Page:Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov - The New Russia - tr. Emile Burns (1920).djvu/25

 Money has gone down in value ten or twentyfold, and prices and wages have gone up in the same proportion. But there are even more exorbitant prices charged in the "free markets," where things can be obtained without cards at enormous prices. A pood of wheat (36-lbs.) cost in January, 1919, six hundred roubles. But the price of provisions distributed under the card system was moderate.

There were cards of three kinds. In the first category were included productive workers and all workers who were registered in Trade Unions. They received one pound of bread a day. The second category included intellectual workers and officials, who are entitled to three-quarters of a pound of bread per day; and in the third category are professional people, who receive half a pound of bread per day. Other provisions are distributed according as circumstances permit.

Wages have been fixed by the State; the minimum for a labourer is 600 roubles a month, and the maximum for a skilled worker is 1,000 roubles a month. The People's Commissaries (that is, the ministers) receive 1,300 roubles a month.

I am not able to give information on a good many subjects which I am sure would be of the greatest interest to the public, because I did not have time enough to make a close study of the situation in that enormous country.

In the country districts the peasants are not yet communists. They have a traditional collectivist tendency in the working of common lands under the system of the Mir, a kind of village moot; but that system is, however, far removed from communism. This is the source of