RUSSIAN WOMEN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 15 September 1936, Page 11

RUSSIAN WOMEN.

STOICAL WAYS OF LIVING. j WORK ON THE COTTON FARMS. [ A visitor to Auckland recently was j Mrs Duncan Gordon, of London, en route to Australia in the course of a j six months’ holiday in the Pacific, t Speaking five languages, French, Ger- i man Spanish, Russian and Italian, < with a working knowledge of other less I familiar tongues, Mrs Gordon has tra- | veiled widely all her life (states an Auckland exchange) , Of her recent visit to Russia, Mrs ■ Gordon has much of interest to relate. . She thought that order was gradually evolving out of extreme chaos, and, instead of building huge modern edifices in such an absurd hurry that they had to be pulled down again after only three months, the Russians were giving more attention to detail. There was, however, a certain impatience in the Russian temperament that would not allow of their waiting for the thorough completion of their work. Whatever they did, on a large or small scale, was done hurriedly and imperfectly. . . During her stay in Russia 31 is Gordon said that she had conceived the highest admiration for the Russian women. They were little less tlisr. stoical, worked long hours at reallv arduous tasks, ate cheap, coarse food, and lived in nhat would he the utmost discomfort for any other women. 3lrs Gordon said that she would never forget a visit to Russian Turkestan, where the grain lands had been turned into cotton fields. Here the best farming was done by either collective or Government farms. Occasionally however, families were to lie found working their own plots of land, and on these women worked long hours in the mud and stones of ditches, while I their babies, bundled in wrappings, * were tied on hoards and hung upon a ! branch of .a tree. I PROFIT-SHARING SYSTEM. I On the collective farms a. number of families joined together to cultivate i large tracts of land, sharing the profits 1 after all expenses have been paid. They [ were obliged to sell their cotton to the I Government at a fixed price, hut were j allowed to sell in open market any ! surplus over the amount stipulated by i the Plan. The workers lived m their j own houses made of mud and chopped straw. The larger ones‘were built round I a stagnant pool, from which the water | was used for washing, cooking and j drinking. Tlie entire family slept on the floor in one room, which had no ventilation, ~ In comparison, said Mrs Gordon, the Government farms were vastly modern, j Tlio peranent workers lived either in ugly fiats or rows of box-like houses lin streets of mud. Each farm was a ! world ot its own providing lectures, I sports, news, a club, a school, an instiitute of health, and (i creche for the :babies while their mothers worked. There was always a shop where food and clothes could be bought well under the market price of the towns, and usually there was a communal dining room serving cheap, plentiful, but taste- , less meals. The wages on the Government farms ranged between 100 and ! 2CO roubles a month (£4 to £8), whereas on the collective farms the worker s 1 wage averaged about £6, or 150 roubles ; a month. The Government fams, how--1 ever, required no domestic labour. with their communal bakery, laundry, 1 creche and kitchen, so that every member of the family was able to work. ' The young people, or “shock workJ ers” as they were called, who had left towns and homes to work in the cotton * fields lived in “barracks.” which were ’ not more than sheds. They , slept in . dormitories irrespective of sex, and ' worked so long and no hard that they ' seldom bothered to undress.' Thee-e ' young men and girls were recruited 1 from the young Russians, and required I to t>2 ready to be rushed on assistance trains to ‘whatever enterprise needed 1 their services meet. They worked not 1 the seven or eight hours of the ordin- * ary psnsant, l>nt until the licht failed * or until they could find nothing more to do.