SOVIET RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 154, 28 December 1936, Page 9

SOVIET RUSSIA

ITS UNEXPECTED SIDES1

"I am supposed to tell you about tha future of Soviet Communism. I do not mind prophesying about tomorrow," said Mr. Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield)! in his lecture to the Fabians at Friends" House recently, reports the "Manchester Guardian." The biggest difference between the pattern of London and the pattern oJ Moscow, hje said, was that in Russia profit-making, or the motive of profitmaking, had been taken out of the body politic. Profit-making in the Soviet sense meant buying something to sell at a higher price, hiring someone's labour to make a profit out of it. ' In Russia these were criminal offences, but people might sell things they made by themselves or co-operatively "with; others; It was not profit-making for a skilled mechanic to work on piecework at a high wage. It was a mistake to lay so much; stress on the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. More than half 'the adult, population of Russia were working for,, themselves, fifty or six millions of them in partnership. There were probablyf fifty to sixty thousand managements, all of a public character, from village,l councils upwards and including newspapers and theatres, employing workers with wages. It was therefore ridiculous to say that the State was tha only employer. Numbers of co-opera-tive farms were working for themselves. There was no chance what-' ever of Russia's going back to capi«> talism. ' . SPREAD OF EDUCATION. I One found important unexpected fee* tures in Russia. There was its extremaf nonconformity. Everything was multM form. Russia was full of different polH tical, social, and economic forms. There, was universality. Everything that-was good must be extended to everyone in,', the vast country. Education/was ex«| tended to everyone, and whe£ the fourK years of education were turning into; seven and then to ten, everyone must; share it. Under the old regime therawas v a good medical service for the well-to-do. Now they must have medical services for everyone, all the way to Vladivostok. They had 35,000 doctors to begin with; they had now got 80,000, and'they want 175,000. Hussial did not want an- educated or accult* t tured class; it wanted an educated andi a cultured people. It was the firsts time in history that any nation'had ha» that aim. "You cannot have universalism withi out multiformity in methods of adnrihi istration," said Mr. "Webb, "or without participation, the widest possible par-! ticipation, of all the people •'in. all the administration. We hand over tfia administration of London to t&f L.C.C. and the local authorities. -sU Moscow they reckon that 50,000 peopja are engaged in carrying on the admin* istration of Moscow, and in additl<j>n| every citizen is expected to do his bita of voluntary additional work." 5 Other unexpected developments were« the extraordinary zeal for productfdM and the amazing initiative which keiNi people suggesting and devising *iejw| things. They had much more initiative! than the British. '