MOSCOW AFTER FORTY YEARS -II
By SIR EVELYN WRENCH
THREE of Moscow's greatest problems are space, shopping and transport. The population since the Revolution has nearly quadrupled, and the citizens of the Soviet capital are probably worse housed than in any other European city. The Soviet, for all its Five Year Plans, has never caught up with the population-increase. Church towers, stables, backyards and basements are crowded with teeming humanity. It is difficult for the foreigner to get correct statistics of the overcrowding, but it is almost impossible to get accommo- dation. One of the drawbacks of easy divorce, we were told, is the fact that, even after the legal formalities have been complied with, it is often necessary for the divorced partner to continue to live in the same room as the former spouse owing to the impossibility of obtaining even a shakedown elsewhere.
The twenty-two years of Soviet rule have certainly not solved the problem of the terrible overcrowding of Moscow's tramway system either. Conditions have improved, but any day citizens can be seen hanging on perilously to the outside of the cars. If Moscow is ashamed of its tramway system, it has every right to be proud of its "Metro," opened two years ago. One descends by well-lit moving staircases directly on to elongated island platforms with trains on both sides. The architecture and lighting effects are very fine. Two undergrounds are in operation and a third one is being built.
I was not prepared for the drabness and shoddiness of Moscow's shops. No town in a capitalistic State would tolerate them for a moment. We were taken to the largest Government store, a building which I had visited forty years ago when it housed Moscow's leading shop, started by Scots- men, Messrs. Muir and Merrilees. It was swarming with depressed and drab humanity, pushing its way from queue to queue. The Moscow shopper spends many hours each peek trying to obtain the bare necessaries of life. The shelves and counters were practically empty, and we wondered what the crowds found to buy. A resident Englishwoman told us that small purchases such as a yard of black ribbon entailed standing in a queue for probably an hour, at the end of which time it was more than likely that the only ribbon available would be of some other colour.
During a week's wandering about the streets we never saw an attractive shop-window. Another friend informed us that even if she discovered a suitable dress, it might not be obtainable ; in all probability she would be informed that it was reserved for the" privileged classes," the wives of soldiers and sailors, artists, G.P.U. officials and skilled workers ; for Soviet Russia has its aristocracy. There is a great shortage of shoes ; Soviet industry is only able to produce one and a half pair per head of the population each year. Longing glances were often cast at the shoes we were wearing ourselves. The Government explains every short- age of commodities by stating that machines and tractors must have precedence.
Extraordinary prices are paid for second-hand clothes. A fellow-traveller, who was short of currency, sold three shirts, bought in Berlin for seven marks each, for 200 roubles apiece. We met a fellow-countryman who had been selling some of his wardrobe at the Government store, where trans- actions of this nature are carried out subject to a commission of 15 per cent. He disposed of a fourteen-year-old suit of plus fours for 175 roubles and a good suit for a thousand roubles. A pair of new shoes will command 200 roubles. (Nominally 25 roubles go to Li.) A visit to the law-courts is included in the programme of most visitors. On this occasion we joined a party of American and other tourists on a " culture-absorbing " mission. On arrival at our destination we found our- selves on the ground floor of a ramshackle building ; on a raised dais, before a table, sat the judge, an elderly man, benign and unshaven, coatless, his shirt open at the neck ani sleeves rolled up. He explained to us the working of the Russian legal system. The court in question has the power of passing sentences up to ten years. The judge's rc:narks were interpreted to us by a red-haired girl of twenty. we could only occasionally hear what she was saying, as three other interpreters were translating the judge's remarks s;multaneously to groups of Germans, Swedes and French. No sort of order was kept, each interpreter trying to drown the voice of his colleagues. It was like the court scene in "Alice through the Looking Glass."
From here we bumped off in a car over the cobbled streets to the Marriage and Divorce Bureau in Dzerzhinsky Place. The ground-floor was divided into three small rooms, a waiting-room, the Bureau for Marriages and Registration of Births, and the Bureau for Divorce and Registration of Deaths. In the antechamber there were crowds of young mothers, who were applying for the financial aid to which they were entitled, nursing their babies. We were taken into the Marriage Bureau, where a party of Anglo-Saxons was having the working of the Soviet Marriage Laws explained by the manageress of the Bureau, a plump, elderly woman looking like a schoolmistress. At one end of the room the work of registering births was proceeded with regardless of the presence of strangers.
A fluent interpreter hurled facts at us. The pencils of the Anglo-Saxons vainly tried to keep pace. Owing to the large number of abortions a new law was introduced in 1936 to encourage larger families ; as a result the birth-rate is going up. The sum of 2,000 roubles is given to every mother on the birth of her seventh and subsequent child; on the birth of her eleventh child she receives five thousand roubles. To be married costs four roubles and takes about fifteen minutes. Each party has to sign a document testify- ing to a dean bill of health and no hereditary disease. No vows are taken.
Divorce is granted at the request of one party, even if the other party is opposed to it. No reasons need be given. The manageress of the Bureau attempts to patch up matri- monial difficulties, but if her efforts are unavailing divorce is granted without further delay. A committee considers which of the two parents would be best able to look after the child, whose welfare is the first consideration. The Soviet citizen can be divorced today and married tomorrow. Divorce is never refused.
It is a well-nigh impossible task to draw up an impartial balance-sheet of the pros and cons of the Soviet regime. I asked a lifelong resident in Russia what in his opinion was the best thing the U.S.S.R. had done ; the reply came un- hesitatingly, "The care taken of the young." He said he never could quite make up his mind whether the Russian masses were happier today than under the Tsars. The class that had really benefited was that of the skilled workers.
On the credit side of the balance-sheet should appear the great increase of literacy, improved educational facilities for the masses, concentration on the young, the increased care taken of expectant mothers, the granting of equal rights and opportunities to women, the steady industrialisation of the country, and among the impressive list of public works, the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, linking the capital with the Baltic, White and Caspian Seas.
On the debit side I would put the institution of a Reign of Terror, the persecution of religion, the denial of freedom of conscience and of free speech, the poisoning of the minds of the masses by propaganda, the isolation of Russia from the Western world, over-concentration on Moscow to the neglect of other centres, and the introduction of a purely materialistic outlook on life.
The Russian experiment is frequently justified on the assumption that it will bring happiness to unborn millions, but surely the living have their rights, too? As I looked at the wax-like figure of Lenin, in its impressive setting in the mausoleum on the Red Square, I thought of the millions of lives destroyed or blighted by the system he set up.
Previous page
