ACROSS RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 24, 29 January 1935, Page 9

ACROSS RUSSIA

LAND OF TAMERLANE

THE RED ARMY

SOVIETS AND WAR

On his way to the Par East the* writer roaches the land of Tamerlane, and in this third article dis-' cussos the strength of the Bod ■Army and Soviet preparations for a defensive war. By Peter Fleming. (World Copyright Reserved.) 11l Early in October I left Tiflis for Baku, round which the Leaky oil-der-ricks cluster in the desert like vultures, and whore some British Army mules, the legacy of Dunstcrforcc, arc said jto be still in harness. From Baku I Bailed, 12 hours .after tho advertised time, on a cargo boat for Krasnovodsk, a small desiccated town brought into "being between tho desert and the sea by the trans-Caspian railway. This line, once a,bogy in the strategical nightmares of Victorian^ statesmen, appears somewhat decrepit. Still single-tracked throughout, its chief difficulty is water shortage, and to meet this difficulty Diesel locomotives are being introduced. ■On my train the electric light failed, and the arrest of the electrician haTdly consoled the several, hundred passengers for three nights spent in total darkness.' Almost all Lmy companions in tho only "soft class" carriage were delegates on their way to a railway officials', congress, whero improvements on the Central Asian lines wero to be discussed; it1 was oddly typical of modern Eussia, that, while all were busily engaged in preparing notes for this discussion, none took any stops to remedy the failure of tho electric light by pro-' curing lamps or candles. It was1 typical too that, although at several stations bowildered groups of kulaks were being carefully shepherded by Ogpu guards with fixed bayonets, none of the. soldiers or officials on my train raised a finger to restrain a young "Uzbek passenger who, being drunk as •well as mad, stormed up and' down the train making a public nuisance of himself. Intensive bureaucratic dragooning has foßtered the Russian's lack of initiative; today ho does not care, as it were, to sign his name unless he sees tho dotted line. ... THE ROAD TO SAMARKAND. The railway runs through Turkmenistan betwoen the jagged mountains of the Persian frontier and the glittering desolation of tho Kara Kum, then swings north-east through less and country covered with tamarisk and occasional cotton fields, till a long and heavily guarded bridge carries it across tho Amu Darya into Uzbekistan. The traveller's interest centres on the stations, on whose miniature bazaaTS, ■well stocked with fruit if not often with much else, he depends entirely for his food. Ho carries away Flcekerian memories of quizzical Kirghiz women in long-waisted coats of gorgeous colours, of Turcoman whose stature is increased by fantastic fur hats, of kneeling camels and tiny donkeys, of piles of melons and gigantic grapes. ' Samarkand still almost lives up to its name. In tho Old- City earthquakes and (in a less degree) the Tsarist cannon have destroyed much that was ancient and remarkable. But Tamer-, lane still lies at tho feet of the men from whom ho learnt the arts of war, "beneath a dome from which the skyblue mosaics arc not entirely flaked, and tho ruins of El Eejistan have a dignity which is proof oven against •tho posters affixed thereto announcing the advent to Samarkand of an entertainment comprising jazz, foxtrot, and ihe Thumba. Nor has that curiously half-baked commodity, Soviet culture, yet penetrated to tho Shakh Ziiidc,. a ioly placo which looks like a fortress and in which is preserved " a Koran written in the hand of the Prophet's secretary. Many of the Uzbek women, like pillars walking, still go veiled, and in tho bazaars haughty kaleidoscopic mountaineers gaze with moro curiosity 1 ban. respect at revolutionary posters and processions. ' Tashkent has been less able to withBtand the forces of standardisation and appears shdddily progressive. My journey through Kussian Central Asia was too superficial to enable mo tc judge whether tho autonomy of its republics exists in anything moro than their titles: but it was not surprising to learn that Moscow was thoughtfully Bending out officials to "assist" these remote communities in voting at the then imminent General Elections. Mr. Owen Lattimore, perhaps the most perceptive of modern, authorities on' Central Asia, has written: "The Asiatic is inherently unable to delect that different ways of life are admirable or irritable or attainable in different degrees. His way of life is to him something to bo accepted." It is doubtful whether the pseudo-Commun-istic Soviet ideals, make sense in Samarkand. ON THE TURKSIB LINE. From Samarkand I continued my journey by the famous Turksib Bailway, whose rapid completion five years ago was a conspicuous bit of windowdressing in the first Five-Year Plan. Tho Bussians, who have (and need) a keen nose for excuses, had warned me that I must not expect too much from tho trans-Caspian railway, as it was an old line; now they warned me that I must not expect too much from tho Turksib, as it was a new line. I was also told that of the 500 engineers and officials prominently connected with its construction 300 were now serving terms of imprisonment. As an economic unit the railway certainly appears to be unsound, for most of the .Central Asian cotton and fruit goes' west by tho line to Samara, and the freight trains bringing grain and timber from Siberia commonly make tho return journey northward empty. For three days we ran through the sparkling Central Asian air, Toughly parallel to the frontier of Chinese Turkestan, sometimes passing close under the snow-clad spurs of the Tien Shan or of tho Altai. The doubletracking of the line, said to bo planned, has not yet been put in hand, and the passenger trains aro squalid, foodless, and very slow. Tho regions traversed are desolate in the extreme, but at almost all the stations construction of some sort is going forward, and through tho agency of the Turksib the territories of tho Knznks and tho Kara Kirghiz will doubtless one day bo developed. ENTRY INTO SIBERIA. Crossing the River Irtish on tho morning of the fourth day, we reached Semipalatinsk, and the dun steppe wns exchanged for tho bfcick soil and tho forests of Siberia. Factory chimneys and grain elevators onco ntore reflected the progress of those plans which in the timeless atmosphere of Central Asia had seemed remote and unreal. At dusk we reached Novosibirsk. A gradient leading to the terminus imposed on the train tho necessity to reculer pour mieux sauter several times; this alone robbed it of tho dis-' tinetion (which would have been unique in my two months' experience of Soviet trainß) of arriving punctually. ■■ Novosibirsk —"the Chicago," according to the guide-books, "of, Siberia" —boasts an abundance of

gigantic new buildings. But Eussia is pre-eminently a country of surprises, and her present slago of development is perhaps reflected not so accurately by the prodigiously modernistic facade of the huge Novosibirsk hotel as by tho fact that the traveller cannot book a room there until he obtains a- certificate to show that he himself has been washed and his clothes disinfected. Russia's military preparations in the Far East are complete save in one particular of secondary importance. The double-tracking of the TransSiberian Railway now extends from its junction with the Moscow-Samara line at Omsk to Karimskaya, its juncLion with the Amur Railway, though there are two or three important bridges—, notably that which spans tho Yenisei at Krasnoyarsk—which still carry only a single- line. Tho condition of the Amur Railway, ■on the other hand, is less reassuring. Except for the short terminal stretch between Nikolsk and Vladivostok, no sector of this lino is completely double-tracked. Work is proceeding feverishly, and particularly on the western portion of the line, and desolate valleys through which it winds arc as full of litter and activity as a lumber camp. Lightly guarded, miserably fed, and housed in tents or wooden huts, kulaks- and other "counterrevolutionary" undesirables are working on the permanent way. The Russians claim that the double-tracking will be completed next year; appearances, suggest that this claim is overoptimistic. No information is available concerning the progress of the strategic railway which, is being built round the north of Lake Baikal to connect, by a short cut, the Trans-Siberian and the Amur systems. But tho condition of a lino as vulnerable, in the event of war, as the Amur Railway is not perhaps of the first- importance, and the Red Army in the Far Bast has' made itself as little dependent as possible on its only link with the "West. ■ Eastward ttoop movements are ,no longer taking place, and tho accumulation of supplies along the frontier is regarded as satisfactory. On a seven days' journey from Novosibirsk to Vladivostok "tho only military material to too observed in transit was a few light tanks and submarines. The completeness of Russia's preparations is reflected in Vladivostok. A year ago the civilian population of that dingy town was receiving scanty and irregular supplies; today conditions are improved, because the military are no "longer monopolising tho railway. Similarly, a municipal road-building plan is now being carried out, the military, regarding their fltrategie requirements as having been fulfilled. ■ - A STARVED LAND. It should, however, be emphasised that the.country in the Amur and Maritime Provinces, is capable' of supporting only & small fraction of the garrisons •concentrated there, to whose supply depots it can in fact make only negligible contributions.' Neither the Amur nor the TTsguri valleys are particularly fertile, and conditions on the collective farms in those regions are appallingly bad, only the Communist chairmen and the two or three officials under them being Bceure from the threat of starvation during, tho long winter. To the soldiers stationed east of Chita the tin-opener is .almost as indispensable as the rifle.., Information officially made available .last summer placed the strength of. the Far Eastern Red Army at 150,000 men, consisting chiefly iof 13 infantry divisions of 10,000 effectives each, and equipped with 300-AOO tanks (mostlylight) and 300-400 aeroplanes in addition to artillery. T3io main part of this force (which is additional to tho Red Army proper, wJioso peace strength is said to he 562,000. men) is based on Chita and Daurya. D£ those figures the t.ink and aeroplane totals are probably by now out of date, though by how a margin it is impossible to say. In the Maritime Provineo tho principal air bases aro at JJabarovsk, Bochkarevo, Spassk, and a village near Nikolsk. ' :.' Vladivostok is heavily fortified, but with the exception of. a strong submarine base Russia's naval strength in the Far East is negligible. Bluecher, the Cornmandcr-in-Chief. of the Far Eastern Army and better .known to the British public as the Galons who abetted Borodin in South China in. 192G, makes his headquarters at Habarovsk, a further indication, if one woi'o needed, that he does not regard the defence of the' sector on which his awkwardly isolated left wing rests as a forlorn hope. Russia docs not want war. To say that she regards it as inevitable may bo tho truth.. It is certainly a fact that the Soviet citizens "have been told by their rulers to regard it us inevitable. They await its coming with quiet confidence, and with a childlike faith in the novelty as well as in the* validity of the officially propagated argument that the only hope of preserving- peace lies in preparing for war. If will, of course, be (they say) a dpfensiyo war, for Russia- will1 never bo gußty of aggression. But the best method of defence is attack, and the huge bombers, stationed intermittently along tho frontior between Habarovsk and Vladivostok in flights of four or six, very pointedly-menace tho cities of Japan. In the villages on the railway porters instruct the peasants, not only in the arts of anti-aircraft defence and in how to dig traps for tanks, but also in the exact formation of a Japanese rifle section entrenched -in a defensrvo position. DISCIPLINED OPINION. In Russia public opinion is rationed, and distributed liko bread, and the particular brand of it which relates toe tho Far Eastern situation is mow sensible and less inflammatory than most. In the event of war, not onlywill there .be no doubts about its righteousness, but there will bo no doubts about its result; the Soviet citizens have been told that tho'Red Army is bound to win. Japan looms largo1 as tho villain of the piece; but no appeal has been made to racial feeling, and the small Japanese community in Vladivostok goes about its business embarrassed by no symptoms of public animosity. The Soviet authorities have in 'fact shown an unusual wisdom in fostering an atmosphere of calm self-confidence—an atmosphere in which the State's interests can bo endangered neither in peace by tho nation losing its head nor in war by the nation losing its nerve. Russia does not want a war which she cannot afford and in which victory might well, havo results hardly less costly and embarrassing than defeat. It is obvious that these considerations must for tho present continue to govern her Far Eastern policy. It is less obvious what will be tho effect, both on her finances and on her internal political situation, of maintaining under arms nearly a million men, including reservists. Tho subject is touched on in a concluding article. (To be concluded.)