FORKS AND FOX-TROTS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 133, 2 December 1935, Page 19

FORKS AND FOX-TROTS

REVOLUTION IN EUSSIA

WHERE IS SHE HEADING ?

They are taking up forks in Russia. It used to be the good old knife was enough and if that failed there were always the fingers. But now, announces the Moscow Press, where before the revolution only twenty-five forks were sold for every 100 knives, now everyone who buys a knife also wants a fork, says the "Winnipeg Free Press." Down in the villages they are asking for bedsteads, wardrobes, chairs, phonographs, radios, and bicycles. No one seems to know where it will stop or if it will until every family gets a chesterfield and an overstuffed chair.

Families themselves are coming in again. Just recently Comrade Stalin took a trip to Georgia to visit his mother. He had done that before and the weakness was passed over. But this time the newspapers gave a column to it and interviewed the mother. .Mothers it seems are going to be fashionable this year in Russia, for Russia has discovered that perhaps after all the family has a place. It has been announced that there are advantages in a stable marriage relationship that healthy children may be brought up for the Soviet Fatherland. That brings up patriotism, which is another old custom that seems to be being dug up and brought forward. Back in 1918 there were warnings against the family as the citadel of private property and of the CKurch, but these have been disregarded these last few months and mention has been freely made of the Socialist Fatherland. "BOURGEOIS." j This year 44 per cent, of the marriages in Russia have ended in divorce. The authorities are alarmed. One Government newspaper, the "Izvestia," announces that divorces are practically bourgeois. Apparently—or at least so it seems from the befuddled side line of a citizen of a capitalistic country—it was high-class proletarianism to provide easy divorce, but is it bourgeois to take advantage of such provision? The new movement which is meeting with Government approval, without which it of course would never get going, asks for a change in the laws so that divorce may be refused when there is no agreement for the support of the children, and they also ask for more severe punishment for parents guilty of the abandonment ■ of their children. This last recommendation is possibly the more urged since Leningrad reports that in one month 1200 street urchins had to be taken in charge by the police. It is noted that the majority of the applications for divorce are from women and that only a fraction of 1 per cent, of the marriages are performed in churches. However, 25 per cent, of the babies born in Moscow are. baptised. "RUNNING WILD." There seems to be some dissatisfaction with the schools, and the idea is being brought forward that a little less Marxianism on the part of both pupils and teachers and a little more general learning might be helpful. The newspaper "Pravda" recently, for instance, had an article declaring that children in the first grade of the public schools were allowed to run wild in their leisure hours; that little or no attempt was made to teach them manners or. discipline, and that in consequence "juvenile hooliganism" had lamentably increased. Instructions have been issued from headquarters to teachers to pay especial attention to "social education" and Communist party members have been asked to furnish detailed reports of what their children are taught in general and about discipline in particular. In the secondary schools the system whereby if the marks of a "group" were sufficient all the members of it were accorded certificates had been discarded and old individualism in examinations has been recalled. Moreover, no more excuses of "proletarian worth" are being accepted for failures in studies. ■ SCHOOL DRILL. Undeniably, though,' although suggestions that little boys and girls should obey their parents and their teachers are being made more and more, it appears from certain reports that drilling must be done in. scir.e schools. Eosinstance a group of questions was put to' a representative French school, among them "What do you know about God?" The French children answered variously from pantheistic doctrines to tribal conceptions.1 The little Soviet hopes answered as . one, that "God is an invention of the priests for the enslavement .of the workers and peasants." The French children were asked1 what they wanted most, and the answers were from bicycles to an admiral's cocked hat. The Russians wished to overthrow Capitalism and build Socialism. There was one small party, however, among the Soviets who observed that what she hated most was not the bourgeois, but going to bed when there was company. There is a Press item also from Russia which indicates that dancing studios was being reopened. That started with the army. LESSONS IN DANCING. It seems that a delegation from Turkey visited. Moscow last summer and things went quite well until it came to an evening party. Commissar for Defence Voroshiloff is reported to have known his ballroom stuff very well and so did a few of his officers. But only a few. The Turkish ladies, states the dispatch, were driven to dancing with their own husbands. The ball was a flop. So now under orders the Red Army officers are taking lessons in fox-trotting, tea cup holding, and small talk. They are not going to get caught out again. Says the Director of the Park of Culture and Rest, "The new dancing will be uniform. Once learned, any dancer will be able to dance as well with one partner as another because everybody's steps will always be the same." Which seems optimistic.

'It is not only the Army who are going graceful. Recently the Commissar, for Heavy Industry Comrade Ordjonikidge just straight refused to receive another comrade until the visitor had shaved and combed his hair. Comrade Ordjonikidze feels strongly on the subject. He devoted a whole speech at a recent conference of Soviet engineers to urgings that the comrades should shave daily and keep neatly dressed,

The Press, very helpful, are not neglecting this crisis. The "Izvestia" carried a proposed code for proletarian "good tone": "Don't champ your teeth when eating. Don't pick your teeth with your fingernails. Offer, your eat in street cars and waiting-rooms, etc., to women and invalids. Help old people to cross streets where traffic is dense. Don't eat off your knife.. Wash your hands before meals. Shave daily." If this kind of thing goes much further how is the general run of foreigners to tell a noble proletarian from just a low-down bourgeois? ,

A mile of pennies collected by Yorkshire Boy Scouts and the Church Lads' Brigade realised £57 3s 2£d for King George's Trust.