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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 31, 1963)
MEDFOKD MAIL TltlBUNE. MEDFOKD. OUF.GON THLKSUAY, OCTOBER 3. 1963 B 3 Private Profit Seekers Convicted and Executed for Speculation By JAY AXELB AN'K United Press International MOSCOW (UPI) - During the past two years more than 220 persons have been executed by firing squads in the Soviet Union (or trying to make a fast buck. Many of those who died would be criminals in any country embezzlers, forgers, swindlers, bribers and bribe-takers. But others have been shot for simply doing what comes na turally to businessmen in the United States and other West ern countries. In the West, the go-getter who knows how to make money because ot a shrewd business head, resourcefulness or the right contacts often becomes a rags-to-riches success. He builds a house, buys one or more cars, takes a Caribbean or Riviera vacation, perhaps becomes president of his local Rotary Club. In the Soviet Union the same go-getter businessman may be (and has been) convicted as a criminal and put to death. The Soviet government an nounced Oct. 11 that It Rus sians were sentenced to death in two separate trials for op erating private businesses with in two government-owned textile plants. The doomed men were offi cials of the plants who diverted products to the black market for huge profits, according to the Soviet press.. Private enterprise is strictly illegal in the Soviet Union ex cept for a few minor exceptions notably farmers who in ad dition to working on collectives or state farms sometimes have private plots and are permitted to sell the produce, usually a small-scale operation. Anybody who employs his tal ents for making money for himself instead of the state is considered a criminal menace i to society who must be ruthless ly stamped out. Small Minority The Soviet Union long has been plagued by a minority and it is a small minority of "capitalist types" who make or try to make private fortunes. In May, 1961, the government decided to take extreme meas ures to get rid of them and dis courage imitators. - The death penalty was insti tuted for speculation in state property, and two months later speculation in currency also be came punishable by death be fore a firing squad. A year la ter bribery was added to the official list of capital offenses. The figure of more than 220 persons executed since May, 1961' is obtained by counting the cases reported to date in the Soviet press. The actual fig ure could be much higher. No statistics on economic crimes are published. Bribery Costly The magnitude of the prob lem was underlined by Premier Nikita Khurshchev himself in November, 1962, when he re ported that in the first half of that year embezzlement, swin dling and bribery had cost the country 61 million rubles ($67 million). To understand how a Russian can get into private business to make illegal profits and risk the firing squad, it is necessary to know the rudiments of the, Soviet economic system. ) All means of production as opposed to personal possessions such as an overcoat or radio are state owned. In order to make a private profit from com modities one must resort to pil ferage or theft of state proper ty. All legal trading, buying and selling is a state monopoly. Therefore a man in the west who might be described as an enterprising businessmen could , be a dastardly criminal in this country accused of embezzle ment, speculation, theft or brib ery Private enterprise became I an alien and criminal holdover from czarist days. The major 'exceptions were farmers allow ed to supplement their state I farm work by growing produce on their own plots. This was per mitted in order to bolster badly needed food supplies. But So viet authorities have long taken the position that in a more ideal communist society free farming will have to go. Private Enterprise In a technical sense, it may be said there are other areas of limited private enterprise the . doctor who is permitted to tend i u:.. .,: r ....,.. nia piivtue pi aiuie unci aiair duty hours; mechanics, carpen ters or electricians who can go from state repair or work stores to side jobs after hours, teachers who may tutor private ly on their own time, secretaries who can take on private typing jobs and domestic workers who babysit in the evenings. A carpenter can come to your apartment to build shelves or a woman can do private dress making, but no such entrepre neur may take on an assistant. That would be "going into busi ness" and exploiting labor to make a profit. As long as only a person's labor is involved, and state work is not neglected, a side job is legal. Because a person may never hire an assistant, the size and scope of side job earning must remain very limited. In addi tion every Soviet citizen must have a state job or be able to prove gainful employment if called upon. This prevents persons from en gaging in full time backroom business. And money derived from side jobs is heavily taxed. The tax is so high it amounts to a fine. Only the state, in the Soviet system, can legally make a prof it through business. A citizen gets wages or "bonuses" if his plant or place of business ex ceeds a norm, a little "pocket money" from the aforemen tioned side jobs, or earn interest on savings accounts, interest from investment is not permit ted. Communists Protest The newspaper Literaturniya Gazeta (Literary Gazette) on July 27 reported. a pertinent ex ample of how abhorrent private business is to communist leaders. The chairman of a collective farm, in this case, had a bumper crop but no wooden boxes with which to ship them to market. Unwilling to see the fruit rot, he procured wood illegally out side of official distribution chan nels, constructed boxes and shipped the apples off to market for the benefit ot ms collective In some countries such re-, nomic criminals are appre sourcefulness might have been ! hended is through obvious high applauded. But the director's re- living. Some illegal Soviet "mil ward was eight years in prison, lionaires" and they have been even though he pleaded that no so referred to in the press have Penney's ALWAYS FIRST QUALITY 0 g.J. MS.. 1 C Js', . ML W W (ft Better Quality 2-PANT SUITS COMPARE! Don't pass up this fantastic sav ings on better quality, two-pant suitsl Your choice of all wool worsteds. Pants pleated front styles; coats are 3-butlon models. Make your selections from shades of grey, blue and brown in regulars, shorts and longs. Sizes 36-46. SPECIAL GROUP OF BETTER SUITS 5 Now! 38 Huge savings on handsome suits in your choice of plain or pleated front pants. 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U 1 'J"J'- SSSt&M Wok's tie S-M-l-Xl Boy' sizes 4-8 88 Dacron' polyester filled quilted ski parka with roll-up hood, water repellent and machine washable; acrylic pile lined hip length cclnpletely water repellent. Black, royal blue, end dark green. personal profit was involved and he sought only to help his farm. tne same newspaper reported on another collective farm chief who, when faced with inability to get pipes to bring water to the farm, resorted to private procurement in Moscow, f or this he was sent to jail for three years. A western economics expert here gave an example of what constitutes illegal profiteering in the boviet Union. not been able to resist the temp tation to build huge dachas (country homes), furnish tpart ments luxuriously and drive big cars. Some sample cases w. h 1 c h have been reported in the Soviet press : The chief of a hosiery de partment of a government store in Armenia was sentenced to death for embezzling 76,000 rubles ($83,000) worth of goods and selling them Uirough a If, for instance, you want to , large network of bigtime specu- get rid of a suit or bicycle and lators. This case was made pub- can sell mem tor as much r more than you paid for them, such profit would be permitted. But if you buy up suits and bi cycles from acquaintances and sell them at a profit, you are a private business m n a n d a criminal. Because a speculator the common Soviet term for a pri vate businessman often needs the help of industrial or trading officials in clandestine opera tions, such officials frequently get caught up in the dragnet against eionomic criminals. rive bxccutpd In July of this year, for in stance, in one 48-hour period five trade officials in Leningrad were reported executed in con nection with the embezzlement of 162,000 rubles ($180,000) and It was announced four trade of ficials in the Crimea were shot for swindling 104,400 r. u b 1 e s ($216,000) from the state. One of the ways in which eco- lic April 4 by the newspaper "Soviet Trade." A so-called lipstick King who clandestinely manufactured cos metics in a Moscow suburb was reported in March, 1962, to have been shot. A Riga factory di rector, chief engineer and two bookkeepers, his accomplices, went to prison. fays With Life A fruit store director in Sar atov and h is accomplices ac cording to an Oct. 30, 1962, req- port in the newspaper Soviet Trade wrote off one-third of a 30-ton shipment of Mandarin oranges as rotten. He then sold them in various shops and paid for it with his life. On Feb. 14 this year the newspaper Soviet Culture re ported that three men were sen tenced to death for profiteering in the manufacture of girls' hair ribbons. The amount involved was 99,000 rubles ($110,000). Five men were sentenced to Italian Government' Ideal To Help Solve Crisis Proves Flop By ERNEST SAKLER United Press International ROME (UPI) An idea which the government hoped would solve Italy's agricultural crisis reduce wheat acreage in favor of cattle raising has proved a flop. If things go on as they are now, the ox and cow, far from taking over the scene, may come to be remembered in Ita ly as strange, extinct animals. The changeover from whuat to cattle became official gov ernment policy a few years ago when it grew obvious that the great postwar land reform had turned thousands of poor labor ers Into farmers but hadn't solved the farm income prob lem. Continued low prices for farm products and using prices of agricultural machinery ac tually had widened the gap be tween country people and work ers in the cities. The answer, the government ruled, was a switch to the more profitable business of cattle raising. Measures were taken to encourage the change over and domestic producers were pro tected from foreign competition through me.'it import quotas that brought indignant protests from Argentina, Denmark and other meat-exporting countries. Bid Kails It now appears obvious that the bid to make Italy a big meat producer has failed. The Eurostampa news agency reported recently that the num ber of cattle in the fertile Po valley was going down not up by 1,000 head a day. In 1961, the agency reported, there were 9,813,000 head of cattle In the area, including 4, 950,000 milk cows. The following year, figures were down to 9, 300,000 head, including 4,700,000 milk cows. On some farms, cat tle decreased 20 to 25 per cent in a couple of years and wheat acreage went up 6 to 7 per cent, the exact opposite of what the government had hoped for. The reasons, Eurostampa said was increased slaughtering due to a number of factors. One was recurrent droughts which this year reduced fodder production by 15 to 20 per cent. Another was the low level of prices com pared to growing costs. A third factor was the exodus of man- I power of the cities. j Youths Leave i The agency estimated that ' eight out of 10 young men born in industrial Lombardy leave the land. The province of Milan, it said, needs at leaot 15,800 to 16,000 cow milkors, but enly ! 10.000 to 11,00 are available. I The one solutioa wuhIH be wid- ;er mechanical milkiiH!, which however poses technical a(( fi nancial problems. j The Mile newtapep II Gior aa, which toeli a slMifer pesii- ' mistic view, provldoal addi tional explmtMfi: ItaliM cat tle farms are far tit smaU to b profitable. .What little stallMles there are II Giorno said, shtw that the , average Italian cattle farm has nly 6.16 head. On flatlaids, the proportion is 9.90 but in the hills it goes down to 4.98 and in mountain areas to 3.93. An extensive study made In France, II Giorno said, showed the most profitable cattle farms were those with 120 head. The I minimum the French research- 1 ers even considered was 30 head, five times the Italian av- 1 cragc. The farmer with only a few head of cattle, even if he had the know-how and time, could not use high productivity tech niques because they wouldn't be profitable, II Giorno said. The only partial remedies it suggested were measures to stop a further breaking un ot estates ana encouragement for owners of small herds to join torces and set up associated stables for their cattle. death in Leningrad for illegally manufacturing and selling razor blades, buttons and ballpoint pens, the newspaper Soviet Rus sia reported on Feb. 21. Amount involved: 200,000 rubles ($222, 000). In Sverdlovsk six persons were sentenced to death for buying and selling gold. Amount involved was 324,00 rubles ($360,000), theTass News Agency reported last March 27. Finally, one of !he most bi zarre cases from which two men I paid with their lives last Feb.. 1 15. In Sverdlovsk the men were caught not puiting the required amount of fat into meat balls and selling the excess for their own profit. Commentators in western countries have cited the execu tions for economic crimes as proof of the inability of commu nism to wipe out private profit motives in individuals. From Communist China have come accusations that Russia is one "big den" of profiteers and speculators. Soviet authorities retort that it takes many years to get rid of the "lingering traces of capi talism." In the last analysis there is, so far as can be determined by western experts, only one way to become a millionaire legally in the Soviet Union and that is to collect huge royalties from a successful play or novel. The few legitimate millionaires in this country there is no way for a westerner to know how many are believed to be writ ers. The creative Intelligentsia, including writers, musicians, doctors, engineers and those connected with the nation's vast space program, are not millionaires but command hand some rewards and can afford the luxuries. The average factory worker in Russia earns 80 rubles ($88) a month, the average white col lar worker 100 rubles ($110). But a top scientist can pull down as much as 1,500 rubles ($1,660) a month. Under communism a Soviet citizen's chief professed goal if he's both loyal and legal is to make the state rich and prosperous, not himself. When the state becomes af fluent the good things in life will trickle down to one and all, according to Marxist theory. And for those impatient souls who apparently can't wait death ' nr niiunn ic iha nonnllv DENNIS THE MENACE '6oy! Joeys mux HAPPY1. He scmo TOO 613 PEOPLE AH! A DOG!" MAYTAG Dryer Buyer Days! II JS--, 1 Mire FREE U-Pc. Queer. Marie $24.95 HwmS Gift Shee A Towel Set Va,ue If you purchase and install a new FLAMELESS ELECTRIC DRYER between October 14 and December 14 from Larson Appliance, your local CalOre Electrical League Dealer Larson Appliance Co. "Bedford's Home laundry Specialists" 406 E. Main Phone 772-5302
