Woman’s Place In Russian Home “To Be Improved”

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28537, 17 March 1958, Page 11

Woman’s Place In Russian Home “To Be Improved”

(Rec. 11.30 p.m.) MOSCOW, March 16. Russians heard last night a pledge, by the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mr Khrushchev, of a better deal for Soviet women, particularly in the home. It was given as some 120,000,000 Soviet voters prepared to go to the polls today for the election of the Supreme Soviet. Altogether 1364 candidates will be elected to the tw.o parallel Houses for a four-year term. There are no opposition candidates, and voters can approve or disapprove the names on the ballots. Mr Khrushchev made a final election speech at a meeting of 16.000 Moscow citizens. Ke said that foreign visitors were quite justified in criticising one aspect of Soviet life—women working with picks and shovels, cleaning roads and pavements. He said that it was unthinkable that Russia, which had invented and launched the sputniks, should not be able to provide the necessary machinery to mechanise such tasks and thus ease the work of women. Soviet newspapers have published grim reports on conditions in the .“capitalist” world, laying emphasis on unemployment, high rents and an alleged high death

“Pravda,” the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, said that there was no need for “competing” candidates as there were no political parties in the Soviet Union which expressed the interests of social classes. Mr Khrushchev is expected to cast his vote today in the Kalinin district of Moscow, where he is standing as a candidate.