WOMEN IN SOVIET ARCTIC

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4234, 22 January 1940, Page 6

WOMEN IN SOVIET ARCTIC

BOTH LEADERS AND WORKERS. How women are helping to colonise the vast tundra of Soviet Russia north of the Arctic Circle is related by a young American woman journalist, who travelled 6000 miles through these regions by air and steamer. In “I Went to the Soviet Arctic” (Victor Gollanzc, tLd.) Ruth Gruber depicts a tough hard-working people living under raw, pioneer conditions. The author, whose interests were social rather than political, speaks Russian, and obtained a Ph. t>. degree at the age of 20. She is candid about many defects that impress Westerners in the Soviet, notably lack of plumbing, and the inefficiency of the radio and telegraphic services, which is a byword among Russians themselves. She found difficulty in breaking down suspicion on the ground that she was writing for American papers, and must therefore, see everything “as a capitalist.” While many kulaks, or older dispossessed people, were bitter and resentful at ill-treatment, the young were optimistic, even enthusiastic, with a forward-looking faith. As a guest of the northern Administration, recommended by the explorer V. Stefannson, Dr Gruber made an aeroplane journey from Moscow to Igarka, a new timber* port on the Yenisei River, and spent some months there. In winter, the frost sinks to 80 deg. below zero, and houses, mills and wharf had to be built in frozen subsoil. The author says she roved about freely, without hindrance by spies or police. She interviewed the Chief of the Polar State farm, a woman of 43, Marie Khrenivoka, who said that out of 500 experiments each year, about 30 to 40 had been successful. Potatoes and turnips grew well, also kohlrabi, which was a preventative of scurvy, and had done away with the need of Crimea lemons. Other vegetables grown were cabbages, white radish, parsley, carrots and beet, while tomatoes and cucumbers grew in hothouses. As summer lasts 70 to 100 days, and the sun shines 20 hours a day crops, such a rye grow almost twice as fast as in the south. “MANNISH,” BUT CAPABLE. Igarka is run by a woman mayor, Ostroutnova, who is described as energetic, giving Sharp commands

about the docks, “pulling her mannish cap over her ears, splashing her mannish tweed coats with mud,” but imbued with an intense sense of duty. The city has about 15,000 people, the Soviet offers inducements to specialists, engineers and the like, who receive double the pay they would get in the south. Children are given free room, board and tuition and higher scholarships. These conditions were typical of the Soviet’s autocracy, “with intellect and engineers in the top ranks, shock workers on the next rung, unskilled labourers belo wthem, and at the very bottom, the former aristocratic and declassed elements.”

In the mills the sawyers were about fifteen, “husky, red-cheeked girls”; an article in English in the Igarka newspaper, for the benefit of crews of British vessels, was set up in type by a woman. In every field from education and science to manual labour, men and women worked side by side. A Siberian girl who had never- seen a ship in her life became a full-fledged winch operator in a week. Women dragged timber about and loaded ships for twelve hours a day or more. Married women are given maternity leave with pay; there are nurseries, playgrounds and kindergartens with trained women where children may be left while the mother is at work.

In the past twenty years there has been a reaction from easy divorce, laxity and operations elsewhere illegal in favour of the old marriage code. Hospital service, ante-natal and post-natal care are free; a manual worker has eight weeks’ vacation with pay before and eight weeks after child birth; for a white collar worker the terms are of six weeks.

Igarkans ate well and plentifully. “A number of people told me I would not be able to judge whether the Russians really were starving or not, because great supplies of the best food would, of course, be placed before me. But I have dropped into workers’ homes countless times, and found them sitting down to a hearty meal of cabbage soup, black bread, meat, salad, cooked fruit for dessert, then tea served with cookies and fruit candy wrapped in a paper, and finally bars of As far as I know, they hadn’t expected any company.” WORK AND MARRIAGE. In The author’s view. Arctic women were able to combine work and marriage as easily and normally

as men do in the West. The family was not breaking down; the State did not take children out of their mothers’ hands; after-work care was left to the parents. A woman could seek expression in any field, could be as ambitious as men, and none would mock her ambition or thwart it as unfair to men, as long as it lacked greed or desire for personal gain.

While Dr Gruber was a Igarka the Soviet vessel Anadyr, making the first summer voyage from Vladivostok

to linking the Pacific with the Atlantic along the Arctic Ocean, put into port, and the author accompanied the party on the concluding stages of the journey, including a call at the Dickson Island radio and weather station, at the mouth of the Yenisei.

Dr Gruber says that all the Russians she met avowed that their country’s policy was peace. Stalin had said that they neede dat least ten more years of peace to carry out their internal programme. This was before the phase of the Soviet's Imperial aggression and westward expansion as a confederate of Nazi Germany.