LIFE AMONG THE SOVIETS
PART II Life Among the Soviets IWAS introduced to one of the principal characteristics of Soviet society—the shortage of consumer goods—hours before I set foot on Soviet soil. The twin-engined...
...She had been making enormous progress in developing relationships between blood and brain disorders...
...To my unpracticed eye it seemed a clean, well-run establishment which handles much emergency surgery...
...Usually the food is better and the prices cheaper...
...But this average includes the lowest paid in Soviet society—charwomen, messengers, elevator operators, and inexperienced clerks, who get about $30 a month...
...This school was one of the better 10-year institutions in Moscow...
...I was promptly given a cap, gown, and mask and whisked off to the scene of emergency surgery...
...Nothing in my life would change anyway if I did join...
...We teach all this in our classes...
...She would not say which, if any, of the three addresses was the correct one...
...Ehrenburg may well be strapped for spot cash, but his apartment seemed a palace compared to workers' homes I had seen...
...Service is fast and frequent...
...greater autonomy for the collectives...
...The ship carrying it from New York to Leningrad was torpedoed and sunk by the Nazis...
...During the past five years Russia turned out nearly twice as many engineers as did the United States—260,000 compared to our 142,000...
...This ruthless drive has enabled the Soviet Union to vault over several centuries of industrial revolution in several decades, so that today she is the second greatest industrial power in the world...
...There are few cabinets and fewer closets in most Soviet apartments I saw...
...The system works tolerably well, I was told, although there are frequently long delays and a vast amount of bureaucratic red-tape to cope with...
...The factory runs its own technical training program...
...While each collective owns its own buildings and livestock, it owns no machine equipment...
...Many a worker would cheerfully pay much more than that if he could free his family from its one-room cell, but it will be years before he can qualify for more commodious quarters...
...They are all Lend-Lease...
...Moreover, while you of the West boast of the fact that any critic or crank can publish his complaint, the fact remains that your newspapers and radio stations are owned by the very wealthy...
...My own impression, reinforced by resident non-Russians whose speciality is education, is that schooling in the Soviet Union is a considerable cut above standards that many in the West believe to be the case...
...I asked the hospital director if he could tell me in what ways he thought socialized medicine superior to our fee-for-service practice...
...The overall conclusions I reached, after digging as deeply as I could in this field, are: 1. The persecution of the Jews in the period 1948-1952 was even harsher and more widespread than many an American critic of the Soviets suspected...
...The manager pointed to the Newton milling machine and proudly called it "our Soviet-American machine...
...When he arrived, she was waiting for him at his hotel...
...There is no doubt at all that anti-Semitism was growing at an alarming rate in the last phase of Stalin's life...
...This, she was told, would require further consideration at a higher echelon...
...Other schools have other single language specialties—French, German, Chinese, and the like...
...Housing, as we have noted, is cheap if inadequate...
...Of course not," he replied...
...The process begins in the elementary schools when the Russian child becomes a member of the Young Pioneers in the third grade, at age 9. When he becomes 14, he joins the Komsomol, or Young Communists, where he remains until age 23...
...Theoretically, they elect their own farm manager, but more often than not, I was told, they respond to the "recommendation" of the Ministry of Agriculture...
...He enlisted in the Revolution on the first day back in 1917 and worked hard for its success...
...The portion of the family plot given up to crops—vegetables, grains, or flowers—was intensively cultivated in every case...
...Our stewardess began to serve a light supper several hours after we had left Helsinki on the six and a half hour, non-stop flight...
...Workers at the Sverdlov factory, I was told by the manager, get 12 to 30 days vacation per year, depending on the type of work they do—whether heavy or light—and their record in overfulfilling their quotas...
...Among the books I saw were James Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and The Financier, Howard Fast's Freedom Road and The Last Frontier, Zane Grey's The Heritage of the Desert, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Byron's Don Juan, and several volumes each by Louisa Alcott, George Eliot, Jack London, and Charles Dickens...
...A substantial liberalization of the old age pension program was proclaimed by the Kremlin while I was in the Soviet Union...
...The idea is to develop specialized skills and instill a team spirit among the peasants...
...Their jobs carry no prestige...
...Some of them are millionaires...
...Many factors contribute to this sorry performance in housing...
...These rates, of course, favor the more fortunate in Soviet society and enable them to accumulate sizeable reserves of cash and to buy comfort and luxury goods...
...I found the shops darker, gloomier, and less clean than the few I remembered seeing at home...
...When I first saw the American Embassy in Moscow, for example, I guessed it might be about 15 years old...
...I have simplified all references to money values by arbitrarily putting the ruble at ten cents...
...Yes," said the manager, "some of the best machines we have are American-made...
...Their lot is somewhat better than the peasants on the collective farms, for their income is not affected by such unpredictable factors as drought, blight, or storm damage...
...Six hundred families, numbering 2,500 persons, live and work on this collective...
...They will feel more relaxed when the process of rehabilitation, including the public admission of error in the past, receives equal recognition with the restoration of non-Jew's persecuted by Stalin...
...There are ample media of expression now...
...Most apartment construction is the responsibility of the city Soviets (municipal governments...
...Their needs are met, in part, by the considerable number of flower stalls one sees in the large cities...
...During my month in the Soviet Union I visited institutions which bear the principal burden of Soviet education—kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, technical institutes, and universities...
...One rough estimate by a seasoned foreign correspondent placed the total at between 10 to 20 million persons, or five to ten per cent of the population...
...This last with a sigh of regret...
...They have the power to elect new members of the collective by majority vote and expel "incorrigible, subversive, and disruptive" members by a majority vote, provided that two-thirds of the members are on hand...
...For the present the ten-year schools are concentrated mainly in the big cities...
...currency at a Soviet bank...
...Mechanization is provided, on a fee basis, by the state-operated MTS, which owns all the tractors, cultivators, and combines...
...Earthen pots seemed to be widely used...
...he is often snarled in a great deal of red tape...
...Nephew and aunt went up to his room, but she remained coldly silent...
...This, of course, puts new furniture, household appliances, and automobiles beyond the reach of the average working family—which is precisely the way the state wants it to be for the present, for there are not nearly enough consumer goods to go around...
...The taller, more robust, and better cultivated wheat is growing on the private plots of the individual farm families...
...Many Jews were shot or imprisoned...
...I told him I understood he was not a member of the Communist Party and asked if this were one of the privileges of a privileged group of artists...
...of other incentives...
...Both were mightily impressed...
...I could fire either on exactly the same basis...
...there would be no point in creating more...
...Many families of factory and mercantile workers live in a single room and share kitchen and plumbing facilities with from two to five other families on the same floor...
...The yield is used partly for the family table, but much goes into the free market...
...Made in the U.S.A...
...An American educator returned from a visit to several secondary schools with the report that they are doing "excellent" work in most fields...
...When he denied the existence of the elite, my eyes ranged involuntarily over the room in which we were talking...
...They go to school, as do children throughout the U.S.S.R., ten months each year, six days a week, from 8 a.m...
...Alex-androv, the university's rector, told me that English is far and away the most popular because students recognize its importance in science and world politics...
...So great was the congestion that several women fainted and had to be carried out...
...They have embarked on a program of reform designed to provide greater incentives for the peasants by reducing their taxes, decentralizing authority, cutting obligatory quotas, raising state-imposed prices, providing greater premium payments for production above the quotas, and improving rural housing, education, and social life...
...The twin-engined plane which bore me from Helsinki to Moscow was filled—20-odd passengers, including several Soviet officials, Finnish business men, a delegation of Indonesian Communists heading for the May Day celebration, and two British journalists...
...Mechanization and scientific methods are almost universally used...
...The Communist Party carries out the heavy work of helping to formulate policy and seeing that it is executed...
...Housing remains the most urgent problem of Soviet society today...
...It spends 40 per cent of the city's budget...
...If they have legitimate grievances...
...There were only four trays and four tea glasses on the ship...
...All other services are free—including treatment at the clinic, house calls, hospitalization, surgery, in-patient medicines, x-rays, psychiatry, and dental work except for the cost of dentures...
...Prices are much higher than in state stores, for the produce is fresh...
...She would not let him take the picture he wanted to carry back to her family in the West...
...There is no fence around the 7,000,000 that isolates them from us...
...The American traveler in Soviet Russia receives four rubles per dollar when he exchanges his U.S...
...closing time...
...I found it impossible to form any accurate estimate of how numerous a group this elite is...
...I asked...
...She remained adamant despite his pleas—until the Intourist interpreter standing nearby took a hand in the conversation...
...A decade ago only about 20 per cent of the students completing their seventh grade went any further...
...The Jewish press and theater were dismantled, and Jewish cultural life choked off in other ways as well...
...A distinguished Swedish physicist told me that-he had come across a secondary school textbook in his field in the Soviet Union and found it "the best in the world...
...All in all, the Kremlin claims, more than 60,000,-000 of its citizens are attending school, adult classes included...
...The income levy does not exceed 12 per cent and inheritance taxes stop at 13 per cent...
...The Vorosholov Collective, some 50 miles southeast of Kiev, in the bread-basket that is the Ukraine, ranges over 18,000 acres, of which some 6,500 are arable...
...This is certainly a noble goal, but it is difficult to see how the establishment of boarding schools requiring payment of fees by most can fail to accentuate the present trend under which the sons and daughters of the aristocracy use their parents' influence to gain admittance to universities although their grades may not be so good as those of children from workers' families...
...Rents are incredibly cheap, for housing is heavily subsidized by the state...
...This collective, like all others, is in effect a cooperative organization formed to occupy and operate the land...
...I would like to get to know your machine tool people...
...As for farming methods and quality of output, there have been giant strides recently...
...Khrushchev's report to the 20th Congress in February, for example, contained what our own State Department characterized as "the most explicit statement since Malenkov's speech to the Supreme Soviet in 1953 of an awareness of continuing consumer shortages...
...Agents and inspectors of the MTS are forever roaming over the collective farms, keeping their eye on equipment and reporting on the various other farm operations...
...It plays a major part in the "socialist competition" with other factories in the same field of production...
...There have been comparable reports on the quality of university and technical school training in the sciences by a host of foreign observers...
...The busses and trolleys move through the clean, well-swept streets at a furious clip, mainly, of course, because there is comparatively little automobile traffic except in a few of the principal areas of Moscow...
...A cheap work shirt would run him $3.50, or a day's pay, while a better quality shirt for evening or holiday wear would range beyond $25, or more than a week's wage...
...The dormitories seemed ancient, badly run down, and overcrowded...
...Outside, pressed against the pointed iron gates, thousands of Russians stood for more than an hour in a chill drizzle, to await that part of the service when the Patriarch, priests, and choir circle the cathedral bearing candles and chanting the liturgy...
...Another factor that contributes to making life more manageable for the average Soviet family is the system of social security toward which the individual family contributes nothing directly...
...labor reserve schools, which are trade schools for workers seeking greater competence in their fields, and three types of normal schools which train school and kindergarten teachers...
...As I walked out to my car, a great orange ball of sun was sinking behind the peaceful Neva River...
...Such private homes as I did see in Moscow were rude, dingy shacks—slum remnants of the log-cabin era of the ancient city—without plumbing or running water...
...But foreign experts in the field told me that the new factories represent a considerable improvement over an older one like Sverdlov, that fabulous strides are being taken in modernization and automation...
...Among them are schools for working youth, which operate in shifts to provide a measure of part-time secondary school education for those obliged to go to work before 17...
...With that, he escorted the American for a block beyond the synagogue to make certain he didn't talk to anyone...
...Most of those I use are rough, not exact, because of the difficulty of measuring the value of currencies and of translating grams, kilos, litres, and metres into ounces, pounds, pints, and feet...
...Primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and trade schools and technical institutes are jammed to overflowing...
...The larger holdings are for the peasants who have been there longest, the smaller for the comparative newcomers...
...The New Houses Department, for instance, is the largest unit of Leningrad Soviet...
...In a major policy pronouncement this year the Kremlin announced that the private plots and private livestock are to be progressively reduced to a point where they only "decorate" the life of the collective farmer...
...Before embarking on this risky venture, I think I owe the reader a word of warning on the subject of wage and price comparisons...
...Another case, which illustrates the self-defeating extent to which Stalin was prepared to deprive the Soviet Union of needed skills in his obsessive suspicion of Jews, involved a celebrated Jewish woman doctor...
...Many have their own theatrical companies, orchestras, and athletic teams...
...There are night classes for workers who want to acquire new skills...
...This scheme, according to a uniquely well-informed non-Russian Communist, provoked a violent debate in the councils of the Communist Party, and there were some who are convinced that the pressures and tensions occasioned by that conflict contributed to the final stroke which ended Stalin's life...
...Every individual is entitled to free care, with four exceptions...
...The clubhouse has two libraries— one for technical books only and the other a general library with 20,000 volumes...
...More than 60 per cent of those engaged in the building trades stay on their jobs less than two years...
...Room rental is $1.50 per month, but many of the brightest students receive scholarships which pay for room and board as well...
...But with maturity a Soviet citizen is free to join a church or engage in other forms of religious experience...
...if they don't, I feel the pinch...
...today: 20,000 Orthodox 5,400 Baptist 1,500 Roman Catholic 800 Lutheran or Reform 500 Seventh Day Adventists 500 Jewish Synagogues 100 Armenian 50 Buddhist Recently a delegation of prominent American Protestants visited the Soviet Union on a fact-finding investigation of religious practices...
...In round numbers, the U.S.S.R...
...How the Russians Live Adequate housing is the most compelling need in the Soviet Union today...
...Workers are rewarded with premium payments above their base wage for output in excess of the norm assigned them...
...Their spokesman, Dr...
...nor has there been any indication that the men in the Kremlin have any notion of embarking on fundamental changes in the system itself...
...All the land belongs to the state...
...It was nearly 11 p.m...
...to develop self discipline...
...It is an endlessly fascinating experience to watch the law of supply and demand at work in these markets or bazaars...
...I saw the operations all right, but after a while my interpreter told me that the parts of my face she could see were as white as the mask I was wearing...
...Children pay 25 kopecks, or about 21/2 cents...
...His answer was a firm "yes...
...The first trickle of dividends from the long-run investment in capital equipment is just barely beginning to reach the average Russian...
...There can be no interference from parents or clergy...
...It is a good-sized stone structure...
...More than an hour went by after the girl had begun to serve and still no supper for me...
...After listening to a condensation of the speech, the student rose and said: "Until Mr...
...A few Russian intellectuals with whom I talked cheerfully conceded that "we have our millionaires who have served the state well...
...An executive committee of nine meets regularly to discuss policy and prepare recommendations lor the general membership...
...In the United States you can make more dollars out of the dollars you have...
...so is the absence of pork on the table...
...The Russian Orthodox Church claims a membership of 50,000,000, or about one-quarter of the population...
...The rates for all four are fixed by the state and are quite low...
...When we walked into the shops, the first thing I saw was the word "Liberty" stamped on a great boring machine...
...Eugene C. Blake, president of the National Council of Churches, was asked if the churches in the U.S.S.R...
...Moreover, the Soviet family has free medical protection, an elaborate program of non-contributory social security, free education (about which more later), and inexpensive intra-city transportation...
...We believe that the individual student can find the highest fulfillment of his needs and his greatest opportunity for expression if he identifies himself with the Soviet state and Soviet society...
...Basically, the official Soviet attitude toward religion has not changed, only the tactics...
...This continuing emphasis on heavy industries which create new capacity has enabled the hard-driving Soviet economy to reach and move well ahead of the combined output of Great Britain and Western Germany in this general field, notably coal, steel, electricity...
...The members meet periodically to discuss and vote on these policies of the collective—pay scales, acreages, division of labor, and the like...
...The one I visited in Moscow looked much like its counterpart at home—a bit shabbier perhaps, but well-organized and well-staffed...
...But there is a measure of hope for the consumer, too, in the new Five-Year Plan...
...I encountered no revolutionary fervor among them, but rather what struck me as a longing for stability and security, a desire to settle down to a predictable pattern of life...
...By 1960 the Soviets will have four to five times as many secondary school graduates per year as they had in 1950...
...There are not many refrigerators...
...After a while, I steered the conversation around to matters political...
...Heavy industry will continue to grow at a faster rate than that of light industry, but the absolute increase in the latter will be substantially larger than at any time in "the past...
...We are a nation of 200,-000,000 people...
...They begged me to come back another time...
...The cathedral was packed to the doors and beyond...
...The new leadership of the Soviet Union knows only too well of the stagnation in this research field as a result of acts of this kind, has now brought her back to Moscow...
...He went on to achieve considerable distinction in his field, so much so that there is a building and a street named for him in Leningrad, and there is much about him, complete with photographs, in the Soviet Encyclopedia...
...But she was there to tell him that she did not want to talk to him...
...Said Khrushchev on that occasion: "The Soviet people knowingly accepted a curtailment of their needs in matters of food and clothing, in matters of housing and living conditions, as well as in many other respects...
...The dozen or more farm homes I entered seemed neat and clean...
...The workers have their own orchestra, some of whose members hadn't played a note, I was told, until they attended music classes conducted by the club...
...This prominent Jewish physician was summarily removed from his post and exiled to Siberia during the wave of anti-Semitism in the 1948-1952 period...
...I wandered about for several hours, munching on cheese and pickles acquired at various stalls...
...Heads of departments receive $600 per month, full professors $555, starting instructors $150...
...There is a playing field outside the clubhouse, and the workers have their own football team (soccer) which plays teams from other Leningrad factories and sometimes gets to play factory teams in other cities...
...There must be no disabilities put upon the children of believers...
...The tentative draft, however, which appeared in Pravda during my stay, provides that those in the lowest rungs of Soviet society will receive 100 per cent of their pay as pensions —at age 50 for women with 20 years of work service and at age 60 for men with 26 years of work service—with the proportion of salary paid as pension declining for those in the higher brackets...
...Jews, Stalin felt, had too many relatives abroad—in America and Britain and elsewhere—and he was fearful of any exchange of news and ideas...
...The widow was informed that she would get back the apartment of which the family had been deprived when her husband was condemned as an enemy of the state, and that she would receive a rather handsome pension from now on...
...But," I persisted, "assuming for a moment the ignorance of those who do oppose policy, are they free to express opposition in a paper of their own or a mimeographed leaflet...
...We have nothing resembling your bourgeoisie," he argued...
...University authorities make no bones of the fact that they teach history "as we Communists see it...
...A student at the University of Moscow attended a session of the Young Communist League during which there was a report and discussion of Khrushchev's 20th Congress indictment of Stalin...
...They were visibly excited by the fact that this "country without a mortgage" was embarking on a program of building mass housing units clustered around the factories and complete with parks, shopping centers, schools, and outlets for cultural and recreational interests...
...There are cow-milking brigades, hog-feeding brigades, tractor brigades, repair brigades, seeding and cultivating brigades, and the like...
...I suspect this is true in your country as well...
...One is a member, the other is not...
...Americanski...
...Carlton, Cincinnati, O...
...The factory manager—with a representative of the Communist Party tagging along—took me into the shops to watch the men at work building machine tools...
...The subjects that are required of all pupils in this and all other ten-year schools are arithmetic, algebra, geometry, chemistry, botany, fine arts, psychology, manual training, singing, and Russian language, literature, and history...
...The goal of the new Five-Year Plan is universal, obligatory, free 10-year schooling for all Soviet children, but there is little likelihood that this objective will be achieved within the time set...
...He urged, and then virtually ordered, her to talk to her nephew...
...Many still fear a revival of anti-Semitism...
...The doctor died in Siberia...
...A typical free market will contain several hundred stands—one I visited in Moscow had 1200...
...An extraordinary number of new buildings was going up in almost every neighborhood of every city I visited...
...Their principal crop is wheat, but they also raise sugar beets, hogs, chickens, vegetables, and dairy herds...
...It is forbidden to wound religious sensibilities...
...I feel no personal need to become a member...
...he comes to us immediately and we are able to do much to prevent complications by getting at the problem in the early stages...
...He came to Leningrad from a country town in 1930, got an apprentice job at the factory, went to the factory school evenings, and then enrolled in a polytechnical institute...
...no right to demand higher wages, for these rates are fixed by the ministry...
...They are owned and operated by the state...
...We are one people, striving for one goal—for all...
...Classes in a Classless Society For all its professed dedication to the ideal of the classless society, the Soviet system has spawned its own aristocracy...
...The Sverdlov factory, like nearly all of its counterparts, is pretty much a self-contained social unit...
...Compulsory quotas are now extremely low compared to production potential...
...Families that have "middle-class" status—engineers and professors—may qualify for three-room flats, while the apartments of the Soviet aristocracy will have as many as five rooms, in addition to kitchen and bathroom facilities...
...Foreign experts who have made Soviet agriculture their speciality provided me with some of the ingredients for this balance sheet: Life is hard and drab for the peasant...
...The work week is 46 hours, eight on weekdays and six on Saturday...
...One was the inevitable hunt for a scapegoat when things went wrong...
...One striking development which catches the eye of the foreigner is the great trend toward building self-contained communities within the cities...
...Sometimes the free market price is two or three times the price in the state stores, but this is mostly the case when supplies of the same commodity are scarce or non-existent in the regular retail outlets...
...But, he went on: "It is clear that the Party is not turning back from its avowed purpose, which in this case is ultimately to destroy religion in favor of atheistic materialism...
...the shorter, scrawnier wheat belongs to the collective farm whose members are the same families...
...The Moscow Metro is as handsome and clean and efficiently run as I had heard in advance...
...But mostly the existence of this aristocracy of brains and talent was denied...
...No Easy Terms The family of the Sverdlov factory worker, like other factory families throughout the U.S.S.R., eats a bit better and finds it possible to buy a few more clothes than was the case a year ago...
...Its gleaming stations are decorated with striking murals...
...The great drive spearheaded by Khrushchev to modernize and increase farm production includes the opening of vast stretches of "virgin soil" in Western Siberia, Kazkhstan, the Urals, and the valley of the Volga River...
...It is clear, however, that collective farms are saddled with a great deal of bureaucratic control and exposed to many pressures from Moscow...
...When I asked whether he intended to suggest that there wasn't a soul in all the Soviet Union who opposed the official program, he replied: "There are many who don't like certain details, and, of course, they are free to criticize within the broad framework of official policy...
...Khrushchev has publicly harangued the unions to become more militant, and several articles in the Soviet press echoed the line during my stay...
...Many of the workers live in nearby flats built by the factory...
...I know precious little about factories, nothing about machine tools...
...Spectacular advances are projected in the blueprints of the new Five-Year Plan...
...I visited several factories in the Soviet Union...
...they can work through their unions or other organizations, or they can write letters to the press, or they can carry their criticism to their deputy...
...It is the official policy of the state...
...But the mistakes of the tactics formerly used against their churches, their members and priests, are defined and admitted...
...I visited both kinds during my month in the Soviet Union...
...But the years and the indescribable hardship have taken their toll...
...The man didn't sit still for one moment of the two hours we had together...
...For classes to be created, in the Western sense, there needs to be accumulation of capital over two or three generations...
...We believe in the truth of these principles," said one university historian...
...None of these proposals disturbs the basic structure of collectivization...
...there is much we could tell each other...
...This disparity in crop cultivation and yield symbolizes the failure of collectivized agriculture in the Soviet Union—failure brought on in large measure by the inability or refusal of the Russian peasant to adjust to the vast, impersonal operations of collectivization...
...Thus, glasses cost about $2.50...
...But if fresh food is high and clothing and appliances prohibitively expensive, the Soviet worker does have some balancing economic advantages...
...Recently, as part of the current reform, his wife was summoned by the Ministry of Health and told that her husband was being rehabilitated posthumously...
...But many responded with quickened hope that the actions of the new Kremlin leadership might widen the area of scholarship and intellectual investigation...
...State farms (sovkhozy), of which there are 5,000 with an average acreage of 38,100, are what their name would indicate...
...When I asked if the texts were not in fact selected by the Ministry of Education, he agreed that the Ministry does make recommendations but that the final decision rests with the professor in charge...
...Even drinking water is obtained from wells and carried across the shoulders...
...Despite the substantial dosage of propaganda, Soviet education is widely regarded by foreigners who examine it frequently at close range as first-class, especially in the natural sciences...
...Children are taught atheism as soon as they are old enough to absorb the doctrine...
...When they complete their studies in the ten-year schools, the graduating students may go to work on a farm or in a factory, enter a technical institute for training in engineering, medicine, or other branches of science, or qualify for university study by passing stiff examinations...
...evening classes for rural youth on collective and state farms and in the larger villages...
...and to encourage physical and aesthetic culture...
...Sometimes they are given homes rent-free, cars with allowances for chauffeur, and a country home...
...Mothers were calling to their children to come to supper, much as they do at home...
...The average wage rate for all Soviet workers is 750 rubles per month, or roughly $75...
...If he does, he would almost certainly not be able to join the Communist Party or aspire to a high government post, but for the ordinary Russian who looks forward to neither prospect, there is no discernible discrimination because of religious belief or church attendance...
...Some of them seemed to me curt and certainly uncommunicative, doubtless because they have been burnt too many times in the past to risk talking to a stranger...
...Many collectives often find it necessary to borrow from the State Agricultural Bank for capital improvements...
...to inspire unshakeable love toward the Soviet Fatherland, the Communist Party, and its leaders...
...Our students haven't the mathematical tools the Soviet students have," they commented...
...those who work on them receive flat wages in cash and produce...
...But the Yiddish-speaking American encountered several members of the congregation on their way to service, stopped them, asked about the plight of the Jews, and was told precisely the same story: "Everything is wonderful...
...nearly all of them have spacious to luxurious homes or apartments, a villa in the country, at least one limousine, and from one to several servants...
...On this Ukrainian farm the private plots—one to a family—ranged from three-quarters of an acre to an acre and a half per family...
...Members of the faculty, incidentally, earn relatively decent salaries...
...The High Cost of Survival The real wages of workers in this workers' society lag far beyond comparable wage rates in the United States, but not nearly so far behind standards in the rest of Europe, and far ahead of rates in the still underdeveloped areas of Asia and the Middle East...
...If my books sell well, I am loaded...
...But milk was going at 50 cents a quart, good quality butter at $1.28 per pound, Holland-type cheese at $1.17 per pound, pork at 84 cents per pound, cocoa at $1.01 per pound, and fish at 58 cents per pound...
...The latter seemed greatly disturbed at the bad impression this terrorized woman was making...
...Mostly, however, the union is used to exhort the workers on to ever greater feats of production...
...Its members are the leading scientists, writers, musicians, dancers, actors, top military brass, and major factory managers...
...Boys and girls, by the way, share the same dormitories...
...the liberalization of incentives...
...No qualified observer I pressed on the subject was prepared to predict the outcome...
...Some homes I saw had small wood-burning stoves, others an open hearth for both cooking and heating...
...When I countered by pointing out that he could bequeath his holdings to his family, and that the Soviet inheritance tax rate was much lower than that in the United States, he nodded but added that it could never be enough to support his children in idleness as would be the case in Western countries...
...There are two types of farms in Russia...
...Neither he nor any of his successful artist or scientist friends, he went on, came within hailing distance of income of that magnitude...
...The new rulers of Russia are painfully aware that this weakest link in the Soviet economy could spell disaster if fresh, nourishing foods remain scarce for the labor force in the burgeoning industrial society of the cities...
...The terror to which they were subjected from 1948 until the death of Stalin exceeded in some respects the harshest indictments leveled against Stalin's Russia by its most implacable enemies...
...This is true of many Soviet structures...
...He charges what the traffic will bear...
...There is a desperate need for more housing...
...The base pay of the manager is $700 a month, and he receives bonuses as well...
...Thus, each worker, each section, each department has its norm —the basic quota assigned the individual worker and his section...
...Each peasant farmer, male or female (women, by the way, constitute 60 per cent of the farm labor force) is assigned to a brigade with a single special task...
...And let us come to your country so we can get to know and understand you better...
...A fair number of Soviet intellectuals I met are not members of the Communist Party and seem not to have been pressed to join...
...Crowds of shoppers stare wistfully at the luxury goods in the windows of Gum—the great state department store on Red Square—but only the privileged class can afford the fur coats, the smart dresses, the modern furniture, and the de luxe models of refrigerators, television sets, phonographs, and household appliances...
...I saw dozens of TV antennas on one collective farm outside Moscow but none in a collective in the Ukraine where power is in short supply...
...Except for the choice of foreign language, all courses are compulsory throughout the Soviet Union...
...Until January of this year students at the University of Leningrad paid a $25 per semester tuition fee, but this has now been abolished...
...Obrastov talked to me at great length about the theater in Russia, Broadway, Hollywood, Walt Disney, his concept of the function of the stage, his conviction that children should never be shown misfortune, tragedy or bloodshed (he thought little Red Riding Hood worse for children than King Lear...
...I engaged a dozen or more Soviet intellectuals in discussion of this subject, but always the answer came out the same...
...Similarly, the workers' orchestra, theatrical troupe, and chess teams have an opportunity to compete with their opposites in other factories...
...There were many reasons for this development...
...Much of the entertainment fare is produced by the workers themselves, under the supervision of a full-time director and staff, but occasionally there are concerts and lectures by professional talent...
...Most of the private plots I inspected had a cow, several pigs, and chickens...
...It is not unusual for some of them to receive lump sum payments of up to, and occasionally more than, 100,000 rubles...
...He said he couldn't really, because he had never known any other system first-hand, but he felt that state medicine must be better because it emphasizes preventive care...
...The University of Moscow, housed in a completely modern 33-story skyscraper that dominates the landscape of the capital city, is jampacked with 22,000 students—less than half those who sought admission...
...He was on the hunt for an aunt who had not been heard from for a number of years...
...Outside the factory the union provides a vehicle for the social, recreational, and propaganda activities of the workers and their families...
...In the interest of tidiness and convenience I propose to submit my report in a series of classifications that deal with housing, wages and working conditions, prices, agriculture, social security, education, and religion...
...There are few private homes in the great cities like Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, although some have been built, I was told, in cities I did not visit—cities like Stalingrad that have been almost completely rebuilt after the devastation of World War II...
...A third factor is the long isolation enforced by Stalin, which prevented Russians from keeping up with construction progress in the West...
...resort to more persuasion and less compulsion...
...Livestock production continues to lag far behind minimum needs, despite the attempt to adapt American methods acquired by the visiting Soviet delegation last year...
...is largely a nation of apartment-dwellers deprives countless Russians of the opportunity to grow the flowers they love...
...In the next five years it plans to graduate nearly three times as many—400,000 compared to our 153,000...
...The children have been told of Stalin's mistakes...
...Millions of families exist in drab, dilapidated, overcrowded apartments...
...The treatment of the soil, the methods of crop rotation, and the handling of herds have impressed foreign experts...
...Food is becoming more plentiful, clothes slightly less astronomical in price, and housing construction more rapid and of better quality...
...This reduction for the junior members of the collective reflects a determination of the Soviet government to downgrade the private plot in favor...
...The labor organization is virtually a company union...
...As a writer, my income is extremely uneven...
...The factory manager proudly told me of his own rise in the ranks...
...Soviet law provides minimum standards of living space based on the number of individuals per family, but there just aren't enough roofs to come within hailing distance of the law's requirements...
...Shortages and long waits are everyday facts-of-life in Soviet Russia...
...Across the embankment I could see the hulks of a few shattered buildings—grim souvenirs of the Nazis' 900-day siege of Leningrad more than ten years ago...
...Khrushchev took great pains to deny in advance that the objective of the new boarding schools would be to raise an aristocratic caste...
...The library in the ten-year school I visited had a modest number of American and British books, most of them pretty well worn...
...Another pampered group is composed of foreign students, especially those from the "People's Democracies"—Soviet satellites—and neutralist nations...
...Indoctrination of all students in the principles of Marxist-Leninism, begun in the seven and ten-year schools, goes forward with advanced studies in the university...
...The state rewards scientists and the leading artists in all fields with a lavish hand...
...The farm families that make up the membership of the collective share in the income of the farm, in cash and produce, on the basis of the nature and amount of work they do...
...Actually the ruble more nearly approximates our dime than our quarter...
...Its entire output is at the disposal of the Machine Tool Building Ministry, which directs where the finished machine tools are to be sent...
...Down on the Collective As he moves over the great plains of the Soviet Union, the traveler is struck by a recurring oddity: growing side by side on the same soil are crops of markedly varying size and health...
...One distinguished editor, for example, said with a .perfectly deadpan expression that there "just isn't opposition to official policy in a classless society...
...Building goes on the year round...
...Soviet educators with whom I talked could see no conflict between the pursuit of scholarship and the advance commitment to the Marxist-Leninist doctrines...
...3. The Jews of Russia are adjusting slowly to the new moderation...
...The average wage is $90 to $100, but the most skilled and productive workers take home as much as $300 per month...
...The faculties or divisions at the University of Leningrad are mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, botany, philology, history, law, economics, philosophy, and language studies, including most of the major languages of the world...
...Its representatives sit in with management spokesmen on matters of factory policy and are theoretically consulted on every major decision...
...They go back home enormously impressed and indoctrinated_the point, of course, of the whole program...
...The average all-Soviet wage, remember, is $75 a month...
...This means, of course, dedication to the philosophy and principles of Marx and Lenin which govern our lives...
...I feel I share the opinions of the Party, that I am working in and for the Soviet Union, and that I think about art in Soviet terms—in line with the Communist Party...
...The private plot and the free market constitute one of the last remnants of free enterprise in the Soviet economy...
...Some of them seemed badly shaken by the disclosures of Stalin's tyranny and terror...
...I was told that the workers are responding, but cautiously, kicking up a fuss now and then on specific issues...
...He can buy apparel for his children quite cheaply, for the Soviet state takes a special interest in the welfare of its young...
...But her workers and peasants have little to show for these giant strides in industrialization...
...The goal for coal is an increase from 390 to 590 million tons, which, if fulfilled, would easily make Russia the world's greatest producer...
...Newton, Rochester, N. Y., and others...
...But he never joined the party...
...are able to oppose the government and the Communist Party on anything...
...The reason soon becomes clear...
...their entrance credentials are not scrutinized with as much care as those of Russian students, they are allowed considerable latitude in the matter of grades, and they are subjected to no class, religious, or color lines...
...Most of the equipment is adequate, I was told, when it comes from the factory, but those who run the machines are not especially efficient in maintaining and repairing them, with the result that they depreciate much more rapidly than they should...
...And that brings me to my own reason for not joining...
...I came away with the conviction that whatever may be the ultimate rewards in national security and long-range progress, this generation of Russians has paid a staggering price for its government's emphasis on heavy industry...
...Prices, incidentally, are uniform in all state stores throughout the Soviet Union...
...One of the most emphatic denials came from Ilya Ehrenburg, the celebrated Soviet novelist whith whom I spent several hours...
...The demand of the Easter holiday," they explained in their eagerness to have me understand, "has taken most of the good stuff...
...Ever since the exposure of the fraud of the "Doctors' Plot," conditions have been improving steadily for the Jews in the Soviet Union...
...The full course at the University of Leningrad, as at most Soviet universities, runs five years...
...Apart from the quantitative inadequacy of dwelling units, the quality of construction lags far behind Western standards...
...told me of a striking experience he had had in a northern Russian city...
...The Baptist Church, merged with the Evangelical Christians and officially known as the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists, is far and away the largest Protestant denomination, numbering some half-a-million members...
...Collective farms are largely self-contained communities...
...It organizes pep rallies in various sections of the plant to spur the labor force on as the factory embarks on a new quota...
...She would not discuss her personal situation or the plight of the Jews, except to murmur that everything was fine...
...Under it the state reserves the right to complete control of the minds of its young...
...The one and two-room apartments, for example, cost no more than $3 to $5 per month...
...On the day I visited a free market in Moscow I found supplies low and prices high...
...The patient must pay for eye-glasses, dentures, out-patient medicines, and abortions...
...The planners in the Kremlin are only too well aware of the intolerable burdens placed on the collectives by these trappings of bureaucratic regimentation...
...The professors, he said, are free to choose the textbooks used in their classes...
...This pattern of diversification is common among collective farms...
...Religion in the Godless State Organized religion in the Soviet Union shares a piece of the new relaxation of tensions under de-Stalinization, but the fundamental Communist adherence to atheism remains unshaken...
...When I discussed this episode with a well-informed non-Russian who has lived long in the U.S.S.R., he said: "Of course the Jews are cautious, perhaps too cautious now with conditions so much better for them than they were, but they have reason to wonder how genuine and permanent the new tolerance may be...
...In the Moscow school I visited, English was the foreign language required of all pupils...
...His income is low...
...This is one of the incentives for greater effort...
...Comparable expansion is scheduled in the fields of electricity, oil, and heavy engineering...
...The individual peasant family has two sources of income: its share of the net revenue of the collective and the proceeds of sales it makes to the state or the free market from the yield of its own private plot...
...But many of them are still pretty shoddy, built with inferior materials by unskilled workmen...
...Much of this, however, is still on the planning boards for tomorrow...
...I priced a number of items at shops patronized by Sverdlov workers and their wives...
...fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables cost too much to appear in the daily diet of the average family...
...I saw ikons and other religious symbolism in some of the farm homes I visited and in several apartments...
...I thought I saw and heard a great ferment among the university students...
...The fact that these men and women were a class unto themselves in this classless society—with pay, perquisites, and privileges far beyond the reach of the worker in this workers' society—made no difference in their continuing insistence that in a nation without classes and class conflicts, there is no need for publications or parties to express criticism and fight for reform...
...Most of the meat he helps to produce, for instance, goes to the city...
...When I said good-bye to the manager, he told me I was the first American to visit their factory, and added: "Please, please tell your people when you go home that there must be peace and understanding...
...a variety of devices to make life more tolerable on the farm, and greatly increased grants for agricultural science...
...The fact that the U.S.S.R...
...One instrument of control is the MTS (Machine Tractor Station...
...Clothes exact a disproportionate share of the worker's income...
...Children were playing in the streets, much the same games that children play at home...
...precious little remains for his family...
...The all-embracing character of the social community built around the factory is also evident when one sees the playgrounds, nurseries, kindergartens and summer camps conducted for the children of the workers...
...Altogether, I was told in the Soviet Union, there are some 1,800,000 students enrolled in the 750 universities and higher institutes, and another two to two and a half million in the 2,000 tekhnikums, or technical institutes, some of which are open to those who have completed seven years of schooling while others require completion of ten years of secondary education...
...The study of the Soviet educational system, as officially set forth in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, is: "To develop in children's minds the Communist morality, ideology, and Soviet patriotism...
...Wider, more militant functions for labor unions are being discussed by the top command in the Kremlin as part of the new mood of relaxation under "collective leadership" and "de-Stalinization...
...Here union representatives sit side by side with management and argue the case of workers who have complaints regarding the wage they received under the piecework systems, loss of seniority rights, discharge or demotion, and loss of pay because of illness or lateness in reporting for work...
...about 85 per cent of the farms are mechanized...
...Despite the enormous expansion of the educational plant in recent years, there just aren't enough rooms and teachers to meet the demand...
...A fourth reason is to be found in the fact that construction workers —masons, carpenters, bricklayers, and the like—are among the most poorly paid workers in the Soviet Union...
...A Western European Jew traveling in the U.S.S.R...
...This is a flat opposition...
...to 2 p.m., with a break for a light lunch...
...The Communist Party plays a decisive part in the social and intellectual development of the student...
...The production of machine tools is fabulous...
...There have been some immediate gains and some reverses...
...Cabbage was selling at 40 cents a head, cucumbers at 30 cents apiece, radishes at 30 cents a bunch, eggs at 16 cents each, milk at 50 cents a quart...
...If we can only banish fear of each other, we can do wonders for all the peoples of the world...
...Production and wages are geared to an elaborate system of piecework incentives which is the heart of Soviet production...
...There is a system of appeals within the factory and a final appeal is possible in the People's Court...
...Abortions, once outlawed but now re-legalized, cost $5, with no questions asked of married or unmarried women...
...We need your help and we can help you...
...As a result, the turnover is tremendous and the availability of skilled labor meager...
...2. Life for the Jews is markedly better on almost every level today, and their lot is improving constantly...
...One group of dedicated American free-enterprisers, representing the National Association of Home Builders, was greatly impressed this summer by the Soviet experiment in community planning...
...Nor is one of the most dynamic and delightful men I met in all my travels— Obrastov, creator and director of the world-renowned Puppet Theater, and everywhere regarded as a genius...
...Work on the collective is done by brigades...
...Alexandrov told me there are 1,100 members of the faculty at the university over which he presides...
...The extraordinary emphasis on science and engineering shows up in the statistics...
...Its main hall seats 600...
...The campus sprawls over a wide area, much as do many of our universities...
...The churches, he said, "do stand for faith in God as opposed to the atheistic materialism of the Communist Party in the Soviet government's educational policy...
...It is used for movies, lectures, concerts, twice-a-week dances, and plays...
...The Communist Party functionary who usually tagged along on these expeditions seemed to take a sardonically tolerant view of all this, and one of them allowed as how it was mostly the older folks who have to have their religious pills...
...In fact, their restoration to relatively normal life in the community parallels the recent rehabilitation of non-Jewish Communist leaders who were destroyed by Stalin—with this one curious difference: the rehabilitation of the Jews, especially those who occupied leading positions in professional circles, is proceeding with far less fanfare, in fact in an atmosphere of almost total silence...
...modern household appliances are beyond the reach of the great majority...
...This is the uniform Soviet work week...
...Graduating students do not receive a degree, only a diploma describing the work they have completed...
...Families may borrow up to about half the cost of a new home from the government at two per cent for ten years, but few actually build because labor and materials are hard to come by...
...However, a large number of dwelling units are built for workers by the factories that employ them...
...They look old before their time...
...doubtless many came down by sunset...
...The haggling over prices exists in no other legalized sector of the Soviet economy...
...I was not able to determine how much of this democratic procedure is theory and how much is actual practice...
...Often, however, this extreme form of specialization has led to considerable waste of manpower, for many peasants are not working when there is nothing that needs doing in their speciality...
...The pursuit of a degree requires specialized graduate study...
...Countless thousands lost their jobs...
...had any student said half as much in Stalin's time, he would have been arrested...
...There is no requirement for anyone to join...
...A farmer who has raised cucumbers on the private plot, for example, brings his crop to town, rents a stall for five rubles a day—$1.25 at the official rate of exchange, but more realistically about 50 cents...
...The Soviets are now turning out more university graduates in these fields than we are— about 120,000 to our 70,000 last year...
...Still, development of secondary education at the senior high school level is moving along at a rapid rate...
...Its purpose, he said, will be to prepare "builders of a new society, persons of great heart and high ideals, who are self-lessly serving the people...
...Some estimate of the educational standards in algebra, physics, and chemistry, in a ten-year school of the 1dnd I visited, became available recently when two New York experts had a look at the examinations given graduating students...
...Mostly they are two or three-room individual homes...
...It was later reclaimed, but some of its parts had been permanently destroyed...
...The plan calls for a 20-million-ton increase in steel, which would pull the Soviet Union to within two-thirds of the current U.S...
...Ehrenburg said he had never heard of such pay, but he saw no reason to dispute it...
...Mostly the electric light comes from overhead sockets, although I did see table and floor lamps in some apartments...
...Russians either deny this, or decline to discuss the subject...
...When I pressed him to tell me why he hadn't joined, he replied: "In the first place, my father was not a member...
...As for their present lot, it was difficult for me to judge from first-hand experience, mostly because they tell foreigners a pat story that everything is going beautifully well...
...Its school for apprentices had an enrollment of 300 the day I was there...
...A highly disproportionate number of scholarships is made available to these foreign youths...
...I counted some 68 pipes, glanced at a bottle of Mar-tell cognac, admired his French and Russian paintings, patted his English dog, and inhaled one of his imported French cigarets...
...Most factory workers are able to earn about $100 a month, while the pay of highly skilled workers ranges up to $300 a month...
...Just now I am pinched for cash because I haven't produced a book in two years...
...The plant manufactures high-precision machine tools, stamping and die machines, and boring machines...
...They will all tell you the same thing...
...I visited the Skelphasovsky Hospital, named for its first chief surgeon, in Moscow...
...Many foreigners in Moscow remain convinced that somewhat more direct methods were employed to speed Stalin on his way...
...Many of the egg-heads among the Soviet aristocracy are sensitive and defensive with a foreigner like myself on the subject of freedom of expression in the U.S.S.R., whatever may be their private views on the subject...
...But when I traveled elsewhere in the Soviet Union, I saw many new buildings going up without benefit of improved techniques so proudly exhibited in the great Moscow project...
...That is the fundamental difference...
...In response to a question I asked, the principal of a secondary school in Moscow said, "Of course there is political content in our studies, but only along established national lines...
...At the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev proposed the establishment of a new type of boarding school to be situated in pleasant surroundings and to command "the best possible teachers...
...A crowd of Russian shoppers, mostly women, gathered quickly around me when they discovered they had an American in their midst...
...This woman, widely regarded as a genius in her field less than a decade ago, is too old, tired, sick, and beaten, to be of any service to the Soviets in this specialized field...
...will have graduated about 1,200,000 students in the sciences in the decade from 1950 to 1960, compared with 900,000 in the United States...
...Some of those with whom I talked may find themselves in trouble one day soon if they continue to expect more by way of release from regimentation than their rulers have indicated they would be prepared to approve for the present...
...The MTS receives payment for its service, in cash and kind, based on the yield of the various crops on the collective farm...
...Admission will be open to students at the request of parents who are able to pay fees based on income...
...But the average Soviet worker would have to part with from $120 to $150 for a cheap, drab suit of clothes for himself—or between five and six weeks wages...
...I told him I had just heard through an American scientist then in Moscow that the head of the Soviet Academy of Science said he received $3,000 a month, a home rent-free, a car and chauffeur, and a staff of servants...
...Ehrenburg, for example, is not a member...
...There are no published statistics available on churches in the Soviet Union, but a Soviet spokesman released these figures on the number of churches functioning in the U.S.S.R...
...Each worker has his norm for each day, week, and month...
...There is a great deal of detailed work and many meetings to attend...
...production...
...There may be a few who do not understand the problems which beset the Party and the government...
...One, of course, is the government's emphasis on heavy industry which makes materials like structural steel scarce for apartment construction...
...Subways, trolleys, and busses provide what seemed to me an excellent, low-cost system of transportation for those who live in the major cities...
...You in America have a different concept of the meaning and function of the Party from ours...
...Materials are inferior and workmanship shoddy...
...Everything is free," he said, "so the patient doesn't wait...
...Other families a cut above this group have two rooms...
...The manager and his section heads are rewarded proportionately to the extent that the plant as a whole exceeds its government-imposed quotas...
...Through a mix-up in language I was taken to half-a-dozen operating rooms where surgeons, to my horror, were carving up their patients...
...This is inevitable in a classless society...
...no right to agitate for a shorter work week, for the policy is fixed in the Kremlin...
...Militant attacks on religion are now regarded as bad taste and poor politics...
...The collective receives 300 rubles per ton from the state for the quota requirement, 550 rubles per ton for all sales above the quota...
...In addition, there are representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and resident leaders of the local Communist Party unit wandering around on assignments of surveillance...
...They range in size from about 2,000 to 75,000 acres, and represent the forced consolidation of a number of farms, villages, and towns...
...All land in the Soviet Union is owned by the state...
...In addition, of course, World War II saw the destruction of countless dwelling units and magnified the pre-war shortage...
...The boundaries of criticism are not firm or fixed, nor are the penalties for those who cross the invisible line...
...They may feel themselves in opposition, but with education and experience they come to accept the essential goodness of the general plan...
...But I saw a fair number of youngish Russians when I went to midnight mass at Moscow's Cathedral of the Epiphany, the Patriarch's own church, on Easter eve of the Russian Orthodox Church...
...The Communist Party and the Soviet government will have to do a great deal to raise the living standard of the population...
...It created more excitement and approving comments on the streets than any other reform announced by the government...
...I pointed to the portrait of Stalin hanging in his office and asked if the children were confused by the presence of idealized paintings of the man who is being officially exposed as a murdering maniac "Not at all," he replied...
...Production is bound to increase, I was told, but it is too early to tell whether it will be enough to make a significant dent in the requirements of an enormously expanding industrial society...
...A brief report of my four-hour inspection of one collective may help explain the pattern of Soviet farm life...
...One story I was told by a well-informed non-Russian illustrates the problem...
...But this is an artificially inflated value...
...The newest in housing—a giant development in Moscow's Lenin Hills— shows improvement of materials, design, and construction and is intended to serve as a model for the nation...
...Unlike Stalin, who cut himself off from the populace, the new Soviet leadership is painfully aware of the urgent need to improve living standards...
...I often don't know who is and who isn't a member of the Party, even when there are animated discussions on political matters...
...During the 1948-1952 wave of anti-Semitism, her rank was removed, then she was deprived of her laboratory, and finally she was sent to serve as a country doctor in a faraway district in southeastern Russia...
...The solution of the consumer problem, he said, must be "based on the preferential growth of heavy industry, to achieve a steep rise in agricultural production and a' quicker development of the light and food industries...
...The Hunger for Education The hunger for education—and the government's response to that demand—add up to one of the most decisive facts of life in the Soviet Union today...
...This brings its quota of inspectors from the bank...
...The use of farm machinery, however, is quite bad...
...But supplies are still limited and prices quite high...
...The November, 1954, decree boldly says as much...
...All Party units are warned against attacking those who follow the clergy...
...But Khrushchev made no promise of pie in the sky today or tomorrow...
...Not at all," he replied...
...when I was served...
...Its pupils begin at age seven and graduate at age 17...
...As is the case of all Soviet industry, except a sector worked by cooperatives, the Sverdlov plant is owned by the government...
...Another was the general mood of anti-cosmopolitanism and anti-foreignism dictated by Stalin...
...Thus, on one farm I visited that specializes in growing potatoes, the government quota was only 50 tons of potatoes per hectare (2l/z acres) but production ran to 4,000 tons...
...Housing conditions struck me as being superior to those of families with comparable incomes in the cities...
...There is lively "socialist competition" among the brigades to exceed production norms, and the most productive receive bonuses and special rewards...
...The current 1956 budget reflects the essential accuracy of the projections of the Sixth Five-Year Plan...
...One can only spend...
...Mortar freezes stiff during winter construction, and runs all over the place when the spring thaws arrive...
...Income and inheritance taxes are surprisingly low in this socialist state...
...Alexander Alexandrov, rector of the University of Leningrad, told me, for example, that nearly twice as many applicants are turned away as are accepted...
...With all my activities in the theater and the work I do as a member of the editorial board of Foreign Literature, I feel I can be more useful to the Soviet Union and to the Party if I do not take on the duties and responsibilities of Party membership...
...There was no plumbing on any of the collectives I visited...
...Crude attacks against religion must be avoided...
...Here this is impossible...
...Medical services are completely socialized...
...It employs 2,000 workers, many of them skilled craftsmen, most of them men...
...There is a variety of educational institutions in the Soviet Union in addition to the more obvious primary, secondary, and university institutions...
...We have many publications now...
...I had no way of knowing, of course, how many among that great mass of humanity outside were moved by religious devotion, how many merely curious...
...clothes are scarce and expensive...
...All purchases require cash on the barrel-head...
...they are brought out by groups representing every segment of our society...
...I had said I wanted to see "the operations of the hospital...
...I acquired the impression, from talks with a number of intellectuals among the elite, that they have become a conservative force in Soviet society...
...The official refused to have his picture taken and refused to permit the American to take a picture of the synagogue...
...The widow thanked Ministry officials but said that far more important to her than the apartment and the pension was her desire to have the 2500 members of the hospital staff know that her late husband was not an enemy of the state...
...I did learn that one has to be at or pretty near the top of his field to qualify— that countless writers, artists, poets, actors, and editors whose talents range from fair to good not only do not belong to the aristocracy, but in many cases earn less than highly skilled factory workers who command salaries up to $300 a month...
...The full details of the program, ratified in July by the Supreme Soviet, have not yet been published...
...These factories in the field are often close to large cities, and many of their workers live in town...
...They know he did some fine things for our country, too...
...But there is no right to strike, for this is unlawful...
...The competition for university admission is tremendous, partly because of the prestige and financial rewards university education carries with it, especially in the sciences, and partly because acceptance for boys means cancellation of their obligation to serve in the armed forces...
...I could find no one in authority to confirm or reject this figure...
...to put an emphasis on atheist and internationalist education...
...The 89,000 collective farms (kolkhozy) account for about 85 per cent of the nation's productive agricultural land...
...I was sitting in the last seat of the plane...
...Ehrenburg, a shaggy, tweedy man, a bit stooped, closed his tired, watery eyes and pointed out that these were the accumulation of a lifetime of writing, some of which had turned out to be best sellers...
...The cost for adults is 50 kopecks, or roughly five cents, anywhere in the city-wide system...
...Our stewardess served four passengers, waited until they had finished, and then served the next four...
...we have had nothing since...
...As for myself," he said, "I have this apartment, a home in the country I built myself, with much difficulty, a car, and a cook to get our meals...
...Another problem is the weather—the long, severe winters...
...Allen Dulles, chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, drawing on a variety of intelligence, reports compiled by his far-flung agency, warned a while ago that "unless we quickly take new measures to increase our own facilities for scientific education, Soviet scientific manpower in key areas may well outnumber ours in the next decade...
...I was astounded to learn that it had been built less than three years before...
...At the 20th Congress, Khrushchev announced that there would be a gradual reduction, without pay cuts, until a 40 to 41-hour week is reached by 1957...
...Thus, I was told of the case of a distinguished head of a major department of one of Moscow's greatest hospitals...
...The factory, of course, has a union —a unit of the Union of Machine Builders—but collective bargaining in the Western sense does not exist...
...Deserving children of the poor will be admitted with full state support...
...to propagate Bolshevik vigilance...
...the scarcity of hand tools and appliances is equally astonishing...
...It is possible for a family to own its own home but not the land on which it rests...
...The status of Judaism as an organized religion is not strikingly different from that of the others, but Judaism as a culture pays the penalty of a minority group struggling to maintain its identity in a monolithic society...
...The future development of science in the Soviet Union would seem to have an unlimited horizon...
...The "collective leadership" of the Soviet Union seems bent on improving the level of consumption, but it will not be stampeded by consumer grumbling from its principal devotion to long-run capital development...
...I formed most of my impressions of university life in the Soviet Union at the University of Leningrad, which was established in 1819 but whose central building was erected in 1723 by Peter the Great to serve one of the government ministries...
...I spent a fair amount of my time in the Soviet Union exploring living conditions and the problems of consumer goods and community life...
...The average all-Soviet wage, remember, is less than $20 a week...
...I went to classes where nine-year-olds were struggling painfully with their first words of English, and then I went to classes where 17-year-olds were babbling competently if self-consciously with the English they had been soaking up for eight years...
...All have their own schools, recreational centers, nurseries, libraries, clinics, and, in some cases, churches...
...Soviet parts were added to the American machine, and, said the manager, "it is one of the most productive we have...
...A pair of women's hose was selling for $2, and a simple cotton dress for $30...
...My overall impression was that in terms of diet, clothing, housing, conveniences, and creature comforts, Soviet society lags at least a generation behind American standards but is not nearly that far behind living conditions in Western Europe...
...Foreign observers told me that favoritism and pull often play a part in determining the duration of vacation and who gets to go to the country...
...The student, I was told, lost his scholarship and was dropped from the university...
...Anti-Semitism: Then & Now Few groups in Soviet society have suffered so cruel a fate as the Jews...
...Many Russian children— how many I could not determine— can expect no more than seven years of schooling in the foreseeable future...
...the clinics available for medical care, and the rest homes where workers may spend their vacations...
...Many farms now have electricity— some only enough for minimum lighting, others enough to permit every family to have a radio...
...An American Jew who called on an official of one synagogue found the man anxious for him to leave...
...Khrushchev proves that he was not a party to the Stalin game and explains how it was possible for him to sit through the terror without resisting, I am not interested in being a member of the Young Communist League...
...The prices of perishables—like fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese, and meat—start at the highest possible level when the market opens at 7 a.m., and decline as the day wears on, reaching their low at 6 p.m...
...he feels he has been slighted in the Soviet economy, that too much emphasis has been placed by the government on industrialization and the needs of the city workers...
...his opportunities to obtain consumer goods like clothes, furniture, and appliances are greatly limited...
...Many important questions connected with the rise of the workers' material well-being have not yet been solved...
...There is no private investment...
...Send us more Americans so you can see what we are like and how much we want peace...
...The vast majority of urban dwellers live in apartments...
...But my informant went on to point out that it would have been inconceivable for a student to speak up as this one did a year or two ago...
...Some of the staples like potatoes, cabbage, beets, and bread are quite cheap—certainly well within the range of the most poorly paid factory worker...
...There is no need to encourage frivolous and irresponsible individuals...
...They are Kremlin concessions to the universal urge of the peasants to own their own land...
...The symbol of the drive to catch up on housing is the building crane one sees everywhere in the cities...
...This is true despite the substantial doses of ideological indoctrination that are fed to children as soon as they are able to digest the elementary principles of Marxism-Leninism...
...The rent is nominal, often as little as $3 per month, but the quarters are small, spare, dingy, and lacking in many conveniences...
...The rector's salary is $800 per month...
...State farms are scheduled to play a greater role in Soviet agricultural society as the government emphasizes this form in its vast program of new farm development in the East...
...Its income is substantial, for it takes from 10 to 15 per cent of a harvest...
...After all, the party has 7,000,000 members...
...Perhaps I can best interpret the pattern of industrial society in present-day Russia by reporting on my three-hour visit to one— the Sverdlov Factory in Leningrad, named for the first chairman of the Soviet Union...
...Soviet authorities make a great fuss over them, assign them the best dormitory rooms, and see to it that they are kept well-fed and entertained...
...Most of the foreign students have never seen anything like the University of Moscow or, for that matter, the less wealthy Soviet universities...
...The payment in crops goes into the state's food-distributing agencies for retail sale in state stores...
...Several months ago the Communist Party Central Committee and the Council of Ministers, the two principal policy-making agencies, announced the early inauguration of reforms granting the collectives more autonomy in planning production and establishing quotas and pay scales, and a greater measure of freedom from interference and surveillance by government officials...
...The figures on pig-iron production are impressive...
...I have two assistant directors...
...He finished his studies in 1936, became a foreman, then head foreman, section chief, and reached his present post as manager in 1946...
...I visited a fair number of Russian homes and spent many hours in stores and markets...
...the payment in cash goes into the state treasury...
...When I inquired what had happened to the Communist slogan, "to each according to his needs," I was told that this ideal would be reached when Soviet society completed its evolution to "true Communism," that in this "transitional phase" of development, the standard must be "to each according to his deeds...
...He was especially concerned, in view of the scandalous shortage of consumer goods in the Soviet Union, that Russian Jews corresponding with relatives abroad might get some "incorrect ideas" and pass on "incorrect information...
...When the American suggested he wanted to talk to other members of the congregation, he said: "There's no point to it...
...I visited the factory clubhouse—its Hall of Culture—built by the management and maintained by the union...
...He paced the floor, his bushy hair falling over his eyes as he struggled to phrase and rephrase his answers to my questions—so concerned was he that I should understand what he was saying...
...The Hall of Culture also provides a platform for official indoctrination, in keeping with Lenin's stricture that the unions must be "schools of Communism...
...It was his study—a book-lined, comfortably untidy room...
...The prices of city-produced goods like clothing, furniture, and appliances are kept so high that the farm family has little hope of acquiring them...
...I soon discovered the reason...
...The market may be a little roadside stand, but in the large cities it is more often a shopping center...
...Their combination of advanced algebra and science gives them something we cannot match at the present time...
...It is they who create and mould public opinion in your country, no matter how many dissenters are writing their little papers for audiences so small they could have no effect on policy-making...
...Those who work on the farm are members of the cooperative...
...Perhaps the nearest Soviet equivalent to a bona fide union function on the Western model is the grievance machinery...
...In many a worker's flat the husband and wife sleep on one cot while the children share the other cot in the same room...
...Stalin's obsession became so great that he planned, according to a well-founded report, to remove all Jews to Far Eastern areas of the Soviet Union bordering on China...
...by 1960 the figure is expected to climb over 70 per cent...
...But while fear remains, nothing is possible...
...The collective as a whole has three sources of income: the money it receives from the state in meeting quota requirements, the vastly better price it receives from the state for production above the quota, and its sales on the free market...
...As we wandered through the plant I saw American firm names in almost every section—Giddings Sc Lewis Tool Co., Fond du Lac, Wis...
...I could find no official figures on the volume of sales in these free markets, but 1 was told that nearly half of the fresh fruits and vegetables and about 35 per cent of the fresh meat, poultry, and dairy products available in the major cities are sold at these bazaars...
...to strengthen Bolshevik will power and character, as well as courage, capacity for resisting adversity in conquering obstacles...
...These were mid-morning prices...
...There is no installment buying...
...Many of them were bursting with energy and ambition to test the new frontiers of creative thinking...
...Before leaving Moscow he wrote to his aunt's last three known addresses asking if he could see her when he reached her city...
Vol. 20 • September 1956 • No. 9
