MOSCOW'S ATTITUDE 151
growth of the population and of the huge reserves of human
labour has in all probability ceased to be valid. Since 1928 the
rate of increase has steadily declined. In that year the increase
amounted to 3,800,000, in 1929 to 3,300,000, in 1930 to
2,900,000, in 1931 to 2,800,000, and in 1932 to 2,500,000.
In any case, the rulers consider that a loss of 10,000,000 or
even 20,000,000 persons causes no serious harm to Bolshevist
economics.
This fundamental Bolshevist attitude to human life, this
view which regards human beings as economic factors, implies
a similar attitude to human suffering. Compared with the
realization of the Communist ideal, the life and death of the
individual is a matter of indifference; why, therefore,, trouble
about his personal conditions, diseases and sufferings?
The practical results of this theory are described by an
American doctor of Danish extraction, Dr. L. (X Jensen, of
Oregon, who recently returned from a stay in Russia. In a
newspaper interview1 he was asked: <cWere you admitted to
the hospitals in Russia?"
"Yes/* Dr. Jensen replied, "everywhere, and what I saw
was dreadful. The doctors think nothing of amputating arms
and legs without using any anaesthetic. If the patients cannot
stand the pain, they die—Soviet Russia has no use for the weak
and the feeble; as for the aged, no trouble at all is taken about
them; they are simply left to die. It was almost more than I
could bear to watch these operations being performed without
local or other anaesthetic. I ain a surgeon of long standing,
but there were cases where I was physically sick. It is impossible
to imagine the horrors of such an operation. In these days
human lives are of slight value in Russia; indeed, human beings
are the cheapest commodity of all/9
It must also be remembered that Moscow considers the
triumphant industrialization of Russia as the necessary founda-
tion of the Communist world revolution. As things are at
1 Extrabtadet of Copenhagen, July 25,1933.