Feeling Against War In Russia

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29973, 7 November 1962, Page 16

Feeling Against War In Russia

(A.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Nov. 6. Political attitudes in Russia seemed like the reverse side of a Western coin to Dr. D. Vere-Jones, a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, who has just returned from 12 months at Moscow University. There were Russians who were ardently pro-Western, but they tended to be “the lunatic fringe.” “It was rather embarrassing. for they were the sort of people who were in the wilderness in Russia—in fact, the sort who would be in the wilderness anywhere,” said Dr. Vere-Jones, The “respectable" element. Russia’s equivalent of the “establishment," on the whole were “good Communists," who did not want to see their system changed, although many disagreed with some of the details of its actual operation. Nonetheless, in the university itself, he found there was plenty of free discussion and nobody seemed to be worried about supervision of what they were saying.

Usually they . bad strongly orthodox points of view. One thing that did impress him was the emotional desire among most Russians h met to avoid war.

“I had the feeling at times that they would avoid war at all costs. It seemed a much more sincere feeling than 1 encountered in the West.” The Russians had still not emotionally recovered from the ravages of World War 11. They could not understand the Americans’ desire to continue nuclear testing, and the atmosphere in Moscow became “quite tense” when the testing resumed. Yet the people were not nearly as well informed about the Russians' own testing as they were about the United States tests and often learned about them in small newspaper paragraphs long after they had occurred.

Dr. Vere-Jones, a graduate in mathematics from Victoria University, gained his Rhodes Scholarship in 1958 and then did a doctorate at Oxford, from where he gained one of the 20 British Council exchange Scholarships to Moscow University in 1961. While at Oxford he studied Russian, which he polished up at Moscow Univenity. He visited a great deal of Russia. principally Leningrad. Kiev, and Tashkent, where he spoke to Russian scientists not only on his own field but on British and New Zealand education.

“New Zealand was regard-

ed as just the most exotic of places, I suppose, in the same way as Tashken would be here.” , Other impressions from his stay were:—

“Economically, the standard of living in Russia is still lower than in Western Europe, but is rapidly rising. "There is still a housing shortage, but it looks as if the back of it will be broken within a couple of years. "There is probably nothing that is generally available in Western Europe, such as television sets, refrigerators, washing machines and motor-cars, that is not available in Russia, but sometimes they are very costly or in short supply. “It is almost impossible to obtain current Western periodicals in Russia, yet there seems to be no objection to the British students circulating magazines and newspapers among Russian students which have been specially sent in to the British students. Oh the other hand, they cannot arrange to send in the periodicals direct to the Russians.”

Dr. Vere-Jones will take up a post with the Applied Mathematics Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, where he was working before he left New Zealand.