CARDS IN RUSSIA

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 94, 4 April 1934, Page 7

CARDS IN RUSSIA

King’s and Queen’s Return LONDON, March 21. Kings and queens are returning to Russian playing-cards, says a Moscow message in the “Manchester Guardian,” thus ending efforts firstly to abolish cards because they emphasised inequalities, and secondly to replace the picture cards with anti-religious and other devices. The world-famed bridge authority, Mr. Ely Culbertson, who was born in Russia, visited Moscow at the end of 1931, and unsuccessfully attempted to induce the Soviet to introduce contract bridge as part of the five-year plan. The chief of the Card Department explained that his job was to eliminate playing. He had reduced the sales to 1,500,000 packs annually, but since then, cards and wine and spirit drinking had steadily increased. Now Moscow’s most intelligent officials generally play bridge, so the Government, faced with the dilemma of allowing workmen and peasants to continue to use even dirtier, disease-har-bouring cards, decided, in the interests of health, to provide new packs.