SOME ASPECTS OF LIFE IN
SOVIET RUSSIA.
by Christopher Fuller.
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Scarcely anyone who has visited Russia of late years, even though only for
the space of a few days and under the watchful guidance of the Soviet
“In-tourist” Agency, has hesitated to publish an account of his
experiences. In defence, however, of my own similar immodesty, I would
plead that the journey which I recently made in Russia was in certain
respects exceptional. I did not confine myself to the well-known districts
around Moscow and Leningrad and the industrial centres of the Ukraine. I
travelled through Georgia and remote parts of the Caucasus, and made an
extensive tour of Asiatic Russia from the Urals to the very heart of
Siberia, including certain regions along the north-west frontier of China.
In fact, I think I may claim that, travelling as I did by train, by
aeroplane, by motorcar, on horseback and on foot, my journey, in the
course of which I covered some 17,000 miles, constitutes, with the
exception of the very Far East, a very comprehensive tour of all the more
important parts of the entire Soviet Union. My travelling companion, an
Englishman, and I both spoke Russian and were unaccompanied throughout by
any guide. Thus it was that, entirely unhampered by any form of
supervision, we were able to converse with members of all classes of the
population and gain for ourselves genuine first-hand impressions. In view
of these very exceptional circumstances I do not hesitate to draw a
picture of the conditions in Russia to-day, differing in some respects
from that presented by previous travellers.
For little over a decade one-sixth of the earth’s surface has lain under
the undisputed sway of Communist Government. Never in his most extravagant
dreams could Karl Marx have hoped for more propitious circumstances in
which to put his theories to the test. It has become a platitude to say
that Communism is a system not for men but for angels. Year by year the
difficulties which face those who are endeavouring to put into practice
the theories of “Das Kapital” increase with alarming rapidity. The
disillusioned leaders, summoned back from the clouds, are being
irresistibly compelled to face realities and to make a hurried retreat
from one position to another on the long road back from Communism to
autocracy. History may not always repeat itself, but it does at all events
move in cycles of varied length. In little over 10 years Russia has nearly
completed another such cycle. Should this development continue there will
soon be little to differentiate the Government of the Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics from that of the Czar of All the Russias. Before the
Revolution Russia was administered by an autocrat surrounded by a small
number of advisers to whom he looked for counsel and support. To-day the
position is not very dissimilar. The Soviet Union is dominated by the
autocratic will of one man, Joseph Stalin, who, in turn, as its Secretary
General, is dependent upon the goodwill of the Communist party for the
continuance of his power. It is true that the Czar was invested with the
majesty of an Emperor, coupled with the infallibility of a Pope, whilst
Comrade Stalin is but the servant of a sovereign people; the difference,
however, is not one of fact but of phraseology. The Soviet Government find
it no longer possible to conceal the despotic nature of the system which
they have evolved. In fact, they now make but little attempt to do so.
After having proclaimed the inauguration of a system more advanced, more
democratic than anything the world bad yet seen, they have, of their own
admission, returned to the régime of the enlightened despots of the 18th
century.
The most superficial observer who has travelled extensively through
Russia cannot fail to realise that this reactionary process has already
gone further still. A system which has long ago renounced its claim to be
a government “of the people, by the people” has even ceased to be a
government “for the people”. It has developed, in fact, into a government
“at the expense of the people”. Russia is ruled by the Communist party, or
rather by a small clique within it, who impose their will upon the party,
which in itself only forms an infinitesimal fraction of the whole Russian
people. In every aspect of daily life this ruling caste make their
dominating position felt by the rest of the population. Members of the
Communist party make a display of their unselfish devotion to ideals by
declining to accept more than a maximum salary of 300 roubles a month.
Although this is already a very high wage viewed in the light of present
day conditions in Russia, the sacrifice becomes laughable when we
discover the privileges attaching to membership of the party, the most
important of which include cheap food, cheap housing, rapid promotion, and
positions enjoying innumerable perquisites.
The sugar has worn off the pill. The empty phrases which for a time
concealed the bitter facts are now accepted at their true
value. Proclamations of the Rights of Man, which served to mask the
enslavement of a people, have entirely ceased to impress. The weapon of
propaganda has been used in Russia with the utmost assiduity and skill.
However, the power of publicity, like all things, can be abused, and this
is the case in Russia. The Soviet leaders have, after long years, at last
killed the goose which laid the golden eggs. The double menace
of foreign imperialism and anti-revolutionary sabotage was at first
believed but now that it is served up with each man’s daily cup of tea it
has lost its meaning. Russian newspapers scarcely contain a single article
which could conceivably be of any interest to the ordinary man. Items of
daily news, such as we understand them, are rarely printed unless they
can be made to serve some propagandist purpose. To-day the vast majority
of the Russian people rarely trouble to look at a newspaper. Those who do
so must content themselves with a few pages of indifferent print,
containing little else than falsified figures regarding the latest
“achievement” of the Five Year Plan, or photographs of some selected
members of an exemplary “shock brigade”.
The weapon of propaganda has been launched against every
enemy, real or imaginary, with all the furtive craft and ingenuity which
the Slav and Semitic mind could muster; but it is undoubtedly against
Religion that the most relentless attack has been directed. Mankind
throughout the ages has felt an instinctive desire for some form of
spiritual expression. The more primitive a people, the greater their need
for religious belief. Although, in what used to be known as Holy Russia,
no effort has been spared to extirpate the name of God, the conception of
the Supreme Being has nevertheless remained unassailable. An opulent, and
influential priesthood, formerly the butt of many a justifiable criticism,
has been mercilessly butchered, imprisoned, or driven into exile. Shrines
have been either disfigured or demolished. God’s Houses, converted in many
cases into anti-religious museums, have been transformed into the
strongholds of His bitterest foes. For this very reason the Church to-day,
shorn of her rites and despoiled of her glories, hanging as the Son of Man
amongst thieves upon Calvary, makes an elementary appeal to a people1
persecuted and oppressed like herself. The older generation, brought
up in the rigid tenets of the Orthodox creed, cannot easily forget their
Faith. Those who for a while forsook Religion are now instinctively
returning to it, finding in their ancient Faith the sole consolation in
their present misery and despair. The younger people, who were brought up
without religious instruction are few and consist only of those born
between 1907 and 1912. Those born before 1907 can remember their early
teaching, whilst those born after 1912 are not yet grown up. However, in
numerous conversations with young men and women in the early twenties, I
observed no marked godlessness. Though none of them could remember
conditions before the Revolution, all were agreed that the present state
of affairs, from every point of view, was intolerable and, as is usual in
every country, they attributed their misery to the Government. The
extirpation of religion was in their view, in common with the prohibition
of private trading, the interference in home life and the Five Year Plan,
responsible for the present disastrous state of affairs. As a peasant boy
of 22 in a Siberian village said to me: “Since we turned out God things
have gone badly with us.”
However, it is not surprising that the population of Russia, however
inherently religious they may be, accept the onslaughts upon their faith
with considerable apathy. The problem of daily life, or rather the
elementary problem of continuing to exist at all, is more than enough to
occupy each man’ s whole attention. Of all the innovations introduced by
the Government since the Revolution, the Five Year Plan has had the most
distressing effect upon general conditions. The shortage of food and of
other essentials of life, always serious in Russia, has become in the last
years acute. Moreover, the true cause of this state of affairs has become
common knowledge amongst the sufferers. Even the most ignorant peasant is
familiar with the fact, that machinery for the hated Five Year Plan is
being bought abroad with the bread and butter of which he, his wife and
his children stand in such sore need. In all the villages I visited in the
heart of the grain-growing country of Siberia, I had the greatest
difficulty in procuring even a few pieces of bread. As for eggs and butter
I saw neither throughout my whole tour in Russia, except in Moscow and
Leningrad where I stated in hotels which catered exclusively for
foreigners is practically unobtainable. Strangely tasting sweets, the
composition of which I should not care to analyse, can sometimes be
procured and are used for sweetening tea. Owing to deficient organisation,
such meat as there is usually reaches the consumer in a condition which
makes it more than doubtful as to whether he would be wise in eating it.
An extreme case of the scarcity of food is worth quoting. The only edible
substance in an entire village in the Caucasus where I spent a night was a
limited number of evil-tasting cucumbers bottled in vinegar. The
villagers, whose kindly hospitality was touching, were profuse in their
apologies for being unable to offer to the traveller anything more
appetising. Fortunately perhaps, the wretched inhabitants do not appear
to realise to the full extent their lamentable situation. Through years of
gradually increasing misery they have grown in some degree inured to the
pangs of hunger. I, for my part, suffered throughout my entire journey
either from hunger or, what was worse, acute indigestion, the result of
unwholesome food. Had it not been for a supply of milk tablets and
concentrated meat cubes, which I had brought with me from England, I do
not believe I should have been able to bring myself to endure the
privations of the journey. In my frequent conversations with Russians of
every kind, with the exception of Communists and officials, who lead a
comparatively sheltered existence, I was much struck by one circumstance
in particular. Unlike people with whom one converses in other countries,
they were only interested in one subject. I was never asked whether in
England we suffered from a housing problem, whether there was unemployment
or whether wages were good. One question alone was repeatedly and eagerly
put to me and that usually in much the same form: “Are the people hungry
in your country also?”
Not
unnaturally the peasants, whose occupation it is to produce the
food, are those who most resent this artificial shortage. The country
folk, who form the vast majority of the Russian population, are easy-going
lovable people. The peasant with his slow wits and conservative ideas is
startled and shocked by the drastic innovations of the Government. Love of
the land and respect for the time honoured customs of village agriculture
are deeply ingrained in his very soul. Consequently, the drastic efforts
of the authorities in Moscow, by means of collectivised farms, to
proletarianise the agricultural worker have made of him an open foe of the
system. In spite of the ruthless penalties attaching to acts of opposition
or obstruction, the peasants have clung with animal stubbornness to the
old methods which they hold. sacred. A farmer in whose cottage I lived for
a few days in a typical Siberian village not far from the former
Ekaterinenberg told me that until a few months previously he had
persistently held out against the most oppressive efforts on the part of
the authorities to induce him to abandon individualist methods. At first
he had been taxed double, then three and four times as much as those who
had submitted to pressure. Acre by acre, under one pretext or another, he
had been compelled to give up his land until he had now less than a
quarter of what he originally possessed. He had been so excessively taxed
for the few horses, cows, chickens and the small potato patch he
owned that he could hardly squeeze
out of his earnings enough to keep him and his old wife in the essentials of
life. Even the furniture in his house, under some groundless pretext, had
been confiscated and he had been driven to borrow from his neighbours a bed
and a few of the most necessary items of furniture. Finally, on the grounds
of his failure to pay his taxes promptly, his house itself had been
threatened. In addition to this, it was made abundantly clear to him that if
he resisted further he and his family would, along with so many of their
kind, be despatched to some distant concentration camp, to pass the rest of
their days hewing timber or baking bricks. Nevertheless, remarkable as it
may seem in spite of the terrorist methods adopted by the Soviet officials,
some 45% of the inhabitants of this particular village still stubbornly
refused to enter the collectivised farm.
In consequence of the implacable hostility of the peasantry, the new system
of village farming is not given a fair trial. In fact, in another village
which I visited the collectivised farm, in spite of the advantages of
expert advice and labour-saving machinery, was producing less than
two-thirds of the previous yield of the same acreage. All incentive to work
has disappeared. Each man admittedly receives his share of the produce of
the lands calculated according to the number of hour’s work he has
performed. However, before the harvest is shared out a certain percentage is
deducted by the State as payment for agricultural machinery and other
assistance provided. This in itself seems reasonable, but in point of fact
the payment thus levied is so far out of proportion to the services rendered
that only the merest gleanings remain to be divided amongst the peasants.
The latter, knowing on the one hand, that they cannot well be
allowed actually to die of starvation, and on the other, that however hard
they work they will not be permitted to retain more than the barest
necessities of life, are not unnaturally disinclined to overexert themselves
in an effort to produce a record harvest.
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Colonel Fuller and Duncan Sandys visited the Soviet
Union in 1931.
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