SOVIET RUSSIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22714, 29 October 1935, Page 12

SOVIET RUSSIA

A VISITOR'S IMPRESSIONS A recent visitor to the United States of Soviet Russia, Mr Holmes, a Gore business man, delivered a lecture on, his experiences in Milton on Sunday night. Mr Holmes, who stated that he was not a member of the Friends of the Soviet Union, of the Communist Party, or auy political party, commenced his story with his departure from London bridge, and his account of the way that the Soviet ice-breakers cleared a passage through the surface ice of the Baltic Sea made an exciting story. A visit to a rubber factory, which employed 50,000 people, 30,000 of whom were women, was one of the outstanding features of the stay in Leningrad. A description of the May Day demonstration through the famous Red squai'e in Moscow aroused great interest. Mr Holmes characterised this demonstration as a wonderful display of international friendship for the workers of other countries, as the slogans on the banners in many cases carried greetings to workers in outside lands as well as announcing the successes achieved by the particular sections in the struggle to complete the plan and raise the living standard. From Moscow Mr Holmes travelled south to Baku. Besides the oilfields around Baku, he also visited a coal-mining area in the district. The working conditions of the miners were described as excellent —six hours from bank to bank constituting the working day for all miners. The houses for the workers in this area, as in every other new-built area he visited, were not only really good houses, he said, but were laid out in the modern style of town planning, which ensured a maximum of sunshine and hj'gienic conditions generally. Other workers had a seven-hour working day, with a six-day week. Every worker in the Soviet Union, he stated, had, besides his rest days, six other holidays in the vear, as well as a fortnight's holiday on full pay. From Baku Mr Holmes went to Batum, on the Black Sea. From Batum Mr Holmes went to Kiev, capital of Ukraine, and from there back to Moscow and to Leningrad, where he embarked for London. Mr Holmes travelled through Soviet Russia for 11 weeks, and he said that, in his opinion, though all Soviet workers did not as yet enjoy a standard of living comparable to that of a constantlyemployed and comparatively well-paid New Zealand worker, the time was not far distant when that state of affairs would be in existence.