SOVIET SNOBBERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 143, 19 June 1934, Page 5

SOVIET SNOBBERY.

PURE AND UNDEFILED -"SEND US A GENTLEMAN." ARROGANCE IN MOSCOW. » (By a Special Correspondent.) LONDON, May 10. A dictatorship of the proletariat, simple persons assume, should be proletarian in its habits. Thus the munificent entertainment provided by the new Soviet Embassy in Washington has occasioned a certain amount of surprise there. As a matter of fact, of course, a dictatorship of the proletariat is no more proletarian than a government of the people by the people for the people is popular. Indeed, precisely because it is expected to serve cabbage soup and vodka, the tendency is for champagne to flow with particular profusion, in the same way that the first Labour Government, in England was more than usually scrupulous about tall hats and court dress and etiquette. What, it may be wondered, do the "broad" or "toiling" masses think about this out-champagning (to coin a word) of the foreign bourgeoisie? Does it seem to them to conflict with tliej exhortations constantly dinned in their! ears to tighten their belts and thus j hasten the coming of a classless, social-1 ist society? Are mutterings to be heard in the streets of Moscow about the | expense of such lavish entertainment! abroad? In the first place, the "broad" or "toiling" masses are an abstraction and, by definition, are only authentic as long as they approve of the Soviet Government and all its works. The moment any particular member of the "broad" or "toiling" masses is openly critical of anything the Soviet .Government has done, he becomes automatically a class enemy and subject to [liquidation. Therefore, it is inconceivable, even assuming that the "broad"

or "toiling" masses have any feelings, about the matter, that they should ventilate tliem. What the "Broad" Masses Don't Know. In the second place,' the "broad" or "toiling" masses do not know what goes on in Soviet Embassies. Their information about the world outside Kussia is limited to extracts from the foreign Communist Press, Tass Agency reports and occasional extracts from Comrade Litviiioff's- Genoese outpourings; and this does not include descriptions of the menu at ambassadorial banquets. In anv case, since, according to "Pravda," the capitalist countries of the world are in a state of disruption, chaos and faming, its readers njiglit be expected to have difficulty in believing that champagne was obtainable in any quantity at Washington even by the diplomatic representative of the one country where there is still any semblance of order. The "broad" or "toiling" masses do, however, know that the dictatorship of the Proletariat does itself pretty well at home, and they would not, I suspect, be altogether surprised to hear that it did itself pretty well abroad, too. They know that great junketings go 011 in the Kremlin when Comrade Stalin pronounces the party line to this or that assembly of delegates, and that the Hotel Metropolc, where distinguished foreign ers stay and where prices are in gold and not paper roubles, is not short of anything in the way of food and drink. They know that the special Ogpu and Red Army shops are well supplied when their own arc empty, and have grown used to staring in through the windows of Torgsin shops and watching persons fortunate enough to have saved a little gold o'r to have cadged a little foreign currency from relatives abroad buying things like butter and fresh meat and vegetables that they rarely taste. No, the "broad" or "toiling" masses are too used to economic inequality to mind, j even if they know, about the high standard of Soviet hospitality 111 foreign countries. Their predominant feeling on the subject would be, I am sure, a wish that they might one day get within reach of an Embassy buffet. Cannot Remember Such Meals. For my own part, I cannot remember ever eating such meals as those at the Soviet Government's expense. Courses were immense and interminable. All the way to Dnieprostroi we ate afld ate; and all the way back to Moscow we ate and ate. From over-lieated international

» sleeping cars,. replete, we looked out at I the Ukraine, seeing faniisheil peasants collected in melancholy groups 011 station platforms. And it was not only food and drink. A surprising amount of formality, of slightly disguised, hut none the less deep-rooted, snobbery permeates Soviet oflicialdom. In no country that I have ever been in, for in--1 stance, are titles more obsequiously > regarded than in Russia. A* peer, hows ever recent, however, undistinguished, I is sure to be respectfully received there; - and even knights and members of Parr! liament and aldermen enjoy 011 an in- ■ j tour the full benefit of their eminence; 1 while millionaires—ah! how the com- > rades lay themselves out to please ! I millionaires! liow waiters and interpre--5 i ters and commisars fall over each t other in their efforts to win the good ■ graces of the captains of capitalist : industry! In the early years after tlie war, the German Government, then pre- , Idominantly .Socialist, had the idea of sending to Moscow, not a professional ; diplomat, but a worker, thinking : thereby to cement the alliance bei tween the two countries. Moscow ' would have none of it. "Send us a gentleman. He will understand us," a Soviet Foreign Office official rej marked when relations were resumed with Great Britain in 1929. and the Labour Government was thinking of sending a proletarian ambassador to Moscow. 111 the event, tlicy got Sir Esmond Ovcy. Exhilaration of Power. 111 only two place* in the world have I found the bourgeois tradition pure and undefiled —in Indian hill stations and in the Soviet ruling class. (There is a very marked ruling class in Russia, for, as the O.spu flattens out classes at one end of the social scale, they coiiio | into existence at the other.) In the former, the tradition is a museum piece, j preserved intact because hill stations have not been touched by the changes that have disturbed it elsewhere; in the latter, it is virile, at its beginnings, because the Soviet ruling class is still in the enjoyment of the first exhilaration of power, not. that is to say, blase, and still suffers from a certain feeling of inferiority in relation to other ruling classes* elsewhere. Champagne in Washington, like arrogance in Moscow, only goes to show that the Soviet bosses feel a little uneasy about their attempts at playing the. boss game ill the traditional manner. They will get over that in time. —(X.A.X.A.) B