STALIN FACES EAST

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 20

STALIN FACES EAST

THE SOVIET AND GOLD

One of the most interesting and illuminating of the many books about Russia which have appeared in recent years is that entitled "In Search of Soviet Gold," just published by Harrap. The main author is John D. Littlepage who, in 1928, was invited to work in Russia. Until then he had been a mining engineer in the Alaskan goldfields. For the next ten years he served as chief mining engineer of the Soviet Gold Trust. His experiences during those ten years are set down by Demaree Bess, formerly a newspaper correspondent in Moscow. Mr. Littlepage's narrative rings true throughout. He is not concerned with theories: he states candidly what he observed. He left his employment with no axe to grind, and has found much in the Soviet administration to admire as well as much to criticise.

No great secrets are revealed about the Soviet gold industry. He confirms the claim that production is the second highest in the world and that it could actually overtake South African production very shortly. But Arctic miners are not going, to dig up gold for reburial in the pleasant blue hills of Kentucky unless; the price obtained for the precious metal makes it worthwhile, hence the Soviet is not likely to push production too fast and flood the gold market to the detriment of prices.

Much of the value of Mr. Littlepage's narrative lies in his observations of the trends of Soviet expansion. Stalin faces East and not West. The Soviet gold rush was instituted at a time when it was vitally important for Russia to fill up the empty spaces in her Far Eastern regions ®s» Quickly as .possible with a population which was reasonably satisfied with conditions. Kept throughout under closed control, the movement spread ever further into the unexplored wastes 'of Eastern Siberia, the Altai Mountains, .and the northern province of Yakutsk, with the Soviet Gold Trust and its ingenious "gold stores" acting as a vast colonising agency. It is Siberia, whose prodigious resources Mr. Littlepage briefly indicates, which holds the future of the U.S.S.R. and of Stalin's empire-building projects. Not all of this is quite new, but the special merit of Mr. Littlepage's account is that, from his surely unique vantage point, he can relate . policy to the visible course of events.

Of. conditions, in Russia Mr. Little-, page always ..talks illuminatingly. "It is difficult," he. says, "for an outsider to imagine what . the propaganda machine in Russia can do when it is turned loose on a single subject. American advertising men or Press agents must turn green with envy at the thought of it. The Bolsheviks control every newspaper, every magazine, every publishing house, every hoarding, every xnotion-pieture and legitimate theatre, every film-producing company, every radio broadcasting station, every lecture hall, every school and university, every club and social organisation." Under such circumstances the promulgating of certain ideas becomes easy.

Everything in Russia is not perfect by any means. One has only to read Mr. Littlepage's accounts of some of his .railway travels to realise this—how. it was once necessary to wait four whole days for a train, or rather for a ticket for a train.

A universal brooding fear often prevents the skilled Russian from giving his best, thinks Mr. Littlepage. • The majority of Russians, he says, have no sympathy with the wild theories of extreme Communists and these theories are not .approved by official circles. "Russia is full of respectable married people, just as anxious5 to do well in jobs and help their children to become educated and ; get a good start in; life as their counterparts in.this country. And I should say that sooner or later these people will set the standards of conduct in Russia, because they are in the majority. The Communist extremists, who wanted to abolish marriage and respectable family life and the care of parents for children, have lost their prestige, and anew kind of respectability is emerging which sometimes seems almost as extreme in the one direction as the previous ideas were in the other."