COMMUNISTS ABROAD

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 8

COMMUNISTS ABROAD

ADVISED NOT TO DRESS WELL.

To be well dressed is the ambition of fashionable circles in most countries. Not to be too well dressed is the injunction which Emilian Jaroslavsky, secretary of the Communist Party Control Committee, has recently laid on the Communists who work in the Soviet diplomatic and commercial institutions abroad (states the Moscow correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor”). M. Jaroslavsky emphasises the point that the workers in other countries are inclined to judge the Soviet Republic by the conduct of the Soviet citizens who go abroad, especially when these citizens are Communists. For this reason any tendency toward luxury and superfluous display in such matters as dress and entertainment must be severely condemned.

While full equality does not prevail, even among Communist Party members, in Russia, and the “responsible worker” who holds a- high party or Soviet post generally lives in more comfortable conditions than the factory hands who make up the rank and file of the party, the conditions and standards of conduct which have grown up since the revolution discourage anything in the nature of gross and flaunting luxury. Watchful eyes are fastened on the Communist in high position; if he is guilty of too many derelictions from the ideals of Spartan simplicity he is likely to be s'ummoned before the Control Committee, which will reprimand him and in extreme cases expel him from the party. The Communists abroad, on the other hand, have hitherto lived milder Jess strict control. They live, of course, in very different surroundings, and the argument “When in Rome do as Romans do” has often been raised to justify rather non-proletarian practices on the part of Soviet diplomats and commercial representatives. Now, however, a feeling has evidently grown up that the time lias come to call a halt, and M. Jaroslavsky’s article, which is printed in the Communist Party’s official organ, “Pravda,” serves a warning that Soviet citizens abroad will be held accountable for undue expenditure on dress and entertainment.

Recognising that the national Russian shirt, worn without a tie, would not be a suitable costume for Berlin or Paris or London, and advising Communists to be neat and careful in their dress, M. Jaroslavsky points to the very substantial harm which was done to Soviet prestige abroad by the behaviour of the wife of a Soviet official, who wore such expensive and elaborate costumes that her picture was printed in many illustrated newspapers and magazines. Although the lady in question was not a party member, the German Democrats made lhe most of her display as a basis for attacks on flic prevalent standards of conduct among the Soviet bureaucrats, and the matter went so far that German Communist workers wrote letters of inquiry and protest to Communist newspapers both in Germany and Russia. Recognising Jthat etiquette sometimes requires a Soviet representative to wear a formal costume on an official occasion:, tfaroslavsky warns against overdoing this practice, observing: “Sometimes in America, let us say, where simplicity in dress predominates even among representatives of the capitalist world, our comrades struggle into some sort of dress suit which suits them as well as a saddle does a cow, and excites the ridicule of the foreigners themselves.” In conclusion, M. Jaroslavsky urges Communists who go abroad to remember that they are on the advance posts of the Soviet State, where any false step may injure its interests.