These efforts have chiefly taken the form of
industrial conscription. Workers in towns seek to escape to the
country, in order to have enough to eat; but this is illegal and
severely punished. The same Communist Report from which I have already
quoted speaks on this subject as follows:
_Labour Desertion._--Owing to the fact that a considerable
part of the workers either in search of better food conditions
or often for the purposes of speculation, voluntarily leave
their places of employment or change from place to place,
which inevitably harms production and deteriorates the general
position of the working class, the Congress considers one of
the most urgent problems of Soviet Government and of the Trade
Union organization to be established as the firm, systematic
and insistent struggle with labour desertion, The way to fight
this is to publish a list of desertion fines, the creation of
a labour Detachment of Deserters under fine, and, finally,
internment in concentration camps.
It is hoped to extend the system to the peasantry:
The defeat of the White Armies and the problems of peaceful
construction in connection with the incredible catastrophes of
public economy demand an extraordinary effort of all the
powers of the proletariat and the drafting into the process of
public labour of the wide masses of the peasantry.
On the vital subject of transport, in a passage of which I have
already quoted a fragment, the Communist Party declares:
For the most immediate future transport remains the centre of
the attention and the efforts of the Soviet Government.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82