44 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
six months of the financial year 1931-2 to 10,300 tons in the
corresponding period of 1932-3. It is true that this extra-
ordinary strangulation of tea imports was followed by some
increase in 1934; in the first eight months of that year 40,604
tons entered the country. But even of this quantity, extremely
small for Russia, only a part remained in the country; an article
in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of October 6, 1934, shows
that a considerable amount was re-exported to Germany. The
figures for other foodstuff's and consumption goods show
clearly how pitilessly the overwhelming majority of the country
population is being compelled to do without everything
remotely suggesting luxury.
Similar methods are employed with regard to other "indis-
pensable" imported goods, in so far as they are not absolutely
required for the consumption of the privileged classes and the
needs of the industrial system. This even applies to the most
vital drugs and medicines, the import of which is prohibited
except for the benefit of the privileged categories (G.P.U.
officials, the Red Army and certain industrial workers). All
eyewitnesses of conditions in Soviet Russia agree that this
lack of the most indispensable foreign medicines leads to the
death of an immense number of persons.
A particularly competent foreign expert, who for years held
an administrative position in Southern Russia, expressed him-
self as follows: "There were no drugs for the treatment and
cure of various diseases, especially of malaria, which occurred
on an enormous scale. Despite the vast burdens placed upon
the industrial concerns by the sozstrakh [social insurance],
amounting to 16 per cent of the money wages of all workers,
the equipment of the hospitals and travelling dispensaries was
more than lamentable. Everything was lacking. Hundreds of
thousands had to perish because the scanty supply of doctors
had no medicines at its disposal, especially out in the country.
The same was true, of course, with regard to drugs for the
treatment of animal diseases. If laboratories for their manu-