SOME CONTRASTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 133, 2 December 1936, Page 4

SOME CONTRASTS

♦-- RUSSIA REVISITED

PETERSBURG OF THE TSARS

A COLLECTIVE FARM

Russia has had three capitals, and Klyuchevsky, the greatest of Russian historians, has spoken of them as follows: —''Kiev Russia loved and respected; _Moscow she respected but did not love; St. Petersburg she neither loved nor respected," writes Sir Bernard Pares in the "ManI Chester Guardian."; One does not now reach the Russian frontier till one has long passed the Gulf of Riga. What chance has Russia as a sea Power now, bottled up in the Black Sea and at the far end of the Gulf of Finland? , ■ In Leningrad the bumpy roads near the new part; were-sadly in want of repair, but the centre was much better paved. The faces were gloomy, as was natural in such weather and in a city which was once * first and is now second; the initiative has gone where it ought to goi to Moscow, and,-Lenin-grad is left with its gloomy though stately past. The arrangements; made for us were excellent, and in little more than half a day our able guide had picked out for us all the best external sights of the city. Knowing their: history, lean say that it was all i done justice to—both the artistic .side,| and the historical; but we were passing all the time through an : historical monument, and it was not even Russian but a gorgeous plagiarism from Western Europe. Far more is left over from the Revolution than one might have thought. THE HERMITAGE. ■'' The picture galleries of the Hermitage seemed even fuller of good things •■ than they used to be, for though some pictures have been sold they are more than replaced by additions from confiscated private collections. Even in the past the Her- j mitage was well used by the; public, including even the poor; and now the educational use made of it is far greater and far better organised. Part of the Winter Palace has now been added to it, and one was also able for the first time to go through the private rooms. The outside of the palace has been greatly improved. The dull red has been replaced by a softer shade, and the pillars now stand out handsomely. St. Isaac's looks as it did, with the old inscription over the gate: "My house is the house of prayer." Visitors are drawn hither by the wonderful mosaics, ' paintings, and columns, and the anti-religious museum which is to be found here is not shown—"as it is not proper," we were told. ' Falconnet's preposterous equestrian Peter is in its place—with the horse really standing on its tail— an emblem of the strain inherent in the whole creation,of this city. Peter was.spok.en of as the man who brought culture to Russia, but with ruthless violence. Not unnaturally,, a good deal was made of the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Many of the cells have on the outside wall the portraits and records of their revolutionary occupants, though I could not learn where the Tsarfs Ministers of 1917 and, in their turn, those of the Provisional Government were confined, but I. did not think that the explanations given were unfair. THE ROOMS OF SELO. : 1 had thetfglppmy/^ea.y.of,going, for ■the 'firstt:time, 4 ;thrpu g h?Sthe private 'rooms1 Vof v Selo,;; ,:^already almost familiar to me from a detailed study of the years 1914-17.- The whole is conspicuously virtuous, bourgeois, homely, and mediocre.' There was^the portrait of Queen Victoria which so strongly1' impressed her granddaughter,- the young. Empress; .there was the; picture; of ■ tylarie Antoinette which was 'always facihg"her" writingdesk" there was the staircase balustrade by which she could slip, at any time into the Emperor's study, and the couch on which she lay listening when he was hearing official reports. The drawing-room was cluttered with furniture, portraits, and snapshots. "Everything is settled in a bedroom," said courtly critics of a medieval Tsar, and that was the ,truthfui impression which one took away from here. It all seemed to be a hundred years ago, and one could not imagine that so unnatural a way of governing a vast empire could ever be restored. In Kiev the past is much more in the background. St. Sophia, with its famous frescoes, is well preserved as a monument, and so is the primeval monastery of the, Caves. The domes of both were bright and glittering; but this is the ,:lot only of those churchea which are. preserved as artistic monuments.; Several are gone, and one famous monastery, that of St. Michael; was at that very ■ time being destroyed under our eyes. Only ten churches, we were told, are still open in Kiev, which was full of them in those early" days when Kiev was actually described as "the glory of Greece." VISIT WHICH FAILED. The one failure of our trip was a visit to a collective farm near Kiev. The outskirts of the city were in excellent condition. The road was asphalted for at least twenty miles, and closely reminded me of the road between Southampton and Salisbury. In direct contrast the road from Petersburg to Tsarskoe—that is, from London to Windsor—is still only cobbles. But when we got to the farm there, was no one there, though this trip had been arranged for months in advance, and the guide stood in a field and expected us to be satisfied with her account of it. We insisted on seeing something, and persuaded her to walk in various directions in order to find some peasants. The manager was away, the school was under repair, the key to the club could not be found. The club was ensconced in a handsome but battered church. Tasked howlong it had been converted to this use, and was told, "Nearly a year," which means that the church continued to function as a church until as late as that. The village had now voted to convert it to a club, but when I asked some peasants what kind of a majority there was I could get 'no answer. An old peasant woman was looking out of her window, and we were asked if we would like to see her house. It turned out to be full of ikons, exactly as it was in the only house which I entered on the only other collective farm which I have seen! near. Moscow. The-guide asked,. "Are you a believer?" "Yes." .: ' '■■ . "But I expect your sister is not?" "Oh. she likes to look at them." "Ha, ha!" said the 'guide with a harsh laugh. "You see she only keeps them for decoration." "That is not what she said," I interposed. : .'.'■•■■■ PLENTY TO SEE. -It was a-pity this farm was not better shown to us, for there was certainly plenty to see. The pigs were housed in a way that would have been quite, impossible for individual peasants. The cows, looked altogether more prosperous, and there was such an abundance and variety of apples and other fruits as one could not possibly have seen in an old village. In the long distances which we traversed between the three capitals, all of it country with which' I was |

familiar in the past, I noticed.. many , changes, but, as was to be expected, rather, in patches. In the forest zone between Leningrad and Moscow, the | unproductive grey soil, the outlook was much as it • was, thought in the villages there were some signs of club life. But there was one big difference: all the strips which used to serve as a map of the old village life were gone. This was everywhere the same, except for a few very short strips devoted to vegetables in the inhospitable Pinsk marshes. There things were even more backward; there were great stretches of untilled land, with the old, unhealthy scrub and reeds and ditches and meres; there the roads were still quite primitive. But in the south, especially in the grain area around Kiev, the aspect of the country was simply revolutionised—great areas of large-scale, planned agriculture, with fine central buildings, herds of j healthy-looking cattle, and a general | atmosphere of abundance and • hard work. .. ■ ■ . BETTER TRANSPORT. In one great field there was a girl praying in the early morning- by the side of a tractor. (In Leningrad we had seen a woman, praying oh the steps of a closed church.) Peasants came to the stations to sell apples and melons. There'were chatting, groups, a good deal better dressed than of old. Most people seemed to. be wearing slender boots that looked riot unlike goloshes; women and children wore stockings; beards, where one saw them, seemed almost a curiosity. Transport has evidently benefited by the recent vigorous campaign;; the terminus stations looked rural, as before, but were far more clean and orderly than in the j old days, without .those camping peasant families which were so conspicuous in the past. ' ■'. ; ' Moscow was. rather more humdrum, with less of the novelty, and-surprise at well-being, but■ steadily, busy ; as' before,, with plenty .of buyers in the shops arid new big constructions in-! progress. Great preparations were being made for the Youth Day, and placards spoke of the greeting of the Soviet, youth to j "the great Stalin." ; I much questioned the wiseness of the overemphasis which was everywhere laid on very ordinary portraits of the Soviet leaders, and I think it probably defeats its own purpose. While in Moscow I pursued my efforts to obtain more reasonable conditions for British or American students. Travellers by Intourist, as we were, are really a privileged class, and virtually J guests of the country. I could, not dream of expecting in any other country, for the pound a day that I paid, anything like the care, comfort, and attention which we all received. Why, I asked, could not special arrangements be made for students on a more modest scale? The expense of guides, charabancs, and' other special conveniences would not be required. The numbers who would benefit could be counted not by hundreds but by thousands, arid they would be much more useful in their own countries as links between them and the Soviet Union. There was "Intourist," why could there not also be* "Instudent?" In f each department where I made this suggestion, the Foreign Office, the Education Office, Voks (the special institute to help foreign scholars), and in Intourist itself, 'I received the most ready response .tO it. . ;