Legions Of Thinking Russians Chafe Under Police Strife

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23196, 7 March 1950, Page 3

Legions Of Thinking Russians Chafe Under Police Strife

KEW YORK. In 'Russia today there arc “legions of thinking, intelligent people avlio ehafe inidci: I lie omnipotent police State and long Avilb tlieir ayliolc beings for freedom, ■’ reports a trained American observer who recently left the Soviet Union.

“In cominjj years. Hie strongest-. most determined locs oi: the police State are likely to develop east of the iron curtain, where not even forcible indoctrination can neutralise l.lie lessons of immediate knowledge and experience,” writes Edmund Stevens, who has just. completed a three-year assignment as .Moscow correspondent. of Ihe Christian Science Monitor.

[police) are omnipresent, such is human nature that every individual lias at I least one person he fully trusts, and thus an endless chain extends, even though it lacks organised form.” Stevens divides today’s Russians into three groups. Those about 25 or under, youngsters who grew no with Stalin and are susceptible to indoctrination: those between 25 and 35. who he says show gradual frustration in the police State, and those over 35, whose disillusionment breeds cither cynical resignation or intense inner rebellion. Majority of People Apathetic The-cynics arc among the party staff, tlie majority of the citizenry are apathetic, “But many at the least sign of hope would gravitate toward the third (rebellion)." the writer reports. There tire two kinds of Soviet citi zen. The elite are the select group of partv members, risen from 2.000,000 after the purge of the thirties to more than 5.000,000 now, with the recruitment of youngsters who grew up under Stalin. Tlie other Soviet citizen is a member of the great conglomerate mass of Russian peoples. Of the elite, the upper crust includes the ruling Politburo, the military leaders, factory directors, celebrities of letters and the stage and screen and the like. Many of them have their dachas —country houses —in what is called the “forbidden zone” guarded constantly by the M.V.D.

From his observations in the Soviet capital. Stevens warns: "it is essential that the West learn to distinguish be tween the notice State and tbe Soviet Dcople. for if the former tire implacable foes the latter, unless stupidly antagonised. are potential friends and allies, and it is thev who eventually will decide tlieir country's destiny.” Ktiled With Iron Dieipline

Only a relatively small number of Russians arc members of the Communist Part\ - which rules with iron discipline. From among the masses, says Stevens:

"Thousands upon thousands of people in ail walks of life have at some lime sustained some deep personal hurt from the police regime. Each new purge or 'ideological campaign’ adds new contingents of malcontents. "While all open criticism of the regime is effectively prevented and the ears and eves of the M.V.D. (secret

“These privileged groups comprise the cream of Soviet society,” writes Stevens. "Not that the Russians have even a remote counterpart of Western social life.

“For leading citizens of a revolutionary new society, their behaviour patterns are surprisingly conservative and conventional. Indeed, they are more restricted and inhibited than their counterparts in Western ‘bourgeois' countries.”

This upper crust is well fed, well paid, well housed. They live well, if nervously, under the constant vigilance of the secret police who watch both them and those who would dare approach them. Squeeze oil Peasantry

Now. how about the other side? Stevens describes it thus: So far as tlie peasant is concerned, the Soviet Government has evolved techniques of squeezing him far more thoroughly than C/.arist landlords did. Save io a few pampered areas, “the peasant has yet to reap most of the benefits enjoyed by (he urban intellectual and working class. The money the peasantry collected from high food prices in wartime was cancelled by the currency reform. Their obligations to the State in kind and money have tipped from year to year. Consumer goods abundant in the cities have yet to reach most rural areas, and prices to the peasant .’ire higher.” “The serf like bondage of the ‘free’ Soviet citizen to his job is one element of an unrelaxing economic stranglehold upon the masses. Equally important is the total State control of the production of food and consumer goods, a control constantly used In coerce and cajole, reward and punish, in the interests of the Communist Party line.”

Ilow does it feel to live in Russia? What kind of people arc the Russians? Is there any chanrr that (lie Russians one day will turn against their poliee State?

Edmund Slovens, staff correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor lias observed Soviet atfairs for 10 years and only recently left Moscow after a three-year assignment in the Russian capital. This is the second of four articles digesting his reports on the Soviet Union, as published by tile Christian Science Monitor in 40 instalments, and giving his answers to many questions being asked outside Russia,

Round I.ike Gallcv Slaves Under this Soviet system the worker is bound to his job "as fast as ever a gollev slave was chained to his oar." Under the eve of the M.V.D. vast forced labour groups operate in important State enterprises. Use of female labour is on a scale unparalleled in anv other J modern economy, and Ihe woman have j equality in the toughest of manual la j hour. j The trade unions have nothing in | common with trade unionism as the West knows it. Provisions supposedly j safeguarding workers, says Stevens. I have "about as much meaning and application as tiic civil liberties guaranteed in the Soviet conslilulion." The strike weapon is utterly outlawed, and the real Duroosc of the trade union is to aid the Government in getting as much labour as humanly possible out of Soviet workers. "Under the Soviet system, the people have become the property of the State, along with land, industry and other forms of national wealth," he writes. Thus the State dictates what an individual thinks, reads, cats, wears, where he lives, where and how lie works, whom he can marry. The State assumes the right of calling him for a third degree, of searching his home, or of completely shutting him up by the simple expedient of arrest and confinement, with no appeal. Citizens Arc Trapped In this State the Soviet citizen is trapped, and "the methods of the police State arc nowhere so revealed as in tile treatment of Soviet citizens who apply for permission to go abroad," Stevens says.

The story of (lie Soviet wives of foreigners is well known. Except for the lucky few who got out during the war and the immediate postwar honeymoon period between East and West, all of them are still there. The Soviet wife of a foreigner is nagged and pressed to a degree that few have the moral stamina to resist. Sooner or later most file for divorce. The foreigner in tile Soviet Union is constantly shadowed by the M.V.D.. none more than the foreign diplomats. The foreign press is subject to arbitrary and capricious censorship from which there is no appeal. Often, writes Sic vens. censors deliberately distort the meaning of the correspondent's cables. It is commonly assumed that the correspondent’s telephone is connected to a central listening post . Even his servants often spy upon him. “The most embittered, disillusioned members of the Moscow diplomatic colony,” Stevens says, “invariably arc those who first came full of sympathy and admiration for the Soviet Union full of friendly eagerness to get 'to know the country and its people.”