Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
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The Times, October 16th 1931
THE REAL RUSSIA
- - -
YOUTH AND THE FUTURE
III:- A BLESSED WORD
- - -
From a Correspondent (Gareth Jones)
Among some young peasants there is an enthusiasm for socialisation in which a
love of machines plays a great part. This is a favourable sign for the
future of socialistic agriculture in the Soviet Union. It is being
developed by the spreading of education on Communist lines throughout the
country. The fight against illiteracy is being taken with admirable
energy. Campaigns to encourage the peasants to study are carried on by the
Communist Pioneers and the Komsomoltsi (young Communists), and pamphlets and
books are spread by the million. The electrification of the villages will
impress youth. The clubs are rallying points for young people of the
villages and by radio and visitors from the towns, by films and lectures, their
minds are being moulded along Communist lines. A battle royal is being
waged for the mind and heart of the young peasant. Will he cling to the
“Land and Liberty” ideal of his parents and grandparents or will he firm
himself into a socialistic system of agriculture. Will the peasant be
happy as a cog in a great agricultural wheel, or will he always yearn for his
little patch, his own cow, and freedom to buy and sell as he wishes? The
next few decades will show.
The collectivisation of agriculture, which, at the sacrifice of happiness of the
peasant gives the government control over Russia’s grain, and the businesslike
programme outlined by Stalin in June, are two factors which point to a coming
improvement in the industrial situation and to a strengthening of the regime
itself. A third factor is the springing up of this new generation, which
has it’s schooling in the Soviet State and has no recollection of life in
pre-Revolutionary days. It is upon the youth of the country that the
Bolshevist leaders set their highest hopes; and it is upon them that powerful
influences are working which in time will result in the emergence of a new type
of citizen. The main influences are Communist education the worship of the
machine, anti-religious agitation, militarisation and the propaganda for world
revolution.
“PRODUCTION”
Communist education now lays the greatest stress upon the part, which the future
citizen must play in production. Three years ago the “polytechnical”
school was introduced. Under The “polytechnical “system each school
has an agreement with a factory or with a collective farm which the pupils visit
regularly to study methods of production. It is remarkable to note what
importance is attached to the word” production”, a word, which is surrounded
with a halo of respect. At an early age children are introduced to factory
life and learn to handle machines. An enthusiasm for technical things is
engendered, and the knowledge, which children have of machinery, is surprising.
As it was the ideal of the Prussian child to become an officer, so it is now the
ideal to become ideal of a Soviet child to become an engineer. At present
a widespread campaign is being conducted for compulsory education for all and
the cult of the machine will thus be extended to the farthest parts of the
Soviet Union. Processions of children are seen marching with banners
bearing such inscriptions as “Obligatory education is the basis of the
cultural revolution”; “Give us technical power”; “For a seven-year
education”; “Let us fight for the Plan, for the speed, for the carrying out
the Plan in four years.” Technical and political toys are encouraged
among children. In shop windows one can see “A Mass Political Toy
according to the resolution of the 16th Congress of the All-Russian Communist
Party” called “To catch up and surpass the Capitalist Countries, the
carrying out of the Five-Years Plan in Industry.”
Political education is given in schools along the lines of the principle
“History is the record of class struggles.” Such an education is a
narrow basis for the rearing of a new generation, especially when one considers
that music, art and literature are all subordinated to a political aim.
“Art is agitation” such is the teaching that guides the Communist thinkers.
It is inconceivable that there should not be some day a reaction against this
limited conception of all branches of learning as weapons of class warfare.
Anti-propaganda is carried on among youth and is achieving distinct success, for
the children readily believe what is taught in the schools. A religious
Leningrad mother bewailed the fact that her 10-year old daughter had recently
returned from her class and had demanded: “Show me God! You cannot.
There is no God.” Throughout the country posters proclaim: “Religion
is a weapon for oppression”, while cartoons lampoon the priest as the tool of
the Capitalist and a friend of the interventionist. The Communists try to
establish a close connection between drink and religion. Posters
frequently to be observed are “Alcohol is the friend of religion” and “The
man who makes home-brew and the illegal trader in spirits are allies of the
Pope.” This bitter propaganda often produces an effect quite different
from that which it intends. Adherents of religious sects are numerous and
among the Communists themselves there are many who pay lip service to atheism
but who at heart are believers. On priest told of the Communist in his
village who on his deathbed confessed his belief in God. There are many
thousands of Christians enrolled in the Young Communist League. “I am a
believer,” said a schoolteacher, “but I cannot repeat Communist speeches as
eloquently as any Commissar in Moscow. If I do not become a Young
Communist I shall not receive a good education, so I pretend to rejoice in their
long- winded foreign words like ‘industrialisation’, but what my tongue says
my heart does not believe. Never the less, among young people religion is
now losing ground and together with the lessening of the religious basis, stable
family is in the towns also losing its importance.
WAR AND PEACE
An alarming and potent influence upon youth is the extreme militarisation of the
country. A jingoistic spirit is being fostered in the Soviet Union and the
firm belief in the inevitability of war, which is to result in the inevitability
of the war which is to result from the clash of the Capitalistic and Communist
system leads to an intensification of war training. In the theatre one
reads the appeal in large red and white letters: “Be prepared at any moment to
defend your Socialistic fatherland.” In the interval between two acts of
a brilliant performance in an opera house a gas mask demonstration may take
place. Dominating the militarisation of the Soviet Union lies the fear of
foreign intervention, and its guiding principle is the quotation from Lenin:
“No revolution can last unless it can defend itself.” Lenin’s study
of Clausewitz is today bearing fruit in the stress laid upon military science.
Members of the Young Communist League are urged to be leaders in the task of
spreading military knowledge. A powerful instrument for the training of
the civilian population is the Ossoariakhim (Society for Aviation and Chemical
Defence), which now numbers 11,000,000 members. This has numerous branches
in factories and collective farms, where men and women alike receive training in
shooting and in the use of gas masks. In many factories regular military
exercises are obligatory for party members and the young Communists.
Communists share this keenness on preparedness for war in the villages and even
peasants living thousand of miles away from the borders have received anti-gas
practice. In one collective farm the church, which had been closed, was to
be turned in to a house of Culture, a section of which was to be devoted to
military purposes.
In spite of the thorough militarisation of Soviet Russia, there is no feeling of
aggression but a keen desire for peace, based on the necessity of good relations
with the capitalist powers, essential for the industrialisation of the country.
Nothing is less desirable to the Kremlin than a foreign adventure, which would
threaten the fulfilment of the Five-Years Plan. Moreover the Soviet Union
is now concentrating upon her own affairs and eager to realise “Socialism in
one country”, a policy, which Trotsky condemns from afar as “National
Communism” and a betrayal of Marx and Lenin. It is true that the
inevitability of world revolution and the ultimate formation of a World Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics are convictions as unshakeable as ever. But in
spite of the world crisis they are no longer represented as imminent realities.
As a consequence the youth of Russia is encouraged to devote itself to he
economic tasks of national construction and the prestige of the Third
International has suffered a sad decline. No longer the headquarters of
the leaders of the Government, it has become the resort of nonentities and it
has to subordinate its revolutionary ardour to the cold common sense of the
Foreign Office, which prefers not to risk valuable credits and machinery for the
sake of a weak revolution in Germany. Serious disturbances abroad or
revolts, which the Russian Communists would be morally bound to aid would be a
setback to their plans of industrialisation and are depreciated until the time
when the Soviet Union will be stronger.
Such are the outstanding influences to which the younger generation in Russia
are exposed. The power of the Communist Party to mould youth along the
lines they desire is increased by the unity of the party, which has been achieve
after a bitter struggle against right and left opposition. Rarely has
there been less dissension within the ranks as to the policy to be pursued.
Never the less, the movement in Soviet Russia to transform men and women into
the cogs of a great productive wheel and to crush all thought which clashes with
the official philosophy is faced with two insurmountable barriers. These
are the originality of the Russian mind and the human passion for liberty which
is intensified by tyranny and which will increase with the spreading of
education.
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