"HOME LIFE IN SOVIET RUSSIA"

Evening Star, Issue 19000, 23 July 1925, Page 9

"HOME LIFE IN SOVIET RUSSIA"

“ JUST A DIRTY STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE ”

The author of this article, in the June number of the ‘London Magazine,’ is Lancelot Lawton, who has recently made, a prolonged stay in Russia, travelling through it from one end to the other. Previous to the revolution he, lived for years in the country, where he made many friends. Ho was thus able to do what no other foreigner has yet done—penetrate into their home life and live ns Russians themselves have _to live under the Soviet. Ho gives a vivid picture of how similar conditions iu England would affect tho man living in, say, Goldcrs Lire on or Slreatham, should the recommendations of tlio British Trade Lniou Delegation, which recently spent a whole month inspecting the vast country of Russia, be put. into effect. FAMILIES DIVIDED. In an interview with one middle-class dweller bo learned: “A T ou come home and find tho G.F.U. (Secret Communist Police) searching your fiat. You’ve had a letter from abroad, or you’re accused of speculation, or some one has denounced you. That’s enough. You are arrested, and sit iu prison for months. And this denouncing always goes on! Families are divided against each other. Parents hato children and children bate parents. Wives nm away from their husbands with Communists, and when their lovers grow tir c d of them want to come back. Mon arc sick of women. No romance, no illusions left. A'es, Russians have sank very low. It’s just a dirty struggle for existence. No one thinks of anything else but how to jjet money. The Rusian soul that we all used to boast about is dead long ago; it never really existed. Wo’re nothing but living corpses now.” ‘•A DEVILISH DELIGHT.”

Here is another interesting admission ,

“livery week you’ve got to till up a new form; the whole population has been card-indexed a thousand limes or more. It’s all done to dig up you’re origin; if you’re not a Communist or proletarian, you get it hot. I tell you they take a devilish delight in hunting a bourgeois.' And if only they find out you’ve got a bit of money ! Of course, everyone lies, and if they’ve anything worth having left they hide'it. There are no rich men in .Moscow. And if wo had smart clothes, who’d wear them? Better to be shabby and pass for a comrade.” “A town-dweller in Russia,” he adds, “has either to become a State employee or a very small business man. All big industry and wholesale trade is in the hands of the Government. A constant war goes on between tho State and the private trader. Tlio State dare not lose—it is fighting for its life. But all the big forces are on its side : considerable capital, expropriated when the revolution was at its height, a vast police and spy organisation, and an army of inspectors and bureaucrats, totalling nearly a million.”