MOSCOW LIBRARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 138, 13 June 1934, Page 5

MOSCOW LIBRARY.

U.S. WOMAN'S STUNT. WITH PICK AND SHOVEL. A "SOBOTNIK" AT WORK. (By MARION" CHILD SANGER.) MOSCOW, May 10. A subotnik at 8.30 of a grey spring morning is enough to dampen the patriotic or merely adventurous ardour of even the best "volunteer" worker on the embryonic Moscow subway, and being an amateur at pick and shovel work, I found my energies fast waning midway of tho six-hour shift. The word "subotnik" comes from the Russian for Saturday, in former times a holiday, and means giving one's free day to the State. The foreign grotip of subotniks foregathered almost literally in the middle of the street opposite the swanky National Hotel and, after the usual wait for laggards, made its way in ragged form, but double-quick time, to the subway shaft in front of Moscow's second hotel, the Metropole. j We arrived singing "Hallelujah, I'm | a Bum," with true rah-rah spirit, and | were met at the pate by a somewhat • flustered youth with the all-important open sesame to any Soviet institution, "a permit," so covered with stamps that the original text was illegible. Each worker received and cherished his until he was ordered to give it up to the gatekeeper. Immediately upon our entrance into a walled enclosure, I was jabbed in the shoulder by a six-foot plank which a human conveyor of some fourteen j lung boys and girls was passing slowly from one pile of wood to another. The boys shouted a hospitable invitation that I join them, and the knock on my shoulder evidently was meant as a broad hint for me to get in line. Our brigadier had j other plana for us, however, I

Levelling a Mountain. We picked our way through a veritable battlefield of debris—piles of splintered lumber, mounds of chipped brick and stone, earthen hillocks with their adjacent muddy valleys, discarded, or, perhaps, merely idle machinery; metal and strange corrugated pipe. All this no-man's-land was dotted with drab figures in dark skirts or trousers and greyish coats, enlivened here and there with a I red beret or handkerchief. We had on our oldest clothes, comprising mostlyleather coats or turtle-neck sweaters with tweed skirts, but we Averc in Sunday best compared with our native fellow-workers. The single-file march finally ended in a mountain of junk no different from the rest except that it had only two or three men labouring over it, while the others looked like beehives. Our Russian cavaliers speedily supplied us with shovels, even to the' extent of giving us their own. and told us wo were to level the mountain. Why? and whither the spoils? were mysteries to us. The first question remains unanswered; the second we solved ourselves by exploring until we j came upon a mountain no one was j demolishing. In fact, we found other | subotniki were adding to it. With great i enthusiasm, wo then set about our j shovelling. The implements given to us were the smallest possible adult size, except the crowbars, which were difficult to move in themselves. The substitute wheelbarrows were priceless. I wonder if their name will convey to you their nature? They are called "tote boxes," just bits of board, two feet square, with two long poles fore and aft, like litters. Upon each one we could place five shovelfuls of earth —no more. They resembled the crowbars in weight when unloaded, so j it was just as well for us that theii capacity was restricted. I shall never forget my first trir carrying a "tote box" with Mrs. Ferdinand A. Reed, a delightful Bostonian sixty-three years old. We might have been likened to mountain goats, clambering up the rocky side of one great pile, following a tortuous path along its summit and finally sliding in the mud down the other side. Mrs. Reed was a grand spoit and almost out-shovelled her younger companions. I had only a fleeting moment's conversation with a regular Russian worker on the subway, who was throwing dirt from above on my tiny shovel. I ventured

the remark that they had a fine shaft, albeit a trifle dirty. He merely panted. Then I tried again with the inure cheer- 1 ful observation that soon we would all ride the new "metro]),'' as it is called here. He shrugged his shoulders and replied, "You read the papers. We work here." The shift worked on in a steady drizz'e and our mountain was moved. But 1 am sure that the mountain had been put there by a subotnik of the day before and that the mound augmented by our ineffectual labour will likewise bo moved to another spot by subotinki to come.—(X.A.N.A.)