Read the following extract and answer the questions that follow
Rabindranath Tagore wrote from Russia in 1930
‘Moscow appears much less clean than the other European capitals. None of those hurrying along the streets look smart. The whole place belongs to the workers … Here the masses have not in the least been put in the shade by the gentlemen … those who lived in the background for ages have come forward in the open today … I thought of the peasants and workers in my own country. It all seemed like the work of the Genii in the Arabian Nights. [here] only a decade ago they were as illiterate, helpless and hungry as our own masses … Who could be more astonished than an unfortunate Indian like myself to see how they had removed the mountain of ignorance and helplessness in these few years’.
(i) How does the author of the above passage portray Moscow?
(ii) What is the condition of the mass there?
(iii) Why does the author call himself unfortunate?

Read the following extract and answer the questions that follow:
This is a letter written by a peasant who did not want to join the collective farm.
To the newspaper Krestianskaia Gazeta (Peasant Newspaper)
‘… I am a natural working peasant born in 1879 … there are 6 members in my family, my wife was born in 1881, my son is 16, two daughters 19, all three go to school, my sister is 71. From 1932, heavy taxes have been levied on me that I have found impossible. From 1935, local authorities have increased the taxes on me … and I was unable to handle them and all my property was registered: my horse, cow, calf, sheep with lambs, all my implements, furniture and my reserve of wood for repair of buildings and they sold the lot for the taxes. In 1936, they sold two of my buildings … the kolkhoz bought them. In 1937, of two huts I had, one was sold and one was confiscated …’ Afanasii Dedorovich Frebenev, an independent cultivator.
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody.
(i) Why did the peasant not want to join the collective farm?
(ii) What were the reasons that made the conditions of the Russian peasants so deplorable?