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By JAMES LEECH

__ Leningrad was grey in its Oc-
tober manner with swirling clouds
and rolling waters. It was remind-
ful of another city, Yakutsk, on
another river, the mighty Lena, in
the Yakutsk Republic from which

had just returned.

Here in Leningrad, Professor
Yevgeny Vokhonsky, rector of

-the revered Institute of Culture,

named after Nadezhda
Krupskaya for her aid to the insti-
tute soon after the revolution, was
Opening for me the enormous
World of a cultural foundation in
the Soviet Union, which I had
Rever before heard explained.
' His institute trains cultural
Workers (gifted musicians, actors,
Organizers) to work in libraries
and cultural centres throughout
the Soviet Union, including Sibe-
Man centres. Six graduates were
assigned to BAM, the Baikal-
ur Mainline railway.
The job of the institute’s

Sfaduates is to help organize,

train and develop cultural groups

_ Made up of the ordinary public —

People from all walks of life. (In

_ SOmMe ways it parallels the mass

Sports participation in the USSR,
Which fills the needs of millions,
and sometimes turns up the out-

Standing.)
The significance of the im-

-Mense unseen foundation on

Which Soviet mass culture

. flourishes came out in Prof. Vok-

Onsky’s easy discourse, while
Outside rolled the powerful Neva
ver with its barges, on whose
anks, as Evenk. writer...V.N.
vachan had declared, socialism

-for the Native peoples was also

rm
Access to Leading Institutes
__Of the 600 new students who
€nter this institute each year, 100
are from the autonomous repub-
€s and areas; such as Yakutia.
These Students have no competi-

tion exams, but pass exams

among their local minority group,
d after four years, return to
€ir Own area to put their training
s work. There they research,
new and develop their native
qiite, and at the same time open
€ whole of the world’s culture to
ir Compatriots.
- €re is a similar story at the
€emed Pedagogical Institute in
Whe erad: with its 17 faculties,
€re 300 of the student body are
an the northern peoples. Their
tion is paid by the government.
Vic '. Vladimir Mikshin, the
€-rector, said that since the 30s
many students from local national

A world of culture for northern minorities

“The cleansing storm of
the October Revolution
swept away the bourgeois-
landiord system and de-
stroyed the regime of coer-
cion and oppression. The
happiness and freedom of all
peoples of the vast Russian
state were born on the banks
of the Neva.”

— V.N. Uvachan, Evenk
author and Doctor of His-
tory.

minorities have studied at the in-
stitute, fully at government ex-
pense, a privilege enjoyed by no
one else.

‘We see these facts,’’ he said,
‘tin the light of the rehabilitation
of national rights and culture.”

If one does not understand
what opportunities such northern
peoples have at institutions all
over the Soviet Union, if it is not
realized that their rights as Soviet
citizens entitle them to the whole
world of Soviet science, technol-
ogy, social benefits and myriad
forms of arts, then the life of
Soviet Native peoples is not un-
derstood. -

Culture to Soviet people, I ob-
served, means. doing their own
thing every bit as muchas going to
the Bolshoi, or the Yakutsk
Drama Theatre.

Anniversary of Written Language

Many of the minorities had no
written language, an important
facet of culture, before the
Socialist Revolution of 1917. Asa
matter of fact, December 1977
marks the 60th anniversary of the
Yakut ABCs. :

The premier of Yakutia,
Alexandra Ovchinnikova, had
explained to me how the Yakut
people first began to feel the ad-
vantage of learning when liberal
democratic intellectuals like N.G.
Chernyshevsky were “éxiled to
Siberia’’ by the tsarist regime,
and wound up in Yakutsk. There.
they fraternized with the Yakut

people and taught them the basics _

of reading and writing — among
other disciplines.

In the Soviet Union all children
have the right and the facilities for
learning their own native lan-
guage first. This was instituted
early in the revolution, at a time
when Native children in Canada.
were being punished for uttering
words in their own language in the
sacred confines of federally-run
schools.

Woodcut by A. Munkhalov.

Culture, like most things in Yakutia, is a blend of the best from the past
and the new, the national and the international.

While the Institute of Culture
was sending its graduates far and
wide, the prestigious Leningrad
Academic Choreographic School
was drawing its students too from
many places.

‘Some 30 nationalities are
studying here,’’ Deputy Director
Vladimir Statskeivich pointed
out, ‘‘from both inside and out-
side the Soviet Union.

**Tuition and accommodation
are free of ‘charge,’ Director
Yanina Lushina, explained.

Observing only an advanced
class, during a tour of the build-
ing, I found Tajik , Ossetian and
Latvian dancers among the stu-
dents. :

National Arts Flourish

It’s revealing, and makes a
startling contrast with the situa-
tion in Canada, to consider that
the Yakuts in far-off Siberia have
their own National Drama
Theatre, their own Opera and
Ballet Theatre, their own Art Col-
lege, their own Writers’ Union
(which publishes a widely-read

monthly magazirie), and so on..

The Yakut State Publishing
House publishes about 200 titles a
year. Imagine replacing the name
Yakut with Cree, or Ojibwa or
Inuit, and then think of what it
means! ~,

‘*Ah, but they do only Russian:
works,’’ says an anti-Sovieteer.

Not so. They do Russian
works, along with Shakespeare

and others, but the drama theatre ©

begun in 1925, has 35 professional
Yakut actors and performs
dramas by Yakut playwrights in
their own language. The opera
theatre, founded in 1947, has sev-
eral Yakut librettists and com-
posers. The ballet theatre has half
adozen Yakut ballets in its reper-
toire.
~ More than 30 artists of Yakutia
are members of the all-Soviet ar-
tists’ union, and display their
works in the USSR and abroad.
Yakut artists showed their works
at Expo 67 in Montreal. Yakutia’s
graphic artists are known in many
countries. One Yakut artist has
the high honor of being a corres-
ponding member of the Academy
of Art of the USSR.
Writers from Minorities
More than 300 journalists in the
Yakut Republic belong to the
union of journalists, and better

than 50 writers there, including a
Yakut woman writer, and rep-
resentatives of other minorities,
are members of the USSR Writ-
ers’ Union. Six indigenous
nationalities are among these, in-
cluding a Yukagir, whose people
number only about 400.. In
Yakutia there are also 33 central
and provincial newspapers —
most in the Yakut language, some
Russian, and some bilingual.
The cultural activities evident
even in less accessible parts of the
USSR span both the centuries
and all sections of society. Never
do they rest ona financial or racial

base. And the young people of the -

construction sites develop their

"ARTS AND LEARNING FLOURISH IN YAKUTIA

Own activities. :

In the construction workers’
village of Zolotinka, 25-year-old
bricklayer Nikolai Kruk, who
completed his last two years of
secondary school here on the
construction site, invited me to
the room he shared with three
other workers. His album of
photos, interlaced with full page
drawings of his own suggested the
place of art among these workers.
Certainly I treasure the example
of his wood engraving which he
presented to me.

The grinding poverty which

puts artistic satisfaction out of the ©

question, poverty which still
exists in Canada’s north, was
vanquished by the Socialist Re-
volution, which reached into
Siberia.

Articles 45 and 46 of the new
Soviet Constitution, which state
that, ‘‘Citizens of the USSR have
the right to education . . . the right
to enjoy cultural benefits,” for-
malize what is a fact.

Projects in Somalia halted _
after specialists expelled

If Somalia wants to be econom-
ically independent, she has to de-
velop her southern part, said Vik-
tor Komissarov, a representative

‘of Soviet suppliers.

Komissarov, a prominent
hydro-engineering expert, had
been taking part in the construc-
tion of a hydro scheme on the
Juba river, a unique project for
Somalia. ‘“‘Three years ago,”’ he
said, ‘‘man was a stranger in this
vast area, the home of elephants,
lions, boars, antelopes and mon-
keys. Thorn bushes gave no pro-
tection against the scorching sun
and the Juba carried its brown
waters to the ocean, refusing to
quench the thirst of the land.”’

The Soviet projéct was in-
tended to irrigate 25,000 acres of
land, ensure the supply of elec-
tricity, create an industrial base
for processing agricultural pro-
ducts in the Juba Valley and even-
tually enable Somalia to produce
enough food domestically and
stop buying it abroad. The Soviet
engineer pointed out that the irri-
gated area could be increased to
100,000 acres, half the country’s
irrigated land.

When Somalia unilaterally de-
nounced the Treaty of Friendship

_ with the Soviet Union; Komis-

Sarov went on to say, ‘‘our
specialists were forbidden to
leave their homes. Work at the
1,600 kilowatt electric power sta-

tion was stopped, machinery for
the hydro station stood idle, con-
crete was no longer delivered to
the dam’s foundation and the sta-
tion’s foundations, and workers
left the 5,000 acres of land already
irrigated.

‘“‘We were then ordered to im-
mediately leave the country.
Work on the main canal was inter-
rupted, more than 20 kilometers
of which had already been put
into operation. Just think, the
Somalis could have gathered two
crops a year from those lands.

““We were bitter when we were _

leaving, not only because we had
not finished the project, planned
to be put into operation one year
hence, but also because ‘the two
years we had been working there

,was too short a time to share

everything we knew with the
Somalis and to train engineers
and technicians to take our
place.” Se

Soviet hydrologists had studied
in detail the ground water regime
in the Juba Valley and drew upa
hydrological map and a forecast
for ground water input in the pit.
The project was guaranteed
against accidents and the ele-
ments. “‘But hardly could we
have predicted that our work in
Somalia would be unexpectedly
terminated and we would leave

without finishing the job,’

Komissarov said.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 16, 1977—Page 11