220 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
simply forbade the foreign correspondents to leave Moscow.
Surely such a prohibition applied to the benevolent corre-
spondents at Moscow is more eloquent than all the dementis
issued hitherto. Foreign eyewitnesses, however well disposed,
were not wanted in the Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and
other areas; for the struggle in connection with the new crop
had just reached its climax in those regions.
Yet, after August 1933, the controversy over the Russian
famine and the necessity of rendering assistance did not abate;
one appeal was followed by the next, and in Geneva the members
of the League Council began to discuss the problem. It seemed
as though the truth about Russia would succeed in prevailing
after all.
But at this precise moment the Kremlin brought off a
second master-stroke. The former French Prime Minister,
M. Herriot, was enrolled among the witnesses supporting the
thesis that there was no famine in Russia, and that the famine
allegations were merely the manifestation of separatist ten-
dencies fomented by National Socialists. At the same time
Moscow ceased to proclaim itself as the pioneer of world
revolution, but as an advocate of peace and stabilization in
Europe. Thus it succeeded in winning various states for
political co-operation and even economic assistance. These
new friends did everything possible to prevent any discussion
at home of the real position. Yet the questions, what had
happened in Russia, and what course things were going to take
there, still made themselves heard in the West.
Once again Moscow's never-failing imagination began to
work. The work of propaganda had to be adapted to the new
fact that the losses of human life unfortunately could no
longer be kept quite secret. In autumn, after the new harvest,
there is generally and naturally an improvement in the food
position in the producing regions, and this fact was used in
order to create the illusion of an unprecedented abundance of
grain and foodstuffs. In order to achieve this end Moscow