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