1.

MEET THE KUTSENOVS

Beginning the story of
a typical Soviet family

(How do people live in Moscow? How do they work, how do they spend their leisure time,
what do they read, see at the movie or talk about at home? Ralph Parker, former New York Times
correspondent,’ now correspondent for the London Daily Worker, takes us into the home of the Kuz-
netsovs, a typical Moscow family. Follow this series as it unfolds the true picture of life in the land of

socialism. Introducing the Kuznetsovs ;

mee ;
By RALPH PARKER

MOSCOW

I want to tell you about my friends, the Kuznetsovs, Moscow working class family I have grown to
know pretty well during the last five years.

Let me introduce them in the order I met them, beginning with Mrs. Kuznetsov, Natalia Grigorievna,

or, to her friends, simply Natasha.

Short, blonde, capable-looking,
she was one of a group of moth-
ers waiting one summer evening
in 1944 for the train bringing their
children back from evacuation.

At that time Natasha was as-
sembling automatic rifles in the
factory where she had been a
metal polisher before her son
Sasha was born.

Sasha was four when the war.

began. His mother sent him to a
day nursery when her husband,
Vladimir, was called up and she
took his place at the bench.

She realized it was for the best
when the nursery was evacuated
to Central Asia but the wrench
was a harsh one, bearable only
because everybody Natasha knew
was going through some sort of
personal tragedy.

The summer Sasha

returned,
looking incredibly brown

and

healthy to Natasha’s eyes, her hus- i

band was shot through the knee
at Minsk.

By the end of the year he was
t enough to work in the factory.

Sasha had started going to school
then—he was seven—and Natasha
went on at her job.

Then soon after the war Galya
Was born, and for much of 1946
and 1947 Natasha and the little
girl lived with relatives on a col-
lective farm. The change did her
§ood, smoothing out some of the
lines of worry and fatigue the war
years had. brought.

* Ith eS

Natasha Kuznetsov’s parents
had been peasants. She was one
of the youngest of a family of
ten. Her father’s patch was too
Small to support them and he
came to Moscow to work as a
janitor,

Her mother dug sand from the
Moskva River when one of the
merchant Zubov’s factories was be-
ing built. She died of rheumatism
the job gave her. :

“Both my parents died without
having any idea what decent life
is," Natasha told me, as she de-
scribed her own upbringing in her
married sister’s cottage, and how
she came to help build up Moscow
during the first Five Year Plan.

She had four years’ primary edu-
cation in a village school.

“I still feel I have one foot in
the village,” she says.

Natasha sounds a little apolo-
Setic when she talks like this.

But it's probably her country up-
bringing that accounts for the
Spotlessness of her home, the pret-
tily embroidered linen’ curtains,
the high pile of pillows on the bed,
with lace spread, for her unerring
skill in picking the best mush-
rooms for drying and the right
Cabbages for pickling when she
sles to the market.

She has grown accustomed to
life. in a great modern city, to
cooking by gas or electricity, to
the factory canteen, to using the
telephone, to getting the news of
What’s happening in the world
While it’s still fresh, to using the
health center not so much to cure
as to prevent sickness.

But when she sees Sasha at his
homework and looks at the grow-
‘ng line of textbooks on his shelf,
She feels how luckier her children
~8re than she was as a girl.

The family sometimes teases her
about the few lingering traces of
‘Village ways. For her habit of
reading signs into everything. For
instance, she never sees the family

Be

/

‘strikes

\

‘

cat washing itself without saying:

“Oh, there must be guests com-
ing; I must put the kettle on.”

There are many of Mrs, Kuz-
netsov’s generation in Moscow of
this town and country mixture.
Many, too, like her who have help-
ed to build the city’s factories and
homes. with their own hands.
One day when I was walking
with my friends along the broad,
tree-lined streets near the Stalin
auto works, Natasha said:

“You know, I don’t think the
children will ever be able to feel
quite the same way as we do
about Moscow. We built it with
these,” and she raised her toil-
worn hands in an expressive ges-
ture.

Sasha and Galya will, no doubt,
have other reasons to make them
feel their share in Soviet construc-
tion no less keenly.

(This is the first article in a

series of 14 on life in the Soviet
Union today.)

VLADIMIR KUZNETSOV

Wounded at Minsk —

French labor boycotts
arms going to Vietnam

By MARK FREEMAN

F

PARIS

The French General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has de-
nounced government plans to compel maritime workers to handle military
shipments. A CGT executive board meeting congratulated Algiers and
Marseilles dockers for refusing to work ships bearing arms and ammu-
nition bound for Viet Nam or coming from the U.S.

The CGT stand came as the
government announced it planned
to smash the mounting wave of
protest strikes: by replacing dock
workers with troops. The special
cabinet session also voted to sus-
pend all public servants participat-
ing in the strikes and exclude
from further arms contracts em-
ployers who fail “to use their auth-
crity to insure delivery of arms
or munitions on schedule.”

President Vincent Auriol, tradi-
tionally supposed to be above par-
ty strife, used his influence at the
cabinet meeting to assure passage
of the drastic measures,

Speaking at the National News
Agencies Guild luncheon after the
meeting, Auriol declared: “As long
as there is fighting in Viet Nam
our soldiers will receive supplies
and weapons they need.”

The progressive press has chal-
lenged Auriol’s claim that strikes
should be economic weapons only.
Auriol was reminded that French
workers have some great political
to their credit, “among
them that of February 22, 1934,
which barred the road to fascism,
.,. On that day a Socialist deputy
named Vincent Auriol, perhaps be-
cause he could not do otherwise,
was marching the Paris streets
alongside the strikers.”

Meanwhile anti-war sentiment
continues. In St. Nazaire, hub of
the workers’ resistance against
loading war supplies, the visit of
a U.S. destroyer met with cold
hostility, A leaflet addressed to
the U.S..sailors said: “Take care
of your Wall ree ome
lunatics—we'll e care 0.
and together we'll win the
peace.”

Won‘t work for war,
says atom scientist

SYDNEY.

Dr. Thomas Kaiser, one of Aus-
tralia’s best known atomic scien-
tists, said on his return, “I have
made it clear that I will not
engage in research connected
with the preparation for war. I
hold the same viewpoint as the
world-famous physicist, Dr.
Joliot-Curie, who said, ‘If tomor-
row anyone demand that we work
for war, that we make atomic
bombs, we will reply NO! ”

National Union of Australian

University Students is demanding
reinstatement of Dr. Kaiser, who
was dismissed from the Common-
wealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organization for sup-
porting striking Australian min-
ers.

last week.

that the U.S. was embarking on an
atomic race which would lead the
country to a “suicidal future.”

“Morally the decision to manu-
facture the hydrogen bomb reveals
a fatal contradiction in our natio-
nal policy,’ the statement said. “It
runs directly counter to the UN
convention on genocide which the
President has placed before the
Senate for ratification ...

“Diplomatically going ahead on
the bomb overlooks the failure of
the one-sided Baruch plan which
has been the stumbling block to
international control of atomic
energy... :

“Even militarily it would seem
the choice of the H-bomb is not
a practical one. In a hydrogen-
bomb throwing contest, our allies
in thickly-settled, industrially-
concentrated Western Europe
would be easy targets, while Rus-
sia’s people and industries are
widely dispersed.

“This is the suicidal future to-
ward which our continuing reli-
ance on the arms race is leading
us.
“It is hoped that the action of
the President . . . will not be ac-
cepted by Congress as a foreclo-
sure of its Constitutional right and
duty to examine more calmly and
deliberately the wisdom of the
decision. The American people
should cetrainly participate in the
review through public Congressio-
nal hearings.”

The National Council of Ameri-
cam-Soviet Friendship asserted
that Truman’s decision “further
contributes to the war hysteria
being deliberately promulgated in
our country to obstruct an agree-
ment with the Soviet Union.”
The Council called on the gov-
ernment to “review negotiations
with the Soviet Union to ban
A- and H-bombs as well as other
weapons of mass destruction.”

The national committee of the
American Slay Congress, in a let-
ter to President Truman, told him:

“Your contention that your fate-
ful decision is based upon the de-
sire to see the United States
secure agaimst aggression will
not change this impression among
the freedom-loving peoples of the
-world, who recall that such con-
tentiongs were uttered almost dai-
Iy by the leaders of the Third

Reich when they were arming
Germany for their World War
If agression against the peace-
loving nations in Eastern Europe,
as well as in Western Europe
and America. .

“By taking this step in a most
dictatorial manner, without even
giving the American people an op-
portunity to express their views
and desires on this grave issue,
you have given the world an out-
standing example of how not to
work for peace. That this should
have been done by the chief execu-
tive of the nation which boasts of
its overwhelming might and pre-
sumes to be the moral] leader of

the world is not only regrettable

| Truman H-bomb
order scored as
‘suicidal policy’

WASHINGTON

President Truman’s decision to develop the H-bomb should be
subjected to a review by the American people and by Congress through
open hearings, the National Council for Prevention of War declared

In a statement signed by Frederick J. Libby, the council stated

but is imexcusable and outrageous.
“There is no doubt that your
aetion, instead of enhancing the
prestige of these United States
among the peoples of the world,
will, on the contrary, further da-
mage it. Military might does not
make right. The policy of build-
ing new and deadlier weapons is
a suicidal policy. It is a policy of
madness, as the deserved fate of
Nazi Germany showed conclusive-
ly.”
. The letter concluded:

“What the people of the U.S.
want is not new and deadlier
weapons, but more funds for edu-
cation and health, for better
housing and social insurance.”

Sees fascists
as U.S. allies

NEW YORK

“In the last war we joined with
the Communists to fight the Fas-
cists; in another war we will join
the Fascists to defeat the Commu-
nists.”

JAMES B. CAREY
“We will join the fascists”

It was not a Silver Shirt or a
Ku Klux Klanner who made this _
statement, but James B. Carey,
secretary-treasurer of the CIO and
head of the “Imitation UE” recent-
ly set up by the CIO to split and —
raid the militant United Electrical
Radio and Machine Workers Union.

But, if the statement was astoun-—
ding from the lips of a labor lea-
der, it was made in an appropriate
setting and to a receptive audience.
The scene was New York’s swank
Astor Hotel, and the occasion big
business conference called last
week by the American Legion to
launch an anti-communist cam-
paign. of support for the Mundt
Bill, now pending in the U.S. Con-
gress. PAs

DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER

But U.S. claims 8,000

SYDNEY.
Eight thousand soldiers of the
former Japanese Army in Man-
churia, who perished after a_tor-
pedoing of transports in 1945, are
still officially listed in Japan as
“prisoners of war in Russian
hands.” The Australian Democrat
an independent, non-party review,
reveals this in.a carefully detailed
report from a correspondent in
Japan. i
The Australian Democrat protests

TCR ADE EP

that the Menzies-Fadden govern-
ment sent a “stern note” to the
Soviet government on the alleged
fate of the Japanese POW’s based
on a “US ‘propaganda fairy-tale.”

The report states:

“Late in October, a certain Toku-
jiro Komatsumoto, a former officer
in the Imperial Army of Manchu-
ria, discovered at the Repatriation
Board headquarters in the port of
Maizuru a list of the personnel of
the 44th Army of Manchuria. This

still POW’s

group, 8,000 strong, had been or- |
ganized in Harbin and had perish-—
ed on July 16, 1945, when a trans-
port carrying the group was tor-
pedoed off the coast of Korea. These
dead men are now listed as POW’,
in Russian hands. “Komatsumoto —
told the Repatriation Board officials _
that an announcement of the deaths
of the 8,000 men had been made
by the Japanese authorities at the
time, but officials refused to remove
the list from their file.” :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 10, 1950—PAGE 3
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