WHITHER RUSSIA?

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 215, 11 September 1931, Page 3

WHITHER RUSSIA?

FUTURE OF RELIGION.

SOVIET'S CLEAN CHILDREN

FEAR OF WAR.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 6. Is Russia really bent on crushing religion? That is one of the questions which all the world is asking Lord Lothian—better known as Mr. Philip Kerr. Lecturing at the I.L.P. Summer School Yesterday he gave thoee earnest seekers" after truth a more sober analysis of things Russian than h?s paradoxical fellow tourist G.B.S. In Lord Lothian's view the Russians are only reacting against the superstition and obscurantism of the old Russian Church. He believed sooner or later | there would be a revival of religion 5n a healthier form. At the moment they had not begun to feel the hunger f■ r spiritual things'. New Toys. Communist youth at present was occupied with science and economic?. Youth was inclined to get absorbed in new toys. All their conceptions of capitalism were coloured by experiences of their own ancient regime. He did not think they had ever dreamt of what j a Nonconformist minister was like, -r j Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, or King George j V.! ■ As to the provision for leisure it is not neglected in spite of the passionate , fervour of work which the Russians are j putting into their Five Year Plan. "Tne J five-day week is universal," he said, j "On the fifth day they go to the pa.-k , of rest and culture. The one I sa-v was one of the most astonishing things— a. great area along the Moscow River j bank, a combination of a proletarian | university and Blackpool. j "There is a proletarian amusement park, j a , sort of Blackpool, made up of shoot- : ing galleries, swings and circuses. The shooting galleries are adorned with! pictures of Sir Austen Chamberlain and M. Poincare, dark objects at which the proletariat learn to shoot! _ Peop.e ( bathe in various degrees of nudity. Then there is a park for babies, where a woman can park her child in a creche where it is washed, fed, amused -i id taught to dance. There is a sports ground with basketball and eo on. Tn another place the older children can be left for.three or four days." English and Russian Children. This provision had a sidelight thrown on it by a remark made by Lady to Stalin. Lady Astor told Stalm that they did not know how to treat children properly. Stalin turned roand and said: "In England you beat children." It is a crime, Mr. Shaw said, to beat a child in Russia, and when exasperated parents give their children a clouting they summons them. . Lady Astor complained that they were too clean and that any child playing about ought to be dirty all the time. She advised them to send some responsible woman to England to study Miss Margaret Macmillan's system, and they would probably do it. Lord Lothian believes that Russia cannot go back. "It is going to evolve forward, but where it is going to get to nobody knowfe, not even the Communists themselves. They M'ill die in the last ditch rather than return to a system based on private property. Inroads into Communism, however, are already being made to-day. As we know, they are differentiating in wages according to skill ... and allow bank deposits. "Russia is a revolutionary State in a state of chronic war—not military war, but a ■ war mentality. They believe themselves to'be at war, both at home and abroad, engaged in a fight against the inertia of the old order and the counter-revolution. They are convinced that sooner or later capitalism will become so menaced by Communism that Russia will be attacked. They are acting as we did during the war, and have all the characteristics of a people at war." All the same, "the Communists are terribly afraid of war and I don't think k they want, war," said Lord. Lothian. "They say: 'Our existence depends on enormous importations of machinery from abroad with which war would interfere, and we have no desire whatever for increased territory. . On the other hand, every Communist believes in the world revolution, but they believe that will follow from Russia's example, but not by militarist intervention." . * . Silk Stockings Sighed.For. Speaking on the standard of living, he said: "The whole of Russia is on war rations as we were in 1917. The staple diet of the towns is black bread and.cabbage soup. Almost the only luxury obtainable in Russia to-day is lipstick. Silk stockings are looked on with most envious eyes by peasant girls who never thought of them before the war. • The population of Moscow struck me as the most care-free and healthy. I ever saw, though I didn't see the people who were hiding from the G.P.U., the secret police. "An American engineer of long residence said to me the main characteristic of the workers is they are not worrying about anything because they get holidays and are looked after in sickness and old age. The peasants, I should say, are unhappy. No community can be taken up by the roots as they have been and remain content." Lord Lothian's conclusions are these: Russia will never go back to an order of society based on private property. Evolution will carry her forward, not backward, but whither no one can prophesy. Meantime some of the, Russian ideas are destined to have a tremendous influence on the world, and especially what Lord Lothian called the winning idea, that competitive economic life must be restricted and property made to serve communal ends.