New Chronicle, Friday, October 3rd, 1930
THE SNOBBERY
of
SOVIET RUSSIA
By an Englishman recently returned from Moscow
Special interest is given to this article by the repeated
reports in the last few days of the ‘executio’., of "specialists" on a
charge of sabotaging the food supply of Soviet Russia.
Stalin
There are many kinds of
snobbery. There is the snobbery of the old lady who reveres of a title and
adores blue blood. There is the snobbery of the American who places the
successful money-maker on a pedestal. Bloomsbury has its own special brand,
intellectual snobbery. Finally there is that snobbery, which, is rampant in
Russia today.
THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES.
The town-worker is the
aristocrat the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. He sits in the forefront
of the Opera House. He gets the first place in the queue when meat is short.
He alone is sent to a Rest Home or a sanatorium. It is he who prides himself
most upon his birth. To be able to boast of a working-class origin is far
more important to a Russian than the possession of Norman blood ever was in
England land. This domination by one small class, the town proletariat, was
the feature, which struck me most during a. recent visit to Soviet Russia
where a knowledge of Russian helped me to get beneath the surface.
THE BADGE 0F RANK.
"What is your father? Is he a
worker or a bourgeois?" How many Russians asked me that question! A fat Red
Army officer who promised to visit me in London when the World Revolution
broke out, was exceedingly anxious is find out whether I was tainted with
Capitalism or not. When I disclosed that I was bourgeois he treated me with
pity. He foresaw a grim future for me when the World Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics came into being. Still he said, since I was an
"intellectual" rather than a "capitalist" my fate might not be so bad.
The new aristocracy of Russia
has many privileges. The greatest of these is the trade union card. British
trade unionists will find it hard to realise what a precious possession this
is; so precious, indeed, that a roaring business has been carried on in the
forging and illicit sale of these cards. If you have a worker’s trade union
card, you receive a far larger share of bread or meat or butter (if there is
any!) than the poor bank clerk or post office assistant or waitress or
shop-girl! You have reduced prices in cinemas, theatre, concerts, gardens
and restaurants. You only pay two-pence to visit the Anti-Religious Museum
or the Museum of Revolution, whereas the common herd has to pay four-pence!
FAUX PAS.
There is a complete
reversal of values in the esteem in which one’s occupation is held, and, of
course, in one’s social position. This is reflected in the language of
today. The pre-revolutionary equivalents of "Monsieur" or "Mademoiselle" are
now taboo, and have been replaced by " Comrade" or "Citizen." A small
incident in a chemist’s shop in Moscow will illustrate the change in the
forms of address. A girl who stood next to me, and was probably from the
provinces, made the great faux pas of shouting to the shop-assistant "Baryshnia"
(Mademoiselle) instead of saying Comrade " or " Citizen." I shall never
forget the shocked faces of the customers who heard her, nor her blushes
when she realised that she bad given away her bourgeois origin. An East End
costermonger’s wife would not be more embarrassed in a Bond-street
jeweller’s shop than was this middle class or may be noble girl in the
Communist co-operative chemist’s store.
BLUE BLOOD COUNTS.
One evening I went to a Moscow
theatre, and was struck by the snobbishness, which the play revealed. The
impression, which the performance left on me was that in Russia far more
stress is laid on what your father was than on what you are yourself. The
heroine of the drama was an energetic Communist girl, who inspired all her
companions in the factory with enthusiasm for the Five Years Plan. When
things were going badly and output was low, it was she who rallied the
workers and saved the situation. Then came a bombshell. A drunken man
disclosed the disgraceful fact that her father had been nothing else than a
Tsarist policeman! Sensation. "Throw her out of the Party," was the cry. And
out she had to go.
Often Soviet snobbery
degenerates into real cruelty. I was chatting with a Russian caretaker and
his wife and watching some dirty little children at play. "Look at those
children,’ said the woman. "They have been born to misfortune, because the
fathers are not workers. They will never get on in life. When they grow up
they will not be able to go to a university, and now they cannot have food
until the workers’ children have had their fill, poor, unhappy ones!"
Of all kinds of snobbishness
the Communist is the worst, for it is not a superficial airing of class
superiority, as in England, that wrecks the lives of many Russians, whose
only sin is to have been born of other than working-class parents,
The Five Years Plan is Stalin’s effort to equip and
organise Russia industrially, and involves vast purchases of machinery from
abroad.
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