NOW BEING REMADE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 70, 19 September 1936, Page 11

NOW BEING REMADE

LIFE IN THE UKRAINE WORK ON A FIFTEEN-YEAR PLAN YOUTHFUL DICTATOR On my first visit to the Ukraine for four years I found a steady recovery , progressing in Russia's "south-western borderland"-the name means that, writes A. T. Cholerton m the 'Daily Telegraph." _. ' The future prosperity of Great . Russia"—Muscovite Russia proper—largely depends on how fairly Red Moscow ,will be able to treat this rich southern land, nearly as big and soon to be as populous as France. It is inhabited mainly . by a dark, handsome, easy-going race of a rather purer Slav stock. Its splendid grain :■ steppes (growing over 50 per icerit. of Russia's total crop), its iron and coal 1 (75 per cent, and 50 per cent, of Russia's output), its waterpower and ice-free ports, are all essential /to Russian might. From the slow-moving train the old scars of the famine years, -when the Bolsheviks were forcing the peasantry into the new collective farms, and the more recent progress of collectivised farming itself are about equally apparent. One can see the many abandoned dwellings (from 1929 ; to 1933 the number of rural households declined by about one-fifth) and the still grave shortage of cattle; but also the wealth of new barns, tractorstations, silos, and elevators. ON THE JOURNEY. This remark applies to the "Great Black Earth Wheat Belt" proper, so rich as to need no fertilisers;, but not 'to the lighter lsmd of North-West Ukraine, where- the lack of manure, clue to cattle shortage, spells a shortage of bread-stuffs.' The peasants observed on main line stations of this latter area looked at least as wretched as in 1931, and little new building work was noticeable in their villages.- With its hard realism, the Soviet has wisely tackled the economic reconstruction of the key wheat belt first. There are now only two passengc/'trains daily from Moscow to Kiev, a '"rapid," timed to do the. 540.miles at an average of 30 m.p.h., and'a "mail" at 20 m.p.h. After two days' wait—the normal delay is six—l was granted a berth on the latter. Jibbing at an'easy gradient,- our locomotive' had to back .several miles, and then lost forty minutes "piling on steam." Even if the best engines are temporarily : diverted to goods traffic, such a thing should not be allowed to happen in. favourable weather on the oniy direct line between. Moscow and Kiev, the two administrative capitals, an* also the two chief military centres, of European Russia. •■■■.-, I wished to see what Stalin's "Great Russian" lieutenant in charge of the Ukraine Republic, young Paul Petrovich.Fostishef, was doing to "build up" again the ancient,and charming city of Kiev, long neglected,because "too' close" to the "dangerous" Polish frontier. He • moved his political capital there in 1934 from-Kharkov, a safe 300 miles further eastwards in: the interior. PRIDE IN THE CITY. One of the advantages of having a resident .dictator, ..or ,Vvice4ic,tatpr," is the' f persorial pride he' Takes' in* his' city. Postishefs coming to Kiev, preceded by a caravan of semi-nomad Soviet bureaucrats in scores of special trains, was heralded by. a- State trial with grim sentences on slackers and "grafters" in the local Socialist trading organisations—just to., show that in future everything in the new capital has got .to be "P.P.P.,",. as the rather slack Ukrainians put it..... This simple, cunning, clever man of . thirty-six is, like most true Russians, an. ardent .lover .'of Nature. He seems to have fallen -in love with mellow Kiev on. her twelve leafy hills, above a grand five hundred-yard wide reach of the full-watered Dnieper, her kinder climate, her semi-European, character. From' his close-guarded • official residence in the high, once aristocratic quarter, Postishef works to extend the natural amenities of the place—"open her to Nature" is his own phrase. .He works in close collaboration with a wiser lot of "town-planners than those who turn ramshackle "Old Mother Moscow" into a slick, arid, and pretentious pseudo-American town. Kiev will be allowed to keep her easy Ukrainian character, protected against the hard .architectural megalomania of the, Muscovites., No-vulgar sky-scraping Palace of Soviets tipped with ' a chromiumplated, Lenin, like the one Moscow is threatened with, will crush and disfigure Kiev's sky-line. Its tallest building, the Commissariat for the Interior (former Ogpu), will have only ten storeys. For such an old city, Kiev has few ancient monuments; but these are respected. There has been no mass demolition of churches as in Moscow. EXPECTED TO DOUBLE. Kiev's present population of 600,000 is expected to double itself within ten years. This alarming growth will be due to influx of new official and cultural life and development of local trade, in the ' new capital, and not to any artificial stimulation. The fifteenyear reconstruction plan which has been drawn up for Kiev is the wisest thing, of-the kind I have seen in Red Russia. , Economically, Kiev will be kept a predominantly' trading centre. The local food and. cqrisumptipn-goods industries, will be enlarged'to take" the strain off rail and water transport. New s plants will specialise in higher-grade fabrics, including silks, and porcelain from fine local clays. But no'new "heavy" 1 industry will be permitted so near the frontier, and fifty evil-smelling works will be moved out from the congested lower town. The city will not, however, be extended beyond its present generous limits by new industrial suburbs with vast workers' tenements grouped round new factories. Kiev's town-planners strongly disapprove of this practice of the Moscow Soviet. They promise to "make up to the workers the extra half-hour they will lose going to and fro by giving them better air in a normal, residential neighbourhood, where they can spend their leisure right away from the factory atmosphere " Road tunnels will be pierced under the hills for a faster service of buses and trolley buses to replace the trams, still in the same nightmare state as Moscow's. ' ■I visited, many new houses, witnessing to Kiev's good taste, and I noted one new building actually being pulled down because its violent design upset Krestchatik, Kiev's main shopping street and promenade, where people actually stroll and chat at ease, instead of shambling hurriedly past. Whereever possible on hill tops there will be terraces (one-side '.streets) with views over the surrounding country, DECENTRALISATION PLANNED. The- river's brink will be. cleared of shacks and ■ an embankment built to check landslides from the steep, wooded hillfront, down, which escalators will take you straight to the water. Finally, the city wijl be decentralised- into twelve wards, each

for 100,000 persons, each with its own ! central square or circus, with the district Soviet offices, libraries, dispensaries, cinemas, chain shops, etc. This is mostly "futures," of course. Today, life in Kiev is poorer and (on paper) harder than in Moscow. The average "living (floor) space" per head—only 60 sq. ft., or 10ft x eftis already nearly as low as Moscow's and is likely to fall still lower before the new housing schemes mature. Wages are 10 per cent, lower than in Moscow, but chain food store prices have been-standardised at the same high level, so that the Ukraine, while supplying the central Moscow authorities with foodstuffs at nominal prices, is not allowed to enjoy her own fertility, but must pay the same high "taxed" food prices as the poorer rest of Russia. However, on Kiev old market, called the "Jew Base," I found present prices slightly lower and quality of vegetables rather better than on similar Moscow markets. Also prices in State clothing stores were not quite so fantastic and the wares offered were better sewn and in much better taste. Two perfectly sound official reasons are' given for having moved the capital of Soviet- Ukraine from Kharkov to Kiev; that the Red Army is now more than strong enough to protect a city within 150 miles of. the frontier, and that Kiev, cradle of Russian culture, makes a deeper appeal than mushroom Kharkov.' But the urgent . need to split up the Government of Ukraine was the real major reason. NAZI AND POLE. The political capital was moved to Kiev but the State economic administration remains in Kharkov, capital Of the wheat belt, of :the Donetz coal basin, of the Krivoi-Rog iron field and the metallurgical industries dependent thereon, all controlled- from Moscow through Kharkov. . ' ■ . „ T . Stalin's "Nationalities Policy I believe to be absolutely sincere—one of the big ultimate things about the Soviet Union. But, with wild Nazi schemes for "Colonising" this rich borderland and alleged Polish ones to detach it from poorer northern Russia, it is now too early—or perhaps too late—to tolerate even a Red 'Ukrainian Movement." .." ' " Ukraine is now being treated as fairly as possible- under present circumstances, Her peasants have been relieved from pressure. Ukrainian Culture" in terms of literature and drama can be and is being safely fostered and will some day bear fruit. Young Ukrainians are encouraged to speak and write their national tongue but .they had better not think in it too narrowly just now. All Bolsheviks with marked Ukrainiamst leanings have been removed from the important local posts, : For the moment "Ukrainisation" is dead. . ■■■ ■ . -.■ '