FAMILY LIFE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17451, 27 December 1930, Page 13

FAMILY LIFE

MOSCOW’S FRESH ASSAULT SLAVE WORKERS IN BARRACKS ' NEW TOWNS .CHEATED BERLIN, Nov. 10. Moscow’s fresh assault on foreign markets is to be carried out with an army, of slaves who are to be forced to lead socialised lives. The creation of new towns close to the sources of the raw material, from which the goods are to be sold at prices with which iftanufactuiers employing fr£e men cannot possibly compete, is -parf of the fiye-years-plan for the industrialisation of Russia. The work of building these towns lias already begun. "What they will be like and what life in them will be is described by M. Lunacharsky, formerly Commissar for Education and now head of the committee for superintending their construction, in an article in a Moscow review tailed Ogonek. Re deals with the town of Magnetygorsk, which (is being constructed for SU.CCO inhabitants in the steppes to the south of the Ural Mountains, where iron ore is found and where foundries and blast fUllages for its exploitation are to be. built. AUULTS AND NON-ADULTS In Magnetogorsk there will be no homes. There will be great barracks in , which from lOCO’to 15C0 persons will ■ live. In none of these barracks will there be a home for a married couple or feu* parents and their children. Each grown-up man or woman, married or single, will have a tiny room, and each of these rooms will be furnished in exactly the same way. In each there will be a sofa-bed, a table, two chairs, two cupboards, and a washstand. All children up to the age of lb will live in institutions under the care of nurses and' Communist teachers. M. Lunacharsky points out that fathers and mothers will not be entirely separated from their children, but states that the ideal .to be aimed at is the substitution of the terms “adults” and- “non-adults for the present terms “parents and “children.” Family life is to go. “One may say, he writes, ‘unit the family is the perennial source of individual and traditional ideas; its destruction is therefore in full harmony with the aim of Communism which is the creation of collectivist men and women. The women of Magnetogorsk, which is the model for other new towns, will not only have no duties towards thenchildren but they will also have no household duties. All the food for the inhabitants will be cooked at central kitchens and brought to the barracks, where the'inhabitants .will partake ot it in' tho public dining-room. By abolishing housework, Ivy separating parents and children, and by making husband and wife independent of each other it is believed that family life, will quickly disappear. M. Lunacharsky points out as another ' advantage of this monstrous system that the provision of a separate room for each man and woman will give the parents freedom in the intimate relations of life, . , . - The advantage of the system for the Bolshevik employers is that they get cheap tabor and can exploit the labor ol married women as well as that ol the, '■unmarried. . i iL is obvious that jjoods produced hv j these standardised men and women, led' and housed in the cheapest manner, will j be. incomparably cheaper than goods pro- ( duced by men and women in countries where the tradition of /aintlv lno > s maintained, and where the needs of the individual are considered. They will be cheaper than the goods which are already being dumped in England and elsewhere! MONEY-HUNTING

Moscow is at present straining ovciy nerve to get the money to complete the, process of industrialisation. No dodge lor getting ready money is neglected. Hpre is a case in point: Tenders for iron sheeting, to be supplied to Estonia, were recently asked for. German, Polish, and Russian tenders were sent in, and the Russian price was so much cheaper than the German or Polish that the order was given to Russia. When the iron sheeting arrived it was found that it had been manufactured in Poland. The Soviet authorities had got it from the Polish manufacturers on long credit, and sold it below the price eventually to be paid so as to get cash. The Soviet authorities have sold cotton, supplied in America on long credit, to fpreign ipanuiacturers willing to pay cash! or requiring only short credit.