146 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
attitude adopted by Moscow with regard to the famine, or
rather, to the possibilities of exploiting it—I refer now to quite
recent events—should in the course of time have undergone
a change, and that the Kremlin should see in the famine a
positive relief, and even an actual support for its campaign
for the ultimate triumph of Communism. To put it in plain
English: Moscow now has a direct interest in the destruction
of a large part of the generation now living in the Ukraine
and in other autonomous districts.
The nationalities of these districts, especially the Ukrainians,
are thus engaged in a struggle for their existence and for the
salvation of a part of their national being. But they are wholly
at the mercy of Moscow and can do nothing to defend them-
selves. They have to look on in silence while their harvest is
taken away, and the very existence of the famine is denied
when foreigners are ready to intervene. The majority of these
nationalities—Ukrainians, White Russians, Caucasians, etc.-—
in any case have no state of the same nationality capable of
appealing on their behalf. And even where there are such
states, their existence is of no avail, because they are unable to
do anything for their kinsmen in distress; considerations of
their political and economic relations with the Soviet Union
compel them to confine themselves to remittances or food
parcels, which in any case are no more than a drop in the
ocean, if they do their recipients no actual harm. On the con-
trary, one cannot avoid the impression that the authorities in
Berlin, Hdsingfors, Warsaw and Riga have resigned themselves
to the destruction of their kinsmen in the Soviet Union.
Since the end of 1934 Moscow's systematic policy of destruc-
tion as applied to the nationalities has become even clearer.
After the assassination of Kirov, representatives of the local
peoples and nationalities who had nothing whatever to do
with that crime were sentenced to death and executed in the
Ukraine, White Russia, Usbekistan, etc. Indeed, there is no
doubt that the Government exploited Kirov's assassination in