LIFE IN SOVIET RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21802, 6 June 1936, Page 22

LIFE IN SOVIET RUSSIA

IDEAL OF COMMUNITY SERVICE

COMPARISON WITH NEW ZEALAND

“One must not think that the Soviet system .aims at producing a generation which will think of nothing but work, of nothing but ideals; the spiritual side of life is certainly more developed under the Soviet system than it is under our own. Art, literature, and science are valued and appreciated to an extent which would be utterly foreign to most of us.” This statement was made in an address last night to the annual meeting of the Canterbury branch of the Sunlight League of New Zealand by Dr. O. H. Frankel, Plant Geneticist of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, who recently returned from a trip to Russia. Dr. Frankel said that what one might call the t fundamental idea of Soviet ethics, the red thread which ran through all the phases of Soviet philosophy, was service to the community. From the earliest age, the ideal of community service, of responsibility towards the community, was instilled in every Soviet child, and the child was taught to abhor individual acquisitiveness. It was truly amazing to see what success had been achieved in this direction. The average Russian of to-day, particularly of the younger generation, considered it* an axiomatic truth that to work to ac-quire—-beyond the ordinary standard of living of the community—was equally criminal as it would be for an Englishman to forge a cheque. This meant a complete revolution of the mind, and that it had been accomplished as fully and successfully as no doubt it had, was probably one of the most important results of the Soviet experiments. Nevertheless, the common pleasures of life were appreciated and encouraged to an ever-increasing extent, and this, no doubt, was reflected in the education system. Sport, dancing, tramping, and bathing were national possessions, and the beauty of it was that no one need stay at home for lack of money, and the only limitation to enjoyment was the amount of sunshine. “I have been asked to suggest in what way such ideas could be made useful in our own educational system,” Dr. Frankel continued. “The Sunlight League aims at raising the health and happiness of the community. It apparently feels that mental health is as important as physical health, individual health as important as social health. Unselfishness, services to the community are accepted ideals which, if carried through into practice, no doubt contribute towards a state of happiness. It is no doubt from this point of view that the league may wish to take advantage of the ideas I have been putting before you. “But circumstances here and there are so widely, so extravagantly different, that it is hard to conceive how the psychological methods of the Soviet system can be translated for our own use. In an age and in a country where material considerations are supreme, where the acquisition of goods, of money, is one of the most common and most cherished signs of individual success, the teaching of an unselfish service to the community must remain more or less an empty phrase. The ideal, after all. has been known to us for nearly 2000 years.”