SOVIET RUSSIA AT WORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23831, 10 June 1939, Page 4

SOVIET RUSSIA AT WORK

AN ENGINEER'S INTERESTING EVALUATION

"In Search of Soviet Gold." By John D. Littlepage. London: Harrap., 13s 6d.

John D. Littlepage is an American mining, engineer who. was taken to Russia in 1928 and, as one of the principal technical experts for the Soviet Gold Trust, was largely responsible for that country's rise to second place in the gold production of the world. To politics he was completely indifferent, he had a job to do and he did it. Even now he is faithful to the trust reposed in him. and he. will not divulge figures or facts concerning many aspects of his work for the Soviet.

His book is one of personal and unprejudiced observation, and because of that is doubly welcome. One of the underlying reasons for the Soviet Government's decision to open up the mining areas was the ambition to populate the large and almost uninhabited areas of Siberia. The privileges accorded to gold seekers and the natural " get-rich-quick " instinct resulted in the achievement of this ideal, and to-day large towns and cities have sprung up on what were formerly desolate tundras. The Soviet Council's determination to end the unproductive existence of the various nomadic tribes and place their members in industry was an added impetus in this scheme. Naturally, the carefree wanderers preferred their traditional untrammelled life, but in a country in which the State was both the law and its executioner, their resistance met with little sympathy. The secret police, from whom no aspect of Russian life is completely free, undertook the " denomadisation " and were responsible for placing many of the tribesmen in productive work. Added to these were thousands of criminals and exiles, making the secret police one of the largest employing departments in Russia. Such recruited labour was responsible for such huge works as the Baltic-White Sea canal and the double-tracking of the transsiberian railway for 2200 miles. Mr Littlepage deducts another significance in this concentration of attention to the resources of the East, as a check to the ever-present threat from imperially ambitious Japan. The tremendous, fertile country at which Japan once looked so longingly Is now supporting ■ a large and increasing population, plus a strong and efficient army. The author disdains any suggestion of Soviet ambition in Europe, and gives plenty of evidence to support the contention that Russia will be occupied for many years yet in developing her immense eastern resources. The bewildering number of "purges" and sabotage trials in the Soviet have left a legacy of doubt

as well as confusion in the minds of foreign observers. Mr Littlepage refuses to comment on those of which he had no personal knowledge, but the instances he quotes of deliberate wrecking and slowing up of industry under his own control—and gold production was particularly favoured by Stalin and was. by comparative terms, efficiently conducted— certainly support his conclusion that some at least of the confessions are genuine One explanation he puts forward for the widespread conspiracies is the system whereby prominent Communists, exiled for plotting against the party, are brought back and given positions of power. The hope that a period of exile would reform them is apparently not often justified. Another cause of much confusion in industry was the attempt to transform ignorant peasants or wandering tribesmen into .capable machine workers 'almost overnight. The course was attended by much bureaucratic interference and impatience, and resulted in the despair of many engineers. Altogether Mr Littlepage has written one of the most enjoyable and, in its own sphere, one of the most instructive books on Soviet Russia that has appeared for some time. To read it is to gain a real understanding of much of the tremendous social upheaval which has taken place in that country, and also to glimpse the real Russia at work. E. A. A.

Fairy Literature At the Bodleian Library an interesting exhibition of fairy literature was being held last month, the fairy romances of the Middle Ages including " Le Morte D'Arthur " (London. 1498). "The Earthly Paradise. and "The Ancient Historie of Huon of Bordeaux." Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales " was among the books exhibited; the Wife of Bath's Tale shows how the taste for these fairy romances had disappeared by the end of the fourteenth century: I speke of manye hundred yeres ago. Bnt now kan no man se none elves mo. Writers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have, as might be expected, the most space in the exhibition. Puttenham's "Arte of English Poesie" (1589), Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" (1590), and Lyly's " Edimion" wert all there, and of course, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," after which, as the Library Record points out "in English literature all fairies are Shakespearian—airy, dainty and minute."