people standing in these queues are women--housewives or servants or older members of a family. But it's always been remarked in Russia that the 'women say what the men think.' And during the periods this winter when the temperature fell at times to 45DEG below zero, women in the queues were heard to say 'We've had enough of this: we'll not go through this again.' Such remarks I never heard in Russia, even during the days of the 1933 famine.

"One thing always certain in Russia is that Moscow fares better than any other urban centre, and you may always be sure that when Moscow is hungry, the rest of the country is hungrier."

According to Mr. Williams, the Soviet leaders of today are "doped by their own propaganda" and the Kremlin "has brought the level of intelligence of all Russia down to its own. . . . The Kremlin actually was surprised and deeply resentful of the fact that the Finns shot at them. . . . The Slav intellect can't understand anyone fighting for such an abstract thing as freedom. . . . The trouble with Russia is that it's large but not great. The myth of the mighty Red Army has been shattered and Stalin can never regain the lost prestige of the Finnish debacle."

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