MODERN RUSSIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23895, 24 August 1939, Page 20

MODERN RUSSIA

THROUGH TWO WOMEN'S EYES Russia—a land where clothes < and personal appearance are a secondary feminine consideration; where nobody dresses for the first night of an opera, but the house is always sold out; where oranges are retailed at 2s each during intervals at the ballet; and where there are as many bookshops in the principal cities as there are hotels in Melbourne. These are the outstanding impressions of Mrs Stanley Wilkinson, of Toorak, wife of Dr Stanley Wilkinson, and her daughter Celia, who have just returned home from a tour of the Continent, and who sought vainly, in Moscow and Leningrad, to gain an insight into the life of a woman in the Soviet (says the Melbourne Argus). They ascribed their failure to accomplish this desire to two causes—lack of opportunity and the preoccupation of the modern Russian woman in playing her part in building up her country for the benefit of posterity. They found that Russia was no exception to any other country in exploiting the tourist, but they had the same experience as other travellers with whom they discussed the subject. They felt, while they were there, that the Russians resented them, as being representative of capitalism. "It was a strange sort of feeling, said Mrs Wilkinson, "but it persisted. Everybody had a job to do, and took it seriously, and we could not help feeling out of it. But old foreign residents and foreigners who were revisiting the country were loud in their praise of the progress that had been made, and we felt that this. too. was true." Rents, she said, were low, and nobody seemed homeless, but the women looked drab. Most of the women she saw had sallow complexions, and compared with Australians they did not bother about their appearance, either from the viewpoint of make-up or clothes. They used lipstick, but not with the nicety of taste that caused the Melbourne girl to tone her cosmetics with her clothes. And their clothes were ordinary. They were for utility—not for admiration. Russian women wave their hair, too, but as more than 90 per cent, of them wear tight-fitting berets the effect is lost. " I do not know where they get their ideas of beauty, because we did not see a beauty parlour in either Moscow or Leningrad," said Mrs Wilkinson. The best-dressed woman whom Miss Wilkinson saw hid her clothes beneath a long, badly cut fur coat, and the latest fashion in headgear appeared to be a hand-knitted angora wool beret. She saw few girls of her own age doing nothing or enjoying themselves. Everybody was working. Even at the dances held in the hotels few Russian girls were present. , What annoyed Mrs Wilkinson most about the women working was the heaw work they did. " I saw women v/orkmg on the railway lines," she said. "They were there with big heavy spanners, tightening fishplates, and men were looking on." But the opera surprised them most. A South African tourist who went with them to "Othello" wore a dinner jacket. He was the only man so dressed in the whole crowded house, and attracted more attention from tne Russian members of the audience than the stage did. .. The ballet, too. astounded Miss Wilkinson. Seats—for tourists—were 25 roubles, equal to an English pound. " The show was marvellous," she said. " and the frocking of the dancers could not have been bettered anywhere in the world. But the Russian lads were there unshaven, and many of them in their working shirts, with their girl fnends eating ham sandwich teas out of paper bags, while vendors offered oranges at 2s each and pineapples at lis each to the tourists." "Everything is being done for posterity." she added. "They have nurseries, creches and kindergartens equal to those we saw in England, and in Leningrad I saw old palaces turned into places where children go after school and are taugh art, music, drama, literature, singing—everything, in fact, except manners.