THE CATASTROPHE 61
such leniency strengthen our system of collectivization? No;
the Bolshevik struggle has no room for such leniency.'*
Surely these words reveal the whole tragedy of the situation
more clearly than any reports.
Since Postyschev made this speech, the nature of the famine
now prevailing in the Ukraine and the other grain districts
of the Union has been admitted even by Bolsheviks. It can
no longer be concealed that the Kremlin is allowing the popula-
tion of the agricultural regions to starve in order to save the
Soviet regime.
How were things now—in the summer—at Kiev, at Kharkov,
in all the towns where the food position was supposed to be so
much better than in the countryside? Here, too, hundreds of
thousands of people, all who did not belong to the privileged
categories, were condemned to starve, if they had not actually
died of starvation. A month's earnings—especially for those
who had no work permit—barely sufficed to buy a few daily
rations of bread, meat, fish or milk at the fantastic prices ruling
in the open market, and consequently people died in multitudes
in these big towns just as in the country. As time went on the
number of starving persons lying in the streets and squares of
Kharkov, Kiev, Rostov and other cities increased. Most of
them were peasants who had summoned up the little strength
left to them in order to reach the town. In the streets and the
courtyards scenes were often witnessed which are hardly
credible by European standards. While at first passers-by
would take some notice of these appalling pictures of misery,
this soon changed, and it was particularly shocking to see people
carelessly passing the corpses of those who had died of star-
vation. The number of corpses was so great that they could
only be removed once a day. Often no distinction was made
between the corpses and those not yet quite dead; all were
loaded on to lorries, to be flung indiscriminately into a common
grave.
This burial work was done by convicts from the local prison.