IMPERIALISM WITH A DIFFERENCE
BOOKS OF THE DAY
By PETER FLEMING
Ma. SMOLKA has now expanded into book-form the material on which were based his articles published in The Times last autumn ; and a very good job he has made of it. He is the first non-Communist observer to be granted permission to visit the vast area controlled, on behalf of the Soviet Govern- ment, by Glaysevmorput, a characteristically cacophonic con- densation which stands for the Central Administration of the Northern Sea Route. Its head is Dr. Schmidt, the hero of the Chelyuskin episode. Its territorial responsibilities comprise on quarter of the land surface of the Soviet Union ; the Russian Arctic is one and a half times the size of the Indian Empire. The density (if that is the right word) of popula- tion is one man to every six square kilometres. But the Soviet Government is not thinking in terms of immigration ; the aim is economic, industrial, and strategic exploitation of Russia's only independent coastline. Along that coastline (there are 6,000 miles of it) radio stations, airfields, meteorological research institutes, and ice-breakers are at work. The North- East passage has already been opened for three months in the year. A " Russian lake," into which flow some of the longest rivers of the world, is being brought into being to link the North Sea with the Pacific along the top of Asia.
Mr. Smolka writes rather clumsily in a language which is not his own ; but that detracts only negligibly from the merits of a book packed with curious and suggestive information. From Leningrad he followed the Trans-Siberian Railway to Krasnoyarsk, and thence flew—jerkily at times—up to the Far North, finally taking ship from Dickson Island to Murmansk en route for home. His method is not in the least impression- istic. He gives us, with the minimum of comment, all the facts he could get hold of ; and he has the really good journa- list's gift for selecting from and arranging a mass of information so that it holds our interest. He is, moreover, eminently sensible in his attitude to the Russians. He appreciates and accepts the fundamental differences between their way of life and anyone else's, and he describes them objectively, without constant cross-reference to his own standards of this or that. He implies rather than makes criticisms ; and, though one is tempted to wonder whether he has not at times been over- discreet, the picture that emerges is undoubtedly a very fair one.
The Arctic is full of surprises. The winter temperature, according to Di. Schmidt, rarely drops lower than 4o below, which is no worse than they get in industrial centres in the Urals and the Ukraine. In Igarka, which with a permanent population of 12,000 is the largest of the Polar towns, the life of the inhabitants (Dr. Schmidt told Mr. Smolka) " does not differ very much from that of other Russians " ; and this tribute to the rctime's powers of standardisation Mr. Smolka, when he got to Igarka, was able to endorse. The mud, it is true, was deeper ; but there were the same slogans on banners, the same braying and ubiquitous loudspeakers, the same hopeless telephone exchange, the same haggard and dynamic female officials, the same habit of talking in terms of the future, the same grievances and the same boasts, the same unkempt priggishness that you find all over one-sixth of the earth's surface. Pioneering has been put in its place. Banish whatever sentimental admiration you may have felt for Yermak and his cossacks, for the haphazard and deplorably individualistic old-timers of the Yukon and the Rand. Admire instead (and 10,000 Against the Arctic. By H. P. Smolka. (Hutchinson. tas. 6d.)
there is no reason why you should not) the braw young idealists, half-baked but heroic, who are picketing desolation with small, important zarebas of red tape.
That desolation was of course inhabited, however sporadically, long before the Bolsheviks, long before the Tsars. Twenty-six petty races are dotted about the ,tundra. Samoyeds, Ostyaks, Goldis, Yuraks—but one might as well transcribe their telephone numbers as their names, so remote are they from the ken of any save a few ethnologists. These benighted minorities have been lucky. The impact of Soviet administration on the scarcely less primitive nomads of Central Asia was clumsy and cruel ; the botched and premature policy of collectivisation was unprofitably imposed only by dint of shootings, deportations, and State-controlled famine.
The Arctic tribes came into the picture too late to suffer the consequences of Moscow's earlier and costlier mistakes. Their indispensability was quickly appreciated. Mr. Smolka says that there are 150,030 of them. " They are the natural human element that can develop the resources of this new continent . . . the only race that can stand the climate permanently." Even the culture-mongers are going slow with them. Those, it is true, who have hitherto' lacked alphabets are being provided with them now ; but " the method of education now adopted is gradual." As far as tribal life goes, the dictates of climatic conditions have not been over- ridden by sweeping and locally inapplicable ukaseatfrom the Kremlin, as they used to, be in Central Asia. The old and necessary traditions of nomadism are not only condoned but accepted by the authorities ; " there is no intention to make them settle on a permanent basis." The aim, rather, is to teach these half-Mongol, half-Red Indian tribes to look on the depot where education and equipment are supplied as the centre of their shifting life.
Forty thousand sounds a lot ; but almost every one of Mr. Smolka's encounters reflects a " We few, we happy few " atmo- sphere. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that in a kind of
specialist's preserve, whither only the best pilots and meteor- ologists and doctors are seconded for service and where a romantic sense of emergency is never very far round the corner, the standards of efficiency, initiative, and responsibility are higher than they are on humdrum, unregarded sectors of the proletarian front. It is true that at Igarka and elsewhere Mr. Smolka found large gangs of exiles undergoing that variant of slavery which the Russians call regeneration ; but they seemed to be treated well enough, and the other classes of the population—drawing exceptionally high wage; and liberally injected with the crusading spirit—impressed their visitor favourably.
This is an altogether fascinating account of two brave new ,worlds. One is the natives', who " are getting to know modern technical instruments in a curiously inverted order." They are familiar with the aeroplane before being acquainted with a wheel ; they knew radio before they conceived the possibility of writing. The other is the young Russians', who have learnt to grow asparagus in the Arctic and to make a horse eat fish.
Is the future—economic and strategic—of these identical worlds overrated by their. visionary masters ? Mr. Smolka
sees the possibility of ice conditions worsening on the sea route, of difficulties in connexion with refining oil locally. But he sounds, on the whole, optimistic ; and it may be that those
" Barren and Desert Regions incapable of Commercial Develop- ment " (to quote the more conservative of his two maps) may one day powerfully affect the history of the world.
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