THE PROBLEM OF RENDERING ASSISTANCE 283
State undergoing proper punishment." This also explains why
even a purely charitable relief action for their benefit met with
the greatest difficulties.
The victims of the present period are a very different body
of persons. These are simply the victims of a catastrophe,
and even the Soviet Government does not attempt to describe
them as saboteurs, kulaks or enemies of the State. Here we are
faced with the fact that the daring experiment of agricultural
communization has involved the death of an appallingly large
number of people who were innocent even in the eyes of
Moscow. This is, in my opinion, the most striking feature of
the most recent events in the Soviet Union. The usual explana-
tion that the interests of the State demanded, and therefore
excused, these sacrifices, is not valid in this case; there is an
obligation to render help in need, and from this standpoint a
situation has now arisen which cannot possibly be confused
with the question of political offenders against the Soviet
State.
Human charity has always been ready to help when the lives
of innocent people have been imperilled from inability to
overcome economic forces, or from other causes. But now it
seems that this rule did not exist, and that people in the Soviet
Union, even when not regarded as politically or criminally
"guilty," are to be sacrificed in masses to the Communist
experiment while the world looks on and does nothing. It is not
sufficient to explain this by saying that the groans of these
unfortunates are not audible, because their voices are too
feeble to cry for help, or because the foreigners visiting Russia
see or hear nothing of their misery—since they themselves
are the victims of Russian propaganda. No, it is also because
they only too often avoid the sufferers as being a painful
spectacle to them.
There is no doubt that this factor has contributed largely
to the "conspiracy of silence/' for it is in fact unpleasant to
associate with persons who are mentally and physically at the