LIFE IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 122, 19 November 1931, Page 24

LIFE IN RUSSIA

UNENDING QUEUES

PROPAGANDIST PRESS

AT LENIN'S TOMB

The Soviet Press, "the Red Morning Press," carries on for the adult what the school does for the child, writes Frank Owen, M.P., describing his tour of Russia in the "News-Chronicle." It propagands. Its news is. subject to rigid censorship. But there is very little "news." It is collected in this way. All the correspondents are the men who produce the factory news sheets every five days in air the great works. They send copy about their factories. It sounds dull. It is. Tass, the Soviet News Service, distributes a few foreign stories —something about the White Terror in Glasgow, or a howling mob of landlords and business men at a Louisville lynching. I asked the editor, supposing a great fire broke out in "the Nova shipyards and many men were burned there. How would you 'cover' that?" "The workers' correspondent would send it in," lie said, "if it was a big thing—if it interfered with the Five Year Plan." "Supposing a Commissar was shot on Nevski by a woman. Would that be a story?" "Not if it was just a private quarrel." The evening edition is 160,000 copies. It comes out at 3.30. There are two German rotaries there capable of 48,000 an hour. At 3 the stereos had not arrived. The casting, cooling, filing, would have made Mr. Caxton smile. So would the distribution. I asked the editor how he sold 160,000. He gave me a pitying look and said: "We do not suffer from capitalist competition and exploitation of Dews." * I looked again, at the Bed Evening Press. It seemed an inadequate reason for parting with three kopecks. In the evening I went to a Soviet film, their counter offensive to the assault of Hollywood, as Bed Evening Press would say. In Leningrad's Tivoli the top price is two roubles, and the seat is as hard ab -Is as it is at 10d.- We waited. ■ The audience assembled, a group of young men, a group of young women, a number of pairs of young men and' women.. . : When it appeared that no more were coming the film began. Pictures of the Five Year Plan were the substitute for British news reels. "We waited again. The audience began to clap, shout, whistle, stamp. The young men made noises in the- heavy moments. ' The young women giggled. The young pairs didn't notice either the film or the audience. WAITER'S LIFE. The film portrayed the life of a waiter before the Revolution. His sou was killed, his wife died, he fell ill, the rent collector arrived, his daughter was pestered by a. low-down fellow who owned a factory. Fortunately, there was a young man about who outwitted the scoundrel. The audience —that is the groups of young men and women—laughed. I thought they .deserved bettor. It is • fair to say that very often they get it. The Soviet films are.mostly very good, and some are superb. The part of the audience, which is in pairs, however, don't care which they sec. - ■ ■ At night I caught the train to Moscow. We ran through the .timber belt. I saw no chain gangs. . Only village boys kicking- a football about on a green outside a wooden church. ' Moscow is grey and white. Leningrad is grey. There are no rags there. It would seem almost less dreary if there were, for there would be some break in the drab line. In Moscow, if there are no peaks there are at least undulations. The beggars have come to town. Not a bad sign, for it shows that somebody must have something to give away. It must be the more prosperous proletarians. There are even motor-cars. There is a traffic problem here because there is traffic. Grey helmeted police are at the cross-roads. Of course, they are armed. Everybody in Russia with a shoulder strap is armed. • The first policeman who held up the rickety tumbril which, bore us through the cobbled streets was a woman. She was not a policewoman. She was a policeman, wore short hair, trousers, and heavy service boots. - A column of troops in grey overcoats •with slung rifles and bayonets was passing across our route. The droshky driver drove at a gap in the ranks and passed through. Now my diary:— AT THE EACES. I took myself down to see the Amtassador. He identified me, and we drove up to the trotting races. It was not very well patronised, and who composed the small crowd I could not make out. I should have put them down for hopeless bourgeois parasites but for the interesting'fact, that the next box to ours was occupied by members of the Communist Party doing themselves Tory well with sandwiches and salad and beer. Some clever scout must have found a passage in Lenin' 3 writings condoning betting, or at least nothing against it, for if it was in the book it would be final. • For everyone did bet and the minimum was five roubles (10s). ' Characteristically, for the foreigner the minimum was 10 roubles. They do not, however, permit the bookmaker. It is all done by tote. The "Morning Post" has perhaps not yet realised that the tote contains the insidious germ of Bolshevism. While the horses raced round the two-mile track the great air.liners of the Soviet Service roared up from the neighbouring aerodrome. 'I went to Lenin's tomb hi the Bed square under the lioary walls of. the Kremlin. A red and black_ marble mausoleum in the constructivist style. Lenin's name is set in crimson over the • door. Two sentries with fixed bayonets stand guard over him day and night. The patient queue of workmen, peasants, women soldiers, and Young Communists winds back and fore across the Bed square like a great snake, marshalled by the G.P.U. . . REVOLUTION'S MAKER. Lenin made . the . revolution. He plotted it, achieved it, defended it, organised it. He was a materialist and an atheist. Dead, his disciples have rewarded him by giving him the most precious commodity in the Soviet State .—house space. The living are herded into a narrow closet. There is ground room for a dozen families where he lies. :• We pass direct to the head ot the queue. There.is no resentment. They have been waiting there for three hours. What of it? You can stand for twelve in a shop queue and nothing happen at the end. ~ ■ The bronze gate swings open and the slow, hushed pilgrimage begins. Down the white steps with the grey walls. Two peasants stare at us with awed eyes because we whisper. In the room where ho lies there are three colours in the marble: black, red, grey. Black because the great leader is dead, red for the Revolution, grey for the masses that he led. It is dim and cool down there. He lies in a triangular glass coffin, his head on a Ted pillow, in his khaki blouse. On his 'breast.is tie red order of labour. A

black robe covers his body. A small blonde man. The only sound is the shuffling feet of the pilgrims. Is it Lenin? Is it a model? Somebody said it was. They took the doubting reporters there, and took off the glass eofh'n to prove it was not. The. Revolution is never done_ with Lenin. Fifty years of physical toil and suffering. Perhaps thousands of years of spiritual influence. The materialists require the material still.