Show P bd N 1 0 A TH EA R P J we V A 02 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 white installment THIRTEEN ibold I 1 told him what I 1 was doing here and that this was amsk they told me been assigned as technical advisers on a big war c construction project A mine up north said tex and now were going out ed said at this little burg they set up a whole In tourist hotel to take care of us brought bought in wine cheese cigarettes cindy candy noodles and dried eggs for the rest we were supposed to scavenge off the country they sent in a cook and an assistant cook a erIn all about ten people taking care of us we really get to know many russians said ed except it was different with the girls they have some fine girls and nobody seems to mind if you take them out they might have been assigned to us or anyway had to tell the whatever wlate whatever ver we said we know they gave the hotel employees a lecture said tex said t lack of 0 highways and ana motor transportation prove handicap to russian development we were foreigners and anything we did they must report very suspicious pi cious clous at their mines they sure do things dings different from what we do instead of having big construction firms they call them trusts arid and most of them are branches of one big central trust any ten year bid american child with a meccano set said ed will start at the bottom and build up but these russians always start at the e top build the root roof first and then th raise it and work like tell bell so they can throw up some kind of framework that they can hang a red fla flag g on the tip of and make speeches st said 1 tex got no respect tor for materials te rials they have no conception of how much work has gone into making them they unload valuable pipe from a flat car by just rolling it down an embankment smashing hell bell out of it and fire brick tor for smelters shelters sm elters the same way the way heave it off about 25 per cent would be damaged when wed try to stop it ft abald said ed they explained they had a law in russia because of the freight car shortage that they had to be unloaded within two hours after arrival no one seemed to see it would take more cars to bring more mor 0 material we were only consultants said tex and if they got tired of us hollering get around it by not supplying us transportation out to the job say out chauffeur c be found which was n nonsense on because he be was picked by the and if he took a five day vacation hed be shot they dont understand mechanical stuff they put things up out ol of plumb and then blame this trouble on poor american design so they take it down and start all over once we saw them assembling a complicated steel frame out in a field in stead of on its foundation they said bald they wanted to be sure it would fit 1 1 I think their system baided sai dEd give them the personal ambition the incentive that ours does and its so complex they lieve b ve to talk to so BO many people before anything gets done they could never naver be ba a competitive threat to america we can always build in a year a and nd a half anything it takes them ten to do you see said tex in russia they dont have our penitentiary system they herd prisoners into la ia bor gangs and the which J has charge of them has developed a fine ane engineering staff they bid on construction jobs supplying both the engineers and prison labor often the engineers are also prisoners cals get the roughest deal 10 gald ald ed they have spies in the markets and hanging around them the store counters waiting for some one to pop OP off they usually get ten wood with no chopping cor 7 years ears and grams of bread a 8 day if you are husky and can 4 work hard give you more U you miss getting typhus and 4 live out your sentence said tex they turn you loose but your passport has a red line through it that means you can never get a house or a good job youve got to keep moving or you may not get sentenced said ed just arrested and Iny investigated esti if things dont look lock quite right then you get a passport with letters in front of the numbers this means that you are under some suspicion and you can never hold a key job you see a mining engineer gets about 1000 roubles coubles a month said ed they get get one room tor for which they pay ab ou SO 30 roubles coubles rou bles AU they can buy on their ration cards amounts to or or roubles coubles a month then they must go to the free market for enough butter eggs meat or fish now for a note on russian suspicion of foreigners russia does not yet trust the outside world diplomats in ts are just as closely imprisoned in moscow as are correspondents at the time of our visit the current british ambassador had been unable to jo secure permission to travel outside the capital one of the allied countries which has in power a left wing government adorned its diplomatic staff in moscow with a special labor atta c he and appointed to this post an important union official he came to extend the hand of fellowship from the of the west to their fellow workers in russia the soviets gave him countless banquets but let him see nothing this lack of freedom has so warped his viewpoint that he now insists that the soviet system of unions la Is only a scheme to get the last oun ounce c e of work out of labor after the revolution lenin invited foreign concessionaires to help get russian industry back on its feet later they were thrown out but stalin invited foreign engineers to build the great factories and dim dam rivers but later put some on trial for espionage of course bolshevik hostility aroused bitter counter hostility A cordon taire wa was s built around russia france supported poland in a war against the bolsheviks in 1921 and russia was for over a decade excluded from the league and denied diplomatic recognition so their suspicion of foreigners came to have some basis in fact this warped view of the world held by the kremlin is slowly yielding to reality after lenins death stalin won power and supported the thesis gingerly at first that socialism in one country was possible and russia could dare to devote her energies to building up her own economic structure world revolution he explained was desirable and ancl he pledged himself to bend all efforts ato to bring it about but for the immediate future it was not indispensable to the russian bolsheviks in recent years there has been a further change for publication the kremlin has announced that world revolution is neither necessary nor desirable from the standpoint of the soviet union and the ablest foreign observers in moscow agree that these protestations are sincere they point out that russia has beester be been enter terribly weakened by war and needs desperately a few decades of peace they say she now realizes that europe does not want to be liberated from capitalist democracy end and that this could be accomplished only by a further bloody struggle involving sacrifices which the russians are both unwilling and unable to make russia wants they insist only a stable and friendly europe biberias Sib erias capital lies in the center of this chill chili root roof of the world about midway between berlin and tokyo the feeling of this big sprawling boomtown boom town was like that of the west where the robust town builders are proud of their city west of the urals brals belsh bolshevik evik civilization h has as taken over the a ancient n clent towns and palaces and their new structures structure i rise on the ruins of things they de strayed here in siberia they have chopped and blasted and dug their cities out of a virgin continent and they have something to be proud of Novo has baa almost a million people we are whisked across the town to our quarters tiny potato patches are along the highway shoulders and back la in forest clearings big handsome girls often barb barefoot foot walk erect down the road with scarves around their hair and farm tools over their shoulders the patches s have been assigned to workers in the city some factories maintain busses to take the workers out on weekends week ends to hoe the patches but most out from town as we see gee them doing now presently we ride along the banks of a river ss as wide as the ohio at its mouth but as yellow as the missouri we are told that it Is the ob of which none of us has hag ever heard and that it Is the fourth long est river in the world we come to the dacha bacha a russian word meaning country residence for someone who normally lives in the city it gleams new and white against the great trees which surround it and overlooks the ob the house would be indistinguishable from the great estates of the wealthy new york families along the hudson it lies has an equally large staff of sei servants the rooms are as large as clean and as luxurious whenever the convenience of a high communist Is involved these people can be as clean and tidy as the dutch or the swedes so its it Is in this dacha bacha below the dacha bacha a private bathing pier extends out into the ob down the hill we see a well kept tennis court with flood lights for night games to the right is a volleyball volley ball cour court t we have a volleyball volley ball game i ai russians hussla ns versus americans there is considerable shouting on the russian si deonly one man does any shouting the others play in grim slavic silence he is an undersized der sized in man an in his forties with wide cheekbones and a shock of curly hairl hair quick as a fox terrier who keeps up a running fire of command and encouragement to the russian team he Is strikingly un some 0 odd dd combination of chromosomes chromo somes has produced brod out here on the steppes a quick minded tough little irishman complete with wiry hair and jutting jaw he even talks out of the comer of his mouth his name nam ewas was michael kalugin Kalu gln and although he turned out to hold no local office it was easy to see how he be had acquired the habit ol of command d lie he was wis secretary of the communist party tor for siberia has a shopping district about the size of Wie bitas there is a beautiful new theater for the ballet but moscow artists also occasionally perform there near by a smaller theater la Is devoted to operettas ope and plays are given at a third the post postoffice office Is th the usual soviet shabbiness the building Is pretentious but the linoleum is worn through in the halls tiles tile 3 are chipped and missing the railway station is from the outside an impressive modern modem building the nhe architecture is tire dra matic high ceilings with sweeping vistas but the materials are sec ond rate it is shopworn already but the effect is beautiful the crowd is fascinating one great hall Is roped off for women with babies and small children there are no seats their mothers mother sit on the clean swept ferrazza ter razza floor there are polished wood benches in the spacious main waiting room only this is reserved for wounded soldiers sold lera who sprawl on every inch of the space their crutches leaning on the benches beside them or lying inthe on the floor there must be between and 1000 of these weary men most of them with an arm am or log leg missing this Is a normal hour of a onnal normal day in ill station in the main hall they even have indians copper yellow faces with high cheekbones and straight black mongolian hair these of course are from Kazak stan down on the chinese border but I 1 see no racial difference between or kazaks and our usages or navajos cavajos Nava jos except that these soviet indians indiana are not so BO well dressed as ours like ours they were fighting nomad mongolian tribes until the russians russian tamed them at the dacha bacha a red army band Is tuning its instruments down by 9 as V 1 MV P 1 21 W amsk one of the industrial centers visited by johnston Job and white the water front As it strikes upa up a military march a second band ai appears in even smarter uniforms uniform forms i and begins tuning up As we go in to dinner a gleaming whito white river steamer ties up at the wharf we are told that after dinner we will go for a rido ride on the ob mike kalugin ushered us ui down the tha river bank and aboard the steamer mike waved us ui expansively to i a row of deck chairs just forward of the bridge the better of the two bands lined up on the bow facing u us a struck up a x th the a boat moved out into the tha current the band was magnificent it was the official band of the red army TO CONTINUED |