THE NEW RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 118, 20 May 1932, Page 3

THE NEW RUSSIA

HER HEADLONG SPEED

MIGHTY PLANNING

BUT POORBUILDINGr

A sultry August night towards the dawn with two (or perhaps three) hours more to wait for the Moscow train, in which there may (or may not) be a place for the two days' journey. The gaunt waiting halls and station yard are spread with encamped fellowtravellers—many of them peasant family parties of three generations, the babies laid out asleep on. tattered blankets with flies thick upon and above them, writes dough Williams-Ellis, the famous English architect, in the "Daily Telegraph.^' I have been so fortunate as to find an empty bottle-case to sit on in a corner of the buffet—but its hardness, the glare of the. unshaded lights, the irritation of the swarming insects and general squalor make sleep 'unlikely, as the impending scramble for the train makes it unwise—if and when the train should coma in. So one sits and thinks and wonders, and asks oneself silly questions. "What do you really think of Russia?" In England, by and by, thai" no doubt will be .the universal greeting. As well ask ■what I, think of the Atlanticor of chil: dren, or Mount Vesuvius, or Niagara Tails. ... Incalculable, portentous, fascinating, and more than a little alarming. But Russia and the children have: this much more—-they .embody hope, and may become anything. Enterprising little boys arc often ab6orb'edly grubby, perceiving that it is absurd to leave their mud-pies to brush their hair or press their paints. We begin to see that they are right in their values (within certain hygienic limits), and, despite the squalid "discomfort of the moment, I resolve to be. magnanimous and to decide'that Russia is right, too,, in neglecting most of the elegancies and some of the conventional decencies for the sake of the world to come. So I ache resignedly-on my, packing-case, softened by the reflection that due. attention to my comfort: is no part of the Five-Year Plan, '"\ ;' HEAVEN ON EARTH. ■ For Kussia is out to have her heaven upon earth—all hereafter ( substitutes wfiatsoever having been, declared fraudulent. They know what they want, these Russians; they mean to have it, and I think they will get it. It won't be my heaven—even' less so than it will be theirs when they have got it—but it seems to have some prospect of giving greater happiness to a greater number than any state or civil" isation has c"ver contrived before—and surely that is an experiment worth making. I have seen the still flaunting remains of the old Russia, Europe's Barnacle Bill—"old and tough and dirty 'and rough"—but I have also seen the.flooding tide of youth rising over all the land towards a high and shining level and already far above the tousled heads of the old illiterate masses. "What if the cities' streets have potholes^that would hold a suitcase, if the broken pavements border peeling stucco, and shops have cracked and grimy windows, which show little beside flies and flypapers beneath their sunshades of faded newspapers? What, again, if the people arc poorly dressed in shoddy, the trams a torment of jammed humanity, the decrepit • droskies and their horses on .the. point of irreparable collapse? What, again; if the stranger can only get East End accommodation at West End prices, his necessities with difficulty, and luxuries scarcely at all? ' ". . CHANGING PEOPLE. What, I repeat, do the trappings matter if .the Russian people itself is so made new and transfigured that it shines out startlingly against its outworn background? So vivid, indeed, is this contrast that it cannot last; it is too grotesque, too ludicrous. Even now the background of the new people is changing—being transformed into something more answerable to its newfound qualities of bodily and mental vigour, of enterprise, order, , and purpose.^ . Moscow is in a fever of construction and reconstruction—old slum areas are cleared for gardens, sapling trees bring their soft greenness! into the streets, new pleasure parks arid cultural centres line' five miles of the river's banks. Even in. Leningrad, where the pulse of the new life beats less strongly, the achitects and artisans are now busily making good the' dilapidations of the past seventeen' years; a thousand painters must have been swaying in their dangling cradles, colour-washing the city's face the afternoon I left it. In the new industrial towns the activity is simply fabulous, and if the constructive skill and the materials available at all equalled the general excellence of the designing and lay-out, Russia's modern factory .centres would be almost beyond criticism. As it is, the clean-lined cubistic. blocks of buildings that look so impressive at a distance or in the conveniently blurred newspaper pictures, are too often quite tragically jerry-built in fact. They may serve their purpose well enough for a time, but dilapidations will be—and in some cases already are —cripplingly heavy, and it is depressing to see such excellent intentions -stultified by shoddy, execution. As Russian procedure eliminates the-con-tractor, whether fraudulent or otherTrise, to what is this prevailing shoddiness attributable ? . It is really very simple: There is •just nothing whatever of which Russia is not desperately short except acreage, large ideas, courage, and determination. ■ HEADLONG SPEED. Not only are skilled workmen heartbreakingly Bcarce, but the roughest labourers too few also for the work in hand. As there is no present hope of sufficient specialists in any department of construction anywhere, any man, ■woman, or adolescent has an almost unlimited choice of employment at any job or any place he or she mayfancy ■within the vast continent of the Soviet "Union. The hot weather sets in, and the girl bricklayers and boy carpenters leave their work at A, in spite of the grand new club and cinema, for the superior allurements of E, where, amongst shady pine forests, the river-bathing is reported good and the.brand new "Park of Rest and Culture" is well spoken of. All over Russia great buildings are at a standstill for lack of labour or materials, or both, waiting their turn in a strictly controlled priority list. At one place I jheard a works manager being called to account by his superior because he had apparently concentrated on the completion of his machine-shops at the expense of the creche and kindergarten —as essential to the proper running of the plant (so the Russians think) as any other part of the equipment. Everywhere there are mistakes and shortcomings in execution and detail • —mostly admitted and deplored—but everywhere, too, there is a. staggering sanity and magnanimity in the general scheme that soon silences all criticism except where it can be helpfully constructive.

Never, I suppose, was any human readjustment, attempted on so heroic a scale or at such headlong speed, and, •with obstacles both natural and artificial in proportion, it seems marvellous, not that the thing is done imperfectly, but that it is done at all.'