Russia Without Illusions

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21280, 25 February 1939, Page 12

Russia Without Illusions

REFLECTION ON VISIT TO SOVIET

Ordinarily, it would be difficult to imagine anything more boring than still another tome about Russia, but it lies to Mr Pat Sloan's credit that he has produced a work in “Russia Without Illusions” that is almost explosively charged with personal experience, feeling, and conviction; a book, which, after all, is well worth reading. Though his indignant apologetics are not always impressive, they stimulate thought, and can be depended upon to provoke controversy and even acrimony.

The reader is asked to believe that the author visited and left the U.S.S.R. without illusions, but the most, that can be conceded to him is that he remained disillusioned after living with the Russian people for several years. He admits the shortcomings of the Soviet environment, but can find no fault with the system. He agrees that domestic sanitation and plumbing are not all that they should be (by a long way); that ceilings are likely to crash down at any moment; that the average citizen is ill-shod, and ill-housed; that the U.S.S.R. “cannot and never will be like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion”; and that there is a “necessary” constraint of personal freedom. But these quaintnesses, to him, are trifles compared with the “tremendous internal progress” of a still more tremendous social experiment. When he decided to go to the land of the Soviets, he was assistant lecturer in economics at Bagnor. His economics, by the way, had been acquired at Cambridge, a fact he afterwards deplored. What were his first impressions on crossing the border in 1931? “A wooden arch across a railway line laid on sand, and on the arch was inscribed the legend, “Workers of all' lands unite!’ And then the Customs House at Stolpec, which, at that time, was made entirely of wood. Then, as now, it was necessary to wait a long time for the Moscow train. Customs officials politely but very thoroughly searched through the luggage of each passenger. They appeared particularly interested in any printed matter, and their lengthy perusal of every illustrated magazine seemed hardly to be a matter of duty. ... At the buffet was some rather fly-blown food . . plugs that did not pull, plugs that did pull and pulled right off, plugs that pulled with no water to follow, overflowing fluids swamping the floor . . . and a smell apparently uncombated by any form of disinfectant.” Such were the station amenities.

“Surgeons Different”

As a potential teacher of English in the U.S.S.R., Mr Sloan was Intrigued by the fact that the menu in the dining-car had been translated into that language—at all events that had been the intention. Indeed, every dish was not only described in Russian and “English,” but in German as well. “Reading through the English version I found it to be almost meaningless, since most of the English translations appeared to consist of a few English words together with Russian words printed in Latin script and a few German ones thrown in! My desperation reached its zenith, however, when I came upon this delightful dish, “surgeons different’ ... I called the waiter, went through the menu dish by dish, and by the end had turned out something approximating to a bill of fare that any English visitor might be expected to understand. Admittedly, our translations were a little clumsy in many respects: I have always felt that my erudite ‘sturgeon prepared in various ways’ missed something of the appetising slickness of ‘surgeons different,’ but, at any rate, it saved the

naive' visitor from conforming his suspicions of cannibalism l on the very threshold of Soviet territory!” One of the first words the foreigner learns in Russia is "ceychass,” which literally means ‘‘within the hour,” but it is usually translated “presently,” and in fact signifies some future time when the speaker thinks fit (if he does not forget in the meantime). “Ceychass” governs personal behaviour, official “action,” administrative and structural reforms, and life generally. Not clocktime, but sun-time, is the standard, and that perhaps explains a great deal of what has happened and even more of what has not happened in Russia since the Revolution. It certainly explains the doubts of the western concerning the Soviet’s capacity to nations concerning the Soviet’s capacity to wage a war and the efficiency of the fighting machine generally. It is “ceychass” for this, that, and the other, and nobody else thinks about it, even in so small a detail as the supply of knives and forks.

However, the author found much to please him during his five-year sojourn, and quite a lot to delight him, when he again paid visits in 1936 and 1937. He waxes enthusiastic about the equality of sexes, about national equality, about educational methods, about the constantly rising living standard, about factories, and Industry, about social insurance, about culture and the judicial system, about collectivism, and a score of other “improvements,” including socialism itself (which he admits has been in vogue only for the past five years). Awkward Questions When he was writing this book Mr Sloan received a letter from a “welldisposed” person, who asked the following questions: “When shall we be able to cease making excuses for Russia —valid excuses, but still excuses? When will the experiment be able to stand on its own merit and not need internal propaganda, which gives Russians a somewhat distorted view of their own country and others? When will the Soviet Government be able to let its citizens go abroad freely, without fear of comparison with conditions in capitalist countries How soon will it be before the essential worth of the regime in Russia will be so obvious to Russians that there will be no more question of sabotage, Trotskyism, or the necessity for secret police? In fact, when will Russia be like Ceasar’s wife?”

Posers, some of these, it would seem. But Mr Sloan, fired by his twenty-seven-jewelled idealism, does not hesitate to answer. And his replies, in effect, are these: It is no longer necessary to find excuses, even valid ones; though there may be partisanship, the "views” of Soviet citizens are no more “distorted” than those of citizens elsewhere; the Russian Government discourages people from going abroad because (this is surely rather damaging) “it is no more interested in sending recruits out of the country to join the White Guards in Berlin or Tokio to-day than it ever was in 1918”; finally, the U.S.S.R. will never be such a land of milk and honey that there will be no question of sabotage, Trotskyism, or the necessity for secret police—never, at least, while the world is divided into the U.S.S.R. and capitalist States. “To ask that there should no longer be sabotage, or the necessity for secret police, is to ask that there should not be anyone on Soviet territory working in the interests of States whose aim is to wipe out the Soviet Union. . . . Until every possible cause of human disgruntlement has been removed on Soviet soil, an achievement which will not be fulfilled this side of the Millennium (or, to put materialistically, the highest stage of Communist society), there will be human grievances. And of the citizens with grievances it is meritable that some, at least, will turn their rancour against the State itself. . . . even when a world socialist community’ is attained, this system will never be ‘like Caesar’s wife.’ ”

All in all, Mr Sloan’s case is forceful so far as it goes, but, in essence, it is both incomplete and misleading, if a dozen qualified authorities have told us the truth in recent times.