< PYONGYANG IVING along the road between the cemetery city of Sariwon @nd Pyongyang I often saw a Sttiking and symbolic sight —- black shattered U.S. tanks, relics Of General MacArthur’s advent- Ure north of 38th parallel, half idden by tall corn or surround- €d by heavy eared millet or thick- €rowing enierald green rice. This . Impression of life triumphing Over death heightened when I ° €ntered the capital of the Korean €mocratic People’s Republic. _ Pyongyang, which had its last air raid when we first passed through it the day before the atmistice, was struck by 420,000 bombs in the course of the war and every single building was SMashed. But the Koreans dug down into the earth or into sides of its green hills where the stone €gins very near the surface and ere recreated life. went through several of the City’s 127 factories: functioning Underground. In one maze of Stone tunnels brilliantly lighted with electricity and well ventilat- €d with power blowers, a thous- and women workers were operat- Mg an ultra-modern textile shill With all machinery made in a ‘Well known Japanese engineering Plant in 1949 and imported just fore the war. Saved by the workers at the War’s outset, it was scattered and Uried during the American oc- Cupation and installed in its pre- Sent quarters afterwards — with immense labor and unbelievable Mgenuity (how the huge spinning Tames were taken through the Narrow stone passages baffles the Magination). This plant, like all ‘T By ROB F. HALL “The report of my death is Sreatly exaggerated,” —MARK TWAIN. (While the academic world is Ourning the untimely passing of © noted historian, Prof. Arbuth- Rot Noseleigh, it is my privilege Present below one of his un’ Ublisheq manuscripts which I am Sure will be of more than passing Mterest__REH) - THE Stirring part of the history “a of the USSR properly begins eh its fall—that is to say, the Otable features of its history be- &n with the first time it collaps- - The Soviet system had not ag heard of up until that time, oH Since then we have never fai Sed to hear of it at stated, un- in intervals. I have thought Bers, Such a remarkable career de- ist es the attention of the careful chee and I have, therefore, a the materials for such a Siti from unquestionably auth- 1¢ sources—the Western ‘‘free”’ a — and here present them to © public.. ce first information the West- ern reader had of the Soviet gov- ik ee came November 8, 1917, ae € following dispatch to the its York Affiliated Press, from Correspondent in Paris. PARIS, Nov. 8 (By Affiliated hee Pyongyang * ey to rise. again By ISRAEL EPSTEIN others in Korea, had the usual social amenities customary in fac- tories throughout the socialist and new democratic countries— a nursery for children, a medical clinic, club, library, ete. — all deep below the surface. -Pyongyang’s central printing plant, which is also underground, has. 1,200 workers. It is fully equipped with rotary . and flat presses of various kinds and facil- ities for letterpress, bookmaking, matmaking, lithography, photo- engraving, bookbinding on a large scale. The equipment came from the Soviet Union and the’ People’s Democracies, some so re- cently that it is still in crates. There was plenty of newsprint and other types of paper. i The press was turning out 65,- 000 daily copies of the news- paper of the Korean Labor party, a hundred thousand copies of the Peasant Gazette, thrice a. week, similar quantities of various mag- azines as well as school texts and other books in large editions. As they were proudly telling us these facts, members of the plant com- mittee said new quarters above- ground were already under con- struction and will be ready for occupancy January 1. The tremendous vitality of Ko- rea’s cultural life, shown in the fact that the press was handling many new works of wartime authors and poets, was further evidenced in a huge 1,000-seat underground theatre where I heard a symphony orchestra and saw a ballet group of outstand- ing quality. In the midst of the cruellest of all wars, beneath the ceaseless hail of destruction from the air, the Korean government e report of my Press)—The government of the Soviet Republic of Russia which was set up in Moscow yesterday by Nicolai Lenin and his Bolshe- vist Party is expected to collapse within a few days. Most compe- tent observers give it a week, at the most. * * *x Soberly I clipped this item and put it aside — sadly; because I was disappointed that the world was not to discover the sort of system which the Bolsheviki would initiate. How premature was my disap- pointment! On April 10, 1919, the Affiliated Press carried another dispatch, this time from Berlin: BERLIN, April 9 (By Affiliated Press). — The Bolshevik govern- ment was reliably reported here as tottering with collapse immin- ent as the huge armies assembled by General Kolchak launched their spring drive. It was con- ceded that ‘war communism” in- troduced by Nicolai Lenin was\a failure. With a sigh I filed the clipping, . gratified however for this addi- tional chapter in the history of Bolshevism. It was not until March, 1921, that the next col- lapse was reported, this time from Helsinki. It read: : HELSINKI, March 13 (By Af- filiated Press). — Seizure of the and people spared no effort or expense to provide safe quarters and full facilities for the develop- ment of literature, music and art. @ ~ The best architects and artists of Pyongyang collaborated during the heights of battles and bomb- ings in producing maps and plans of a new and better city that will arise from the ghastly ruins. These plans were shown us proudly by Mayor Tien Yen Pyo who headed a city council of 80 members when elected but now has only 40—the rest were killed. Proceeding, map in_ hand, through the debris, we saw sing- ing young people clearing the new route for the main street — Stalin Avenue — which is being widened, and another majestic avenue named after Mao Tse- tung, both to be lined with big apartment houses. Work: has al- ready begun on factories which will produce brick and other building materials, and .on new schools, theatres and temporary quarters for the population. Pyongyang, which had 400,000 people before the war, now has 175,000. But within ten years, the mayor told us, it will accom- modate a million in far better housing than ever existed here before. Similar plans and activi- ties are going on in 40 North Korean cities. : In the underground market there are hundreds of stalls where the prices of goods have been reduced twice in the last two months and rice is much cheaper than in South Korea which has far more tilled land than North —but also plenty of profiteers who do not exist here at all. Kronstadt fortress by mutinying members of the Russian fleet yes- terday under slogans of ‘‘For the Soviets but without Communism” was viewed here as a prelude to the fall of Lenin’s government. ea @ % Through 1922 and 1923 my mind was preoccupied with the labor strikes and the first sound- on-film talking pictures. Imagine my surprise when on January 22, 1924, I read the following: MOSCOW, Jan. 21 (ByAffilix ated Press). — Nikolai Lenin’s death yesterday was the signal for an outbreak of a fratricidal . power struggle within the Krem- lin which observers believed would certainly end with the col- lapse of the Soviet government. I had to wait some time for my next information on the Soviet government collapse, It came in November, 1926: MOSCOW, Nov. 12 (By Affiliat- ed Press).—The resolutions of the 15th Party Congress of the Bol- shevik Party condemning Trotzky and Zinoviev for their factional activities revealed the wide split in the party and government which foreshadows imminent col- lapse of the Soviet system. There was a series of minor col- lapses up until April 4, 1930, when I read: Incessant, devoted and heroic work was as great a factor as military valor and self sacrifice in Korea’s strength. Now it’s again exemplified in such feats as the full restoration of pas- senger traffic on all the coun- try’s endlessly - bombed railway lines within a week of the armis- tice. The magnitude of this feat death . MOSCOW, April 4 (By Affiliat- ed Press).—Dictator Joseph Stalin admitted today that the collective farm policy of his Communist government was proceeding too fast and called for a relaxation in those policies, This new shift and turn in the party policies was not believed by observers to be suffi- cient to prevent uprisings which wauld sweep his government away. : But the sweeping away was re- ported in 1936: MOSCOW, June 10 (By Interna- tional Noose Service).—The purge trial following the assassination of Sergei Kirov is reliably report- ed (in Helsinki) to be only one of similar purges planned through- out the country as the power struggle between Stalin and his foes reaches a new intensity, fore- shadowing the fall of the govern- ment. * * * The fall was apparently some- What delayed, for on June 22, 1941, I read: WASHINGTON, June 22 (By Universal Fiction)—With Hitler’s Wehrmacht pouring across Soviet borders, high military experts here predicted the-fall of Moscow within six weeks. It was something more than six Pyongyang in 1952 ‘and the light it sheds on wartime happenings may be seen from the fact that on one of Korea’s main lines, during the last three years, the number of rails that had to be relaid amounted to a greater length than the entire original mileage, while each bridge .was rebuilt scores of times. B 8 weeks later (in 1953) that I picked up again ‘the career of this re- markable government: MOSCOW, March 7 (By Vitiated Press). — Generalissimo Joseph Stalin died last night, ushering in a struggle for power which rock- ed the foundations of the Soviet system. I reached for my shears and carefully clipped the item, past- ing it on page 893 of my scrap- book entitled ‘“‘The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union.” I snapped the book closed with a finality. Then, in the New York Clock of July 15, 1953, an article by the expert Barry Tartz: “The purge of Chief Lavrenti Beria of Stalin’s dread secret po- lice revealed the cracks in the Kremlin edifice which Soviet pro- Paganda can no longer conceal. Hungry workmen and starving peasants are ‘already clamoring for the removal of the Soviet gov- ernment and its imminent col- lapse was awaited in world cap- itals,” ® * * Thus, the noble experiment in socialism is gone! We shall never hear of the Soviet system, nor the Communist government — until they turn up again for another _ collapse. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 11, 1953 — PAGE 9 Sree