MOSCOW TO-DAY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3444, 17 March 1932, Page 3

MOSCOW TO-DAY

CHANGED PRACTICE AND DOCTRINE. (London Times Corespondent.) To the ordinary visitor Moscow sems like the capital of TopsyTurvydom. It is confusing to find oneself in a world run according to none of the old tenets, a world where age need not be respected, children need not be loved, parents need not be obeyed, officers need not be saluted, shirts need not be washed, and a Supreme Being need not be revered. It is so confusing, in fact, that the simple observer who goes to it without prejudice or axes to grind, needs to return from time to time in order to achieve any sense of direction among the fantastic events which take place before his eyes. The visitor of November 7, 1930, who returned for the same fete in 1931 was first struck by the new paving in Moscow. In 1930, save inside the Kremlin and on the Red Square, cobblestones alternated with deep mud and wide pools all over town; now there are miles of smooth. asphalt, achieved, one is told, in a great burst of enthusiasm and record-breaking time by workers vying with each other in day and night shifts according to "shock brigade" methods. Outside the shops the queues waiting for food in the rain look a little less long and a little less miserable than they did a year ago. This may be partly due to the opening by the Government of what are called, with Revolutionary tautology, "commercial shops," where purchases may be made "for the high prices." A year ago it did. you no good to be as rich as Croesus; with" out ration card or permission slip, your money was useless. This year, if you have 50 roubles, you may buy a pair of shoes, whether the commit* tee permits or not. True, for a clerk earning 160 roubles a month, this privilege is of rather doubtful value.

Higher Wages for Skilled Tasks.

For Russians life is dear or cheap according to the category in which they are classified. A kilogram of cheese, for example, is 25 roubles in the ordinary co-operative shop, five roubles for a Communist, and cheaper still for certain favoured groups within the party. This range of privilege somewhat modifies 'one's view of the nobility of the Communists in refusing to accept salaries above a certain figure, a rule which, I was told, is falling into desuetude since Stalin's pronouncement in favour of higher wages for the more skilled and arduous tasks.

Offsetting the gains of local inhabitants in the realm of food and clothing, I found the question of lodging and transportation more acute than a year before. Rooms which held four people now hold eight; families which had three rooms now have one. Trams where formerly one lost only two buttons in the battle for the exit now cost not only all one's buttons, but one's belt-buckle as well; trains which used to be three hours late are more than twice as much behind the time-table.

Country Short-Handed.

Is Russia moving forward or backward? one asks oneself, and like the flurried nurse of whom the anxious father asked: "Is it a boy or girl?" one is inclined to answer, "Yes, sir." Like everything else in Russia, progress is shot through with paradox; nevertheless, the casual observer in 1930, on returning in 1931, had a feeling that there is progress toward the morn. But a traveller with words of praise is "one of the few who have understood our country," and the one who finds points to criticise is reminded that he "cannot hope to comprehend so vast a- problem in so short a stay. It is useful, therefore, to check one's fleeting and careless impressions against the pronouncements of a man who may be presumed to understand, if anyone does, the ins and outs of the Bolshevist experiment, the man who, on Lenin's death, has been "left to boil the devil's soup," Stalin. One has the impresion that the country is short-handed; one's friends, complain of being drafted on their day of rest into the muddy fields in their thin and only shoes to cut cabbages or to the railway yards to unload goods; one reads of sanatoriums being combed to find bean-pickers. And along with this one sees an enormous amount of waste motion; nothing seems to be economically accomplished, everything is done in a difficult way,, even scrubbing the steps. Stalin has precisely the same impression. Stalin says: "The instability of labour power has become a plague of production, disorganising our industries." He estimates the labour turnover at 30 to 40 per cent, a quarter and traces its cause to "the improper structure of wages"; he means the lack of adequate differentiation betwen the rates of pay for skilled and unskilled labour, in consequence of which the unskilled and the skilled man looks upon himself as "a sojourner in industry," always ready to move on in the hope of at last finding an enterprise where his skill will be appreciated. During last year there have been

certain important changes in the official attitude of mind in Moscow which have gone far toward alleviating the tense atmosphere of terror which one felt palpitating just beneath the surface a year ago. In some quarters the terror still exists, but it is less general and less intense. One has the impression that the population, even the intellectual population, is daring to breathe more deeply. A year ago trial was following trial in swift succession; first came the men in charge of the meat supply, then the engineers, then without trial the spiriting away of certain well-known professors, economists, historians, students, library workers, 160 persons in all in that lot, until nobody felt safe. Confessions were wrung from some of these men by methods, the story is whispered, which exceed in horror the worst iniquities of the Inquisition, since they brought into play all the ghastly possibilities of modern science. The memories of such things have not died, but nearly a year's respite, along with some public pronouncements and some favours granted to intellectuals, has brought a certain measure of healing to the fear-ravaged minds of those who felt sure their turn would come next... Russia has at last come to realise that a new civilisation cannot be created without skill, education and brains; she has begun to try to conserve what supply of these commodities she has at home. Hence the

policy of terrorism is abating. For this reason also the custom of raising members of the Communist Party to important positions instead of nonparty members who are better qualified for the posts is now officially decried. This allows non-party members to take on new hope, it encourages that which Stalin declares he wishes to see created "an atmosphere of mutual confidence."

But Stalin goes further than that: "Our attitude toward the old bourgeois industrial and technical intelgentsia is undergoing a change," says he, "our policy toward them must be one of conciliation and solicitude. It would be foolish and unwise to regard almost every expert and engineer of the old schools as an undetected criminal. Expert baiting has always been and still is regarded by us as a noxious phenomenon." This right about face is regarded by the people concerned as "the Bolshevists are now making love to us," and the fruits of it are found in permission to occupy more square feet of space in a dwelling house and to secure food under more favourable terms. These material gains, valued though they are, are of small importance compared with the loosening of the bands of fear about the heart which have made life one long, furtive agony, even for the braver souls among the educated classes, these last years. When fear abates both in the mind of the Government and in that of the people, we may

say that the Soviet regime has at last began to make real progress not only in a military and economic sense, but progress away from barbarism toward humanism and civilisation.