Russia from Within and Without Diary of a Communist Undergraduate.
By N. Ognyov.
Translated by Alexander Werth. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.)
The New Russia. By Dorothy Thompson. (Cape. 12s. 6d.) IT is nearly three weeks since Father died, and I am still unable to see my way clearly. The point is, that I have left one basis—the school—and haven't yet reached the new basis of the University. The collective body which supported me psychologically at school has. ceased to exist. And sometimes, especially at night, I regret terribly that past period of my life. At the University, of course, there is a much larger and much more powerful corporate body than at school, only I haven't yet found my place in it." This quotation sums up the position of Kostya, the imaginary diarist of M. Ognyov's Diary of a Communist Schoolboy, who now writes of his undergraduate days in the present volume. At school, Kostya was happy, full of energy and enthusiasm, but " when one lives, as I do now, without a room, without even a regular abode, and when the only thought haunting one since morning is the question of where one can borrow money for a meal--one simply Can't think of anything worth while." When his father died, as his house was going to be pulled down, Kostya had nowhere to live and no money to live on. He was therefore psychologically and materially stranded, except for the help given him by his many friends. But even this help he often found difficult to accept because of his Communist principles, which are " the main question so far as I am concerned." He was taken by one of his friends, Korsuntsev, to a dancing club where he could get a meal. Having stolen some sausages from the kitchen table, he set about trying to dance the foxtrot. But Kostya found dancing " a stupid and anti-revolutionary pastime," so he flung the bits of sausage on the table and left the place. Another of his friends found him a bed in a hostel. Kostya insisted on interfering with a man who was beating his wife in a room in the same hostel, thereby breaking a rule of the hostel. This time he lost a bed for the sake of his ideology.
Another of Kostya's problems was that he didn't know what Faculty to take at the University :—" One mustn't be guided by one's personal interests (or else I could choose to lie in bed all day or spend all my time at the cinema), but by the urgent requirements of the proletarian republic— especially during this hard time of transition. The place to choose must be the one which will be most useful to the state, even if personally one finds it uninteresting or even loathsome." Kostya, besides finding his mental adjustment difficult, felt himself a social failure : " One has to consider parties and excursions and talks with different people ; and this is just where you have got to be at your best or people won't talk to you." Whatever Kostya may not have been. he was a relentless realist with no pity or excuses for himself.
All the characters, however, in Mr. Ognyov's Diary of a Communist Undergraduate do not find life so difficult. There is a delightful shepherd who spends the summer looking after his sheep, and the winter as a student at a University ; there is Silva, a successful medical student, full of practical common sense ; and Vanka, a leading Communist in the Lux factory, who, because of his rather domineering manner, Kostya accuses of behaving " like a regular Chamberlain." At the end of the book, Kostya gets a new lease of courage. " It's no good. I've got to pull myself together. Life has been rushing past me, while I've just kept on contemplating myself in my diary. One's got to put up a fight—and it's no good getting excited over little things like having or not having a room to live in. I must work and keep control over myself and the life around me ; I must be constructive, not contemplative."
As in the Communist Schoolboy, in The Diary of a Communis: Undergraduate we get a stark and vivid impressinn of adolescent life in the new Russia. It does not give a very favourable picture from a material point of view, and for this reason it is a little surprising that the book has passed the Russian Censor. Mr. Ognyov's diarist is, however, so sensitive and so uncompromising that he cannot be typical. He is a very, real person, too brave to be pitied, too young to be criticized.
Miss Dorothy Thompson has written a most interesting
and entertaining book about Russia " from the outside."•As an American newspaper correspondent, she was sent into
Russia, according to the publishers, " with orders to write what she saw without bias or prejudice." Not being able to speak Russian, much of her information had to be gleaned at second hand, and we feel it is in the descriptions of social life and of people she actually met that Miss Thompson has done her best work. She gives a panoramic picture of the social life of Moscow. Describing a Foreign Office reception, we see " Tehicherin sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed, sharp-bearded, with a grey, tired skin. He lives simply and eats chiefly kasha." Litvinov " is a round-faced little man, speaking fluent English and German,. but with a bad accent and wearing that slightly pompous air, which eye-glasses on a black ribbon seem invariably to give one."
Miss Dorothy Thompson has tried to do what only a jour- nalist would attempt—to give a complete and comprehensive picture of Russia to-day. She describes Moscow, the shops, streets (" I myself picked the factories, schools, clubs and other institutions which I wished to visit, and sometimes I picked them out of the Telephone Book ") ; she tries to analyse the Soviet system, but when writing of politics she is often guilty of tautology, which is a pity ; there is an ,enlightening chapter on concessions, and although there are
innumerable difficulties to overcome, me, Miss Thompson con-- siders that " given a favourable contract and given 'experience in the industry, the foreign 'concessionaire has opportunities in Russia," for the demand for goods is enormous ; other chapters are devoted to " the War psychosis," the Red Army, education, and so forth.
The book is full of contradictions, but is none the less interesting. In her first chapter, Miss Thompson sums up her general impressions " The only definite judgment which I brought out of Russia is of a country in mighty movement, of an experiment of far greater significance than the Western world dreams of, of problems, spiritual, mental, economic and administrative, greater than have ever concentrated themselves at once in any nation, and which are of profound meaning for the whole world."
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