THE QUIET RUSSIANS
Pollak, Harry H.
The Quiet Russians by Harry H. Pollak F3r years now, Americans have been assailed by the bombast and strident diplomacy of Soviet officials from Stalin to Khrushchev—and on down. Some of us,...
...At Durgapur there is an excellent "British" mill...
...To the Indian people a steel mill is the arch-symbol of their efforts to lift themselves up into the major industrial nation category...
...What about the language barrier...
...with rose-colored glasses...
...Conversely, at Jamshedpur, we were impressed with housing, health, and safety emphasis, and many other advantages, including what appeared to be a higher wage pattern...
...They play their roles as technicians to the hilt...
...In the key race that India is running—obviously against Communist China—steel is a vital index to development...
...But, one may answer, there are other gigantic steel mills springing up...
...Many an Indian may owe his life to the grain and milk that came from America, but the concrete visualization of the future—even when dimly seen by the lowliest peasant—may be in the hot glare of coke ovens and the flow of molten steel...
...And as long as the foreign technicians are at Bhilai and it is considered a "Russian" steel mill, there is little likelihood that there will be any serious Communist efforts to organize the workers...
...I came away from Bhilai and its sprawling township, Bhilainagar, with a strong feeling that our country needs not only to reevaluate some of its aid projects abroad, but that it must pay extremely close attention to the nature of its personnel and their relationships with the peoples of other societies...
...At present there were 54,000 employes, but 32,000 of them were on construction...
...There was better access at the many points of the coal chutes...
...The giant earthmovers contrasted sharply with the half-naked male and female laborers working on construction...
...As we moved on to the electrical motor shop and construction area for the open hearth furnace, Misra tendered an invitation to a special ceremony that evening when the first "loco" was to go into the open hearth...
...Many of these charges are exaggerated, but during one of my two visits to India during the past year, a tour of Bhilai brought out something new about the nature of Russian technical assistance which bears even closer examination...
...From all of our conversations with Indians and from our observations at the plant level, we got the impression that this new kind of Russian "Point Four" is making an enormous impact...
...We also met one of the chief Indian technicians, Suku Sen, who honored the occasion with a big red flower in his buttonhole...
...What about the Russians...
...While the Russians have many interpreters, the public relations man said they were teaching Russian to a thousand Indians at the project...
...The next day we had a long discussion with another leading official who compared his experiences with American technicians in India and with the Russians...
...Some of us, meeting during the annual conferences of the International Labor Organization, have been faced with stiff-necked, unrelenting, confident Soviet crusaders who would brook no differences of opinion and were always, always right...
...We were eager to know how Misra felt about the differences in the Soviet and American approaches, since he had been at Tata's...
...This article originally appeared in The American Federationist...
...New homes and schools were going up all around us...
...Bulldozers were clearing ground and cutting through roads...
...The atmosphere was a combination of Eastern boom town and the pioneering of the old West...
...One of the great problems, he said, was that Americans, with a much higher standard of living, tend to raise prices in the marketplace...
...where...
...As he took us through the operation, he indicated where Russians had been able to solve simple but vital problems—such as self-sustaining repair shops where repairs were made in the area of breakdown—in comparison to what he considered the American approach at his former "alma mater...
...When the first stage of Bhilai is completed, four and a half million tons will be available in India from all the mills in the country...
...Even though it was long after sundown, a great number of construction workers were on the job outside...
...was not involved in any significant aid until after the highly publicized Khrushchev-Bulganin triumphal tour of India in 1955...
...The public relations man responded: "They are not dictators here...
...He said that the ceremony sparked the workers with inspiration...
...From several sources we learned that the Russians tend to refrain from open political discussions...
...others carry through blindly...
...Ceremony and ritual, we were to learn later, played an important part in the morale-building activities at Bhilai...
...The reason is not difficult to come by...
...Socially and culturally, we are closer to the Americans," the official said...
...There was a blaze of activity everyHARRY H. POLLAK, international representative for the AFL-CIO, recently completed two trips to India...
...A doctor at a Bhilai field dispensary told us there are so many sick and injured workers that the health facilities are overburdened and many have to be turned away without care...
...An excellent restaurant, catered by one of India's leading restaurateurs, Gay-lord's, provided fine food...
...Here we met the Russian chief engineer, N. K. Goldin, and other Soviet representatives who were beaming broadly...
...At the Tata plant the operation is in the "private sector," and as one Bhilai official explained, Russia has "extended hands of friendship to the public sector...
...Most of the Russians had less sumptuous but adequate quarters and their own cafeterias with their own cooks where they could obtain borscht and other familiar staples...
...Misra, we learned, was a former Tata chief engineer who, like several others now in key positions at Bhilai, had been persuaded to come into the new program...
...Ironically, the Communists at the Tata works not long ago engaged in a violent and bloody strike, whose consequences are still being felt...
...Beneath the level of top and secondary management and selected "permanent" personnel is a vast mass of temporary workers—primarily construction workers—who live under primitive conditions, who have no strong union to protect them, and who work under hazardous conditions...
...Moreover, all contained air conditioning, refrigeration, carpeted floors...
...They do not get into trouble, as nationals from other countries have on occasion...
...There is a tendency to ignore the facts that the Russians have had their share of difficulties and that the Bhilai plant is behind schedule...
...We returned to our apartment nearby and met a representative of the Bhilai public relations staff—a man with a "soft sell" quite unlike our Madison Avenue types...
...One orders...
...The Chinese Communist slogan of "a blast furnace in every backyard" is a measure of that country's interest...
...At Rour-kela there is a "German" plant under construction...
...Where once there was only hot, red wasteland, there is now springing up a new "Pittsburgh," and, manifestly, the Russians who financed the construction of the project with a credit of nearly $133 million, at about a two and one-half per cent interest rate, are making diplomatic "hay...
...There is little contact with the Russians on a social basis...
...This is true despite the far greater American contributions to all forms of technical assistance in India, and despite the fact that the U.S.S.R...
...They used bigger brakes...
...As he showed us the coke oven, battery number one, in operation, and white hot pig iron flowing out of the blast furnace, he explained that Bhilai in its first stage expected to produce one million tons of steel when it reached capacity...
...We later learned that there are plans to double the capacity of the mill, which would mean that the Russian technical advisers would probably remain for some time...
...They are not our bosses...
...His suggestion to the democratic friends of India is simple: "Let the words be few but action abundant to demonstrate the undoubted excellence of their technique and humanity...
...The Russians, Misra said, had produced better screening for the coke ovens...
...The Russians, whose standards are closer to the Indian, tend to "blend" into the local economy...
...In India we saw nearly a thousand Russian technicians helping the Indian government erect a gigantic steel mill at Bhilai in the District of Durg in Madhya Pradesh...
...That evening we went to the area where the locomotive was to make its initial run into the plant...
...There seems to be a "will to believe" in Russian technical superiority that is alarming and annoying to the casual American visitor...
...He told us that when construction was completed it would take 7,000 to 8,000 employes to operate Bhilai...
...We asked him how he got on with the Russians, and he remarked: "Excellently...
...There was an air of genuine excitement, and we saw broad grins on the faces of the Russian and Indian officials...
...They look at the U.S.S.R...
...As my friend Ram Singh said: "More than a change in the pattern of aid, what is indicated is a change in outlook, approach and perspective...
...They stay to themselves, and on rare occasions when Indians come to their homes, conversations are limited...
...Their behavior is impeccably correct...
...A total of 950 Russians were at Bhilai and were steadily being replaced...
...While in practice confusion is sometimes created, most of the time it works all right...
...At the British project the complaint runs that the British are aloof and treat their Indian counterparts with cool reserve...
...I noted that the Russian senior officials were housed in apartments similar to ours, in extremely comfortable modern buildings, with a large dining room, living room, bedrooms, and well-tended gardens outside...
...But each of these operations suffers from a special "defect" in the view of at least some key Indians...
...He struck me as being an eager, dynamic, and straightforward individual...
...there is one man who thinks or orders and others execute...
...L. N. Misra, superintendent of mechanical maintenance, personally escorted us around the giant works...
...He thought for a while and then said: "In the United States everyone is allowed to think, while in the U.S.S.R...
...Suddenly a cry went up and the whistle blew as locomotive T3B13 slowly rolled into the mill...
...Do what America will, there will always be some people in this country, or in any democratic country for that matter, who would make it their business to decry America and lionize Russia...
...The technique, he added, was equal "Russian and Indian responsibility...
...In the pioneering "haze" which envelops Bhilai—by comparison with the long-established Tata Iron and Steel Company works at Jamshed-pur—there is a dark side...
...They advise and guide...
...They work side by side with us in a partnership arrangement, and when an Indian learns the job we tell the Russians to get out...
...Being a genial and basically friendly man, he added, somewhat as a consolation: "Outside of Russia, nobody can beat America in steel...
...The tensions with Communist China over the border incursions do not seem to affect the attitude of the Indians toward Russia...
...It was gaily decorated, and a number of workers were on the top and hanging over the sides...
...Inside, there were a number of Russian officials with their wives greeting workers, together with the Indian dignitaries and their families...
...We will have ingot steel in eight to ten days," he told us...
...It therefore came as a surprise to see another kind of Soviet representative—the men the Kremlin is sending to the underdeveloped areas of Asia and Africa...
...The brilliant editor of Thought, Ram Singh, has described the special advantages the Soviet Union has in such "peaceful competition": "Russia has the singular advantage of its permanent public relations office in the agency of the Communist Party of India...
...At the German plant relations between local residents and some of the German engineers have been poor...
...At Jamshedpur, which I also visited, there is the pioneer Tata plant that is being expanded with American technical assistance from Kaiser...
...There appear to be no serious efforts to involve themselves with local Communist Party activities...
Vol. 24 • September 2006 • No. 7
