RUSSIAN TIMBER CAMPS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—In its issue of February 7th Forward brings together a number of extracts from different newspapers—which few people ever sec contiguously placed—about the alleged slave labour in the timber camps of Soviet Russia. These are a few :—
(1) "The Daily Telegraph of February 3, 1931, published a despatch from Washington, U.S.A., wherein it is stated that, according to affidavits made in Finland by former Russian workers there are four million persons held in Soviet prison camps producing goods for export. (2) The Times of January 31st last published a despatch from its Helsingfors correspondent quoting the report of a former Soviet 0.G.P.U. official who had escaped to Finland that there were 662,200 prisoners (N.B. Please note the odd 200') cutting timber in the Soviet concentration camps, and that in the winter of 1929-30 there were 72,00) casualties from fever, exhaustion,. etc.
(3) But three weeks earlier The Times itself had published a despatch, also from its Helsingfors correspondent, quoting the affidavit signed before a Public Notary by Nikolai Lukin, an escaped forestry expert from Russia, who gave the total number of prisoners in the timber camps as 9,500. Forward comments on this affidavit that Lukin seemed to know nothing about the 72,000 deaths in those camps during the previous Winter ! "
All these figures are contradictory.—I am, Sir, &c.,
London. J. C. MAcGREGOR. [This letter has been shortened for reasons of space.—En. Spectator.]
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