LIFE IN RUSSIA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19131, 28 September 1936, Page 9

LIFE IN RUSSIA

NOT A UTOPIA NEW ZEALANDER'S STAY OPPRESSIVE AT.MOSIMIKiIk A vast amount lias been written on Soviet Russia, but New Zealanders may still find something of interest in the observations of a fellow-countryman who spent 17 months there as a dairy expert in the service of the Government. He is Mi'. D. Garsdon Fowler, and at present he is visiting relatives in Auckland. Mr. Fowler w:u; .formerly an assistant in the Mount Eden factory of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company. Ho went to Britain, and there obtained aa appointment to reconstruct export butter production in the Ukraine according to New Zealand methods. This work he carried on from February, 10.10, to July, lft.'il. Returning t,o Britain, lie lias since been associated with the manufacture of vegetable adhesives. Although Mr. Fowler's Russian experience is live years old, most of what he hail to tell in an interview, especially about Communist rule and Russian life and character, is undoubtedly true to-day. DREAM AND AWAKENING. "1 did not go back after my engagement ended," he said. "1 had in, wish to, and T am sure that any other New Zcalander would have shared my feelings. The Soviet Government treated me well and the pay was generous, but to stay longer would have been almost intolerable. "it is difficult for any ordinary Briton, brought up in a demoneratie country, to imagine life in modern Russia. To me it was like stepping back SIX) years. When 1 went, away mi holiday to Western Europe 1 felt for a week or more like a man in a dream, and when f crossed the frontier again an extra I'll years seemed to have been placed on my shoulders. It was a happy day when I said goodlive to Russia for ever.. Anyone who imagines that the Bolsheviks havo created a Utopia or a model State is very much astray." BACKWARD MENTALITY.

In the course of his work Mr. Fowler came to like and admire much in the character of the Russian peasant —his patience, cheerfulness and love of song, but i! was quite obvious that many generations musl pass befoi'O the tillers of the soil in their scores of millions could reach a Western level of intelligence.

"The average peasant, has a vocabulary of about. 40 words," Mr. Fowler said. -'lie talks in short ejaculations, conveying the simplest ideas, like, 'Fine day,' or 'Rail, over there.' Naturally if did no! take me long to learn as much Russian as the typical peasant knew, nnd T found it indispensable in my work-. "Another thing 1 learned about Ihe Russian mentality was that one had to say everything at least, lour times before it was understood. The first lime the ordinary Russian merely looks at you, the second time he takes in the words, the third time he gets a glimmering idea of their meaning, and the fourth time he understands them, more or less. Next day he will probably have forgotten everything you inve said, and you will have to begin all over again. It. is this repetition that makes discussions of any kind in Russia so very tedious. TRAGEDY AS A JOKE. "One thing that always shocked me was the callousness of the people. 1 was riding in a tramcar in Kharkov, the capital of the Ukraine, when a young woman fell under the wheels of the trailer of a tram on the other line and was literally cut to pieces. All the bystanders were completely uneoncorned; they were not shocked at all, but seemed to think it rather :l joijp—oven people who were fairly well dressed and apparently educated. The woman's husbrfnd appeared and showed the wildest grief, but the crowd only laughed at him. "Old folk, and even the middleaged. I found, simply did not count. They had memories of Tsarist days and were therefore ' has-beens.' All the consideration was for youth —the children of the Revolution and the makers of New Russia. BUREAUCRACY ON THE MOVE.' "The Communists, the members of the small governing class, I did not Hl-e- thev were certainly not men of a typo which would be entrusted with power in a well-ordered democratic State. A strange feature of.the Governmental system was that administrative .officials, including experts, were never allowed to remain long in one

part of the country or even ia one class of job. For example, the man who was over me in the Ukraino was moved away to take charge of a collective poultry farm, although he knew nothing about poultry-raising. His successor was a. man from a flour mill, who had never had to do with dairying. "All this shifting about was very much against efficiency, as anyone could see, but it had been organised deliberately to keep the whole administration outside Moscow in a state of flux, so that officials»in a locality had no time to get'to know one another or to combine and assert. themselves. All the threads ran from the capital to the provinces and there could be no crossthreads. This feature of the Soviet system alone was enough to condemn it in my estimation. Foreign experts were treated differently, and wero allowed to remain in one place until their job was done." Mr. Fowler found dairying in the Ukraine and Siberia to be carried on by rulc-of-tlmmb and often very primitive methods. During, hjs term ho did a good doal toward standardising exported butter, and before leaving committed his knowledge to writing for the use of the Government. iSo far as he was dwaro, no foreigner was engaged t*> succeed him. Latterly, ho said, exports of Russian butter had fallen very much, apparently because butter had been included in. the dietary of the Red Army, which' was 7,000,000 strong. To the common people it was an unattainable luxury.