Hlybokaye

I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in our little town every week we have to pay taxes, now the "income" tax, now the "trade" tax, now the "property" tax, and all of it has to be taken out of trade, and trading nowadays is God forbid. If you buy something to sell, whether at the market or in a shop, you have to make a reckoning of it, and by that reckoning you may earn only 10 percent, while 30 percent has to be paid out in taxes. The heaviest taxes, as I have noticed, are laid on Jews and on the Orthodox. And what goes on at the market is enough to make you laugh. The "entry" and "local" fees have been entrusted for collection to a Hlybokaye townsman, who fleeces everyone who brings anything to the market to sell. Earlier they did not collect until the peasant had sold his goods, but now it is not so. Now everything must be paid on entering the town, and if someone has nothing to pay with, because not everyone has marks at home, he is taken to the police station and kept there until evening, until it gets dark.

I may note that lately in our town people have been very interested in the Belarusian question.

S. I—w.