Foreign Affairs: Bread, Bologna, Fish & Soldiers

After speeding 5,000 miles through Russia and over the new “Turksib” railway connecting Turkestan and Siberia (TIME, June 9), members of a pioneer U. S. party of tourists and newsfolk last week cabled two preliminary conclusions:

¶ Fresh meat, sugar and butter are scarce to the point of extreme rarity in the interior, but black bread, bologna and fish seem fairly plentiful.

¶ But the peasants are learning a painful caution about black bread. It is made of rye. Russian rye is subject to ergot rust. Sometimes only one or two grains of the rye head are affected. The ergot is useful in obstetrics. In Russia, ergot occasionally is ground in with the rye flour, inadvertently causes abortions, gangrene.

¶ Even in remotest parts the railways are guarded by Red Army sentries. Stations each contain at least one agent of the “Secret Police” (O. G. P. U.) easily distinguished by his officious, superior, snooping manner, his brusque questions to strangers.