How Like the British!
By OLGA FRANKLIN EADING the Russian newspapers every day, 1‘ I have become obsessed with how alike we are..1 mean, a Briton could live in Russia today and hardly notice the difference, surely? Of course, we all know the 'difference, basic, politi- cal and inescapable But that's not the point I want to argue here. The point is that now Russian newspapers have become more honest about living conditions, most Russian feature and news -stories are very nearly interchange- able with our own. Some days I find it hard to distinguish which is which.
Ten years ago, our likeness to the Russians was hardly noticeable. In those days no one in the Soviet Union had anything, except a few top people and foreigners, and then it wasn't much. Now they, like ourselves, enjoy a precarious affluence: we're as alike as twins, we Britons and those 'citizens.. When people ask me should they take a holiday in the Soviet Union, I usually say—don't, unless consumed with curiosity. I tell them it's just like home from home. I say, 'All the things that irritate you at home, slow service, reluctant service, sloppiness, will give you that 'homesick feeling.' True. the Russians are build- ing. new hotels, training new staff and making big efforts to develop the tourist industry. But what about the ordinary domestic consumer, the cus- • tomer? It is my firm contention that the customer in Britain gets the same rough deal as he does in the Soviet Union. (Though I find it much harder to excuse in Britain. There are good ex- cuses for the Russians: e.g., shortage of skilled labour. They've got more skilled engineers than they've got skilled cooks and cobblers.)
Only in the Soviet Union and in Britain will you find intimidating waitresses who will sneer triumphantly, 'Fish is oft, meat's off, cauliflower's off too.' You hardly need to know the language, it's all so familiar. How do they manage, then? Just as we do. They, too, get chips with every- thing. Chips were unknown in Russia before 1946. We get chips with eggs; they get chips with salami: and who is to say which is worse?
Only in the Soviet Union and in Britain do you find people of all classes moving joyously into a new house or flat, to find the roof leaks, the bathroom tap does not turn, the electricity is wrongly wired, the gas stove does not work, the washing machine blows up, the walls start to crack and the wallpaper's all sold out and won't be repeated; handles come off doors, cupboards won't open, window fittings are thick with rust. . . The TV set that comes with a guarantee and breaks down immediately. The endless phone calls to summon an engineer. The Russian papers openly admit that TV repair men have to be bribed with vodka, a whole dinner, a handful of money and presents. I have friends in Surrey and Kent who have tried all these methods and more . and are still waiting for the TV set to be mended. . Problems of noise and over- crowding in the big cities, of local courts crowded with people who want to appeal against a nasty block of flats being built at the bottom of their garden, of dirty lavatories, dirty restaurant kit- chens, of hooligans, sex assaults in disused garages, slow trains, long bus queues, bad ser- vice in shops; rudeness and incompetence of staff, the new kitchen-hand who changes her job every week; the salesgirls who are always 'off' with the migraine, the loaves of bread piled by unwashed hands upon the floor. . . . But the list is endless.
All these problems are common to two coun- tries above all: the UK and the USSR. Even cruelty to children, hitherto never mentioned and which I had imagined rare in Russia; even this is featured in lzvesua. The flu (or 'gripp' as the Russians call it), the weather, the football
match that flopped. . Need I go on? Some- times I don't know whether I am reading Russian papers or English ones; they're all the same now.
But, you may say, surely these things are common to all countries, especially in post-war Europe? Surely this does not mean that living conditions in Russia and Britain are the same? Of course they are not the same. They could not be, because we live affluently and eat reason- ably well on largely imported foods and goods. Except for a few foreign cheeses, British boots and shoes and so on, Russia still imports hardly anything at all, except machinery. So obviously the conditions are not similar. What is the same is the attitude of both peoples. The general in- competence (that has nothing to do with politics or governments of any party). the inefficiency, the general shoddiness of workmanship, the don't-care, take-it-or-leave-it attitude. the dislike
for work, dislike for change, the class distin0 tion that has survived Communism over thee a:-.d Socialism over here. Ot course. the moar ing has to be modified in Russia, but it is theft just the same, and the papers—more credit to them--are no longer afraid to show it..
Take the case of old-age pensioners who art afraid to do a little baby-sitting for money it case they get their pension docked. It sounds familiar? And even their sob-stories are just like
ours. They're mad on stories about dogs or bears, or birds, or lions, or what have you. There was the charming little story 'which appeared 10 the Komsomolskaya Pravda the other day about the lorry-driver who accidentally knocked down and injured a little bind on the main road out of Moscow. A crowd of 'sympathisers gathered. The lorry-driver was upset He picked the wounded animal up in his arms and although he had firm instructions to proceed with his load to another town twenty miles away, he drove right back to Moscow and carried the animal to Moscow's new animal hospital. where he sat in the hall waiting for -the operation by devoted animal doctors and nurses. Next scene: lorry- driver, six weeks later, sits in the hall waiting to collect the now restored hind and to return 'it to the woods outside Moscow. Below the story were pictures pictures, you'd say, right out of the Sunday Mirror or the People or the Neli's of the World.
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