ACROSS RUSSIA

Evening Post, Issue 25, 30 January 1935, Page 11

ACROSS RUSSIA

RULE BY SOVIETS

GOVERNMENT BYEEAR

LIMITATIONS OF MARXISM

The last article of the present series analyses the foundations of Soviet rulo and points out tho drawbacks of a Marxist education:

(By Peter Fleming.) (World Copyright Reserved.) IV. ' ■

Since the inception of the first FiveYear Plan Russia has been forcing the pace towards her goal, nncl the outward symptoms of progress lie thick upon the land. But factories and flats, and all the complex economic structure which she has brought so rapidly into being, represent tho fulfilment of her most pressing but not of her mos>t fundamental need. That need, tho inescapable prerequisite of full success, is a change in tho quality of tho human material at hor disposal; her economic front is only a sector of her psychological front, and at the moment that -sector is a salient. . Tho 170,000,000 citizens of the Soviet Union are governed, in the last analysis, by fear. That fear no longer- obtrudes itself • dramatically upon the foreigner who travels among them, but be is constantly ..being reminded of its prosonco in the background. - Its most obvious sourco is, of course, the Narkomvnudel, tho uniformed political gendarmerie to whom the Russian public still refers by its old namo of the O.G.P.U. Tho recent reconstitution of this body, which is probably the most cflicient organisation in Russia today, has left it, though nominally shorn of tho right to inflict tho- death penalty without trial, scarcely less powerful than it was before. It continues to represent the effective sinews of the administrative system. To vast numbers of tho people it is a bogy not less dreadfully incalculable in its actions than the terrorist polico of Tsarist .days; for although tho O.G.P.U. does not, as tho other did, act irresponsibly, 1 but is rigidly disciplined from the centre to impose the Kremlin's will, tho Kremlin's will is so often expressed in regulations which ' seem to tho peasant complicated and contradictory that the peasant can never bo certain that' he has interpreted it aright.

WALLS AND EARS. An important contributory factor to the Russian fear-psychology is the official encouragement now universally given to a system which the English schoolboy knows as sneaking. Not only is it laudable to inform against your fcllow-Workor who slacks or bungles or harbours unorthodox ideas, but it is a penal counter-revolutionary offence to withhold such information. • This systom' (which no doubt accounts for tho curiously impersonal note pervading all conversation in public places, such as railway carriages]) is more cheerfully, | but not less significantly, reflected in the "wall-newspapers." On these broadsheets, which, crudely decorated with caricatures, adorn th.e walls of > every office and factory, the workers) aro encouraged to criticise one another's technique and conduct. It is clear'that that State is_ in a strong position which, can enrol "eVery one of. its citizens as an unpaid private dctcc-' tive; but tho situation.of a' people-who,! while denied tho right of free speech and tho intellectual stimulus of a free Press, are made- «tho official ,and alllieensed censors of one another's lives, is, to say the least of it, 'paradoxie.il.

Finally, at the 'very back of that background of fear—behind even tho fear of hunger which afflicts many continually, and comparatively few never —lies the fact that the frontiers of the Soviet .Union are to all .intents a prison wall. Even a man" whose' ,f amily, living in exile, offers to ' pay the exorbitant charge for a visa and to make'a large deposit "in''foreign currency has no hope of obtaining % permission even to visit them unless his place in, or standing with, ;-.tho-Com-munist Party is such as to'put him 'beyond all suspicion. Soviet citizenship is a life sentence again.st which appeals are -very rarely successful. Russia expresses her ambitions in

terms of Five-Year Plans, but the true measure of their achievement will be in generations. Tt is on the rising and the coming generations that her hopes of success depend—generations , untainted by the old ideas, unscarred by civil -war, steeped from the ciadlo in the culture of a new regime, which today has much more than found its-feet. The national <iharactdr is undoubtedly being remoulded; whether it is being remoulded in the happiest way. seems doubtful., 'It is. true that tho younger generation, in the towns at any rate, are- uncritically enthusiastic adherents of the cause which they automatically espoused at birth, but the fear-psy-chology analysed above cannot "but affect them unhealthily, though it may do so unawares. Moreover, whilo it is impossible not to marvel at tho effectiveness of their political education^ it is equally impossible to ignore its dangerous limitations as an intellectual equipment. The young Communists are

as full of Marxism as >an egg is of meat; and asempty^of anything olae. This circumstance, a* source of present

strength, will in the not distant future bo felt as a weakness by a Stato which cannot .indefinitely turn' for the

majority of its-diplomats, its teachers,

And its trade representatives to men who knew the wider culture and cxperi-

ence of tho old regime. Today tho insularity of Eussia is appalling. THE SOVIET DRAMA.

It must, not however, be thought that tho Soviet regime neglects those aspects of culturo represented by literature, dramaj and tho arts. Far from it. The theatre, in Moscow and Leningrad, 'at any rate, is magnificent, and everywhere it is popular. But the dramatist must still develop his theme, whether it be anarchy or abortion, along the lines laid down by cur-, rent party ideology, and even,Shakespeare is pressed into the service Of tho World Revolution by theorists of an ingenuity surpassing that, of the nine-teenth-century German • critics. In the cinema Russia lags far behind Eur-

ope And America, for the advent of tho

sunnd him, with its need for new equipliient and a new technique, lost her the lead which her silent films of a decade

ago had looked Hko gaining for her. In art and literature Soviet policy, though at first sight remarkably en-

lightened, appears on reflection to be unsound. Russia today is a.paradise for the talented, for the State's patronage is. readily and lavishly extended to

anyone who shows promise. History, however, hardly suggests that the creative impulse is best nurtured, in & hothouse atmosphere, and in art, at any fate, mediocrity is at present naming far more than its duo reward.

To turn to more practical matters, the actiial planning side of the second Five-Year Plan —thn worjc carried out by experts on. paper—appears to be 16----markably well done. There remains, liowevcr, as the chief obstacle to its fulfilment the national temporament

and character. My own experienco as a traveller, both, on arid off the bqatcn track," was of a nature to reveal' tl;o EuwiaE genius for inefficiency at its ■worst, To the men, usually good-na-tured and often charming, on whom my

progress from ono place to another partly.'depended, timo meant very littlo indeed; few were capable of accuracy and almost none of expedition, and their promises-wcro. as.misleading as their time-tables. They were •of course hampered by the rod tape which swathes everything in Russia; the scaffolding of bureauciacy which isurrounds tho second Five-Year Plan gravely retards its growth, and the Soviet citizen, denied the major principles on which liberty i& founded, must in addition submit to a thousand petty regulations, most of which, if he understands them at all, he deciM but dare not call superfluous. Allowances must bo made, as the foreigner in Russia is constantly reminded, for a country in tho early stages of its development, but the fantastic orrors which I saw committed were committed in contexts which had nothing to do with the country's state of development. Tho Russians themselves contend that their inefficiency is being .liquidated, and tho death-roll among bunglers is certainly heavy enough pour encourager les autros. They also unanimously aver that the Red Army, like the 0.6.P.U., is entirely freo from this failing. Certainly there is a striking contrast between the soldier and the civilian in Russia today. The soldier holds himself well, shaves, and keeps himself smait. He has a certain dignity, his air' of reserved assuranco has nothing to do with swagger, and his manners aie good. The privileges which ho receives, and the widespread publicity campaign which exalts his calling, havo not made him overbearing; he seems a very different person from the raw conscript whose feting by his village on tho day he was called up went a little i to''his-head. His- .Officers, quietly conferring* over their maps in a railway carriage, contrast favourably with, their,'opposite'numbars in civilian life, in whoso offices confusion and inconsequence chronically intrude. The Russian soldier gives the impression of knowing where he is; ho is well-fed and well-clothed, and, above all, for the period of his servico, he has nothing to fear. A militaristic spirit, officially propagated, pervades the wholo country down to its very toy shops, but Russia will avoid war if she; can. In response, however, to the situation in the Far East, she has created both a force and an atmosphere which may one day prove difficult to control. . In the event of a crisis in her home, affairs —should hor mysterious finances turn out to be as unsound as rumour says they arc, or should there come a - split insido the Kremlin —the power and popularity of tho Red Army are,-such that the possibilities of some form of military dictatorship would1 be ,too -strong to.be ignored. It is- the failing of the-pre-sent regime that it relies too much on fear; and fear has led it to creato a force . which, while at present-out-wardly innocent of political ambitions, may not remain so always.

(Concluded.)