IMPRESSIONS OF MOSCOW

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27010, 9 April 1953, Page 11

IMPRESSIONS OF MOSCOW

CLASS DISTINCTIONS NOTED VIEWS OF SWEDISH JOURNALISTS (From a Reuter Correspondent.) STOCKHOLM. Moscow is becoming a city of class dinstictions in the opinion of a number of Swedish journalists who have been there reporting skating competitions. High officials the journalists report, spend two or three nights a week dining in the city’s luxury restaurants. Factory and office workers, on the other hand, have started a new fashion of having no butter on their bread. Loaves of all kinds cost only a few kopeks. But butter on the open market used by Russian housewives costs 21 roubles a kilogramme (2.21 b and the average wage of a factory worker is 600 roubles a month.

Milk, the Swedish journalists found, costs 6 roubles a litre and cheese up to 19 roubles a kilogramme. What impressed them was the difference between the almost elegant clothes worn by the wives of high officials and the down-at-heel-shawl-round-head type of dress of typists and factory girls. A better quality two-piece costume, they report, costs 1500 roubles in Moscow at present, and a pair of good shoes 300 roubles. This means that the average factory worker would have to work a fortnight to buy his wife a pair of new shoes. Where manual or clerical workers have their own vehicles, they are usually bicycles or light motor-cycles. Only officials of the rank of manager and upwards seem to be able to afford their own motor-cars—Mokvitches, light seven horse-power saloons, Pobjedas, 14 horse-power, six-cylinder light saloons, and Zims, looking very much like the 1946 model of the American Plymouth. The best cars, the Sis, looking like earlier models of the American Packard, the journalists say, are mainly supplied by the State to the higher officials. Growing class distinction was also noticed in travel. Every high Soviet official travelling on the Moscow-Len-ingrad express was given a whole reserved compartment to himself. The other compartments were so full that passengers were sitting on the floor. Few travellers could afford to employ the small number of porters available at the frontier station. They charged 20 roubles for carrying a pair of bags about 100’ metres from a taxi to the train. “Snob” Schools A new snobbery is growing up among schoolchildren, too, according to some of the journalists. Education is technically available to all children on the same terms. But here and there “snob” schools are springing up, where the pupils ale almost excusively the children of high Army, Navy or Air Force officers, or of important bureaucrats. The “snob” schools are easily recognisable because of the lines of Sises and Zims waiting to collect the pupils and drive them home in bad weather.

The journalists were impressed by the skyscrapers sprouting up here and there in Moscow, but surprised to learn that, with the exception of the new Moscow University building, most of them are intended for new hotels or blocks of luxury flats. They could not report any visible efforts to provide homes for the more poorly paid workers. The correspondents found that if Moscow had more class distinctions than Stockholm, it also had more order. The underground railway, they stated, was impressive, efficient and extremely clean. Women cleaners are posted in the stations to pick up immediately the smallest piece of paper or other refuse dropped by passengers, so that the halls and platforms always look immaculate. The journalists said that, when they insisted, they were allowed to go out on their own in Moscow, but their hosts warned them: “If you should be involved in an accident or come into contact with the police in any way, it will take some time to put things right. Your passport will probably be at the hotel and remember our language is like Arabic to a Swede and vice versa.” Despite the considerable class distinctions, the journalists agreed that all Russians had one thing in common—a deep love of the theatre, the ballet and music in all forms. Significantly, the one thing they found cheaper in Moscow than in Stockholm was balalaikas. They cost from 42 to 52 roubles, or about one-sixth of the price of a pair of good shoes. Balalaikas were, therefore, the most popular things brought back as souvenirs.