RUSSIA’S FOREIGN SPECIALISTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21538, 9 January 1932, Page 13

RUSSIA’S FOREIGN SPECIALISTS

BRITISH WORKER’S HONOUR The Moscow correspondent of the Observer, writing on November 21, says: — The foreign specialist has become a familiar figure in the Soviet Union during the last two or three years. Not only in the hotels at Moscow which cater to foreigners, but in out-of-the-way places, far off the ordinary tourist beats, one encounters these imported engineers, technicians; and skilled labourers, sometimes working alone in a Soviet factory, mine, or large farm, sometimes employed in large and small groups. There are no precise statistics about the number of non-Russian engineers and skilled workers employed in Soviet enterprises; but it probably ranges between 5000 and 10,000. Germans are easily the most numerous _ among the individual nationalities, with Americans second. Some of these foreign specialists come to Russia on individual contracts; some are sent by firms which conclude so-called technical aid agreements with the Soviet authorities; others come for the purpose of installing the machinery and equipment which have been sold by their firms.

American engineers' and mechanics have been employed on such big construction projects as the Dnieperstroi hydro-elec-tric power plant, the Stalingrad tractor factory, the Nizhni Novgorod automobile works, and the huge new steel plants at Magnitogorsk, in the Urals, and Kuznetzk, in Siberia. Germans have been utilised largely in the chemical, steel, coal mining, and agricultural machinery industries. On the whole, this experiment in large scale foreign collaboration with the FiveYear Plan has worked with reasonable smoothness, and a number of forign experts, including the German engineer Leibhardt, who invented a new coal-cutting method, the American engineer MacDonald, and the British skilled worker Monger, who has been employed since prerevolutionary times in the Hammer and Sickle Metal Works, in Moscow, have received special Soviet decorations for meritorious service. Mr Monger enjoyed a further honour: his bust may be seen in the proletarian “ Siegesallee ” in Moscow’s chief amusement park, where a row of casts of the best Soviet workers recently erected. At the other extreme are a few foreigners who have been sent home because the Soviet authorities did not like their conduct, and a somewhat larger number who left of their own accord, because they were dissatisfied with Russian conditions. Of course there has been a certain amount of inevitable friction and misunderstanding. The chief Soviet complaints about some foreign specialists are that they are inclined to demand too many of the creature comforts that Russia cannot at present supply, especially outside the largest towns; that their attitude toward Russians is sometimes overbearing, and that they do not adjust themselves to the condition created by the absence or scarcity of tools and supplies which would be taken for granted in construction work in most other countries.

Apart from material deprivations, the foreigners, when they voice their grievances, are apt to mention cases of bureaucratic red tape in offices and institutions, and sometimes complain that they are not given the work most suitable in view of their past training. A frequent American criticism is that Russian engineers, while highly’trained theoretically, are occasionally lacking in the practical knack of getting things done, and are sometimes reluctant to do the rough, dirty manual work which the American engineer, however high his rating, takes for granted ho must do when construction emergencies arise. One American of long Russian experience is fond of telling in almost awestruck tones, the story of how he saw a Russian engineer come into a railroad depot and wait until a carpet was spread out before Kim before he would examine the wheel of a defective locomotive.