Russian Timber Camps

SOME time ago the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, in order to ascertain the truth concerning conditions in the Russian Timber Camps, instituted an enquiry into the facts so far as they could be investigated in this country. This enquiry was carried out by Sir Alan Pim and Mr. Bateson, formerly a judge of the Egyptian Mixed Tribunals.

Their report has now been published by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society and the result is about one hundred and thirty pages of-carefully guarded statement. The evidence consists of statements by refugees, who came to this country during 1930 as stowaways on ships from the White Sea; by officers and seamen employed on vessels engaged in the Russian timber trade ; by a British traveller who visited a prison camp in Archangel ; a British consulting forest engineer who made an extensive professional tour in the winter and spring of 1929 ; while to this is added docu- mentary evidence drawn from the laws, decrees and admin- istrative orders of the Soviet Government and declarations of that Government or its agents.

How difficult any generalization concerning the conditions in the Russian timber industry would be even at best (i.e., if the investigators had been able to visit the territory and make first-hand investigation) may be judged when it is remembered that the territory in question stretches nearly a thousand miles east and west, and five hundred miles from north to south ; that two million workers are involved, and that, further, we are dealing with periods during which great changes have been taking place, and enormous differences of conditions obtained. If we were dealing with a similar area and similar numbers in any country in the world, it would be possible to cite diametrically opposed testimony— statements indicating bad conditions and extreme hardships, and other statements indicating the contrary.

This report might well be read in conjunction with the statement issued a few weeks previously by a special com- mittee of the Timber Trade Federation of the United Kingdom. The same witnesses are in certain- cases cited by both reports. That of the Timber Trade Federation gives the evidence of Mr. Stewart, a consulting forest engineer, at greater length. This witness (who was not employed by the Russian Govern- ment but by an English Company to investigate and report on a proposed forest concession) travelled unattended and freely for several months in the territory concerned, visiting any camp he pleased. On the whole his report is extremely favourable, and testifies to good and plentiful food, while the camps themselves " were quite good ; none was bad and some very good indeed."

Mr. Henry Wales, an American newspaper correspondent, also quoted by both reports, is emphatic on the main question of convict labour. He says : " The initial question can be disposed of at once. Convict labour is not employed by the State Timber Trust for export production " (p. 123). Against this, however, the evidence of a reliable British witness would go to show that the timber products of some penal camps do reach the foreign markets (p. 130). Lord Buckmaster, who writes the preface to the report of the Anti-Slavery Society, comments on the point as follows :

" That some of the labour in the timber camps is not voluntary is clearly established, but the greater part of it is drawn from people accustomed to the work, who work freely and at wages and under conditions fixed after consultation with their Trade Unions. That these wages and conditions are such as no British workman would dream of accepting is certainly true, but it cannot be asserted that they are worse than, or even as bad as, conditions formerly existing in the Russian Timber industry."

'he final conclusions of the report itself are as follow :

" The bulk of the labour employed in the industry is that of local inhabitants, for whom is is a customary seasonal occupation under conditions certainly not worse than they were before the war."

The remainder of the labour in the camps is that compul- sorily transferred from other industries, especially from the

collective farms ; Kulaks, or other prescribed classes exiled to the North forest areas and there compelled to work in the timber industry as their only means of livelihood ; and finally, prison labour, including both local prisoners and ordi- nary convicts.

That the work of these last two classes, as distinct from

that of the local population, has been marked by great hard- ship, and what is in fact, if not in theory, compulsion, is The worst cases are those of the Kulaks (the well-to-do peasants) who, regarded as " social enemies," have been expelled from their farms, and, as Mr. Wales, whose testimony is evidently not regarded as biased by the Soviet authorities, says, are " deported from warmer climates with their only clothes on their backs and with a few bundles of personal belongings with which to begin life anew amid the arctic snow." He adds that the Kulaks are sent " in long columns marching over the icy Tundra and through frozen forests to distant regions, where they are assigned to settle as colonists." These poor wretches must, of course, work or die (or work and die, since they are unaccustomed alike to the climate and work), but it can hardly be described technically as forced labour.

What are we to conclude ? That there is barbarity and cruelty ? Everyone knew it. What, in view of that, is to be our attitude to Russia ? What will, on the whole, make for the cessation of these miseries ? For undoubtedly miseries they are.

These are not the only hardships and miseries associated with the production of the things we import. The hardwoods from the tropical forests, the rubber, the cocoa, the production of all these things have also at times been marked by oppres- sion. To single out the Russian case will not help matters. Part of the trouble has been that Russia has been too much the subject of a special attitude.

We of the West will never manage to handle this difficult situation wisely unless we put ourselves sufficiently in the shoes of the Russians to look at their problem from their point of view. They are at war, as we were fifteen years ago. They are convinced, with what is in fact a religious passion, that never was a war fought for higher purpose than is their war. Beside that purpose—a supreme liberation of the human race from economic bondage—the purposes of the last war, whether German or Allied, strike them as almost meaningless. What would it matter for the great mass of men, they ask, whether the German or the Allied type of capitalist civilisation prevailed ? Yet when we were fighting our war no single one of the combatants refrained from the completest form of compulsion. No belligerent permitted propaganda against the War ; the conscientious objector or other " traitor " got short shrift. Every belligerent power conscribed men : com- pelled them to kill, if they refused to kill usually shot them.

Compulsion under the Soviets does not take the form of compelling men to kill ; it does take the form of compelling them to refrain from activities which the Soviets regard as fatal to the success of that war for the new social order in which they are engaged. The Kulaks (among others) are regarded as war enemies, and are treated much as some of the belligerents in our war treated prisoners of war. The Soviets cultivate hate of the enemy as we deliberately, thoroughly, cultivated hate of the enemy. In one sense they give the enemy a chance, which we did not. He can cease to be an enemy by showing his readiness to join the Socialist forces.

Such is their view. It is as wrong headed and fallacious as you please, but we shall get nowhere by refusing to admit its sincerity. When one is dealing with convictions of an almost religious character, with fanaticism that is, it serves no purpose whatever to meet those convictions with intolerance or attempted coercion. That is to reply in kind. We must do our part to get- away from the -war spirit—a task that will need infinite patience. But to persist in the war attitude can only make things worse on both sides.

NORMAN ANGELL.