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Show im&8i lrA 1 1 lib I? 1 1 c; C i 4 &l C INSTALLMENT FOURTEEN The Red Army band selected select-ed for their skill from all of Rus-ela'i Rus-ela'i millions. Their uniforms were spotless. Half of them played Instruments In-struments and the other half was a perfectly drilled male choir of perhaps per-haps thirty voices. The big river rang with gorgeous Red Army marching songs and heartbreaking old Russian folk tunes. Whenever they stopped for breath, the other band, out of sight on the stern of the boat, would play. Mike proudly ushered us down to the dining din-ing salon and the boat turned around, heading for our dock. When the boat returns us to the dacha, we find half a dozen women In evening gowns artists from the local opera. In the next room another an-other staggering banquet is laid; they are to dine with us. They speak only Russian but do their best to make polite small talk with gestures. ges-tures. Bob Magidov, who represents repre-sents the Associated Press, Is particularly par-ticularly helpful. His Russian is perfect. Lenin Optical Plant No. 69 now makes range-finding equipment for artillery and tanks. This factory was evacuated from I t p1 "f t y ,1 isiii- Russia had Its I SO, units which also provided entertainment for foreign for-eign visitors. Leningrad on November 16, 1941. Sixty per cent of its 15,000 workers came with the machinery. The factory fac-tory Is clean, well-lit and apparently apparent-ly very well-run, for no one is idle at the benches. Walking down the assembly line, Mike lags behind, talking to the workers, a wave of the hand to this one, a pat on the back for that a wardboss patrolling patrol-ling his precinct. Strictly Tammany. The director here is proud of his precision work. We ask him if it is as accurate as the great Zeiss plant in Germany admittedly the best In the world before the war. He says it is now as good, but only recently and there are two reasons. A pretty Komsomol presents Erie with a bouquet of flowers and a speech, to which he must reply in kind. During the pause we get some Information out of Mike. First we ask him about restrictions on traveling; trav-eling; and he says here there are none. Back in Moscow, Leningrad and In the war zone region, yes, of course. But on this side of the Urals travel permits are not hard to get. In the factory dining room each of us is presented with a fine pair of 8x30 Red Army field glasses, with our names engraved in Russian Rus-sian characters, and, of course, there is another banquet. Back to the dacha at the evening banquet, Mike Kalugin had risen for the first toast. He was talking slowly and looking from face to face with narrowed eyes. Magidov was translating. 'Mike says," said Magidov, "this will be our last dinner together, that we have been good friends, that he has tried to show us Novosibirsk and the hospitality of a Siberian, and he hopes we have enjoyed our-lelves." our-lelves." Mike continued with measured wordg, his eyes narrowed to slits. "He says parting with friends is always sad, but on some occasions It is less sad than on others. On such occasions guests who have pretended pre-tended to be friends of the Soviet Union after they have left have become traitors writing and saying bad things about the Soviet Union. Parting with traitorous friends like this is not very sad, he says." The room was in complete silence. But when Mike began again, his eyes were not quite so narrow. There even seemed to be a grim tmile on his lips. "Mike says," said Magidov, "that he is sur our friendship is not like this, so our parting is truly sad, and he invites us to drink that our friendship may forever endure." Then we rose to drink the toast. After it Eric remained standing. He filled bis glass, and raised it, looting first at Mike and then at the Interpreter. Inter-preter. "We have enjoyed your generous hospitality," he said, looking now at Mike, "and when I was invited to the Soviet Union, it was agreed that I would be free to say and write exactly what I thought when I got home. While there are many things that we admire about the Soviet Union, there are some things I do not understand. "I have never understood the policies poli-cies of the Communist Party in America. The Soviet Union should understand that if the American people feel Russia is ' interfering with our local affairs through this Communist Party, then co-operation between America and the Soviet Union will be impossible. "As you know," he said, "in Moscow Mos-cow I saw many of your important people, and only four days ago I saw Marshal Stalin. I talked with them and with him as frankly as I am talking to you now." We drank. Mike rose rather slowly slow-ly to his feet. Then he looked sharply sharp-ly across at Eric and began to speak. "He says," translated Magidov, "that from the days of the Civil War, when he fought with the Red Guards, he has always followed the discipline of the Communist Party, as he follows Marshal Stalin today. He says the Marshal now tells us that we should not interfere in the affairs of other nations. That we should get along with foreigners. That's all he wants to know: it will be done. So he raises his glass to the health of his great leader, Marshal Mar-shal Stalin." Breakfast next morning was in the same room, and as we sat down, the mayor of Novosibirsk, apparently apparent-ly having first obtained Mike's permission, per-mission, rose for a toast. The mayor said they had found Americans to be good and warm friends; he could assure us that Russians were also warm friends. But if a friendship is broken, Russians Rus-sians can be terrible in their anger. Russia's friendship with Germany had been so broken, and to her great sorrow Germany now knew the weight of Russian anger. The mayor may-or wished Mr. Johnston and those with him a pleasant journey on through the Soviet Union, and that they would get safely home. Then the ten servants of the dacha lined up alongside the dining table and In true baronial style, each was given a glass of vodka to drink our health. We had seen Novosibirsk. In 1917 when it seized power after the collapse of the Romanov dynasty, dynas-ty, the Bolshevik Party was a handful hand-ful of Marxist theoreticians. Russians Rus-sians only fleetingly enjoyed freedom free-dom and the Party then assumed the autocracy of the Autocrat of all the Russias. The heritage of this Party Par-ty is in almost equal parts of Marx and of Genghis Khan. In America, a Republican can be anyone white, black, rich, poor, drunk, or sober, who has decided he likes the party's principles or candidates. can-didates. But becoming a member of the Communist Party is as difficult dif-ficult as joining a yacht club. The usual first step is to join the Komsomols Kom-somols or Young Communist League, which works under the direction di-rection of full-fledged Party members. mem-bers. After some time in this, the aspirant may apply for Party membership. For a year he is watched carefully. Everything about him is investigated from his work habits and political opinions to his sex life. The Party wants only Intense workers who will subject themselves completely to a discipline as rigid as that of any army. It also tries (with less success) to exclude those who may not have strong convictions convic-tions about its principles, but see it as a necessary step on the ladder to success. It does not want "careerists" "ca-reerists" although in Russia membership mem-bership is indispensable to a career. Once the coveted membership is gained, the man is less closely watched, but any slackening in zeal, any deviation from the Party's political po-litical line, or any signs of "personal "per-sonal ambition" are punished with expulsion. These admissions and expulsions are controlled by the Party's secretary, and in the early days this was put in the charge of an unobtrusive Bolshevik named Joseph Jo-seph Stalin. Only after Lenin's death did the more prominent Communists Com-munists like Zinoviev, Kaminev, Bukharin and Trotsky come to realize real-ize that the man who controls the Party's membership, controls not only the Party but all Russia. The high Party members, who now wield the power of the Romanovs, Roman-ovs, have moved into both the palaces pal-aces and the privileges of the old Aristocracy, and are drinking quite as much champagne. But no one can argue that they do not justify their existence by hard and useful work for the state, and by taking leadership and responsibility. Class distinctions are rapidly springing up in Russia. But, for the present at least, these distinctions distinc-tions are based on achievement and hard work even though the achievement achieve-ment may sometimes be only polit ical skill necessary to climb to the top of the hierarchy. "He's got everything a Commissar Commis-sar should have," the correspondents correspond-ents once said, "a motor car, a peroxide wife with gold teeth, and a dacha." But at least, he got these things by hard work, presumably (and usually) in the service of the people and the state. The privileged class In Russia is full of the rich sap of hard work. There is in it so far none of the rotten dead-wood of hereditary fortunes, piled up by useful men with vision but handed down through generations of weaklings weak-lings who yet retain the privileges. The Communist Party had about 5,000,000 members until Stalin's purges beginning in 1936 reduced it to about 2,500,000. After the war began the base was broadened and membership raised to 4,500,000, many from the army. But since responsibility re-sponsibility for leadership goes with Party membership and Communists are supposed to (and do) set an example ex-ample of personal courage, an unduly un-duly large number of them have been killed and nobody now knows the exact membership. One of the Party's functions is to provide the Kremlin with accurate reports on the state of Russian public pub-lic opinion. In the field of foreign affairs, of course, the people have no facts other than those provided by the government-controlled press. But in domestic matters the Russian Rus-sian people have definite ideas as to what they like and do not like. The Party is sometimes unable to check a trend in public opinion. If It is a real ground-swell they do not fight It, but divert it into proper channels. They remember 1917, when they themselves rode into power on the crest of a tidal wave of unrest which the old autocracy failed to recognize in time, and was too stupid to handle. han-dle. They expect similar unrest after aft-er this war, and are sure they will be quiok enough to canalize it before be-fore it gets out of hand. American correspondents in Russia Rus-sia who are most warmly sympathetic sympa-thetic with the dictatorship say that it amounts to a government by the Gallup Poll, which is much too rosy a view of the facts. The dictatorship dictator-ship is, of course, acutely concerned con-cerned with public opinion. But most of this is created by the gov-, ernment's own press; another portion por-tion may be directed into safe channels chan-nels and there remain a few Instances In-stances where the government finds it must abandon, reverse, or postpone post-pone policies because they are too unpopular. Only in foreign affairs does the dictatorship have a completely free hand. Since no Russians may travel trav-el abroad except on official government govern-ment business, the people know nothing of the outside world except what they learn from their controlled press, which is of course only what their government wants them to know. Lacking any independent basis ba-sis for judgment, they must accept wars, allies and peace treaties as these are handed out from the Kremlin. Some observers in Moscow think even this will change. They say that the top Bolsheviks realize what they have lost by not permitting permit-ting their people to travel abroad, for Russia has always sorely needed need-ed foreign help. But always they " ' P I ' ' f! Ij ' ' 1 ! till' l 1 ! 'l Operas and symphony concerts are common in Russia. say even if it grants this concession conces-sion the Party will control. On one side of the picture this is a slave empire. On the other side it is a vigorous, dynamic empire moving on. Just what, I asked of the correspondents, corre-spondents, will the Russians want in Europe? That was easy, they answered. an-swered. Russians already have the Baltic States. They want some kind of frontier settlement with Poland, approximately the Curzon line. They want to be sure Germany is rendered ren-dered harmless. Beyond this they won't want much, except to be sure that the governments in their border bor-der states Finland, Poland, Hungary, Hun-gary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria will not be hostile to them. (TO BE CONTINUED) |
