STOICAL WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 17

STOICAL WOMEN

LIFE IN RUSSIA

COTTON FARM WORKERS

Passing through New Zealand recently was an interesting traveller, Mrs. Duncan Gordon, a lady who had travelled widely, and was capable of speaking five languages, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian. Being able to speak Russian was a great advantage to her when she visited that vast country recently, and she had much to-tell in an interview which was most enlightening about the work of the women in the country districts' and of the hardships suffered by them.

During her stay in Russia Mrs. Gordon said, that she had conceived the highest admiration for the Russian woman (states the "New Zealand Herald").. They were little less than stoical, worked long hours at really arduous tasks, ate cheap, coarse food, and lived in what would be the utmost discomfort to any other women. Mrs. Gordon said that she would never forget a visit to Russian Turkestan, where the grain lands had been turned 'into;.cotton fields. Here the best farm-" ing was done by either collective or Government farms. Occasionally; however, families were to be found working their own plots of land, and on these women worked long hours in

[the mud and stones of ditches, while their babies, bundled in wrappings, were tied on boards and hung upon a branoh of, a tree. PROFIT-SHARING SYSTEM. On the collective farms a number of families joined" together to cultivate large tracts of land, sharing the profits after all expenses had been paid. They were obliged to sell their cotton to the Government at a fixed price, but were allowed to sell in open market any surplus over the amount stipulated by the Plan. The workers lived in their own houses made of mud and chopped straw. The larger ones were built round a stagnant pool, from which the water was used for washing, cooking, and drinking. The entire family'slept on the floor in one room, which had no ventilation.

In comparison, said Mrs. Gordon, the Government farms were vastly modern. The permanent workers lived either in ugly flats or rows of box-like houses in streets of mud. Each farm was a world of its own, providing lectures; sports; news, a club ( a school, ari .institute'of health, and creche for tlie ' babies ' "while their mothers workeaJ:'-; There iwas- always a shop wher'6 food'and clothes could'be bought well • uhd'er'"the market price of the towns, and-usually there was a communal = dining-room,: serving cheap, plentiful bjut tasteless - meals. The wages on the Government farms ranged between 100 and 200 roubles a month C£4 to £8), whereas on the collective farms the worker's wage averaged about £6; or 150-roubles a month; The Government1 farms;: however, required no labour; with their communal bakery,, laundry,-creche, and kitchen, so that every member of the family was able to work. NO REGARD FOR SEX. - The young people, or "shock workers" as they were called, who had left towns-and homes to work in the cotton fields, lived in "barracks," which were not more than sheds. They slept in dormitories irrespective of sex, and worked so long and so hard that they seldom bothered to undress. These young, men and girls were recruited, from the young Russians, and required to be ready to be rushed on assistance trains to whatever enterprise needed their services most. They worked not the seven or eight hours of the ordinary peasant, but until the light failed or until they could find nothing more to d 0... . *