RUSSIA RETURNS TO PEACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25964, 3 October 1945, Page 6

RUSSIA RETURNS TO PEACE

RESTORATION OF INDUSTRY

NEW FORCES IN NATIONAL LIFE

In this survey of the tasks of restoration facing Russia, the Moscow correspondent of The Times, London, summarises the industrial changes brought about by the war and the effect of the increased productivity of labour during that period on the Soviet’s reconstruction programme.

President Kalinin, who is giving a good deal of personal attention to the problems arising from demobilisation and the reconversion of industry, ended a recent talk to a group of Red Army men with a reminder that war was only an episode in the history of the State, and that peaceful life was its normal condition —“ a condition under which you will now work.” Spoken in Russia, where for two decades before the war the accent was on preparation for self-defence, and peace was viewed as fragile, these words have had a profound effect on Soviet readers. The Russian people are turning to the struggle for peace in confident, optimistic mood. They do not expect miracles. They know that in exchanging army billets for overcrowded homes their gain may not be much, that generally the fronts have been more amply provisioned than the rear, that release from discipline does not free them from their exacting obligations to the State; yet they are cheered by signs that the vast resources of their land are now being swiftly mobilised for peaceful tasks. Before considering what these tasks are and how they are being shouldered it is necessary to look at the changes that have been brought about by the war. In industry they have been authoritatively listed as the following: The locating of industry closer to sources of raw material and of crops closer to consumption areas, the creation of millions of new qualified workers by a system of mass technical training, experiments in co-operation between various industrial plants, and the widespread introduction of a “ flow system ” —in other words, the avoidance of bottlenecks —and new methods of fast building.

order. The Government aims at raising the total of rail haulings to prewar level in 1947, and this first means concentration on the production of rolling stock. Automobiles and aircraft will play their part in the drive to imErove transport. Motor car works are eing expanded in Moscow, Gorki, and Yaroslavl, while three new factories are under construction elsewhere. Coal and Steel Production

Substantial progress is reported in heavy industry as a result of the efforts of the past two years. Big capital investments made in 1943 in the coal and black metal industry have resulted in a 20 to 30 per cent, increase in output. The city of Stalino, in the Don basin, which was entirely wrecked by the retreating Germans, now has in operation 9 blast furnaces, 20 openhearth furnaces, 15 rolling mills, and 16 coke batteries. Last month’s iron ore output for the whole Soviet Union was nearly 50 per cent, greater than that of the corresponding month of 1944 The industrial enterprises of Stalingrad are being restored with great speed; there are now more workmen in Stalingrad than before the war. Steel and rolled metal tractors, and Diesel engines, sheet iron, and building materials are being produced. The increase of production during the second half of the war has not been confined to heavy industry. From 1943 there has been a steady increase in the number of workers in the lumber, building material, and food industries, and in light industries of many types. Producer co-operatives, though still fewer than before the war, are making a notable contribution to the increased flow of consumer goods to the shops, and are, with local enterprises financed from municipal and regional budgets, being called on to do even more in the production of clothing, furniture, and building materials Many demobilised men will be directed to work in these enterprises, which have already absorbed a large proportion of war Invalids.

Railways and Industry

Some figures will illustrate how farreaching these changes are. The industrialisation of the Urals and Siberia had made great progress before the war, but during the war the freight turnover on .some of the main railways there increased by as much as 70 per cent. The Magnitogorsk combine is giving twice as much steel as in 1939. Women were widely employed on farms and in transport services in peace-time. Between 1940 and 1943 the total number of collective farmworkers dropped by only 7 per cent., but the proportion of women employed on the farms doubled in some areas. While before the war one railway worker in four was a woman, when the war ended women made up nearly half the total. Almost as important as the influx of women workers has been the mobilisation of youth. Over half the railway workers of the Soviet Union have had less than three years’ service.

More Consumers’ Goods

Thus the Soviet people are looking forward not only to the steady replacement of capital losses, but to a greater abundance of those articles of which they stood so much in need dU The g Government Is pushing forward measures to improve nousing. There are frequent complaints that the output of building materials is far short of the pre-war level. There is no lack of experiment. Prefabricated Finnish cottages are being erected near Moscow, the building qualities of alabaster have been tested and several large factories have opened departments to produce material for “victory” settlements built by the workers with some assistance. The Government achitectural committee has worked out plans for a hundred types of small houses and is circulating them to demobilised soldiers. A standard house with two and three-room dwellings, including separate kitchens, has been designed. A report from Minsk states that over 100,000 families of soldiers and partisans have been transferred from dugouts into new homes and that tens of thousands of three and four-room houses have been built in the villages of Byelorussia. Many new villages have grown up on the banks of the Dnieper and the Ugra, in the Smolensk region, where 350,000 people have found shelter.

Eight million new workers have joined the trade union movement during the war. It will be seen that in carrying out its pledge to provide demobilised men with employment equivalent to their pre-war qualifications or to those acquired in military service the Government envisages the return to home or studies of a substantial number of citizens. The problems will, however, be alleviated by the gradualness of release from the services. Most of the men of 13 age groups now leaving the army will probably be absorbed by heavy industry and the transport services.!

Hie Stakhanov Movement

Powerful Forces at Work

Details of the increased productivity of labour are not easily presented in palatable form, but it is beyond question that the wide application of Socialist emulation, the stimulus given by the Stakhanov movement to the workers to think for themselves and evolve methods of reducing waste and rationalising production and progressive technical improvements, have had some notable results. The speed of track-laying has, for instance, been increased threefold, and as a result 50,000 kilometres of Soviet and 29,000 kilometres of foreign railways have been restored.

There are signs—hints of a natural process of growth that no planning can altogether control and of which a wise Government will take account — that powerful forces are at work in Russian life. They are revealed in “the merciless struggle against red tape” demanded by the trade unions in connection with the return of soldiers, in the demand that more democratic methods be used in local trade union procedure, in the appeal of the newspaper of the Communist League of youth for responsible jobs for young men and women leaving the services, in sharp criticism ot stereotyped teaching methods made at a recent conference of teachers from all parts of Russia, and in the frequent attacks in the press on heartless bureaucratism and deafness to the voice of the people. It is interesting to note that this prodding comes from above as well as from below —a sign perhaps that the Soviet Government is sympathetic to the forces in ferment. '

An authoritative article in Gosplan on “Planned Economy’’ has emphasised that the restoration of heavy industry and transport are in the forefront of the Government’s reconstruction programme. The whole machinery for the improvement of the economy of the liberated regions depends on the speed with which heavy industry and transport are put into