RUSSIAN CONGRESS.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17132, 20 June 1927, Page 11

RUSSIAN CONGRESS.

A MOTLEY THRONG. ALL EARNEST DEBATERS. (From a Correspondent.) MOSCOW, April IG.. Moscow has felt ils dignity anil importance as a capital in a larger sense this week past with the All-Russian Congress in session. This body, taking up internal problems as its exclusive agenda, represents the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, belter known by its initials, R.S.F.S.R., including 70 per cent of the population and more than 90 per cent of the territory of the entire Soviet Union. With its 1403 members, this Congress is the world's second largest parliament, the largest being the AllUnion Congress, with ils 1510 members, which will meet to-morrow as soon as the All-Russian Congress adjourns. As an "ethnological museum," the All-Russian Congress puts the League of Nations in the shade. In Geneva they have nothing really exotic except a few Turks, Japanese and Chinese, a Hindu with an Oxford accent, and a coloured gentleman from Liberia, all wearing clothes of the most fashionable London cut, especially the delegate of the Libcrian Republic. There is also a beautiful giant from Abyssinia with his broad-brimmed black hat and cloak' with its silver clasp and trimmings, but you arc lucky if you find him in .this hopelessly Westernised and bourgeois assembly. 100 Varieties of Local War Paint. But here in Moscow the Congress comprises delegates of nearly a hundred distinct races, nearly all from unheard-of, uncomfortable places such as the coast of the Arctic Ocean or the edge of the Mongolian Desert. All are invited by the authorities lo wear their local war paint, and if this cannot be obtained from "home town" costumiers the State Opera at Moscow doubtless would he happy to oblige. Everywhere in the streets, cafes and theatres, ami even in the few discreet night '•joints," one encounters the most astonishing types—swarthy, dignified, silent giants from North Caucasia in black wool busbies and cloaks, which hang wide from their broad shoulders, dapper little Kazan Tartars wilh liny embroidered skullcays, and Crimean Tartar women in still' green, wide-skirted silk frocks and velvet caps wilh coins sewed on the edgehanging over their foreheads. Then there is the bright-eyed Chubarek peasant girl, wearing her brand new "Inpki" birchbai'k sandals with crossed garters, who gat so excited when, as a me.mbor of the "Praesidium" of the Congress, she had to sit on the platform thai she drank up the entire ollicial carafe of water.

And all these queer people carry portfolios which in Soviet Russia, as in France, are the emblems of ofllcc. But-best of all is the Samoyed. Your correspondent saw him unhesitatingly select and hoard a moving street car while other delegates wavered. He is the perfect flat-faced Samoyed type, dressed like an Eskimo, though not an Eskimo, all complete except lor his learn of reindeer, and just elected by his illiterate brother trappers who cast their voles by culnhg notches on a little slick. And he, vug. carried the inevitable nortrati**.

I Delegates Attack Bureaucracy.

j Notwithstanding its picturesque ; make-up, the debates of the assembly wore thoroughly prosaic and almost entirely devoted to problems oi' industrial development. Delegate after delegate complained i that the Central Administration last | year look a greater percentage of the l proceeds of local taxation and that, al- | though they understood that these I sums were required for a vast unified plan and were destined to industrialise the entire Federation, build railways, canals and hydro-clcctric stations, produce agricultural machinery and chemical fertilisers, these benefits, however much they might be apparent in the Moscow region, had not yet reached their remote province. This is an interesting symptom of the "rcgionalist" sentiment that is sure to grow into political reality in the , vast and varied Soviet territories. Nearly all of the speeches denounced bureaucracy, which, after graft, is the chief Russian plague and the worst Russian habit. Inherited in a peculiarly futile borrowed shape from the Czarist regime, bureaucracy nourished in the period of a "militant communism" not only because communism itself is bureaucratic but because in a period of general acute scarcity everything had to be controlled. Plethora of Industrial Reports. Another .explanation of the growth | of overhead due to the complicated system of checks and useless sectional reports, especially in industry, during that period was the fact that the managers of the Stale factories, who were mainly former employees in the prerevolutionary private factories, knew i that they were likely to be shot, for j graft or sabotage when things went i wrong, as they usually did, and preferred to "pass the buck" up to the competent State Department. Habits once formed are hard to cure. 1 The eleven factories of the Slate Iron Trust last year sent in 87G long reports as well as 745,000 sectional reports to the central office of the trust, which, in turn, sent up 80 reports and 73,000 sectional reports to the Department of National Economy. This should stop graft, but it does not. The manager of the Moscow Slate Bicycle and Motor-cycle Store has just given himself up to the police, saying: "I have embezzled 10,000 dollars. For heaven's sake arrest me or I shall steal 100.000 dollars. There is no proper control in my department." Premier Rykoff assured the Congress that the Administration was cutting down bureaucracy to a minimum safe limit, and that is true. Russian Curiosity Rampant. Willi its new ideals and vast curi- I osily the Soviet Covei'nment is attempting a complete survey of the conditions of Hussion life and resources and Russian soil, for Russia, by comparison with the United Slates, is slill an unexplored jungle. Almost daily discoveries of mineral wealth are reported—radium, magnetic ore and gold—but mostly in places so remote to means of communication (hat lor exploitation at present they mighl as well be at the centre of Ihis planet.

Another current obsession is for "questionnaires" on every conceivable subject. Your correspondent has seen the questions and answers of two such questionnaires addressed to the students of the technological colleges ~* ' -"inn-i'iaii :uid Odessa. Among the

less indiscreet questions were the following: "Have you a wife or affinity? If not, why not?" "Have you changed your wife? If so, do you consider prolonged' marriage or frequent, changes preferable?" A few nights ago your correspondent was asked to reply to a questionnaire in the music halls: "What turns do you like the best and the least, and why," '•'Are you married?" "Are you a Communist Party member?" In Russia, as the pre-war type of "perpetual student" exclaims in one of Chekhof's plays: "There is a great future for statistics." Stoical on Reverses In China. The most exciting political event of the week has been the reaction to the violation of the Russian Embassy at Peking, the raid on the trade delegation at Tientsin and the molestation of the Soviet Consuls at Shanghai and elsewhere in China, leading to the breach in diplomatic relations with the Peking Government. Premier Rykof, in opening the AllRussian Congress last Sunday night in the great State Opera House in an atmosphere of extreme tension, declared: "The Chinese game will be won by the party with the strongest nerve, and Russia, although able to intervene in China, and take reprisals, would not fall into the trap set by England and the other imperialists." Chiang Kai-shek's coup d'etat against the Left Wing of the Kuomintang, which is admitted here to be a serious reverse for Chinese Communism and Soviet influence in China, makes M. Rykof's speech stale history. The disruption of the Kuomintang, although feared, might have come earlier than expected here and accentuated the differences of opinion already existing within the Russian Communist Parly as to the Soviet's Chinese policy. The official Communist Party organ, the Pravda, explains the present reverse for the Chinese Communists as entirely in accord with the Marxian theory and preaches patience, fortitude and close Communist co-operation with the Left Wing to and for a new Kuomintang.