BOOKLETS ABOUT THE SOVIET UNION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00415R005900100005-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: R
• Document Page Count: 237
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 29, 2002
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: August 9, 1950
• Content Type: MF

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9 tugust 1950
BooklIto Soviet Union
1. Attached for :four r- t.en:,i,)n and disposal are nine booklets
concerning the Soviet Unior e ere published by the Foreign
Lang:nage Publishing Rouse ir: in 1939 for use at the New York
Worldis Pair.
2. The titles of the h"7,31ri$, are as follows:
a. Soviet Cities !'*.0,? axid Renewed
b. Industrial Pro:r4-7,1,7 In the Soviet Republics of the
Non?Russian rfat,.1,-4.alities
c. Machine and l'ramtor Stations
d. Children and Art j n the USSR
e. Palaces of Cu), Lurk Arid Clubs in ths USSR
f. Waterways and ''att?.-r Transport in the USSR
g. The Nolkhoz
h. Children in r i of Socialism
MaTiitogorek
5.
t...re overt and may be trtd asYre..,
when detached frlm this -7f.
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CPYRGHT
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-,...-..
....
4.44..zt.....'
THE
Oik KO L K H OZ
IL_ Ni. (COM CTiVE FARM)
Illphohe
AppM`Fo 02/08/IA CiA-Kli1ntati405900100005-0
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tIEIE K(opi.mcD/
(COLLECTIVE FARM)
BY F. KLIMENKO
ORDER OF LENIN
CHAIRMAN OF THEESTALIN COLLECTIVE FARM,
GENICHESK DISTRICT, UKRAINE
MEMBER OF THE SUPREME SOVIET
OF THE U.S.S.R.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW 1939
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ARTIST: B. sCEIIVARTZ
PIONTLLI Itt THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
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N tsarist Russia the 28,000 landlords
owed 167,000,000 acres of land and the
10,000,000 peasant households 197,000,000
acres, of which the most fertile sections were
owned mainly by the kulak,. Huge tracts of
the best land were the property of the royal
family and of the monariteries. The landlords
and kulaks, who constituted somewhat over
13 per cent of the population, controlled
71.6 per cent of all the grain marketed.
The old villages were poverty-stricken and
squalid: 65 per cent of the peasant households
were made up of poor peasants; 30 per cent
had no horses and 34 per cent no agricultural
implements, being obliged to hire them from
the kulaks if they wanted to cultivate their
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tiny allotment, or the plots they managed
to rent from the latter or from the landlords.
Nfost of the harvest went to pay for thes7
services, leaving a bare pittance for the
peasant's family. Fifteen per cent of the
peasants did not have the wherewithal t )
sow any crops whatever. For many peasants
a piece of unadulterated bread made of pure
grain was a rare feast, since most of the
year they ate all sorts of substitutes.
Every year 2,000,000 poor peasants left
their homes to work on the landed estates
and kulak farms in the Kuban and the
Ilk tit inc.
Ylizkui, the village where I was born, can
serve as a vivid illustration of the backward
and impoverished condition of the peasants
before the Revolution, and the brutal exploi-
tation to which they were subjected.
There were 3,000 households in our village.
The best lands belonged to the landlords
Virkentin and Fischer, and were worked by
hands hired in our village and the nearby
villages and by landleAs peasants from other
parts of the country who were driven by pov-
erty and hunger from place to place in
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search of work and bread. The peasant allot-
ments in our village were only about five or
six acres, and never more than eight.
The land was worked in an extremely
primitive way: a piece oi land was sown, the
crop harvested and then was left to lie fallow
while another plot would be cultivated. Crop
rotation and scientific farming had never
even been heard of. No fertilizers were used
on the land. Selected seed was quite out of
the peasant's reach. Only very few among
the peasants owned metal plowshares or
reapers. Most of the Yozkut peasants used
antiquated wooden plows and flails. Nor did
every peasant have a horse. Those few who
could boast of one, for the most part pos-
sessed only some sorry old nag. It is small
wonder then that the gr un yield on the peas-
ants' land was generally from 0.15 to 0.2 tons
per acre, and decreased with every year.
Land hunger drove the peasants into kulak
bondage. Here is the st ory of Ivan Ponoma-
renko, a former farmloind, now a collective
farmer: "My father waF. a cowherd for twenty
years on the estate of A big landlord named
Fischer. We were a big family, thirteen of
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us, all huddled together in a little mud hut.
We never had a horse or a cow; our livestock
consisted of half a dozen hens. On the
1.3 acres of land we had, we planted pota-
toes. During the war Lworked on the estate
of Grand Duke Michael, the brother of Tsar
Nicholas. I earned around forty rubles a
year. Cabbage soup and millet was what
fared on. It was only on big holidays that
I tasted meat."
This is how the poor peasants lived in
tsarist Russia; nor were the middle peasants
much better off.
In November 1917 the workers and peas-
ants drove out the landlords and capitalists,
put an end to private property in land and
turned over the big estates and the monaste-
rial lands to the working people. The coun-
tryside began to emerge front its age-old
ignorance and to refashion its life along new
lines.
The Communist Party and the Soviet Gov-
ernment showed the peasants that the only
way they could put an end to kulak exploi-
tation and, with it, to poverty, was by
passing from petty individual farming to
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Collective farmers re ivin.t their share of the
grain (Protochnaya Ilage Krasnodar Region)
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large-scale socialized farming. The Soviet
peasantry adopted this way and began to set
up artels?associations for the joint culti-
vation of the land?and in some cases an
even higher form of collective farming?
agricultural communes.
In 1921, our village of Yuzkari organized a
commune which we called "Equality Com-
mune." It was started by a number of Red
Armymen who had reinroed to the village
after the Civil War?N Sologub, Ivan
Chaplyga, Yegor Sirnonenko, Pavel Cher-
nenko, Afanasy Pivovarov and my father,
Nikita Klimenko, all former peasants of
Yuzkui. Originally the Commune included
eleven families. They received land that had
formerly belonged to one of the landlords'
estates, pooled their horses, cows and agri-
cultural implements, and, disregarding the
kulaks' venomous threats and dire prophe-
sies, set to work.
At first things were quite difficult. The
Commune had no seed, only five horses,
and nothing but a seeder awl a bucker as
regards equipment. But the government gave
us a helping hand, and the Commune began
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the Soviet Union, having restored its eco-
nomic life after the devastation of the im-
perialist war and the Civil War, was de-
veloping industry at a rapid pace. The coun-
tryside was supplied with thousands of
first-class agricultural machines. The col-
lective farms expanded and took firm root.
In 1930 their number increased to 85,900,
and by 1934 it had reached 233,300.
At the end of 1929 rho various small kol-
khozes and communes in our village,
including our Equality Commune, merged
to form the big new Stalin Commune. Our
crops increased every year; we acquired new
machinery and equipment; our income grew
steadily.
It was not entirely smooth sailing, how-
ever. Not every member of the Commune
came to work on time, nor did everyone
work equally well. Yet all the members
shared the benefits of the Commune equally.
At the Congress of Kolkhoz Shock Work-
ers our chairman, Pivovarov, had a
talk with Stalin. Sta:in asked him many
questions about our Commune. He wanted to
know whether the members had cows, pigs
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The Herd of the V arsk Collect ve Farm,
near Elista ;Inyi A S.S.R.
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the specified day's quota of work the col-
lective farmer is credit, d with one work-day
unit.
If in the course ot the day a kolkhoz
member performs more than the speci-
fied quota, he is credited correspondingly
with more than one work-day unit. Thus
his share in the collective farm income
depends on the quantity and quality of
work performed. The work-day units are
calculated and recorded by the head of the
brigade in which the collective farmer
works and by the quality inspector, after
the work has been inspected.
This distribution of income according to
the work performed helped to improve
discipline and increase labor productivity.
The farm began to develop even more
rapidly.
The collective farm Rules definitely spec-
ify that on entering a kolkhoz the
peasant must hand over to it the land
he has been using, and also his draft ani-
mals and agricultural equipment. Cows,
domestic animals and poultry are not sub-
ject to socialization, nor is the peasants'
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personal property. The public buildings of
the collective farm?stables and sheds
for its livestock and poultry, granaries,
clubs, etc.?axe in the collective use of the
farm. In addition, every kalkhoz household
is allotted a plot of land for personal use,
where a truck garden or orchard can be cul-
tivated for the personal use of the household.
To assist the collective farms, the Soviet
Government has established machine and
tractor stations all over the country. At
present there are 6,350 such stations in
the Soviet 'Union. At the end of 1938,
483,500 tractors,153,500 harvester-combines,
195,800 trucks, hundreds of thousands of
tractor-drawn plows, seeders, cultivators,
complex threshers and various other up-
to-date agricultural machines were em-
ployed in the Soviet fields.
The attention accorded the peasants by
the Soviet Government, its constant con-
cern for their welfare made possible the
successful introduction of universal col-
lectivization and the transformation of
the U.S.S.R. from a country of small-
scale, backward agriculture into a land of
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mechanized agriculture on the largest scale
in the world.
In the U.S.S.R. today there are 243,300
kolkhozes, which unite 18,800,000 peasant
households, or 93.5 per cent of all the peas-
ant households in the country.
Our collective farm numbers 674 fami-
lies, 518 of which were formerly families
of poor peasants. Nearly 30,000 acres
of land have been reserved to us. The farm
includes 1,480 acres of hayfield, 8,980 acres
of pasture, 104 acres of woods which serve
to protect the fields from winds, and 1,081
acres of truck, gardens and orchards. Be-
sides this, several hundred acres of land
constitute the plots in the collective farm-
ers' personal use.
The kolkhoz management board is elect-
ed at a general meeting of the mem-
bership. Important matters, such as the
distribution of income, capital construc-
tion and large purchases, are decided on
only by the general meeting.
In most of the collective farms the mem-
bers are divided into brigades. We have
twelve production brigades, whose heads
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are elected by the general Meeting. We also
have an agronomist, several breeding ex-
perts, and a veterinarian.
We have 13,830 acres under field crops,
60 per cent of which are grain. Industrial
crops are raised on 1,270 acres, cotton oc-
cupying 1,185 acres. The rest of our land
is sown to fodder, vegetables and gourds.
Our collective farm is located in the
South of the Ukraine, by the Sea of Azov.
This region is rather arid, but we are learn-
ing to master nature, and our farm has
large harvests of all crops every year.
Despite the exceptional aridity of the sum-
mer of 1938, our average grain yield was
1,456 lbs. per acre, and the yield of non-
irrigated cotton, the cultivation of which
we first introduced five years ago, amounted
to 715 lbs. per acre.
Scientific methods of farming and me-
chanization are helping us to combat drought.
We are extending the area of autumn and
early spring fallow for grain crops, plowing
the fallow in good time, and weeding it by
tractor as often as six times. We plow by
tractor to a considerable depth-8-9.5
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Power House on a Collective Farm at Verkhny
Akbash , ino-Balkaria
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inches, and use large quantities of potas-
sium, phosphate and nitrate fertilizer in
addition to manure. We sow only high-
grade selected seed. For our spring crops?
cotton, oats, barley and the rest?we al-
ways plow the land to a good depth in the
autumn or early in the spring. We are
boldly applying the latest discoveries of
agronomy and the experience of the fore-
most Stakhanovites on our fields. Thus,
for instance, vernalization methods re-
cently evolved by Academician Lysenko
have enabled us to increase the yield of
cereals and cotton by 1.35-180 lbs. per acre.
Mechanization is a most important fac-
tor in increasing the yield in our collective
farm. The entire spring and autumn plow-
ing is done exclusively by tractors. In
1938, 97.7 per cent of the area under grain
was harvested by combines. All the land
left fallow for the 1939 crop was tractor
plowed, as was 77 per cent of the land
plowed in the autumn. Weeding, harrow-
ing, clearing the field of stubble, and
other processes have also been mechanized.
The number of our livestock is increas-
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Ing as well. Our collective farm now owns
800 head of cattle, 460 horses, 7,000 sheep
and 360 pigs, exclusiNe of the animals that
are the personal property of the collective
farmers themselves. The livestock is kept
in light, warm and airy buildings, which
have running water and are always clean
and orderly.
Big progress in stock-raising has been
made throughout the country. In 1938 alone,
the number of horses in the kolkhozes
increased by 8 per cent, the number of
colts by 9 per cent, of sheep and goats by
19 per cent and cattle and pigs by 6 per cent.
The increasing yields and growing pro-
ductivity in stock-raising are accompanied
by an increase in the wealth of the collec-
tive farms and in the material well-being
of the collective fanners themselves.
Whereas in 1930 the gross income of our
kolkhoz was 424,000 rubles, by 1938 it
had reached 3,300,000 rubles.
The greater part of the income is distrib-
uted among the members in accordance
with the number of work-day units credited
to them; 4.3 per cent goes for government
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payments, 0.8 per cent for managerial
expenses. We also spend large sums for
developing the farm ,Ilnd providing conve-
niences for our members. When the Com-
mune was first organized, we did not have
a single decent building, not a single ma-
chine of any kind. Now our streets are lined
with well-built houses. We have 8 power
engines and 9 trucks. Every brigade has
its silo. The animals are housed in newly-
built modern sheds and stables. Our build-
ings, tools and machinery total a value of
nearly 2,000,000 rubles.
In 1933 every collective farm household
in the grain regions received on the aver-
age of 1 ton of grain clear for the year. By
1937 this amount had risen to 2.36 tons. The
total cash income of the collective farms
of the U.S.S.R. has increased during the
same period from 5,661,900,000 rubles to
14,180,100,000 rubles
In 1938 our kolkhoz distributed 1,960,000
rubles in money as the share due for
work-day units. The income in kind is
also divided in accordance with the number
of work-day units, after grain deliveries to
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the state have been made, payment has
been rendered the machine and tractor sta-
tions for their services, seed has been set aside
for the next sowing and fodder has been
provided for the collective farm cattle.
En 1938, our kolkhnz members received
11 lbs. of grain and 3 rubles 10 kopeks in
cash for every work-day unit. Take collec-
tive farmer Borodin 's family. This fam-
ily received 6.7 tons of grain and 6,932
rubles in cash as their share of the collec-
tive farm income. Collective farmer Po-
nomarenko 's family received 6.2 tons of
grain and 6,326 ruhks in rash. K. Pakho-
menko, a Stakhanovii e, received 5 tons of
grain and 5,120 rubles in cash. Most of
our collective farm my/idlers received sim-
ilar incomes.
A life of prosperity brings culture with
it. The tsarist. government did its hest to
foster chauvinism and dissension; it in-
cited the Russians against the Ukrainians,
the Ukrainians against the Jews, the Geor-
gians against the Armenians, and so on.
In the U.S.S.R., with its Socialist culture,
a great and inviolable friendship and
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Spring Sowing on the Michurin Collective Farm,
Stalingrad Region
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amity exists between the various peoples
and nationalities.
Russians and Ukrainians, Jews, Gypsies
and Poles live and work in complete har-
mony in our collective farm.
Khalil Saitov is a Gypsy. He spent most
of his life wandering over the steppes. His
children were born in a cold, wind-beaten
covered wagon. Now his family is happy
and prosperous.
Mikhail Piznoy is a Jew. He is in charge
of one of our brigades and commands the
respect and affection of all our members.
His brigade has secured the high yield of
0.9 tons of grain per acre.
Boody, a Moldavian, was for many years
a shepherd in the sun-scorched steppes; he
worked for next to nothing for the kulaks.
Now he is a well-to-do collective farmer,
and is in charge of a section on our farm.
Some twenty-five years ago, before the
Revolution, it was no easy matter to get
permission to open a school in the country-
side, and most of the children went with-
out any schooling. Now we have plenty
of schools. The kolkhoz also has a
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moving picture theater for sham, ing sound
films, several clubhouses, a good library,
a radio broadcasting station for local
purposes, and a poser plant. This year the
members subscribed to 24,000 rubles' worth
of books and periodirals. We have a mater
nity home, a nursery, a good public bath
and a barber-shop.
The collective fanners' homes are lighted
by electricity and comfortably furnished.
Nearly 3,000 of our members have bicycles.
The young people go in for sports (300 of
our members have received the Voroshiluv
Badge for marksmanship), and are enthu-
siastic members of the club dramatic,
singing and music circles. There are no
illiterates in our farm. Eighty per cent
of our members have had an elementary
or secondary education, and 20 of the
members have had a university education.
Over 500 children attend the ten-year
secondary school. Twelve of our young
people have graduated agricultural or in-
dustrial training schools.
Hundreds of people who formerly went
unnoticed have developed into capable
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executives in government and public bod-
ies. A. Pivovarov, formerly chairman of
our kolkhoz, is now chairman of
the executive committee of the District
Soviet and has been awarded the Order of
Lenin by the Government. N. Pikulsky
is manager of the repair shop at our Stalin
Machine and Tractor Station. P. Letugin
took a post-graduate course at the Institute
of Agricultural Economics and now oc-
cupies an important post in the People's
Commissariat of Agriculture of the U.S.S.R.
P. Ponomarenko is in charge of one of the
biggest state farms in the Zaporozhye
Region. I. Ivanov, i former member of
our kolkhoz, is the chairman of a
district executive committee in the same
region. The names of Feshehenko and Va-
lovaya, brigade leaders outstanding for
the big harvests they secured, are known
far beyond the bounds of our region. Grigory
Koshka, one of our shepherds, is an outstand-
ing Stakhanovite who gets letters from
collective farms all over the U.S.S.R. He has
achieved a record increase-- over 140 lambs
for every 100 ewes-- in the size of his flock.
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The collective farm system has opened
broad prospects for the peasant woman both
in production and in public life. It is
helping to efface the distinction between
town and country. Remoulding economic
life in the villages, it is radically refashion-
ing the people as well.
In February 1939 our collective farm was
awarded the Order of Lenin by the Govern-
ment for its outstanding achievements.
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WAT E R WAYS
ET 7 D
WATER TRANSPORT
Pi T1F.
USSR
?
-.A -.0 -.0 ...01 .411, ../ ? I."
BY A. VLIGMAN
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WATEHW1 V AND
WATER rE PORT
IN TI 1F
By A. BI I VI A,".
411/1/1.1i 01
AKIIANON,111
FOREIGN LANGUAGES BLIMING HOUSE
MOSCOW
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I: III, IN III! Nit,N ..."(Op I I :"1/CIALISI RI. Pt IILIC-?
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"$.
WO oceans and
shores of the Soviet
stretches for 26,703 mit,
of the country is inter
em; its inland -water
seas and 180,000 lake4
world can compare ti
the number and 311
inland waterways wh
miles.
In the Russia of th an
?vern wash the
ion. I ts seacoast
Th, vast expanse
ed I v .300,000 riv-
fact includes two
nog try in the
T.h Y .S.S.R. in
of navigable
agate 248,400
I 'if; length of
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t:te naviealde ,ater1iiily5 open for traffic
(excluding river- serviceable for floating
timber) w;u4 27.1115 miles. But only 22.356
ILI AlC4 were eipii?ped with flash signalling
installations for the guidance of mariners
,T.J.,k,1 so forth) which were (it
A primitivr qualliv hardly comparable to
he in.qallationA ritoW in use. rnder tlik!
1:iiverninot,t the length of the naviga-
..ale waterways fe,choling those serviceable
II floatine I intlie0 has increased liv 37,881
glib..., and now realprises 65,826 miles.
The riiers of Ore "40viet. Union are int-
Hatant not only a a nleans of traffic, they
:ire at the same one a mighty source of
ie,trae proV, .4,- early as 1910,
geIi the Civil V"; was raging all over the
country. work was been!' on the first So-
ut power plant on the ol-
Ifiver. not f ir front Leningrad. Dur-
':to', the First ,?-Year Plan period a
2i:.!-a.fitie dam wa.. 1. iilt itero--,s the Dnieper
i cr, in the Fkr ine. which raised the
el of the river in 1'23 feet. Prior to this
ltuOlo?r rapids ,arred navigation o'er
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liii III jr
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considerable stretch of the river, but with
the completion of the clam the rapids dis-
appeared and the river became navigable
from its upper reach( to the Black Sea.
A triple chamber lock Alows for the passage
of craft. The Dnieper Hydro-Electric Pow-
er Plant with a capacity of 558,000 kilo-
watts generates more electric power than
did all the electric power plants in tsarist
Russia.
Dams have been built on the River Svir,
near Leningrad, wher,- a powerful hydro-
electric power plant is now operating.
Another hydro-electric power plant will be
built here during the Third Five-Year
Plan period.
In Karelia, cutting through granite hills
and virgin forest, a canal, 141 miles in
length, was built in twenty months. This
canal links the White Sea with the Baltic
Sea.
Another feat of engineering, but far more
complicated, was the huilding of the Mos-
cow-Volga Canal. Two hundred large works
had to be built along its route of 79.5 miles.
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These works include eleven locks, eight
earth filled dams, seven spillways, six
floodgates, five pumping stations, eight
hydro-electric power stations, seven railway
bridges and twelve bridges for other traffic.
The whole scheme was completed in four
years.
In the building of the canal 170 excava-
tors were employed, hundreds of locomo-
tives, motor-shunters, concrete mixers, hy-
dro-monitors, thousands of conveyors and
electric engines. Volga River water now
washes the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow.
Formerly the Moscow River was very shal-
low and hardly suitable for river craft.
Now it has been linked up with the great
Volga thoroughfare. The water course from
the capital to Leningrad has been reduced by
685 miles and the distance to Gorky?by
68 miles. The largest vessels can now sail the
canal which can handle annually some
15,000,000 tons of cargo in any given di-
rection.
The amount of capital invested in water
transport is increasing with every year.
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Loading the contents of a 5-ton truck according
to stevedore IIL Akin's method
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Under the First Five-Year Plan 1,258,000,000
rubles were assigned to this _branch of the
national economy. The sum appropriated
under the Second Five-Year Plan was
2,852,000,000 rubles. These sums were ex-
pended on building a modern, technically
well-equipped fleet of river and ocean going
vessels, on refitfing exist ing vessels, on the
construction of new ports and reconstruct-
ing existing ports. New ,hipbuilding yards
and dockyards were built in various parts
of the country, while nttw equipment was
installed in the existing yards, thus placing
them on an equal footing with the up-to-
date enterprises.
The Soviet salvage organization, Epron,
has been doing excellent work these last
fifteen years in raising shipwrecked or
sunk vessels from the beds of seas, rivers
and lakes. Many a vessel that was sent to
the bottom by the foreign invaders during
the Civil War has been given a new lease
of life due to the efficient work of Epron
and is now ploughing the rivers and seas
under the flag of its Socialist country.
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The fleet of the Soviet merchant marine is
rapidly increasing in size thanks to the
new vessels that have been built for it by
the home yards. Many vessels were also or-
dered to be built or purchased abroad. The
tonnage of the Soviet merchant marine has
increased nearly three and a half times be-
tween 1923 and 1937. These vessels differ
radically from the type of vessel formerly
in use. In 1914 the deadweight of a sea-
going vessel averaged 1,150 tons. At pres-
ent the average deadweight is around
3,000 tons.
The Soviet Government has created a
large and modern tanker fleet in the Caspian
and Black Seas. The fleet of Soviet icebreak-
ers is the largest and most powerful in the
world. In the winter months these vessels
ensure a free passageway for ships entering
and leaving all icebound ports and also
maintain a regular service between Mur-
mansk and Vladivostok along the Great
Northern Sea Route.
The Soviet river flotilla is practically
new. During the two Five-Year Plan pe-
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nods, i.e., 1928-37, the carrying capa-
city of the fleet of river steamers and motor
ships has almost doubled, while that of
barges has trebled.
Many new vessels have been added to
the river transport service. These include
steamers and motor ships ranging from 150
to 1,200 h.p., cargo-passenger boats from
200 to 800 h.p., steamers having a dead-
weight of from 1,750 to 3,000 tons, refri-
gerators and numerous motor boats. Many
new barges have been built for carrying oil
in bulk and dry goods with a carrying ca-
pacity of from 1,000 to 4,000 tons. The Mos-
cow-Volga Canal maintains its own fleet of
comfortable passenger motor ships of from
280 to 700 h.p. The fleet of small draft
motor boats for the lesser rivers is constantly
growing.
This has considerably enhanced river and
sea shipments. In comparison with the pre-
war period the cargo carried by the Soviet
water transport system during the Second
Five-Year Plan period has increased 300
per cent. The freighi turnover of the
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Soviet water transport system aggregated
43,000,000,000 ton-miles in 1937.
In 1924 the freight turnover of sea-going
vessels aggregated 3,900,000 tons. In 1937
it already exceeded 29,000,000 tons. Dur-
ing the last ten years shipments of timber
have increased eleven times. In 1938 some
19,000,000 tons of oil were shipped by So-
viet tankers.
Me Soviet merchant marine has consider-
ably increased its relative standing in the
import and export trade. In 1929 Soviet
vessels carried 10.3 per cent of the country's
foreign trade. By 1936 this had already
grown to 35.9 per cent.
The Soviet flag can now be met in every
port of the world awl along all the main
ocean and sea routes. Regular sailings arc
maintained between the U.S.S.R. and the
U.S. A.
The importance of the water transport
service as a means of conveying passengers
borne out by the fact that in 1938 the
fleet of Soviet river steamers alone carried
some 67,000,000 passengers.
lb
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Chief Engineer Shvyreva (right) and Yevdoki-
mov, Superintendent (rf River Section, inspect-
ing suspension conveyor line
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During the last few years almost all the
previously existing seaports and river
wharves have been thnroughly reconstructed
and brought up to date. Ports like Lenin-
grad, Odessa, Novormsisk, Murmansk, Ni-
kolayev, Poti, Mariupol, Baku, Makhach-
Kala, Vladivostok and Archangel have been
fitted out with new moorings, portal cranes
and other modern port facilities, not to
mention elevators and cold storage plants.
New ports have come into being such as:
Onega, Soroka, Kandalaksha, Igarka, Nar-
yan-Mar, Nogayevo, Kara-Bogaz-Gol, Port
Ilyich and Otchenttehiry.
Antiquated river wharves and moorings
have been rebuilt and fitted out with new
and up-to-date equipment. Such river ports
as Gorky, Stalingrad, Kiev, Dniepropet-
rovsk, Astrakhan, Bostov-on-Don, Perm,
Novosibirsk, Archanocl, Moscow and Za-
porozhye have changed beyond all recogni-
tion. Of the new river ports, Lenin Har-
bor on the Dnieper River, in the vicinity
of the hydro-electric power station, deserves
particular mention.
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The new mechanical appliances with
which the ports and harbors have been
fitted have made the 'work of the stevedore
much easier. In 19313 fifty per cent of all
river vessels were loaded by mechanical
means. As a result the labor productivity
of the stevedores increased many times over.
The new machinery installed in the ports
and harbors has promoted new vocations:
crane .operators., conveyor belt operators,
engine.rnen, electrician=, chauffeurs, mechan-
ical engineers now supplant the long-
shoremen of former dais. Engineers, techni-
cians and executive personnel for the river
and sea transport service are being trained
by the Academy of the Water Transport
System, three engineering colleges, 29 tech-
nical training schools and 20 workers' col-
leges. The number of people enrolled in
these schools and colleges totals 32,000.
Apart from these educational establish-
ments 60 schools are giving special voca-
tional training to juveniles. A large net-
work of central and local courses for Sta-
khanovites are training .or raising the quali-
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fications of machine operators, foremen,
stevedores, dispatchers and wharf superin-
tendents.
With machinery as an auxiliary, the wa-
ter transport workers are improving this
machinery, making it work better, quicker,
in a word, squeezing out of it all that is
possible.
During the 1936 nLvigation season I was
working in the coal harbor of the Kiev
port. The loading was done by means of a
"Yanvarets" conveyor belt. The loading
capacity for this type of conveyor .was
fixed at 32 tons per hour. But owing to"var-
ions slight defects A was never possible
to load more than 28 tons. 1 made a care-
ful study of the conveyor belt. A simple in-
novation, proposed by me, had an immediate
effect. The brigade to which I belonged be-
gan to fulfill the scheduled rate 100 per
cent. Further improvements which I in-
troduced enabled us to increase the coal
loadings to 40 tons per hour. Naturally,
our earnings increased accordingly. We
began to make 6.35 rubles an hour.
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Continuing the work I had begun of
improving the conveyor belt, I succeeded
in bringing our loadings up to 50 tons of
coal an hour. The conveyor belt hardly
manat.,red to cope with the amount of coal
the men were shovelling into the loading
funnel. What I then did was to increase
the speed of the conveyor belt from 2.95 feet
per second to 3.9 feet. change the sheaves
and lengthen the funnel. The result was
that our loadings again began to grow?as
much as 70-80 tons per hour.
I was bent, however, on improving this.
I proposed a drive for 100 tons an hour.
Doubting Thomases did not believe that
this was possible. But I was convinced that
it was. All that had to be done was to speed
up the conveyor belt, install a more powerful
motor and enlarge the loading funnel so
that it would he possible to shovel coal into
it from three sides instead of one.
The day after this innovation was in-
troduced the loadings jumped up to 120 tons
per hour, and in the presence of a special
commission sent to test my innovation the
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result shown was 147 tons. Small craft
which usually took about 40-50 tons of
coal were now loaded inside half an hour.
I then began to teL my innovation with
sand loadings. Success was assured from
the very outset. Loadings jumped up to
290 tons per hour.
Our earnings also showed a considerable
increase. Although we were making record
loadings we were not in the least tired and
would go home from work happy and jolly.
The press began to take an interest in
our work. At first items began to appear in
the paper published by the port authorities.
Then articles began to be published in the
Kiev papers and finally in the newspapers
of the capital. In the Soviet Union inven-
tions like mine, or for that matter any
scheme for rationalizing industry, serving
to make it more productive, are not the
private trade secret of any individual or
enterprise. They are immediately made
public and introduced all over the country.
The Stakhanovites of the Dniepropetrovsk
port asked us to give them the details about
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our innovations. A brigade of Kiev steve-
dore; immediately left for Dniepropetrovsk
to demonstrate our methods to the local
stevedores. After this the Kiev stevedores
challenged the Dniepropetrovsk men to a
Socialist competition.
We were bent on showing record results.
We fixed up two additional conveyors of
the "Samarets" type and linked them up
with the main line. This enabled us to
feed the main conveyor right from the coal
dumps. The loadings jumped to the record
ligure of 214 tons per hour.
At a rally of inventors which was held in
Moscow in the winter of 1936 I undertook
In increase the productivity of my conveyor
to 300 tons per hour. The actual results,
however, during the 1937 navigation season
were far beyond my fondest hopes. Our
loadings rose to 382 tons per hour.
In the autumn of 1937, together with a
group of Kiev stevedores, I was sent to
study at the Leningrad Water Transport
Academy. The daytime I devoted to study,
but at night I worked out the details of a
24
INE.Z
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plan for bringing loadings up to 500 tons
per hour.
In the spring of 1938 I was in Dniepro-
petrovsk. Last year's record established by
my brigade had already been topped by
another brigade--their loadings being 392
tons. I decided to give a hand to the brigade
that was lagging most behind. In a short
while this brigade, which had always shown
the poorest results, was loading 435 tons,
beating the records set by the best brigades.
A few days later my plan of 500 tons per
hour became a reality?in one hour my
brigade loaded 504 tons of coal.
The very next day another brigade also
topped the 500 ton mark, loading 500 tons
of salt. But soon this high level was left
behind. My brigade began loading 630 tons
per hour. In other words we were fulfilling
20 normal loading quotas. The conveyor
was moving at the rate of 11.4 feet per
second. Other brigades were also showing
good results.
By the end of 1938 even this high level
had been surpassed. Our loadings were now
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1,059 tons of coal an hour. In 1939 I have
pledged myself to bring up the coal loadings
on the existing equipment to 2,000 tons
an hour.
Every port, every wharf has its own
Stakbanovites, its own inventors, its own
rationalizers. The names of Pctrash and
Henkin, Stakhanovite stevedore men from
the port of Odessa, are familiar all over the
Soviet Union. At the present moment Pet-
rash has been promoted to superintendent
of one of the largest ports in the country?
the port of Baku. Henkin, who is a foreman
stevedore, was elected a member of the
Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
Captain Tchadayev, master of the Stepan
Rain, was the first to begin towing larger
caravans of barges. IIi vessel began towing
barges loaded with 40,000 tons of oil.
Captain Kalmykov increased the number of
barges attached to his tug boat to 22 units.
In every basin of the Soviet Union
people began to emulate the example set
by Captains Tehada)cv and Kalmykov.
They are raising the productivity of labor
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to unprecedented heights, showing real feats
of labor heroism. Many of them have been
awarded the highest distinctions in the
Soviet Union for thrir outstanding work.
Women too hold an honorable place in
the water transport system. Ann Schetina,
captain of an ocean-going vessel, Olga
Dobychina, pilot, arc but two in a whole
list of names known all over the country.
The progress made by the water transport
system is accompanied by an improvement
in the well-being of the water transport
workers. This applies not only to wages but
also to the cultural level of the transport
workers. The following figures give an idea
of how average wages have increased.
AVERAGE ANNUAL WAGES OF WATER TRANSPORT
WOR KERS
(in rubles)
1932
1937
River-going vessels: crew
1,332
3,461
long,horenien
1,825
3,763
Sea-going vessels: crew
2,341
5,678
loog,horemen
1,739
3,934
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Two-third, of all the workers in the ship-
building and repairing yards are on a seven-
hour shift. The rest are on an eight-hour
shift, with the exception of stokers, boiler-
men and all categories of hazardous trades,
who arc on a six-hour shift.
Clubs, libraries, theaters, moving picture
theaters, stadiums, sports grounds and yacht
clubs are at the disposal of the transport
workers and their families. The Water
Transport Workers' Union has splendid rest
homes and sanatoriums in some of the most
beautiful spots in the Crimea and the
Caucasus. These annually accommodate
some 50,000 people.
Before the Revolution the water transport
system could boast of only 12 second-rate
hospitals. By the middle of 1937, 127 hos-
pitals, 270 clinics and dispensaries, 268 first
aid stations (located directly in the yards,
wharves, etc.), 247 feldsher stations, 42
health centers for children were at the ser-
vice of the water transport workers.
While the adults are busy at work loading,
manning, building or repairing vessels
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their children are looked after in 400 kin-
dergartens. The best of everything is ensured
to the children, who are under the constant
observation of trained nurses and doctors
and experienced pedagogues. In the spacious
rooms and playgrounds of these kindergar-
tens the children find interesting pastimes
in collective games, music, singing and
drawing. In the summer time the kinder-
gartens leave for the countryside.
Under the Third Five-Year Plan (1938-42)
the water transport system will play a still
more important role in the economic life
of the Soviet Union, The fleet of river and
sea vessels will be considerably improved
from the technical standpoint and will be
supplemented by new and still better vessels.
The plan provides for the construction of
new ship-building yards. The freight turn-
over of river transport is planned at
36,000,000,000 ton-miles for 1942 and that
of sea transport at 32,000,000,000 ton-miles.
New water arteries are to be opened during
this Five-Year Plan period and these will
increase the length of the inland waterways
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from 63,342 miles (the total length at the
beginning of 1938) to 76,015 miles.
Of tbe Volga projects the Uglich develop-
ment and Rybinsk development will begin
to function during this period, while the
year 1942 will sec the completion of the
Rybinsk and Uglich reservoirs. This will
increase the depth of the river between
Rybinsk and Ivankevo from 4 feet to
16.5 feet. At Kuihyshev work is under way
on the largest hydraulic engineering scheme
i it the world?two hydro-electric power
plant of an aggregate rapacity of 3,400,000
kilowatts. The dams here will raise the
level of the river for a stretch of 1,242 miles
and this will allow the passage of ocean-
going vessels, provide cheap power to
factories and works along the Volga, the
South Urals and Moscow, besides irrigating
7.410,000 acres of arid land.
The general plan for the reconstruction of
the water arteries of the U.S.S.R. provides
for the construction of eight hydraulic
engineering development schemes on the
Volga River alone, including the three now
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under construction. Preliminary work has
already begun on the Kama River develop-
ment scheme near Solikamsk, in the Urals,
one of the four projects that will be built on
this river. Powerful hydraulic engineering
projects will also be built on another tribu-
tary of the Volga?the River Oka. A canal
at Stalingrad will link up the Volga and
the- Don rivers. This will give the Volga
an outlet to the open sea, connecting it
with the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
With the completion of the Volga-Don Canal,
Moscow will become a port of five seas.
The reconstruction of the Volga-Baltic
waterway will also be undertaken during
this period and will transform this route into
a deep watercourse 'finking up the Volga
with the White Sea and the Baltic
Sea.
The Kama-Pechora-Vychegda watercourse
will link the Volga c',ith the rivers of the
North giving it an out let to the Arctic.
By the end of the Third Five-Year Plan
period the Northern Sea Route from Mur-
mansk to Vladivostok will function as a
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normal route ensuring regular scheduled
shipments to and from the Far East.
The Soviet merchant marine, furnished
with new, first-class vessels, will ensure
still cheaper and quicker shipment of raw
materials for the needs of industry, agricul-
tural produce, manufactured goods and con-
sumers' goods produced by Soviet works and
mills, along the waterways of the U.S.S.R.
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C
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-7.
? 1.
i .74
1 ?
1-1
X
MACHINE
ANA-PAC-COP
STATIONS
eV A.OSK1 N
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MACHINE
"D TRACTOR
STATIONS
By A. OSKIN
ORDER OF LENIN
HARVESTER-COMBINE OPERATOR
MEMBER OF THE SUPREME SOVIET
OF THE U.S.S.R.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW 1939
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RUST: 13. SCHWARTZ
PRINTED IN THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
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is November 8, 1917, one day after
the establishment of Soviet power
in Russia, the Council of People's
Commissar, issued its decree on
the land.
Under this law priN ate property in land
was abolished for all lime and the land was
declared state property, the property of the
people. More than 370,000,000 acres of land
formerly comprising the estates of the landed
proprietors, the mon;;Aeries and the royal
family were added to the peasants' holdings.
The Soviet Constitution declares:
"The land occupied by collective farms
is secured to them for their use free of
charge and for an unlimited time, that is,
in perpetuity." (Article 8.)
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. . . The Nears passed. The Soviet Union
completed two Five-l'ear Plans of economic
development. In th, space of ten years
(1929-1938) large-scale industry in the
U.S.S.R. increased its output by almost
400 per cent. A new arrav of mighty indus-
trial plants, mills and factories arose
throughout the country.
The Rostov Agricultural Machinery Plant
alone produces more machines per year than
were produced by all the agricultural ma-
chinery plants of tsarist Russia.
Great tractor work:, were built at Stalin-
grad and Chelyabins.k. plants for the pro-
duction of harvester combines were opened
at Saratov. Zaporozhiye and Rostov. In
machine building and tractor production the
U.S.S.R. advanced to first place in Europe
and second in the world while in output of
harvester combines it rose to first place in
the world.
Thanks to large-scale socialist industry
the Soviet Inion was able to reorganize
agriculture on completely new lines. By
now. 18.800,000 peasant households, 93,5 per
6
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cent of the total number, had joined col-
lective farms. The Soviet government sup-
plied the collective farms with hundreds of
thousands of tractors and harvester combines,
a vast number of motor i rucks, tractor-drawn
farm implements and other machines.
This equipment, the last word in technical
progress, is concentrated in the Machine and
Tractor Stations (M.T.S.), which have be-
come the principal state enterprises in the
countryside, servicing over 250,000,000 acres
of collective farm land.
In 1930 the U.S.S.R. had 158 Machine
and Tractor Stations. By the beginning of
1939 their number had increased to 6,350,
a great network extending from the White
Sea to the Black from the Western
frontiers to the Far East. in 1938, the
Machine and Tractor Stations serving the
collective farms had 130,000 harvester com-
bines, 160,000 motor truck, 105,000 thresh-
ing machines and 394.500 powerful tractors,
and their number is ,teadily increasing. In
addition there are hundreds of thousands of
other machines and mechanical appliances
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in the Machine and Tractor Stations as well
as a large number of well-equipped repair
shops.
The Machine and Tractor Stations are fin-
anced by the state, and have no farms of
their own. In 1938 alone the state assigned
7,000,000,000 rubles to the Machine and
Tractor Stations. The work of each M.T.S. is
planned in conformity with the work of the
collective farms which it serves.
The stations work on the basis of a stan-
dard contract with the collective farms in
their area.
Under this standard contract, which is
legally binding, the particular M.T.S. un-
dertakes to do certain work of a definite
quality by a definite date in the given
collective farm. On the other hand, the col-
lective farm has specific agrotechnieal and
other duties to perform. It must do part of
the work, mainly of an auxiliary nature, and
provide draft animals for hauling supplies
or fuel for the tractors, and other purposes.
Through the Machine and Tractor Stations
the state plans the process of production
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0-900001.006900t19 I.
Living-Quarters and Tractor Park for one of the Brigades of Drivers
Sent Out from the Protochnaya M.T.S. (near Slavyansk, Krasnodar
Territory)
0-900001.006900t19 I.
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and the introduction it the latest scientific
farming methods on a wide scale, thus in-
suring big harvests regularly.
The work performed by the Machine and
Tractor Stations is paid for in kind by the
collective farms according to the rate fixed
for each class of work. Thus, for threshing,
the collective farm gives the M.T.S. from
4 to 6 per cent of the grain threshed by
M.T.S. threshers.
The Machine and Tractor Stations render
the entire proceeds to the state.
The Machine and Tractor Stations are well
staffed with engineer. mechanics, mechanics, agronom-
ists, expert bookkeepers and accountants,
land reclamation experts, hydraulic engin-
eers and other trained men. Here we might
add that the Machin,' and Tractor Stations
are bound by contract to train a regular
contingent of the ? ollective farmers for
skilled work.
During eleven months in 1938 the amount
of tractoring performed in the collective
farms by the Machine and Tractor Stations
-,ame to the staggering figure of 481,150,000
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acres of conventional ploughing.* Collec-
tive farm harvests have increased corres-
pondingly. In tsarist Russia the harvest of
grain crops never exceeded 80,000,000 tons,
while in 1937 the grain harvest in the
U.S.S.R. reached 111.500,000 tons.
Before the revolution the cultivation of
tea, citrus fruits, soy beans, kenaf, hemp,
sesame, and rubber plants was unknown in
the Russian countryside. Now, with the
help of the Machine and Tractor Stations
the collective farms are making splendid
progress in the cultivation of these and
many other plants.
The concentration of machines in the
Machine and Tractor Stations and the merg-
ing of the peasant farms into collective
farms controlling vast areas of land have
made it possible for machinery to be used
in agriculture to the utmost advantage.
In 1938 the average area farmed per
M.T.S. tractor was 1,015 acres.
Le., ploughing plus all forms of tractor work
(sowing, harvesting, etc j.
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Ap
005-0
Collective-Farmers Attending Class at the M.T.S.
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Stakhanov tractor drivers cultivate as
much as 5,000 acres w ith wheel tractors and
up to 12,500 acres with caterpillar tractors.
The tractors on the collective farm fields do
not work singly, but in teams consisting of
a number of tractors with the requisite out-
fit of appliances and agricultural machines.
The work of these teams is directed by
mechanics and agronomists. Skilled men
from the M.T.S. repair shops see to it that
the machines are kept in good order. The
M.T.S. tractor teams are attached to a
definite collective farm for the whole season
to complete all the work undertaken in the
contract.
Through the Machine and Tractor Stations
the collective farms are also served with
harvester combines which have become
the principal harvesting machines in the
U.S.S.R. harvesting about one-half of the
total collective farm area.
In one season, harvester combine operator
Bonn of the Steinhardt Machine and Tractor
Station, in the Krasnodar Territory, har-
vested 4,940 acres of land under cereals, an
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average of 185 acres a day. 2,950 tons of
grain passed through his bunker.
Thanks to such thorough mechanization,
farm jobs take much less time than for-
merly, and the collective farmers are able
to get the sowing and harvesting done
quickly without losses.
Prokhorov and Susopatieva of the Red
October Collective Farm, Vozhgal District,
Kirov Region tell us what a difference the
Machine and Tractor Station have made.
"In the old days the peasants had to sweat
blood for every pearl of grain. We got from
300 to 375 pounds from the acre. Now we
have the Machine and Tractor Station to
help us. In 11/2 hrnirs a tractor ploughs
21/2 acres, and a combine harvester harvests
21/2'acres in half an hour. The yield per acre
has increased to 1,500 and 3,000 pounds."
The figures for 1937 show that collective
farm labour is six times more productive
than was farm labor in tsarist Russia. Up-to-
date mechanization i4 making agricultural
labour more and more like industrial labor.
The collective ferias have their own
16
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Tractor Ploughing in a Collective Farm
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electric power stations, clubs, theaters and
moving picture house 4, laboratories, schools,
nurseries, kindergari ens, hospitals, athletic
fields and radio centers. Farm life is rapidly
coming up to urban standards.
Thousands of peasants' sons and daughters
are studying in universities. Last year alone
agricultural colleges gave the Machine and
Tractor Stations and collective farms 12,732
experts in agronomy, veterinary science,
scientific animal husbandry, irrigation, hy-
draulic land reclamation, mechanics and
surveying. Every year about a million per-
sons take courses in mechanics.
In the village of Moskovskoye, Izobilensk
District, Orjonikidze Territory, there are
five schools, with a total attendance of
1,600 children and a teaching staff of 43.
There are six stores, a hospital, a clinic,
a drug store, a club with a library, a central
school for collective farmers from the sur-
rounding districts and, of course, a Machine
and Tractor Station -the industrial center
of the new, collectiv,: farm village.
The number of professional people in
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Moskovskoye is constantly increasing. Two
local peasants have become professors, sev-
en?doctors, thirty-six--teachers, twelve--
agronomists, eight?engineers, and ten hold
commissions in the army. Before the advent
of collectivization the two brothers, Michael
and Alexei Tolin worked as farm hands for
kaiaks. Now Michael is a colonel in the Red
Army and Alexei is a doctor. Ivan Chaiko,
formerly a poor peasant, is now a
scientist and lectures at a college in
Leningrad.
Or take another village, Koltsovka, Vur-
narsk District, Chuvash Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic. Not so long ago the
chairman of the local collective farm. was
Korotkov. He proved to be a capable exe-
cutive and was promoted to a higher post.
Now he is the People's Commissar of Agri-
culture of the Chuvash Republic.
There are many villages like Moskovskoye
and Koltsovka in the U.S.S.R. Collective
farmers become Peopl..'s Commissars, trac-
tor drivers become academicians, milkmaids
become members of the government. Such
20
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el ase 2002108115 : CI -RDP83 5R 05
Harvester Combines at the Romadanovo M.T.S.
(Mordov
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are the opportunities open to all in the col-
lective farm villages.
In the old days there was no mass training
of technical personnel for work in the
countryside, there were no schools for young
talent like the machine and tractor stations
which are now training skilled labor for
our socialist farms. New figures have appear-
ed on the rural scene, people with semi-
industrial professions formerly unheard of in
the countryside. By the most modest esti-
mates the Soviet countryside has 1,500,000
tractor drivers and harvester combine oper-
ators, 124,000 truck drivers, 240,000 col-
lective farm chairmen, over 535,000 field
foremen and approximatel3, 264,000 stock-
farm managers and foremen.
This vast army of skilled people is work-
ing hard to increase the productivity of
farm labor. In its front ranks are the Sta-
khanovites, people who know their work to
perfection, people who have introduced
new methods and efficient organization
of work.
Take the Stakhanovites of the Raganovich
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M.T.S. in the Krasnodar Territory. At this
station, which employs 25 tractor trams,
there are 200 tractor drivers. A hundred
and forty-eight of them MO their assign-
ments 200 per cent and over. Five of these
teams consist entirely of Stakhanovites.
Each tractor driver in these teams ploughs 18
acres with three-coulter plows to a depth of
7.9 inehcs. And the asAignment is 8.6 acres.
The assignment for harrowing is 98 acres
but these tractor drivers do 195.5 acres.
The assignment for scarifying is 42 acres:
they do 138.8 acres. 'The days' assignment
for combine-harvest in!, is from 19 to 22 acres.
Soni.' of our Stakhanu% ite combine Operators
harvest 1,730 acres of grain, in the 22 days
of the harvesting season.
Thousands of Soviet combine operators har-
vest from 2,500 to 5,000 acres in one season.
The Stakhanov movement in the coun-
tryside is advancing by leaps and hounds.
Millions of peasant families receive from
16 to 25 and more tons of grain a year in
their collective farms. In addition to this
income in kind the collective farmers re-
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ceive cash. Exceptionally large money in-
comes are received by the collective farmers
in the cotton, flax, stock-raising, sugar
beet-growing and citrus fruit districts.
Before the advent of collectivization,
Gerassimov, now a member of the Dimitrov
Collective Farm in the Narimanov District,
Stalingrad Region was a poor man. In the
collective farm he became an expert farmer,
a Stakhanovite. In 1938 his share of the
collective farm income was 14,000 rubles
plus several tons of grain, vegetables and
other produce.
In 1938 in the Khanlat District of the
Azerbaijan S.S.R. the Tbaelman Collective
Farm, consisting of Germans, received
4,450,000 rubles for it3 produce. The family
of Robert Schmidt received 7,500 rubles
in cash and 4,700 rubles worth of farm
produce. In 1938 this collective farm spent
778,000 rubles on building extensions and
cultural service for the collective farmers.
There are tens of thousands of collective
farms like this one in the U.S.S.R.
In 1938, with my brother Arkhip, a com-
25
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bine operator like myself I harvested the
collective farms in the Ilek District of the
Chkalov Region. In 11 days the two of us
together harvested 12,933 acres. Our earnings
came to 42,315 rubh:-.
More and more colle,tive farms arc getting
the benefit of M.T.S. ,ervice, and increasing
their incomes beyond the million ruble
mark. In the Nikolaev Region in the
Ukraine 35 collective farms have become
millionaire farms. In the Terniuk District,
Krasnodar Region 20 collective farms each
receive incomes of over a million rubles.
In the Fergbana Region, Uzbek S.S.R. in
1938 the number of millionaire collective
farms rose to 320.
Under the collectix e farm system life in
the villages of the U.S.S.R. has become
prosperous and cultured. Socialist industry
and collectivized agriculture complement
each other, each ai-sisting the other to
attain further progre!,
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Ap INDUSINAr
p9bitolikS,91,5 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 5 -
IN THE SOVIET REPUBLICS
OF THE
NON-RUSSIAN NATIONALITIES
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"A1
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INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
IN THE
SOVIET REPUBLICS
OF THE NON-RUSSIAN
NATIONALITIES
BY M. PAPYAN
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE PRESIDIUM OF THE
SUPREME SOVIET OF THE U.S.S.R.
CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE
ARMENIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW 1939
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MORE than three-quarters of the entire
industry of tsarist Russia was concentrated
in its central provinces, in the Ukraine and
in the Baku oil district.
The non-Russian borderlands of the em-
pire were looked upon by Russian and
foreign capitalists alike as nothing more
than sources of raw material and markets
for the sale of manufactured goods.
When it came into power, the Soviet Gov-
eminent abolished the regime of national
oppression and established the equality of
all nationalities. To give effect to this
national policy, it haa to put an end, in
the shortest possible time, to the economic
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and cultural backuardness of the nation-
alities formerly oppressed by tsarism.
Accordingly, the Communist Party and
the Soviet Governnient designed and en-
acted a series of measures which enabled
the districts inhabited by the backward
nationalities to overtake the more devel-
oped central region,-; of Russia.
Many industrialization measures were in-
cluded. During the first two Five-Year Plan
periods (1928-37) the former "borderlands"
of the country witnessed the construc-
tion of numerous industrial establishments
and the growth of large forces of workers
and professional people of native stock.
Without all this, national equality would
be but a sham, an empty, meaningless
phrase.
The republics of the non-Russian nation-
alities comprised in the U.S,S.R. have
fundamentally reorganized their national
economy and have attained gigantic in-
dustrial expansion. From agrarian adjuncts
serving as raw material bases for the in-
dustries of Russia proper, they have been
6
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Lead Works of the Bidder metallurgical plant
in KazAhstan
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turned into mighty centers of Socialist
industry. Vital centers of the iron and steel,
coal, oil, machine-bii ailing and electric
power industries have sprung up in the
Soviet East.
There is no republic or region of a non-
Russian nationality in the U.S.S.R. that
has not founded its own industry during
the last ten years. This is equally true of
both the large and the small republics
and regions.
Let us, for example, consider the Bash-
kirian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Repub-
lic, whose dimensions are ,relatively small.
The funds invested in the national economy
of Bashkiria in 1932 alone equaled the
total sum invested in this region by tsar-
ist Russia in half a century. During the
Second Five-Year Plan period (1933-37)
capital investments in the national econ-
omy of this republic exceeded 1,000,000,000
rubles. Bashkiria, which before the Revo-
lution had practically no industrial enter-
prises at all, has now built up scores of
new factories, including the well-known
9
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Ufa Motor Works and an oil cracking plant.
The Bcloretsk and llaimak Works have
been totally reconstructed and transformed
into modern enterprises. This republic has
also been found to contain oil, and the
lshimbai and Tuimaz). oil fields are already
being successfully op4rated.
Let us now turn to another republic?
Kazakhstan?one of the eleven constituent
republics of the Soviet Union. This is a
vast country, occupying a territory of
1,060,000 sq. miles, and is exceedingly
rich in valuable minerals. It includes the
huge Emba oil fields. second in size to the
Baku fields. Its copper deposits consti-
tute 60 per cent, and nickel deposits 50
per cent of the total known deposits in
the U.S.S.R. Kazakhstan also has huge
coal deposits. Recent prospecting revealed
immonse phosphorite &posits and new chro-
mite beds. They are among the richest in
the world. The metal content of the Altai
gold, silver, zinc and copper ores is of the
highest.
Yet, until the Revolution, all these
10
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Medaanized loading of inanguineso at the Chiatura
mines in Georgia
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riches lay buried in the ground untouched.
Kazakhstan was a backward region whose
nomad population engaged almost exclu-
sively in rather primitive cattle breeding.
Meat and leather were the sole products
they provided for Russia's central regions.
There were no industrial enterprises of
any account, no railroads and no telegraph
or telephone service.
Today the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Repub-
lic represents a land of new constructions.
A large coal industry has been created here,
with Karaganda as its center. Numerous
oil fields are being exploited, the erection
of the gigantic Balkhash copper smelting
works has been completed, the Ridder
Lead Works has been entirely reconstructed,
and a huge lead factory, the giant of the
Soviet Union's lead industry, has been
erected at Chimkent, while several new
chemical and other works have been added
to the republic's industrial plant.
The tempestuous rate of development of
the republic's industries may be judged
by the fact that timing the years of the
13
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Second Five-Year Plan lead smelting in
Kazakhstan increased twelve-fold and in
1937 constituted 75.3 per cent of the total
lead smelted in the Soviet Union, as against
30.2 per cent in 1932.
A roadless country in the past, Kazakh-
stan under Soviet ink has been covered
with a whole network of overland commu-
nication lines, including numerous rail-
roads whose trackage totals 4,160 miles,
Wade 3,700 miles o f waterways have been
made available fur mivigation.
Bordering on Kazakhstan is Uzbekistan,
one of the Soviet Socialist Republics situ-
ated in Central Asia. In the past, this re-
public, like all the other borderlands in-
habited by non-Ru-:-,ian peoples, was a
tsarist colony. It supplied the central re-
gions of the empire ,.%ith cotton, which the
tsarist authorities did not allow to be
woven or even spun in the regions which
produced it. Today, Uzbekistan has a num-
ber of big textile mills. Special mention
must he made of the hii,4e plant in Tashkent,
the republic's capital, which is equipped
14
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9
0
0
0
0
Approved Fo
The Stalin Textile Mills 'a, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
0-
0-
0-900001.006900t191400-CMCIU-VIO : 91./80/ZOOZ aseeieu JOd peACLIddV
with 112,000 spindles and 3,246 looms. A
second section of this plant is now under
construction, upon completion of which the
plant will have in operation 211,000 spindles
and 6,952 looms. Many electric power sta-
tions, plants manufacturing agricultural
machinery and implements, silk reeling
mills, clothing factories and other indus-
trial establishments have also been built
in Uzbekistan. Not far from Tashkent, on
the banks of the Chirchik Iliver, a combined
plant producing electricity and chemical
products is now under construction. It
consists of a hydro-electric power station
with a capacity of 270,000 kilowatts, which
will supply cheap energy to the industrial
establishments of Tashkent, and of a fer-
tilizer factory whose products will go to
enrich the republic's cotton fields.
The industrial development of Uzbekistan
has led to a considerable increase in the
number of the republic's native workers
and professionals. Over 100,000 people
are now employed in its large-scale industries
and on construction. More than half of these
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are skilled and semi-skilled Uzbek workers.
An Uzbek technical intelligentsia?tech-
nicians and engineers has also come into
existence.
Similar records of achievements may be
exhibited by the other non-Russian nation-
alities of the U.S.S.R. Industry is rapidly
expanding not only in those republics
which formerly were agrarian colonies pure
and simple, but also in Azerbaijan and
the Ukraine, which el, en before the Revo-
lution had quite a few industrial establish-
ments.
In Azerbaijan, the old Baku oil industry,
dating back to pre-rel, cdutitmary days, has
been entirely reorganized. As a result, the an-
nual oil yield has increased 3 times in com-
parison with 1913, the gas yield 69 times
and the production ol gasoline 48 times.
In recent years a number of new oil fields
have been prospected and are now exten-
sively exploited. In 1938 the new fields
and the new wells on the old fields account-
ed for 83 per cent of flie total oil output.
The Donetz coal basin, the chief pur-
19
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veyor of coal for the whole country before
the Revolution, is located in the Ukraine.
Now, with the development of the Kuz-
net,k coal fields in Siberia, the Karaganda
coal fields in Kazakhstan and local coal
fields in Central A-ia, Georgia, the Far
East and in other di,tricts, the Donctz ba-
sin 'a proportionate share in the Soviet
Union's output of coal has, naturally, di-
minished. However, as far as absolute fig-
ures go, the mining of coal in the Donetz
basin is increasing from year to year and
has inure than tripled in comparison with
pre-war times. TodaN, the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic produces twice as much
coal as all of Poland.
The Ukraine also had an iron and steel
industry before the Revolution. This, too,
has been thoroughly reconstructed during
the years of the Soviet rule. In place of
the old blast and open-hearth furnaces and
of the old rolling mills, new, thoroughly
modernized equipment has been installed.
Many first-class new works, such as the
Zaporozhye Steel IT ill, the Azov Steel
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The new mountain highway leading to the Aldan
gold fields Yakutia
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Mill, the Krivoy Rog plant and others,
have been erected. During the years of the
Second Five-Year Plan alone (1933-37), the
Ukraine's output of pig iron was more than
doubled. One plant? the Kirov iron and
steel mill in Makeyevka?produces twice as
much pig iron as all the iron and steel
mills in Poland put together. During this
same period the production of steel in the
Ukraine almost tripled. Ukrainian mills pro-
duce as much steel annually as Japan,
Italy and Poland put together. In com-
parison with 1913, the machine-building
industry in the Ukraine has grown thirty-
fold and the generation of electric power
18.5-fold. The Lenin Hydro-Electric Power
Station on the Dnieper, built under Soviet
rule, alone supplies more electric power
than did all the power houses of tsarist
Russia in the aggregate.
The author of these lines is an Armenian,
and it is therefore only natural that he
should want to illustrate the industrial ex-
pansion in the republics of the non-Russian
nationalities by the example of Armenia.
23
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Until 1914 the industry of Armenia, in
the main an agrarian country, v,?as extremely
backward and even primitive. Its few fac-
tories were hardly more than handicraft
shops.
Most developed at that time were the
copper industry, the production of alcoholic
beverages, and cotton ginning by handi-
craft methods.
The inexhaustible natural resources of
this mountainous country, with its rivers
and lakes and its colossal reserves of val-
uable minerals, were practically unexploited
All the electric power in Armenia used
to be supplied by to hydro-electric power
stations with a total capacity of 250 kilo-
watts.
During the World War (1914-18) and the
years in which UI Armenian counter-
revolutionary Party of the Dashnaks was in
power (1918-20) Armenia's weak industry
was altogether ruined.
Only Soviet rule, established in Armenia
tin November 29, 1920, put an end to its
economic prostration. The initial period of
24
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One of the departments of the Orjonikidze Textile
Mills at Kirovabad, Azerbaijan
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economic revival ba-3 been followed by the
Socialist industrialization of its national
economy.
A number of hydro-electric power sta-
tions, with an aggregate annual output of
350,000,000 kilowatt-hours, have been built.
All these power hous( 3 are linked up into
a single chain, which makes it possible
to regulate the flow of electric power.
Extensive work is now under way to
utilize the abundant waters of the huge
Sevan Lake, situated high in the moun-
tains, for which purpose a number of hydro-
electric power stations are being erected on
the cascade system along the Zanga River.
When construction of the cascade is com-
pleted, leaving the lake and its innumerable
fisheries intact, Arm( nia will annually be
supplied with more than 3,000,000,000 kilo-
watt-hours of cheap electric power.
At the same time the water discharged
by the turbines will go to irrigate more
than 321,000 acres of fertile soil.
Construction of power plants has made
possible the extensive development of in-
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dustry. New branches of industry have been
launehed, and the old branches have been
fundamentally reconstructed. Armenia's cop-
per industry has made big strides. At pres-
ent the annual output of the Alaverd and
Kafan copper smelting works amounts to
10,000 tons.
The republic also has large chemical
works. In Erevan, the capital of Armenia,
a huge synthetic rubber works has been
erected. Some time ago a new cement fac-
tory, producing 111,000 tons of high-
quality material annually, sprang up on
the Davalin sands, at the foot of a long
range of mountains rich in limestone.
A machine-building plant manufactur-
ing engines and compressors is another
addition to the Republic's industries.
A new tobacco factory manufactures
1,700,000,000 cigarettes a year. Armenia's
canneries yearly put out 20,000,000 cans
of preserved fruits and vegetables. The out-
put of wine presses and distilleries, meat
packing plants and oilier establishments of
20
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Cracking plant at Neftedag, a new oil center in
Turkmeni an
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the food industry has also increased to a
marked extent.
Two cotton ginneries have been built to
take care of the rich cotton crops. Their
capacity is 22,000 tons of cotton annually.
A huge textile plant, with large new
spinning and weaving mills, forms the
nucleus of a regular hale town of its own
within the city of Lerainakan. This plant
has 117,000 spindles and produces 33,000,000
yards of textiles a year.
The leather and shoe industry has also
undergone considerable development.
Erevan, which only recently used to
amaze the foreign tourist by its winding,
typically Asiatic streets and clay hovels,
has been transformed into a beautiful,
well-planned city really deserving of being
a capital.
Under capitalist conditions nations re-
quired whole centuries to attain to modern
modes of production.
With the impetus given them by the
October Socialist Revolution, our formerly
backward nations needed little more than
31
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a decade to develop into flourishing So-
cialist republics, where exploitation of man
by man and national oppression have been
wiped out once and for all, where. advanced
Socialist industry and large-scale Socialist
agriculture hold undivided sway,
32
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Approved ror Release 200
, t
BY MADEMI(IAN A-BA KOV
005-0
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snnotiors
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CI C)0 lOrg
BY A. BAIKOV
MEMBER OF THE AC AI4 MY OF SCIENCES OF THE
U.S.S.R., DEPUTY TO FRE SUPREME SOVIET OF
TIfF [S.S.R.
FOREIGN LANGTJAGHS PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW 1939
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ARTIST A. ZHITOMIRSKY
PION rim IN THE UNION Of S./VIET SOCIALIST HEPUBI ICS
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THE URAF.S-KUZBAS PROBLEM
sarist RuFsia was an agrarian
country with a backward in-
dustry. But even that industry
was extremely unevenly dis-
tributed throughout the coun-
try. Textile mills, for instance,
were built only in the central districts,
far from the sources of raw material. Oil
extraction was concentrated almost entirely
in Baku, and coal mining in the Donetz Ba-
sin (Ukraine). The principal iron and steel
plants were concentrated in southern
Ukraine. This was practically the sole coal
and iron and steel producing center of tsarist
Russia: it accounted tor nearly 90 per cent
5
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of the coal mined in the country and about
75 per cent of the pig iron produced.
This uneven distribution of industrial
enterprises and their remoteness both from
the sources of raw material and from the
consuming districts caused heavy losses
to the national economy of the country.
Naturally, the Soviet Government, which
has set itself the aim of developing the
productive forces of the country according
to a definite plan arid along strictly scient-
ific lines, has from ihe very outset dealt
with the question of the rational distri-
bution of industry throughout the country.
Lenin dealt with this problem as early
as 1918. It was he also who at that time
put forward the idea of building up a new
coal and metallurgioal base in .the cast
of the U.S.S.R.?what was known as the
Urals-Kuzbas problem. The project visu-
alized the creation of a powerful iron and
steel industry based en the iron ore depos-
its of the Southern Urals (principally of
Magnitnaya lilountaini and the coal depos-
its of the Kuznetsk Basin.
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This idea was further elaborated and
put into practice oft the initiative of
J. V. Stalin.
Both the iron ore deposits of Magnitnaya
Mountain and the foal deposits of the
Kuznetsk Basin are extremely rich, and
of a very high quality. The distance between
them is about 1,250 miles, and, in order
to utilize them to the best advantage,
it was necessary to build two large indus-
trial centers; an iron and steel and ore
mining center in the Southern Urals, and
an iron and steel and coal mining center
in Western Siberia.
This vast project was realized during
the period of the First Five-Year Plan.
An official decision was promulgated by
the Soviet Government on January 16,
1929, providing for the Construction of
the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works
on the basis of the previously drawn up
plans. On March 10 of the same year work
was started on this construction, and on
February 1, 1932 pig iron began to flow
from blast furnace No. 1 of Magnitogorsk.
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Simultaneously with the building of the
Magnitogorsk plant, construction was going
on on the Kuznetsk iron and steel works
which started operation somewhat earlier
than the former.
Professor Davis, an American engineer,
wrote a propos of the Urals-Kuznetsk
project at the time that, according to
preliminary data, the iron ore deposits
discovered in the Magnitnaya Mountain
district in the Southern Urals are the
richest in the world. A considerable part
of these ores do not even require concen-
tration. Professor Davis pointed out that
the Soviet government's plan to combine
the exploitation of the Ural ore with that
of the Kuznetsk coal, with the construction
of two gigantic iron and steel plants at
both ends, was one of the boldest and
most stupendous projects ever undertaken
in the history of the iron and steel industry.
This plan of the Soviet Government,
which Professor Davii characterized as a
bold and stupendous project, has now
material ized,
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Magnitogorsk. Coke-Chemical Plant.
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The Magnitogorsk Combine mines iron
ore for its own plants and for the Kuznetsk
Combine.
The Kuznetsk Combine, on the other
hand, while receiving iron ore from Magni-
togorsk, supplies the latter with coal mined
in the Kuznetsk Basin.
The Magnitogorsk Works consists of a
number of plants organized as a single
administrative and economic unit with a
huge output of iron and steel.
The central feature of the Combine is
the iron and steel works with blast fur-
naces (production of pig iron), a steel
smelting plant (pro,tuction of steel in
open hearth furnaces) and rolling mills,
as well as a number of auxiliary shops.
Immediately adjoining the iron and
steel works are the powcrful mines where
the iron ore is extracted and worked up.
The neighboring districts abound in depos-
its of limestone, dolomites, quartzite and
fireproof clays.
A special coke-chemical plant has been
built for the production of coke.
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The Combine includes also a plant
for the production of fireproof materials
(Dinas clay and charnotte) adjoining the
iron and steel works.
THE SUPPLY OF HAW MATERIALS
The principal source of the iron ore
is Atach Mountain, one of the four peaks
of Magnitnaya Mountain, rising 2,017 feet
above sea level. Its N%estern slope is rich
in magnetite deposits representing a
huge lode amid the .olcanic rock forma-
tions.
The presence of iron ore in Magnitnaya
Mountain was known long ago. Ore in
small quantities was extracted here us
early as 1747. But at that time nobody
had a clear idea of th.. significance of these
deposits. The Mountain attracted very little
attention. It was situated in a sparse-
ly inhabited steppe region devoid of any
forests, and there were no railways. The
little ore that was ruined was carted by
horses to the Byeleretsk Works Situ-
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ated about sixty miles from Magnitnaya
Mountain.
Prior to the World War of 1914-18
the output of ore on Magnitnaya Mountain
never exceeded 50,000 tons a year. In those
times all the Ural industries used only
charcoal, and this necessarily limited the
output.
All this has changed with the intro-
duction of mineral fuel from the Kuznetsk
Basin. The Kuznetsk coals coke well,
have a small ash and sulphur content,
and their known &posits reach hundreds
of billions of tons. As a result, Magnitnaya
Mountain has assumed a tremendous sig-
nificance
Thorough geologic surveys have estab-
lished the amount of the ore deposits
and their composition. It has been brought
to light that Magnitnava Mountain con-
tains 450,000,000 i ons of magnetite ore
with an average content of iron amounting
to over 60 per
Due to the proce-i.es of erosion the top
deposits have been largely transformed
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into easily restorable martite with a small
sulphur and phosphorus content. Its ave-
rage composition is the following: iron
64.47 per cent, sulphur 0.19 per cent and
phosphorus 0.015 per cent. The deeper
deposits contain mot-, sulphur and less
iron (an average of 58.34 per cent) but
their phosphonyi content k also small.
One of the largest ore mining enter-
prises in the world has been built up on
the site of these deposits. The mine is well
equipped with modern machinery. All the
processes of ore extraction are a hundred
per cent mechanized. There are also crush-
ing, washing, sorting and agglomeration
plants attached to Ow mine.
In the past seven years the mine sup-
plied 30,000.000 tuns of ore to the Mag-
nitogorsk and Kuznetsk Iron and Steel
Works. At present it supplies annually
6,500,000 tons of ore ready for the blast
furnaces. This represents 1B per cent of
aIl the iron ore mined in the U.S.S.R.
In addition to the 31agnititaya Mountain
deposits, the Combine has at its disposal
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0-900001.006900t1
Refrigerating Room in the Rolling Mill of the Stalin Iron and Steel Works.
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the Komarovo-Zigazinsk iron ore, the known
deposits of which reach 150,000,000 tons,
and manganese or deposits estimated at
. 2,600,000 tons.
The districts in the vicinity of the Com-
bine abound in valuable minerals which
are used as fluxes and fireproof and build-
ing materials.
The known deposits of these minerals
include:
Limestone . 280,000,000 tons
Dolomite 2,700,000 ,,
Quartzite 6,000,000 ?
The known deposlis of fireproof clays
and moulding sand reach scores of millions
of tons.
Thus nature has fully provided the Mag-
nitogorsk Iron and ',tee] Works and all
its auxiliary plants with an abundant
and uninterrupted supply of all the ne-
cessary raw material,' for a long time to
come.
2-111
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INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
The Coke-Chemical Plant CODSiSts of
four batteries (276 ON ens) of the Koppers-
Decker system and covers the entire chem-
ical cycle. At the same time it provides
an enormous amount of high-caloried gas
which is utilized for the open-hearth fur-
naces and for other purposes.
The Iron and Steel Works includes four
blast furnaces with a volumetric efficiency of
41,670 Cu. ft. each. The output per day of
each furnace is over 1,000 tons of pig iron.
There are ten stationary open-hearth
furnaces of 150 ton capacity each and
four of 350 ton capacity each with a total
hearth area of 9,648 sq. ft. Two more
open-hearth furnaces of 350 ton capacity
each are now under construction.
The plant i equipped with a powerful
blooming mill with two continuous bil-
let-mills and six oat the most up-to-date
automatic merehani mills, including a
wire-drawing mill of a design which is
unique in the world.
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Reading Room in the Workers' Club of the Stalin
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Another powerful blooming mill is pro-
vided with a continuous billet-mill "720."
The huge Iron and Steel Works has its
own:
Central electric power plant;
Steam power department;
Mechanical shop, f or ge-shop, foundry
and repair shop;
Chamotte and Dina:, brick plant;
Chemical, electrotechnical and thermo-
technical laboratories
Railway, automobile and other transport
facilities.
A huge reservoir, formed on the Ural
River by the building of two dams, sup-
plies the Works with water and feeds the
water supply system -which has a daily
capacity of 132,000,000 gallons of water.
The Magnitogorsk Combine covers an
area of 27 sq. miles in the valley of the
Ural River.
By September 1, 1938, expenditures
on the construction or the first section of
the Combine amounted to 1,322,500,000
rubles.
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The Combine employs 26,000 workers,
engineers and technicians,
In the seven years. following the begin-
ning of its operation the Combine pro-
duced:
Over 30,000,000 tuns of iron ore;
10,500,000 tons of coke;
8,200,000 tons of pig iron;
5,600,000 tons of steel;
4,400,000 tons of rolled steel.
The Iron and Steel Works has been grad-
ually increasing production, while the
construction of the Combine has been
going on all the time. At present the first
section of the Combine is nearly completed.
The following figures indicate the nature
of its work in 1938:
Output of pig iron--1,796,000 tons;
Co-efficient of volumetric efficiency of
blast furnaces-0.90;
Average annual output of pig iron per
blast furnace-449,000 tons;
Output of steel-1,580,000 tons.
The output of pig iron at the Magni-
togorsk Iron and St eel Works amounts
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Magnitogorsk. t School Building.
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to nearly a half (42 per cent) of the total
output of pig iron in tsarist Russia.
THE SECOND SEC "'ION
When the second se,,tion of the Magni-
togorsk Combine is completed within the next
few years, it will in,dude the following:
A mining enterprise consisting of three
powerful crushing plants, a washing and
a concentrating plant, an agglomeration
plant and a number (If auxiliary plants;
A coke-chemical plant with eight bat-
teries (544 ovens) covering a complete
chemical cycle;
Eight powerful bia ,t furnaces;
Three steel-smelting shops with 29 sta-
tionary open-hearth furnaces (ten of 150 ton
capacity and nineteen of 350 ton capacity);
Two blooming mills with continuous
billet-mills "720," "630" and "450";
Six merchant rolling mills;
A rail and beam IL olling mill.
The Combine will produce annually:
8,500,000 tons of orted iron ore;
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Over 4,000,000 tons of coke;
4,500,000 tons of pig iron;
5,000,000 tons of Aecl;
4,000,000 tons of rolled steel.
When thus compl,ted the Magnitogorsk
Combine will be the largest iron and steel
enterprise in the world. Its annual pro-
duction of pig iron will exceed that of
all the iron and steel plants of tsarist
Russia taken together.
THE CITY OF MAGNITOGORSK
Iti the beginning, when the construction
of the Magnitogorsk Works first started,
a camp town of white tents sprung up at
the font of Magniinava Mountain on the
banks of the Ural River. In these tents
lived the builders of "Magnitka"?engi-
'leers, technicians, Ns orkers. Soon, how-
ever, the tents were replaced by wooden
barracks, and these have in their turn
been replaced by briek buildings.
Today Magnitogorsk is a city of hundreds
of tall well-appointed houses, with a popu-
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lation of 250,000, an electric power plant,
waterworks, scores of wide streets, squares,
boulevards, parks, streetcars and a good
autobus service.
In 1938 the expenditures provided for
in the city budget of Magnitogorsk included
8,856,000 rubles on educational purposes,
and 19,185,000 rubles on public health.
An additional sum of 13,500,000 rubles
was expended on education, public health,
sports and social maintenance out of the
budget of the factory committee of the
iron and steel worker union. Large sums
are spent on these purposes by other public
organizations, such as the trade unions
of the building workers, miners, etc.
Magnitogorsk has two higher educational
establishments: a mining and metallurgic-
al institute and a pedagogical institute,
forty secondary schools with 25,000 pupils,
and pedagogical, industrial and medical
training colleges.
In addition to these a variety of training
courses function in the Works, such as
courses for providing higher qualifications,
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factory apprentice courses, courses for the
training of Stakhanovites, university and
college preparatory courses. More than
60,000 workers completed these courses
in the past six years. A sum of over
42,000,000 rubles has been expended on
the maintenance of three courses.
The four main libraries of this new city
have 230,000 volumes.
The city of Magnitogorsk boasts a fine
theater with a seating capacity of 1,000,
eighteen moving-picture houses, a circus,
a large number of clubs, including the
splendid iron and steel workers' club,
which has R large stage and in which con-
certs are held regularly. Besides concerts
by local musicians, recitals are given
here by singers and musicians from the
largest centers of the country, such as
Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Baku.
The population of Magnitogorsk, like
the population of all towns and villages
of the Soviet Union. receives expert med-
ical aid free of charge. The city has seven
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polyclinics, six general and lying-in hospi-
tals, 26 children's nurseries, a special
children's polyclinic, ten women's and
children's medical consultation centers,
dispensaries, a camp-sAnitarium for adoles-
cents with accommodations for six hun-
dred campers at a time, scientific sanitary
stations, etc.
The City Soviet of Magnitogorsk devotes
a great deal of attention to the develop-
ment of sports. The facilities that have
been provided for sports activities include
two stadiums with a seating capacity of
16,000, an aquatic sports station on the Ural
River, nine gymnasiums, a hunters' stand,
and skating rinks in tlw, winter. In the aero-
nautical club young people receive training
in parachute jumping, gliding and flying.
This, in brief, is the story of an indus-
trial giant and a large flourishing city
that have sprung up in the course of a few
years in a desolate and practically unin-
habited district.
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OVIET
CITIES
NEW
REI4EINED
AND
005-0
n SS 0?i
pcti, r ?
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tsJ
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OVIET
CITIES
NEW
AND RENEWED
By PROF. ). GOLOSSOV
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW 1939
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ARTIST: 13. SCIIIVAR2
pRINTED IN THE UNION OF ,OVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
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FROM the Black Sea to the Arctic
Ocean, from the western frontiers to the
maritime regions of the Far East, hundreds
of new industrial centers have arisen in
the last twenty years where once was virgin
steppe, dense forest and mountain deso-
lation. Thousands of settlements, built up
to modern urban standards, are thriving
in districts previously considered uninha-
bitable.
Two hundred and thirty new cities have
been built in the U.S.S.R. since the Revolu-
tion. In these same twenty years the old
cities have changed beyond recognition un-
der the hand of the architect and the builder
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creating new apartment houses, factories,
schools, theaters, hospitals and public lib-
raries.
Who would recognize Ilughesovka, a hum-
drum industrial town of tsarist Russia, in
the city of Stalin?. the centre of the Donetz
coal fields? Grimy, gritty Hughesovka,
Vi hose population was 40,000 in 1913, had no
electricity, no water mains or sewage sys-
tem. A street-car ser % ice to take people to
work was a t topian ideal. Now it is a hand-
some, thriving city of 462,000 inhabitants,
with new apartment houses containing over
10,000,000 sq. feet of living space, with
40 miles of water maias, 22 milcs of sewage
pipes, 25 miles of train lines and 1,612 acres
of public gardens and boulevards.
Equally vast improvements have been
made in other humble townships and min-
ing villages of the D.inetz district, to name
only Gorlovka, Makeyevka and Lugansk
(now Voroshilovgrad).
Take another of the innumerable exam-
ples. Chelyabinsk, in the heart of the Urals,
once a second-rate town of little impor-
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Offices of the Council oi People's Commissars of
the U.S.S.R., Okhotny fiyad, Moscow
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tance except to the merchants and govern-
ment officials who dominated it. Its name
was aptly derived from the Bashkirian
word "chalyaba," meaning "a hole." Now
Chelyabinsk is one of the great industrial
centers of the U.S.S.R., a city of handsome
buildings, many stories high, standing on
wide thoroughfares and spacious squares.
Sverdlovsk and Novosibirsk are two of many
more cities with a similar history.
Hundreds of the ni,,diocre cities of old
Russia have changed just as radically. Take
as an example Minsk. now the capital of
the Byelorussian S.S.R. During the Civil
War it was half demolished by the invading
Poles. Whole districts were burnt to the
ground. Now Minsk is a large modern city,
with pleasing prospects of asphalted ave-
nues, fine architecture and beautiful parks.
An essential element in all Soviet town
planning is a centra t square, bright and
spacious, with the best and handsomest
buildings to surround it. Minsk, Kharkov,
Tbilisi and many other Soviet cities have
been re-planned with this principle in mind.
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On this central square depends the aspect
of a city, the lay-out and character of its
streets.
Like all Soviet cities, the capital of
Byelorussia has been reconstructed in con-
formity with a attic! plan. Minsk has ac-
quired no small number of fine buildings in
the last few years: a Government House, a
line opera theater, university extensions, a
Conservatory of Music. a Red Army Club,etc.
In 1920 Stalingrad had 90,000 residents.
Now it is a great industrial center, with a
population above 445.000. Miles upon miles
of new industrial enterprises, including a
tractor plant, an iron and steel works,
an oil refinery, a great saw mill, power
stations, shipyards, wharves, warehouses,
offices and apartment houses--such is the
panorama that meets the eye on the out-
skirts of this rejuvenated city.
Astonishing changes have taken place in
the republics of Central Asia, once crown
colonies under the heel of tsarism. In pres-
ent-dav Altna?Ata, the picturesque garden
city and capital of the Kazakh S.S.R.,
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Tbilisi Branch of the Lenin Museum
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there are more inhabitants (231,000) than
there were in all Kazakh towns put together
when the first census was taken in Russia
(1897). In 1913 the paltry sum of 6,000 ru-
bles was assigned for the improvement of this
city, which was thea called Verny. The
"city fathers" spent the whole sum on re-
pairs to the local jail and the residence
of the governor. In 1938 investments in the
development of Soviet Alma-Ata came to
above 90,000,000 rubles. Alma-Ata now has
a street-car service, a modern sewage system
and water supply system. The dark, tor-
tuous streets of the past have given place to
asphalted avenues, brightly lit with electri-
city. Alma-Ata is n.tw entering a further
phase of development with a great plan of
construction that in..ludes a Government
House, a new opera theater, a house of
culture, a palace for Young Pioneers,
schools, moving picture theatres, hospitals,
kindergartens, nurseries, and many new
apartment blocks.
Then there is Stalinabad, the beautiful
capital of Tajikistan. which has sprung up
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on the site of three wretched hamlets. Ash-
khabad, formerly a small, nondescript
place, half village, half town, has become a
large modern city, the capital of the Turk-
men S.S.R. Another forlorn country town,
Pislipek, has emerged from its obscurity
transfigured as the city of Frunze, capital
of the Kirghiz S.S.R. A notable feature of
urban developments in the republics of
Central Asia is the new architecture, in-
corporating elements of the national styles.
Erevan, now the capital of Armenia, is a
city of modern, Socialist culture, where ex-
tensive industrial development and housing
con.struction go hand in hand with landscape
gardening. Erevan has a population of
200,000. Like (+angel-. have taken place in
Baku, the oil city, capital of the Azerbaijan
S.S.R., and in Tbilisi, capital of the Geor-
gian S.S.R., one of the most ancient of
Soviet cities, founded about 2,000 years
ago.
Under the First Five-Year Plan (1928-
32) 54,000,000 rubles were invested in the
municipal improvement of Tbilisi. Under
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the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-37) this
item was increased to 280,000,000 rubles. The
assignment for 1937 alone was 72,000,000
rubles. The main street of the city has been
thoroughly reconstruetril; new embankments
have been built; the River Kura has been
spanned with a new bridge; a palatial Gov-
ernment House has been erected.
The sea-side resorts of the Caucasus,
Sukhumi and Gagry, have altered beyond
recognition.
Even vaster change- have been made in
Sochi, another Caucasian resort, famous for
the Matsesta medicinal springs nearby.
Formerly a tiny health resort, frequented
by the wealthy few, Sochi has now become
the health center of the Soviet Union, a city
of immaculate aspha ft and green parks,
where tens of thousands of working people
spend their vacations and undergo treat-
ment every year. The magnificent high.
way skirting the Black Sea coast is lined
with palatial sanatoriums, which, like the
new hotels in the city, contain all the com-
forts and conveniences that modern arti-
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fice can provide. Among the many handsome
buildings newly erected is a splendid theater
with a large seating capacity.
But the model city for Socialist recon-
struction on a large scale is undoubtedly
Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union,
the population of which, since 1926, has
increased from 2,029.000 to 4,137,000.
Since the Revolution over 65,000,000 sq.
feet of housing space have been built in the
capital of the U.S.S.R. Many of the old
streets have been remodelled, new thorough-
fares and squares ha-ye been laid out. New
districts have sprung up all round Moscow.
The embankments of the Moscow River
have been faced with granite. The river is
spanned with beautiful new bridges, among
the largest in Europe. Some of them have a
width of 130 feet. In a short space of time
a splendid subway has been built, and the
shallow Moscow River has been connected
with the mighty Volga by a great canal.
Now the waters of the Volga lap the walls
of the Moscow Kremlin. Numerous public
buildings have been erected: Palaces of
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Hotel in Ashkhabad, Turkinrn S.S.R.
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Culture, colleges, research institutes, hospi-
tals, theaters and clubs. Hundreds of schools,
- kindergartens and nurseries have been built.
In 1938 two hundred and fifty apartment
houses, with a total housing space of
2,690,000 sq. feet, came into occupation.
In the first three months of 1939, 38 apart-
ment houses, with a tot al space of 646,000 sq.
feet, were completed.
This great work ot construction follows
a general plan coordinating the part with
the whole, the house with the street, the
apartment block with the district, the dis-
trict with the city, to create a flawless
architectural ensemble.
The intrinsic features of the architecture
of the capital of the U.S.S.R. are bright
idioms and light but majestic forms, re-
flecting the spirit of the Socialist era. The
elements of classical architecture are used
in organic synthesis with the themes of the
Socialist era. This principle will be bril-
liantly materialized in the Palace of So-
viets, the great monument to Lenin to be
erected in the center of Moscow.
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Leningrad, too, is being reconstructed on
the same grand scale_ Classical St. Peters-
burg, built in the eighteenth century from
the designs of the best architects of the time,
was a city of perfect architectural lines,
noble proportions, clear perspectives and
masterly planning. I3ut this, one of the
finest cities in the world, bore the marring
imprint of the capitalist age. The magni-
ficent districts in the center were hemmed
in by pestilent slum-. This hideous con-
trast is now a thing of the past. There are no
more slums in Leningrad.
This great city on the Neva is still devel-
oping rapidly. Under the Second Five-
Year Plan no less than two billion rubles
were invested in the municipal improve-
ment of Leningrad. In these years 7,680,000
sq. feet of housing space and 170 schools
were built. In some diitricts, the Volodarsky
and Kirov, for instance, new housing forms
almost half of the total accommodation.
The numerous historical buildings of the
city are being restored and renewed. In the
last six years 500.000.000 rubles have been
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spent on capital repairs to the old housing
accommodations. Wide new avenues and
squares are taking shape. New embank-
ments are being built. The right bank of the
Neva and the Obi,odny Canal have been
clad in granite and concrete. Two new
bridges have been built across the Neva. By
January 1, 1939, 18,300,000 sq. feet of
streets and squares had been asphalted.
The scale of the Socialist reconstruction of
old cities can be secii from the following
figures. By January 1, 1937, the Soviet
Government had built about 646,000,000 sq.
feet of housing space in cities and towns,
which amounts to more than 40 per cent
of the total municipal housing accom-
modation. This new floor space cost
12000,000,000 rubles. In Moscow 30.8 per
cent of the total hou,ing accommodation is
newly built, in Gorky 55.2 per cent, in
Stalingrad 69.6 per cent, in Chelyabinsk
79.1 per cent.
On the territory of the R.S.F.S.R. before
the Revolution there were 156 cities with
water mains, while in 1937 there were 260.
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In the old days only 18 cities had sewage
systems. In 1937 there were already 71.
Formerly only 23 cities had street-ear ser-
vices; in 1937 there were 46.
The geography and topography of the
country is changing. Where once was dense
forest, desert, uninhabited mountains, vir-
gin steppe, tundra and Arctic waste, we now
see the glittering lights of new Soviet
cities. Magnitogorsk. Stalinogorsk, Zapo-
rozliNe, Bererniki, Stalinsk, Kemerovo,
Prokopievsk, Karaganda, Komsomolsk,
Magadan, Kirovsk, Monchegorsk, Elista,
llaiklaash, are but the largest of a long list.
The Kola peninsula in the Far North was
an uninhabitable region used by the tsarist
government as a place of exile for revolu-
tionaries. Now these voiceless wastes have
been awakened to life by the will of the
Soviet people. A great wealth of minerals?
apatite and nepheline?has been raised
from the bowels of the earth. Outposts of
civilization have arisen where human foot
never trod. Great mines and elaborate plants
for concentrating apatites have been devel-
22
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Vorov,4k Street, Chelyabinsk
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oped, and with them the new Socialist city
of Kirovsk, which has a population of about
50,000. Market gardens thriving in this
land of Arctic night supply them with rad-
ishes, cauliflower, cucumbers and to-
matoes.
To the west of the Ehibini Mountains,
beyond Lake Imandra, in the tundra, is the
new city of Monehegorsk, an important
nickel-producing center.
In the north of the Murmansk peninsula
the new city of Murmansk has developed
from what only a few years ago was a
fishing village. Now this is one of the main
centers of the Soviet fishing and ship build-
ing industries, an ice-fr,6-e port through which
all freights to western Europe pass in the
winter time. From here the Soviet Union
exports apatites for the world market. Eight
years ago Murmansk had a population of
21,000. Now it is 117,000.
New cities have also been built in the Far
East of the U.S.S.R., thousands of kilo-
meters from Moscow. One is Komsomolsk-
on-Amur, a large induArial center built by
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the bands of our yoong generation. Another
is Lesozavodsk. which has arisen on the
hauks of the River Ussuri. A third is Ma-
gadan, a neighbour to the new port of
Nogayevo, on the north shores of the Sea of
Okhotsk. This is the center of Soviet Ko-
lynta?a territory .thounding in natural
wealth.
The map of the l'.S.S.R. shows us the
itc%% 1 olga city of Elista, situated in the
Kalmyk steppes in the south. This is the
center of Soviet K alj,uvkland. In the old days
there was not a singb, town here.
In the Kazakh whose capital,
Alma-Ata, we. have already mentioned, the
large industrial city of Karaganda has de-
veloped. This is the center of a recently de-
veloped coal district.
Such is a brief act mint of Socialist con-
struction and reconstruction in the field of
urban development. Care for the indivi-
dual, his comfort arid convenience is the
first consideration of I he builder.
A special body, the Government Planning
Commission, courdinoi es the construction of
26
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Fallen Heroes liemorial Square, Stalingrad
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new Socialist cities and the reconstruction
of the old with the general program of eco-
nomic development. The Soviet Govern-
ment firmly discourage the tendency there
has been to build oversized industrial en-
terprises, and forbids the construction of
any large factories within the boundaries
of the larger cities, such as Moscow.
The renewal and extension of old cities,
the choice of sites for new cities and their
construction must conform to the general
economic development of the country and
definite hygienic standards. The plan prin-
ciple in this work of construction makes
it possible for the Soviet Government to
build cities in which each small part har-
monizes with the whole, where the location
of districts, thoroughfares, streets, squares,
parks, monuments, etc., is given mature
thought.
In planning future cities the state bodies
prescribe the hygienic standards, the archi-
tectural ensemble, and the storey limits.
The drawing up of the general scheme of
construction of a new city is preceded by a
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careful survey of the area. Then a complete
plan is worked out in which the location of
Ike industrial enterprises, roadways, and
branch railway line,. is indicated definitely.
The Third Five-Year Plan (1938-42) pro-
vides for the installation of water mains in
fifty cities, sewage iystents in 45, and for
the development of tramway services in
eight cities.
The plan also provides for extensive de-
velopments in municipal gas supply.
The third section of the Moscow Subway,
eight and a half miles long, will be com-
pleted during this period.
The bulk of the v.ork on the construction
of the Palace of Soviets is also to be complet-
ed by the end of th.. Third Five-Year Plan.
For the practical architectural designing
town planning the state maintains a
large number of insfitutions employing the
best architects, engineers and technicians.
They make the plans, whether for-whole
cities, apartment blocks, or separate build-
ings. But Soviet arehitecis do not seclude
themselves in their Audios, away from the
30
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noise and bustle of the building site. They
are expected to have an all-round knowledge
of constructional engineering and take part
in the effectuation of their plans.
This rational organization of work, in
which the smallest details are considered
and provided for, is one of the factors en-
suring the success of the great work of
construction and reconstruction undertaken
by the Socialist state.
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9
0
0
9
0
0
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?
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CHILDREN ANL) ART
IN
1
IA I
BY S.MARSHAK
Order f Lenin
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
u./ 19
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ARTIST: D. BASHANOV
PRINTED IN TUE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST
REpi:Hucs
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ne day a iJoy of eight or nine
appeared at the Child Art
Center carrying an enormous
roll of paper under his arm.
Set on end it would have stood
half as high again as the
youngster himself.
IIe unrolled it.
"What's that you"vt- got there?" he was
asked.
"A Socialist City," he replied briefly.
The immense scroll was a patchwork of
several pieces. The young artIst had evident-
ly drawn his many-tiered city in parts and
then pasted them together.
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The parks, squares and underground roads
and elevated ways had been planned with
equal care and thought.
The drawings of Soviet children, like
their games, reflect the great work of con-
struction and renr:w al going on in their
rount rv.
That is quite nal oral. Children of all
ages and all countries have always responded
to the life going on around them.
We who were born in tsarist Limes, at
the end of the last century, also reflected
the ways of our adults in our childhood
plav. Of political events we knew very little.
True, the Russo-Japanese War figured in our
games; but it was usuallv the doings and
happenings of our own street or city that
appealed to our yonn.:: imaginations. We put
out tires, saved drowning men, buried each
other in turn, played at being stall-owners
in the market, tracked down robbers.
%lore often we were Red Indians, whom
we read about in books, or played the tradi-
tional childish games invented by our dis-
tant forefathers.
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-We added little to the range of make-
believe the previous generation had left
tolls.
We were so brought up as to be almost
incapable of reacting intelligently to the big
events of our times, of reflecting them in our
drawings, games and songs.
But Soviet children are generously en-
dowed with this gift.
They play at airmen flying across the
North Pole, at frontier guards protecting
the Soviet borders, at Asturian grenade-
throwers. Their drawings and verses depict
the building of the Moscow Metro, the search
for the crew of the Rodirta in the taiga,
the work of the deep-,ea divers, the celebra-
tion of revolutionary holidays on the Red
Square in Moscow.
When the four plucky explorers, Papanin,
Krenkel, Shirshov and Fyodorov, were drift-
ing down from the North Pole on their ice-
floe, two Moscow schoolchildren, Nick and
Serge Bobin, expressed the emotions of
thousands of Soviet youngsters in the follow-
ing appeal to the "Papaninites":
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We, too, would like to visit
The frozen Pole, and land
By the earth's jutting axis
And feel it with our hand.
Too small, Lou small, dear children,
Is all the answer we get.
There are no Pioneers camping
Around the North Pole yet!
But if we do not hurry,
And wait until we're men,
All Poles will be discovered?
What will there be left then?
We'll wait on one condition.
Sergei and I implore:
Leave us undiscovered
One spot at least to explore!
This humorous appeal was written when
there were still no grounds to fear for the
safety of the men on the icefloc. Cheerful
messages were being received from the
"North Pole" station almost daily.
But their icefloe began to break up. The
country was plunged in alarm. Airplane
expeditions were fitted out to help the mire-
8
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AUTUMN
BY GENE CHESNAKOV, aged 15.
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pid explorers; the ice breakers Yermak
and Taimir were sent to join the work of
rescue.
The general anxiety and concern was ex-
pressed by Sergei Feinberg, a fourteen-
year old schoolboy, as follows:
. . . And then the country in a trice
Its planes and ships sent forth
To save its heroes from the ice
Adrift in the perilous North.
0 happy hour, when th,, valorous four
Saw the lights of the Taimir gleam
A.nd through the murk of the Arctic night
Spied the Yerrnak's wandering beam.
These schoolboy veres very well express
the emotions experienced by the whole So-
viet country in those days in the early spring
of '1938.
There are preserved in the Palaces of
Young Pioneers and the child art centers
many thousands of notebooks and sheets
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filled with verse and prose composed by
schoolchildren.
The Main Child Art Center in Moscow
received in one year alone about 20,000
letters from young authors all over the
Soviet Union. The majority of them con-
tain eager requests for advice and counsel
and for a critical opinion of material sent.
Youthful authors--especially of verse--
were not rare in Russia even in pre-revolu-
tionary times. Nearly every college had its
'poet laureate" who would recite his own
compositions at school festivals and cele-
brations. Nor was it rare for college boys
to bring out amateur magazines in manu-
script form where the literary novice could
test his pen.
And some of these beginners were really
talented youngsters. But how pallid, un-
substantial and anemic does this hothouse
college literature seem compared with the
writings of schoolchildren in the U.S.S.R.
today! How much more vigorous is the hat-
ters' sense of reality, and how richer their
knowledge of practical life! They write with
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a surer pen and greater independence. They
set themselves weighty and difficult tasks;
they are careful observers and students of
reality, and delve into historical documents
for material.
And the chief thing is that they know
what they want.
They are convinced that creative labor,
and nothing but creative labor, is the basis
of human society; they look upon work as
a matter of honor, a matter of valor and
heroism.
They are strong in the opinion that racial
enmity should be banished from earth.
A ten-year old youngster writes:
All Soviet children are happy and gay.
All children are equal in our land today?
Chinese, Japanese and Malay . . .
They are equally 1 onvinced that there
will be a wide sphe,r, for their activities
when they grow up. it never enters their
heads that circumstances might force a man
to choose a lifetime occupation which he dis-
likes. They have no misgivings for the mor-
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row. So much wonderful, useful and necess-
ary work is going on around them, and so
much remains to be done -it cannot be that
HO use will be found for their hands, brains
and energies!
This conviction is the source of the op-
timism which inspires the writings and
verses of Soviet children.
Nowhere in the poerns and stories with
which these thousands of notebooks and
sheets are filled will you find any impotent
whining or fruitless complaining. None of
these young authors regards himself as su-
perfluous and useless in the world.
And they speak of their country as only
its future full-fledged masters can speak of it.
?
Of course, the verses of hundreds and
thousands of young poets cannot be of equal
literary value. But a careful study will dis-
close that they all possess certain common
ypical features. The ,ie arc the features of
their time and country.
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The character of the poems varies consi-
derably. You will find among them a ballad
on Chapayev, the national hero; a long poem
about Lomonosov, the poet and scientist
and the first of Russia's academicians;
a lyrical composition in which descriptions
of urban or rural scenes alternate with the
reflections and sentiments of the poet. You
will also find school satires, epigrams,
addresses to friends, and so on.
But however varied these youthful poetic
efforts may be, they are all profoundly real-
istic, specific, even concrete. They offer a
striking contrast to the lyrical imitations?
the romantic poems about knights and
ladies, corsairs and nuns--the vague effu-
sions and lamentations with which the ado-
lescents and youths of earlier generations
filled the pages of their cherished diaries.
Whatever may be the subject of the young
Soviet versifier?whether an historical bal-
lad or a poem to a modern hero?he will al-
ways strive for precision of imagery and vi-
tality and truth of acLion.
An eleven-year old youngster writes:
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Hammer on anvil
Rang like a bell.
Said iron to hammer--
1'11 he a shell.
rtir hrevitv and vigor of expression these
four lines in the Russian bear the stamp of
genuine folk poetry they smack of the
proverb and folk rhyme.
A_ schoolgirl, aged v... elve, succeeds in the
very first lines of a 1:vrical poem in depict-
ing an old garden in Leningrad, with its
broad walks and its staiues encased in wood-
en sheaths for the winter.
k hoary frost has settled on the trees,
And all the world Aims white wherc'er
we look;
The nymphs hide in their shelters from the
breeze,
Anil snow has shrniided every path and
nook.
?
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So far we have been speaking of young
poets.
But are there no Soviet children and ado-
lescents who display tbeir literary gifts in
the field of prose?
Of course there are. We find in their school
notebooks and the productions of their liter-
ary circles stories of Young Communist air-
men or heroic frontier guards, and some-
times whole novels--short ones, it is true?
on the subject of futur, war or inter-planet-
ary flights.
But the young authots feel more at home
in verse; there they display greater variety
and achieve greater finish and perfection.
Stories and novels written by children in
all times have for the most part borne the
stamp of naivet?nd childish immaturity.
But young folk are more successful in
certain fields of prose than others.
Such is the essay--about an excursion or
journey, for example, which the young au-
thor has undertaken, a city which he has
visited, or local customs which he has ob-
served.
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In this branch of literature children are
sometimes very felicitous. Here they are
aided by their adolescent inquisitiveness,
their fresh perceptions and retentive mem-
ory, and must of all by that earnest atti-
tude to life which is fostered in Soviet
children by the fact that from their earli-
est conscious moments they are witnesses
of epoch-making events.
Another branch of literature in which the
young author is often very successful is the
satirical or fantastic tale.
But, after all, the short tale stands on the
border line between poetry and prose, and
often contains more of the poetical than verse
itself.
A little while ago I happened to read a
short tale of a page or two written by Vla-
dimir Petrov, a boy of thirteen, who lives
in a calony for waifs and strays. Here it is:
There was once a buy who lived in a chil-
dren's colony. He was called Foolish Ivan.
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SHCHORS AT THE APPROACHES TO KIEV
By VLADIMIR SatTZHENKil. aged 15
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During one dictation lesson he managed to
make thirty-two mistakes.
One day he wandcrit into a clearing in the
forest and fell asleep. tie was awakened by a
rustling noise. He rummaged in the bushes,
and out jumped a fox. Scarcely had the fox
made off when a lovely white goose strutted
out of the bushes with her little goslings.
"Good morning, Ivan," said the goose.
"You have saved int from cruel Reynard,
and I am going to rexiard you. What would
you like? Speak!"
At this moment the goslings began to
squeak in their shrill little voices:
"Mama, mama, we know what he needs.
He needs a magic quill so as not to. make
mistakes in dictation."
"Very well, Ivan, don't blush." And she
led him to the goose kingdom, the capital
of which is Goosehurst.
There, in the central square, was a blue
lake, in which many geese and ducks were
paddling about with I heir young.
"Good morning, Ivan, good morning!" was
heard on all sides,
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And Ivan had all he could do turning
from left to right, bowing and answering:
"Good morning, citizens!"
At this moment a peacock with real pea-
cock's feathers in its tail came striding out
of the park. The peacock thanked Ivan and
ordered that he should be given a magic
quill which would write without a single
in istake.
The goose stretched her wing, and said:
"Choose!''
Ivan pulled out the end feather. To his
surprise he found that it had already been
made into a pen and even dipped in red ink.
Foolish Ivan returned to the colony.
"Don't think I am a fool now,'' he told
his schoolmates. "I know more than you
(to. . . . And I can write better than the
lot of vou.''
Next Lime they were given dictation Ivan
did not make a single mistake. He rose to
the top of the class. Now he was called
Clever Ivan.
At first they all wondered why he wrote
with a goose quill; hot then they got used
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to it. After all, Pushkin end Krylov wrote
with quills!
In the autumn, lever Ivan and some
other of the best pupils were sent to a uni-
versity preparatory school.
But on the way a misfortune occurred: a
strong wind rose and, carried away the magic
quill! Clever Ivan again became Foolish
Ivan. . . .
Authors know how difficult it is to write
a tale containing all the elements of folk-
lore?bold ideas, viNid and fluent language,
and fresh and unexpctled humor. They know
how hard it is to avoid the dangers of alle-
gory and of ponderous didacticism.
But this boy has successfully coped with
the task. He instinct ively felt that the es-
sence of a fable lie,s in the ease of its lan-
guage and the simplicity and unobtrusive-
ness of its moral.
Young writers of poetry and prose of
former days would scarcely have taken upon
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themselves the difficult and complex task
undertaken in our dais by Soviet school-
children of the Arctic city of Igarka.
This city, lying on the border line between
taiga and tundra, is only ten years old.
It in younger than many of the schoolchildren
living in it, who have seen its port and
sawmill after sawmill spring up under their
very eyes.
These schoolchildren of Igarka decided
to be the chroniclers of the life and manners
of their city and region. They conceived
the idea of writing an account of the taiga
and tundra, and of how this port city, to
which ocean steamers come from all parts
of the world, arose in the Far North on the
hanks of the broad Yenisei.
Such a work could only be done collectively.
Before setting about their task, the chil-
dren wrote to Maxim Gorky telling him of
their idea. Gorky, a great writer and warm
friend of children, lived at that time at the
other end of the country, in the Crimea.
Ile replied in the most cordial terms and
outlined a rough plan ['or the book.
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The children assigned among themselves
the subjects for the stories and articles, and
set to work with a will.
Over one hundred children contributed to
the book, and practically every schoolchild
iii Igarka took part in the discussions of its
form and contents.
The work is now finished. We in Igarka
has been published. Its concluding chapter is
called "A Great School of Life." This might
well have been the title of the book itself.
It recounts what these historians of ten
to fifteen have witnessed. Some of the older
ones were present when the first steamers
arrived and landed the first parties of build-
ers on the marsh and wilderness of the
Yenisei's banks.
The aspect of the city has changed, and
is changing now, with every year and every
month. Houses and factories spring up;
theaters, cinemas and clubs are built. In the
open air and in hothouses, vegetables are
grown which had never been heard of here
in the Arctic circle, and hitherto unknown
flowers blossom in the gardens.
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With what pride these children tell of
the new buildings springing up in their city
of Igarka, and of the new automobiles ap-
pearing in its streets.
They keenly detect the peculiarities which
make their city different from all others in
the world.
They describe the reindeer sleds on which
their neighbors, the Nentsi, drive into Igar-
ka. They tell how in the wood-paved streets
huge timber trucks will sometimes encount-
er harnessed reindeer, their branching ant-
lers tossed back, and teams of shaggy, nois-
ily barking sled-dogs.
But the biggest event in the life of this
Arctic port is the arrival of the annual Kara
Sea expedition, the caravans of ocean ves-
sels, escorted by ice breakers, that come for
cargoes of Yenisei timber.
The youngsters talk like experts of the
sorting, stacking and loading of timber.
And they have a fair knowledge of ships
and their ways. They know which of the
steamers has recently been in drydock, and
which is badly in need of it. Their eye at
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THE HUNCHBACK HORSE
BY TANYA BRZHESICAYA, aged 7.
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once detects any disarray in the toilet of
a Queen Olga or a rood Hope, such as
damaged rails or peering paint.
But they become genuine poets when they
speak of the wild and stern majesty of
their region. They are profoundly acquaint-
ed with its natural life and scenery. They
are all hunters, fishers and naturalists.
Their skis have laid tracks to many an
unvisited part; their canoes have shot many
a rapid in the turbulent rivers.
They know what a stern struggle their
fathers and brothers waged to conquer the
savage, unpeopled orth, extending the
boundaries of their country without war and
bloodshed.
They too are training to continue this
intrepid conquest of the Arctic; they are
impatient to be grown up.
On one of the concluding pages of the
book, the hero of the tale says to his friend,
a schoolboy like hiimelf;
? ? ? When you have learnt everything
and are sure of yourself, you will enter life
a staunch Young Communist. Then your
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elder comrade--the airman, the captain of
an ice breaker, the geologist or the hydrolog-
ist--will turn over hi, job to you with a
smile, confident that it is in safe hands."
?
Many children have a leaning for literary
composition.
But far more love to draw, and are able
to draw.
Long before the child begins to clumsily
trace the letters of the alphabet he can al-
ready draw a house with its chimney, the sun
in the sky, a leafy tree and a girl holding
a balloon by a thread. Give a child a
sheet of paper and a thick red and blue
pencil and he will be happy.
And there is no child in the world who
does not know how to play.
In the old days, before the revolution,
when people who are now nearing the thir-
ties were children. their play and their
drawing did not receive much encourage-
ment from adults. The young artist or play-
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actor of five or six was allowed to indulge
in the delights of imagination only if he
did not spoil too much paper or make too
much noise.
And if a lad of nin, happened to take up
a colored crayon, or arm himself with a
stick to play at being a robber chieftain, he
would be told reproachfully:
"You had better be doing something use-
ful than playing 1ik a baby."
But the majority of children at that age
never had any time for play. Vanka Zhukov
in Chekhov's tale had already been "placed"
at the age of nine. In the daytime he was
run off his legs as au errand boy in a shoe-
maker's shop; in the evening he would rock
the cradle of the boss's baby; and all the
pay he got was to have his ears boxed, or his
head cuffed, or his Gee swiped with a raw
herring.
Only the children of the rich, or at least
the well-to-do, had any real childhood,
with games, stories, theatricals and colored
crayons.
Today, every one oi the millions of young
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inhabitants of the Soviet Union has the
-right to real childhood.
The point is not the number and magnifi-
cence of the toys they have to play with,
but the fact that child labor in the Soviet
Union is absolutely forbidden.
All children attend school. A country
which was so recently universally illiterate
is now universally literate.
Every child enjoys the legitimate and
inalienable right to play, sing, dance, draw,
model and find an outlet for his aptitudes
and tastes.
Adults are imbued, and become more im-
bued every day, with respect for the child's
play and the child's exercises in imagina-
tion.
Family, school and kindergarten eagerly
foster and encourage any aptitude shown by
children for drawing, music or dancing.
fti et cry part of the country there are
l'alaccs of Young Pioneers, clubs, and child
art centers with tudios, classes and circles
of all kinds..
No conditions are set for admission to the
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art, music, dramatic or dancing classes; any
child can join who wishes.
Take any youngster who joins one of these
art classes, a Chekho? Vanka Zhukov of our
day. He has everything at his disposal, all
the paper, crayons, paints and modeling
clay his heart may desire. Side by side
with him there are other boys and girls who
draw, model and make toy airplanes and gay
masks and carnival costumes. He has in-
structors to advise him how to use his ma-
terial, to suggest an interesting theme and
unobtrusively to direct the lively imagina-
tive play of the young pupil into artistic
channels.
As the children grow older their aptitudes
begin to differentiate. As a rule, the child
of seven to nine shows an equal interest in
drawing and modeling, in making an amus-
ing toy or a fearful mask for a children's
play. But gradually his taste turns into a
definite channel. He undertakes tasks of in-
creasing complexity. And if he is not armed
in good time with a certain knowledge and
skill, and if his imagination is not sup-
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plied with richer nouriAment, his young tal-
ent may he extinguished.
At this stage the ,tudio comes to the
child's aid. This is not a professional art
school; its chief purpuse is to foster the
child's creative activity: but it definitely
sets out to arm the child with a certain
knowledge, proficiency and skill.
For children who display definite talent
there are the junior departments of the
schools of art.
These classes and studios, and numerous
contests and expositions, are designed not
only to discover and develop gifted children
but also to raise the general artistic level
of the rising generation.
Of course, by no means all the children
who exhibit talented work at contests or
expositions will become professional art-
ists. But one thing, :it least, is certain:
they will grow up vial) a genuine apprecia-
t ion of art and a keen faculty of observation
of the life around them.
vii-year old Tanya Brzheyskaya, drcu
an illustration to the fairy tale -Kunvok Cur-
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bunok" ("The Hunchback Horse"). Against
a deep blue sky_ thickly studded with
golden stars, flies a snow-white horse,mount-
ed by Ivan the Fool, sitting back to front
and clinging to the horse's bushy tail. Both
lower corners of the drawing are cut by
steep hillsides running down to a rippling
sea. One of the hilhides is all white and
is covered by a scattered design of dark
trees, bulbous and mushroom-like. The
other hillside is black and forms the back-
ground for the whit:- gleaming walls of a
row of peasant hubL
When you examine this picture you feel
convinced that a child who displays such
a sense of rythm and poetic feeling, such
a faculty of imaginative description and
brevity of expression musi possess consider-
able artistic powers. We cannot say whether
Tanya will be an artist (it is too early to
predict anything of a child of seven), but
one thing is clear: whatever she does when
she grows up she iU do with imagination,
boldness and taste.
But of fifteen-year old Gene Chesnokov,
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a youngster from the 1N, v a Collective Farm
in the remote forest region of the Kirov
Territory, it may already be said with
reasonable confidence that he has a big
artistic future before him.
One glance at his water color, "Autumn,"
shows that.
It is not because his picture is good that
we can say that Gene Cliesnokov is an artist;
his picture is good because he is a real art-
ist.
Only an artist can display such a peculiar
feeling for the stern y..t delicate charms of
Russian scenery, and design his composition
with such harmony and simplicity. The
whole landscape seems lo be centered around
two small boys intently gazing up at some
birds perched on the thin branches of a
naked birch. The boys take up so minute
a space in the painting, yet they arc the
real focus of the composition. Without them
the spacious autumn landscape would seem
cold and lifeless.
In ibis water color a keen eye is happily
rombined with profound poetic. feeling.
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THE ATTACK ON THE WINTER PALACE
BY ANATOLE KSENOFONTE v, aged 13.
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This same combination ,of sober observa
tion with a poetic sense is to be detected in
depictions of battle scenes by young artists.
All boys of twelve and thirteen love to
draw infantry attack F ? cavalry charges, air
battles and sea engagements.
But the young art sts we are speaking
of display specific characteristics. They not
only strive for military romanticism, hut
for genuineness of hcroic type, historical
truth, and vitality and precision of action.
Take for example, a drawing by a thirteen-
year old artist, Anatole Ksenofontov, called
"The Attack on the NI inter Palace."
A slanting rain, a lippery, slushy road.
Serried ranks of arined workers, soldiers
and sailors move towards the palace. The
drenched banners flap ii avilv.The old houses
of St. Petersburg coir apprehensively in
the gloom.
No one who recalls the events of 1917 in
Russia can be left -unmoved by this pic-
ture. And very few of the eye-witnesses of
those events could conN ey with such convic-
tion and fidelity the nem and tense spirit
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of battle which led to the victory of the
Oct.rher Revolution.
Here is another drawing: "Shchors at the
Approaches to Kiev."
The artist is Vladimir Shulzhenko, a
schoolboy of fifteen.
It would be quite excusable in a boy of
that age to be carried away by outward
effect, by the spectacular aspect.
Rot what interests ming Vladimir is not
theatrical effect but vintine types and faith-
ful description.
lie does not want his Shcbors to be an
abstract military chieftain imitated from
the pictures of others, but that live partizan
whom the revolution turned into one of its
111415i famous militar) leaders.
1? e have mentioned only a very few of
our young poets and artists.
The fact that. we have singled them out
from among numberless others does not
mean that we consider them the most gifted.
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We selected these poems and drawings
because we considered them most typical
and most indicative or the tastes and as-
pirations of Soviet children.
It would be impossible to mention here,
even briefly, all the boys and girls who
have attracted attention at our numerous
contests and expositions of young artists.
Six thousand youngsters sent in drawings
and pictures to one exposition alone?in
commemoration of the death of the poet
Pushkin.
As to the poems and stories dedicated by
children to Pushkin on the anniversary of
his death, their number is countless.
But in addition to poets and artists, there
are numberless gifted young musicians, act-
ors, reciters and dancers.
There is hardly a music, dancing or dram-
atic class in the Palaces of Young Pioneers
and clubs scattered all over the country
where you will not find children who de-
light us by the freshness and richness of
their talents.
What is the reason for this unusual art-
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Istie activitv displayed by Soviet chil-
dren?
First12,-, the fact that they enjoy real
childhood.
Thai tAltole period of life in uhich the
I, uman mind and organism grows and de-
velops, they are able to devote to study.
play. growth and de-, elopment.
.None of them has to bend his back in
tailor's shops or shoemaker's shops; none
of them has to run about all day delivering
purehases; none of them has to spend his
time sweeping the floors of barber shops.
'km that is not all.
Just as the schools are free, so are the
music_ art and dramatic circles, studios and
clubs.
And these circles, studios and clubs arc to
lie found everywhere, in big cities, small
invtits. factory settl,ments and collective
farms, in the center of the country and in its
horder regions.
Ever.. where ilii child is provided with
parr, crayons. paints, costumes
and a -i age.
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There is a veritable army of trained men
and women to guide the artistic education of
children. There is always an older comrade
to whom the child can turn for help and
advice.
Even children in the most remote and
sparsely inhabited parts of the country do
not feel alone and isolated. They may send
their verses and drawings to Moscow, Lenin-
grad, or the nearest city. A skilled adviser
from the child art cm-der or the Pioneers'
club will reply at length to his letter, giving
an opinion of his work and advising him
what to do next.
Such an exchange ol letters will often be
carried on regularly for several years, con-
stituting in its way an art correspondence
school. Sometimes the young aspirant is in-
vited to Moscow or Leningrad to meet his
advisers and to be F 11 4IWD round the town
and its museums.
All music schools and academies of art
have their junior depariments, where gifted
children are instructed by the best teachers
and professors.
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Theaters in the Soviet 1:nion give regular
children's perforrnan,es with a carefully
selected repertory.
In addition, there are special children's
theaters. In the twenty-one years, 1918 to
1939. 138 children's theaters have been
opened in the variou: national republics of
the They perform in twenty differ-
ent languages.
Nobody is out to torn these theaters into
money-making enterprises. The cost of their
maintenance, like the cost of public educa-
tion, is borne by the ,tate.
In the U.S.S.R. ate artistic- develop-
ment of the child is part and parcel of the
,general system uf producing well-educated
men and women and good citizens.
44
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PALACES
CULTURE
AND
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BY M-KUZNEI
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i6V6 :(
Ln..1 1
FOREIGN
LANGUAC,E
THE
r\R0 0
M KIJZNETSOV
0,..31:1 of the Cultural
Dopartment of the
(....ntral Council of
Trade Unions of the
Ii S.S.R.
MOSCOW 1939
f'UBLISHING HOUSE
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WORKERS' clubs and palaces of
culture play an important part in
the cultural development of the U.S.S.R.
In the first years following the Revolu-
tion, the Soviet Government placed at the
disposal of the trade unions and other pub-
lic organizations the palaces and mansions
formerly belonging to the royal family, the
capitalists and the landowners. It was in
these palaces that the first workers' clubs,
museums, libraries and rest homes were
organized. These buildings, however, soon
proved inadequate and the construction of
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new cultural centen and clubs was under-
taken on a large scale. New clubs have
sprung up in all the Republics, Territories
and Regions of the Soviet Union. In the
new cities that are being built, clubs are
erected simultaneouAy with the construc-
tion of factories and are sometimes referred
to as the cultural departments of the plant
they are attached to.
Thr Soviet Union has the shortest work-
ing day in the world. After six or seven
hours of work, the worker, engineer or of-
fice employee has ample time left for ree-
real ion.
The clubs and palaces of culture offer
the working people. a wide variety of fa-
cilities for wholesome recreation, they pro-
vide opportunities for all round education,
including the study of technology, and
help to develop the talent of the working
people and to perfcct their skill.
At present the Soviet Union has
93,600 clubs, which it, 435 times as many as
prior to the October Revolution. The So-
viet Union also has 70,000 libraries open
6
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The Foyer of a Railroad Workers' Club, Moscow
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to the general public. Many of the newly
built clubs are imposing palaces with dozens
of splendidly furnished rooms, theatrical
halls, moving picture theaters, etc. The
Gorky House of Cult Ire in Leningrad, for
instance, has a hall which seats 2,000
people. Leading theatrical companies from
Leningrad, Moscow and other Soviet cit-
ies perform here.
Tremendous sums are spent on cultural
services in the Soviet Union. During the
last ten years expenditures on cultural ser-
viers provided for in the state and local
budgets have increased twenty-fold. Iii
addition, the trade unions, cooperative and
other public organizations also make large
appropriations for cull oral work. The total
expenditure on cultural services in 1938
amounted to over 42,1100,000,000 rubles.
According to Soviet law all industrial
establishments, offices and institutions con-
tribute a sum equivalent to one per cent
of their total payroll to the trade unions
for cultural work ainon,i employees and mem-
bers of their families. This sum is assigned
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by the place of eniployment and is not
deducted from the employees' wages. The
national payroll for 1938 amounted to
96,425,000,000 ruble,; consequently, these
contributions for cultural activities reached
the enormous figure of almost 1,000,000,000
rubles. In addition to this sum a large
share of the trade union membership dues
is used for cultural work.
The increase in the number of workers
and the steady rise of wages make it pos-
sible for trade -unions to devote ever
greater funds to cultural and educational
activities. Trade union expenditure for
this work has increased ten-fold since 1927,
rea ching thestupendous sum of 1,387,871,000
rubles in 1938.
Many of the palaces of culture and clubs
belonging to the trade unions are large
organizations conducting their work on a
wide scale, with funds running into mil-
lions of rubles at their disposal. This may
be illustrated by the example of the Rail-
waymen's Central House of Culture in
Moscow, which spends 17,000,000 rubles an-
9
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nually on cultural activities among rail-
road workers.
Each club ib under a board which directs
its work. These boards are elected at general
meetings or conferences of the workers and
other employees of the factory or mill to
which the club belongs and as a rule con-
sist of 11 to 15 people active in club work.
Soviet Iyorkers' clubs cover a wide field
of activities. Concerts, theatrical perform-
ances, lectures on political subjects and
popular science, moving picture perform-
ances and numerous amateur circles such as.
dramatic, dancing, chess and checker, choirs,
classes in embroidery, painting, etc., all
form part of the daily activities of the
club. Other features of club work include
dances, competitions of amateur art circles,
amateur theatrical performances, discus-
sions of new books, lectures on the inter-
national situation, shooting matches, etc.
This is but an incomplete list of the fa-
cilities for recreation and education pro-
by Soviet workers' clubs.
There are 5,972 palaces of culture and
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Main Entrance to the Pti1ac,e of Culture of the
Stalin Automobile Plant, Moscow
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dubs under the dircot supervision of the
trade unions. The total seating capacity
of their concert and theater halls is up-
wards of 2,000,000. The best theaters in
the country, including the famous Moscow
Art Theater, and amateur theatrical groups
perform in these dabs. Besides large con-
cert halls and theaters the clubs have many
auditoriums, reading rooms, technical labo-
ratories and class rooms for their numer-
ous circles. A distinguishing feature of all
clubs is their well appointed rest rooms where
the visitor can spend his time in quiet
and pleasant surroundings. Altogether the
trade union palaces of culture and clubs
(-an cater to approximately 6,000,000 visi-
tors daily.
The number of people attending various
classes and circles?political study circles,
educational classes, dramatic and choir cir-
cles, etc.?in workers" clubs and "Red Cor-
ners- (dub rooms attaehed to factories, etc.),
has increased from 4.730,200 in 1934 to
6,573,500 in 1938.
Amateur art has assumed a wide scope
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in the Soviet Union. Millions of people
show a keen interest in music, painting,
sculpture, dancing, and the theater. After
working hours hundreds of thousands of
people attend classes in their clubs and
spend several hours studying painting, mu-
sic and sculpture, or participating in thea-
trical, choir and ordiestra rehearsals.
Over 70,000 amateur art circles function
in the clubs and Rod Corners attached to
the mills, factories, mines and offices. The
Soviet Union is rich in gifted people; the
whole country, to use Maxim Gorky's ex-
pression, is "a training center of talent."
The clubs and Red Corners furnish the
opportunity to develop ami perfect this
talent. Many famous actors and mu-
sicians received their f rst training in work-
ers' clubs.
The worker or office employee who at-
tends a class at his club has free use of
musical instruments, art supplies, etc. All
amateur 'art circles are under the guidance
of experienced teachers and competent art-
ists.
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SOTUC of the clubs have art circles number-
ing several hundred workers, office employees
and members of their families. Thus, the
Gorky House of Culture in Leningrad has
21 amateur art circles with a total atten-
dance of 1,317 students.
Folk art in the Soviet Union and the
amateur art activities of the people are
characterized by their buoyancy, optimism
and brisk gayety.
Several years ago members of Soviet
amateur art circles performed at the Inter-
national Dance Festival in London. The
performance of the Soviet dancers, full of
life and vigor, made a profound impression
on British audirneeF.
Who were these people, whose folk danc-
ing was marked by ?-uch harmony, expres-
sion and grace?
They included a nietal worker, a cabinet
maker, a statistician, an electrician, an ac-
countant and a stevedore. All of them had
received their training in the _amateur art
circles of Avorkers' dubs.
The fraternity of the peoples of the
4
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A Scene from "Boris GoiluilOV" as Presented in
the Workers' Club of Lenin Gold Mine,
Siberia
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U.S.S.R., the complete absence of national
and racial discord has led to the flourish-
ing of national art. The invaluable treasures
of the folk arts of the various nationali-
ties of the U.S.S.R. have served to enrich
the culture of the whole country.
This spirit of internationalism finds its
expression also in the activities of workers'
clubs. For example, the club of the Agri-
cultural Machinery Plant in Rustov-on-Don
has four dramatic circles?Russian, Ukrain-
ian, Jewish and Tatar. Another example
is the seamen's club in Vladivostok, which
runs an operetta circle in the Ukrainian
language, a Chinese theater and an art
studio in the Tatar language.
The clubs of the U.S.S.R. have over
one hundred amateur symphony orchestras,
u-hich successfully perform the most difficult
compositions of classical music. In a recent
competition, for example, symphony or-
chestras of Moscow scientists, workers of
Rostov-on-Don and Kiev, employees of
Leningrad cooperative societies, etc., took
part.
16
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Many amateur theatrical groups have
attained a high artistic standard. The per-
formance of Shakespow.e's "Taming of the
Shrew" by a workers' theatrical group of
the Moscow "Caoutchnue" plant, and
"Twelfth Night" by the amateur theatrical
circle of the tobacco workers' club in Lenin-
grad, the presentation of Schiller's "Kabale
und Liebe" at the building workers' club
in Zaporozhye, as well as the staging of
a number of contemporary Soviet plays are
all on a high level and mark a great step
forward in amateur theatrical art.
Exhibitions of paintings by students of
amateur art circles of workers' clubs are
also of great interest. Special studios are
maintained for the pail icularly gifted stu-
dents of these circle. Such studios have
been organized in all the towns, in Red
Army units and in many villages for the
purpose of fostering the development of
young talent. Some of these studios have
quite a large attendance. Thus., the art
studio of the Central Council of Trade
Unions of the U.S.S.R. in the Stalin dis-
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triet of Moscow is attended by 432 work-
ers, engineers and office employees, some
of whom have been released from their
regular jobs and receive a stipend from the
Central Committee of their union and the
All-Union Committee on Art. Others study
in their spare time. Tuition in these stu-
dios, as in all cdueational establishments
of the Soviet Union, is free of charge.
The many amateur circles in all fields
of art are an inexhaustible source of ne.w
talent for the profc,sional stage. The ma-
jority of the students admitted to the con-
servatories of music, theatrical schools and
art academies received their initial training
in the amateur art circles of workers'
Clubs.
Practically every dub has its own library
and some of the palaces of culture have
very extensive collections of books. The
of the Agricultural Machinery Plant
in Itostov-on-Don has 66,400 books and
9,093 regular subscribers. A feature of its
work is the organization of popular lectures
and discussions on literature. In 1938 )cc
18
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Railroad. Worker3' lob, Stalin Railroad,
Dniepropetrovsk. Ukraine
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Lures were given on Shakespeare, Pushkin,
Lerniontov, Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky, the
Soviet poet Mayakovsky and other promi-
nent writers.
The larger trade union libraries (with
over 1,000 hooks) alone have increased the
number of subscribers and readers from
4,673,500 in 1934 to 6,043,100 in 1938.
Lectures on the most diverse subjects
occupy an important place in the activi-
ties of Soviet clubs.
IThring the first ten months of 1938,
over 55,000 people attended the 257 lec-
tures organized by the Bakers' Club in
Leningrad. These lectures covered a wide
range of topics.
Workers' clubs and palaces of culture
often organize meetings between their mem-
bership and distinguished Soviet citizens
whose remarkable work has won them
nationwide renown. Prominent rum of the
Red Aron., famous fliers, scientists, Stakhan-
ovite workers who have achieved out-
standing results in production, the country's
foremost actors. and Arctic explorers re-
20
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turning after their intrepid work in the
North, are all frequent ,:trid welcome visi-
tors to workers' club,. The celebrated
fliers Gromov, Vodopyanov, the late V.
Chkalov and other world-famous Soviet air-
men have addressed numerous club audien-
ces on their flights to the North Pole and
to the U.S.A.
The best actors, artists and writers of
the country also addrel;s club audiences and
discuss their work with them. They re-
ceive many suggestions from the workers
which greatly influence heir creative work
in art. The Moscow Building Workers'
Club often holds discussions on designs of
new buildings, and such well known Soviet
architects as Iofan., Mordvinov and others
take an active part in them.
A great deal is being done by the clubs
to introduce better and more efficient meth-
ods of work in industry by popularizing
the achievements of foremost workers and
engineers.
Visitors to workers" clubs are afforded
every opportunity of spending their leisure
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Cline in pleasant surroundings. Cusy cafes,
comfortable rest. rooms, rooms for chess, bil-
liard rooms and dancing halls are all at
the disposal of the visitor. Soviet clubs
also arrange picnics, excursions and visits
IMISCUM5, to mention but a few more
of their many-sided activities.
in the summer months the clubs trans-
fer many of their activities to the parks
of culture and rest, where bells, carnivals
and other attractions are organized.
New relations among people are being
created in the U.S.S.R., where the exploi-
tation of man by man has been abolished.
These new relations are founded on honest
work and a conscientious attitude to one's
duties; they are based on the spirit of mu-
tual respect, mutual support, ardent love
for and devotion to the Socialist father-
land; they rest on the harmonious work
of the entire nation in the cause of Social-
ism.
The Communist Party of the Soviet
Union and the Soviet Government attach
great importance to the Communist cduca-
22
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Swimming Pool in th?) Palace of Physical
Culture, Kiev
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lion of the working people. In this respect
the palaces of culture and dubs, of which
there are so many throughout the country,
are important centers for educating the
new individual of Socialist society.
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6415R005900100005-0
DREN
a""ELAND
OF SOCIALISM
I
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CHILDREN
IN THE LAND
OF SOCIALISM
By A. MAR NRENKO
ORDER OF THE RED BANNER OF LABOR
AUTHOR OF THE "PEDAGOGICAL POEM"
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW 1939
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Iworked as a teacher in an
elementary school before the Revolution and
have been working among children ever since
the Revolution. The great changes which have
taken place in the life of the people inhabit-
ing the territory of the former Russian Em-
pire in the last twenty years naturally in-
spire one to compare figures. But when we
come to examine the 1- ituation of children,
statistical comparisons seem to lose their
impact on the mind, so great is the disparity
between the old and the new. If, for in-
stance, we say that the number of secondary
schools in the countryside has grown by
19,000 per cent in the last twenty years-
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nineteen thousand per cent I?statistical com-
parison in this ease ran hardly be grasped
by the mind and defeats its own purpose.
Tsarist Russia, as all the world knows,
was a purgatory for little children. She
may have been belt; ;id other countries in
general progress but few could rival her for
child mortality. The cause of this high
mortality was the low level of subsistence
of the overwhelming majority of the popula-
tion, the vicious exploitation of the workers
in the towns, the dire poverty of the peas-
ants in the countryside and the employment
of juveniles for adult labor.
The situation is radically different today.
Compared with 1913 the national income
of the Soviet Union has increased five-
fold. As a result of the elimination of ex-
ploiting classes the w hole income accrues to
the benefit of the people, whose standard of
living is rising steadily year by year. In
spite of the phenomenal increase in indus-
trial output and the great demand for labor
power, the Soviet law forbids the employ-
ment of children under the age of fourteen,
6
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View of the "Artek" Pioneer Camp (Crimean
A.S.S.R.)
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and forbids the employment of young people
under seventeen years of age in mines or
at any occupation that may be harmful to
the health. Children from fourteen to sixteen
years of age may be allowed to work only
by special permission of the factory in-
spectors. They have a four-hour day and
work under the guidance of experienced
instructors. That explains why you will
never see a Soviet youngster suffering even
the slightest degree of fatigue. You will
never see that blighted look that comes of
overwork and habituation to the grind-
stone.
This of course does not mean that children
in the Soviet Union are brought up to be
idle and irresponsible. On the contrary, we
expect rather a lot from our children: we
expect them to be good pupils at school,
we expect them to develop themselves phy-
sically, to prepare themselves to be good
citizens of the U.S.S.R. when they grow
up, to know what is going on inside the
country, what our society is striving for,
where it is making progress and where it
9
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is stilt behind. We promote the general and
political development of the children, help
them to be active and intelligently disci-
plined. But we have not the slightest oc-
casion to USC force against them, or cause
them the slightest suffering. Our children
cannot be conscious of the affection, so-
licitude and care which attend them at
every step without being morally convinced
of their duties, so that they fulfill their
obligations willingly, without their becom-
ing irksome.
Our children can see that all that they
do is necessary not for the pleasure of their
elders but for themselves, and for the whole
future of our state. Soviet children are
strangers to fawning and servility. They
do not have to demean themselves to a
taskmaster as to one who can make or break
them.
Not only have children in our country
never known what it is to be dependent
on some other person, a master, proprietor,
employer or patron but adults have for-
gotten long ago. Thee arc all things of the
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Approved F
In the Art Studio of the Odessa Pioneer Hall
005-0
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distant past. Our children better than any-
one else feel the freshness in the air of our
Socialist country. That is why they can
study, develop and prepare for their future
freely. That is why they are assured for
their future, love their country and strive
to become worthy citizens and patriots of
the U.S.S.R.
From the example of their parents and
their whole environment they see that all
careers are open to them, all pathways,
success in which depends entirely on their
diligence and honest endeavor in the class-
room.
Soviet boys and girls finishing elementary
school or secondary school have as many
ways open to them as there are trades and
professions; they have the right and the
opportunity to choose any of them. There
are no insuperable difficulties to hamper
their choice. Boys or girls wishing to enter
a college know they can leave for another
town if necessary without having to worry
about board and lodging, for every college
has living quarters and every student is
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entitled to an allowance from the state
whether he has parent.; or not.
Yet freedom is not the only advantage
which our children enjy from these intrins-
ic., conditions of our social order. They are
a stimulus to zeal in school-life and make
them confident in the future.
Even in the first ) cars of Soviet rule
the Workers' and Peasants' Government val-
iantly shouldered the problem of the mil-
lions of waifs left destitute as a result of
the imperialist war of 1914 and the armed
intervention of 1917-21. In addition to this
onus the young Soviet state had to contend
with economic ruin, widespread famine and
war on all its frontiers. Even so, the first
care of the Soviet Government was for the
children. In our country there were many
homeless waifs?children who had lost their
parents, relations or guardians, children of
no fi_xed abode, adrift on the streets of our
towns and villages.
But all of them grew up to be fine work-
ers and good citizens. Soviet society gave
each of them not only refuge and mainten-
14
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Juvenile technical education center. Young natu-
ralists on the experim, utal farm (Kuibyshev).
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ance but an education and the means to an
honest livelihood. Many years have passed
since our country put an end to juvenile va-
grancy. In our factories and offices you
will often meet former homeless waifs who
are now holding positions of responsibility,
respected by society and the people they
work with.
If anything has been proved by the his-
tory of our struggle with the evil of juvenile
vagrancy, the cause of so much gloating and
slander on the part of our enemies, it is
that Soviet society spares no effort nor re-
sources where the welfare of children is at
stake, and does so without lowering its
respect for the individual. Only this can
explain the remarkable fact that in spite
of the great difficulties which sometimes
arose in the course of our struggle on this
front the Soviet Government never once re-
sorted to juvenile prisons or corporal punish-
ment. It preferred to rely upon education
and congenial employment to help the waifs
and strays to become worthy citizens of
their country.
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But the struggle to eliminate juvenile
vagrancy was only a small part of the great
work among children which Soviet society
has accomplished in twenty-one years. The
overwhelming majority of the population of
tsarist Russia was illiterate. Everybody took
it for granted that the ruling classes and
the state power had no consideration for
people, and for children even less. Such
amenities as children's playgrounds, kin-
dergartens and nurseries were unknown to
the vast majority of people even by name.
Soviet society had to create all these things
literally from nothing.
At the present time even in the most re-
mote regions of the Soviet Union the pop-
ulation BCC8 from ite own experience that
care for the children is the prime concern
of the Socialist state of workers and peas-
ants. Thousands of schools have been built,
scores of national alphabets have been creat-
ed, new writers have developed, new teachers
have been trained to educate peoples who
before the Revolution had no written al-
phabet and often did not know what paper
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Happy childhood
(photo-montage)
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was for. Nurseries, kindergartens, children's
clubs have become an indispensable element
of Soviet life, and no one in the U.S.S.R.
can imagine life without these institu-
tions.
Under the Second Five-Year Plan (1933-
37) 864 palaces and clubs were built for
children, 170 children's parks and gardens,
174 children's theater, and cinemas, 760 cen-
ters for the technical and art education
of children. More than ten million children
are attending classes for technical and cul-
tural education. From 1933 to 1938 20,607
new schools were built. In the U.S.S.R.
elementary education has been made uni-
versal and under the Third Five-Year Plan
(1938-42) high school education will be
made universal in the towns and junior
high school education will be made uni-
versal in the countryside. These figures
show what great e Irons are being made to
give Soviet children happiness and a pur-
pose in life.
The children's camps and other provi-
sions for well-spent summer vacations are a
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striking example. At the end of the term
the majority of chiblren go off to the
country to rest. Children's camps are or-
ganized by the state, by trade union bodies
and by industrial enterprises. Every fac-
tory and office in the U.S.S.R. has the re-
sources and the facilities to do so. Camps
are organized in the vicinity of all cities
and are particularly numerous in the south-
ern parts of the Soviet Union--the Crimea
and the Caucasus. In 1939 the summer camps
will accommodate some 1,400,000 chil-
dren. Sometimes these camps are of the sta-
tionary, sometimes of the traveling type.
I myself, for instance, have made seven
big trips round the U.S.S.R. with my chil-
dren's commune. Having at its disposal tents,
camp equipment and provisions, my com-
mune has covered thousands of kilometers
by rail, by water and on foot. We have
rambled over the Crimea and the Caucasus,
the coast of the Sea of Azov, through the
Donbas. We have sailed on the Black Sea
and the Volga. We have pitched our tents
in Sochi, Yalta, Sevastopol and on the
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banks of the Donetz. Everywhere we have
been given a warm welcome by the local
people, who have shown us round their
factories, their children's institutions and
their clubs. Nothing can equal holiday tours
of this kind as a method of cultivating and
educating the young mind. At the close
of their studies at the high school, Soviet
boys and girls have not only acquired learn-
ing but have stored their minds with im-
pressions, a knowledge of people, their work
and psychology.
But even in the winter time the develop-
ment of Soviet children is not restricted
to the walls of the school. After school they
go to children's clubs which, with every
year that passes, are developing into first-
class research and art institutes for juven-
iles in which any child can find assistance
and a useful occupation if there is a spark
of inquiry or originality in his mind.
Soviet children have a remarkable pen-
chant for mechanics. Among children be-
tween twelve and siztccn years of age it is
almost impossible to find anyone uninter-
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ested in technical questions or ignorant of
the principles of the most common ma-
chines. This avid interest in mechanics and
engineering is not only catered to by clubs
organized for the purpose but by numerous
technical journals and books, published
specially for children, which are of great
value as assisting in the training of tech-
nical personnel for th,_, young industries of
the U.S.S.R.
In the army and navy, in the field of
art, literature and politics the rising Soviet
generation is proving at every step that the
attention which is paid to children in the
U.S.S.R. from their earliest infancy is al-
ready having its abundant reward.
r
a
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