4. WHERE THE KUZNETSOVS LIVE :

Rent for Soviet family
six percent of income

From Moscow, Ralph Parker, correspondent of the London Daily Worker and former cor-
respondent of the New York Times, writes this story, the fourth in a series, of a typical Soviet
family. Parker's factual account is a valuable presentation of life under a socialist economy.

MOSCOW

The eight-story . house, cream-faced with iron balconies, which the Kuznetsovs share with other
oscow working class families, has a curious history.
A Belgian financial trust had it built for fairly well-to-do Muscovites some 40 years ago.

RALPH PARKER |
“but we had to share things.

Work started before the war

Then after the revolution Vladimir Kuznetsov’s father moved in from the shanty outside Moscow
one which was typical of the homes most workers lived in then.

In that old Moscow the difference between the density of popula-

When his father died, Vladimir took over the two rooms. In
youth and early married life he grew accustomed to the communal living
conditions that were a temporary feature of Moscow.

tion for the working class and middle class districts was in the ratio of
six to one. The poor were paying as much as half their wages to rent
cellars, doss-houses, and corners in barrack-like buildings.

In_ his

His home was his own and its privacy stoutly defended. But to

cook, his wife, Martha, had to share a kitchen where her gas stove stood
among three others.

“We got along all right with our neighbors,’” Natasha explains,

on an extension to the building.

Kuznetsovs moyed into a separate flat. Aue oe
The outside of the building was redecorated to bring it into
early nineteenth century style of the old street.

=)

Now an automatic lift takes you
‘0 the sixth floor where the Kuz-
Retsovs live. An outer door, heavi-
ly paddea against winter draughts,
©pens on to a corridor with a deep,
built-in cupboard. One of the big
advantages over the old place, Na-
tasha says.

The two rooms are connected by
@ folding door which enables them
to be combined into an L-shaped
‘oom with windows on two sides.
One of the windows leads on to a
baleony, In summer, this balcony
With its curtain of runner beans
and nasturtiums makes a nice place
Or supper.

The ceiling is high, the walls dis-
tempered cream. There are wed-
Mg pictures in fretwork frames,
4 Scene of children riding on a sled
‘a winter and several other repro-
uctions of flower pictures.
There is a what-not with potted
Plants and a number of painted
cups with pictures of Moscow, made
as the 800th anniversary celebra-
ant Between the windows

nds a bakelite radio set.

The telephone in the corridor, for instance.”’

Last year it was finished and the

harmony with the rather pleasant

The far room has a high iron
bedstead with a pile of mattresses,
covered during the day with a lace
bedspread Natasha bought from the
village. A divan bed is covered by
a bright Tashkent rug.

Beside the divan is a small table
where his 13 year old son Sasha
does his homework.

There is also a bookcase for his

father’s technical pamphlets and
magazines, the growing line of
collected Russian classics .'to
which, the family is subscribing
and books from the library —
Dickens’ Domboy and Son and
Voynich’s The Gadfly this parti-
cular week, .

The board floor is painted dark
green with rugs near the doors
and beds. Under a big satin lamp-
shade the table usually has a cloth
on it with tassels and fat little balls
of wool. :

This is a rather large chest: of
drawers and a pitch-pine sideboard.
In this the food used to be Kept,
but now Natasha has a kitchen and
larder to herself.

Ran Chiang’s blockade

huh

The Flying Arrow arrived in Los

with scars on her
hit by shells from
ted to run Chiang Kai-
the Na-

shells.

Angeles:
she was

The rooms have a homey, friend-
ly, lived-in look. You feel that the
contents have been collected pains-
takingly. Everything bears a
strong stamp of individual taste,
favoring things that wear well and
are comfortable and not much con-
cerned with style or fashion.

In the kitchen there is a gas
stove, and a water heater in the
bathroom with its enamel bath and
shower. The flat is centrally heat-
eqd.3

This. is not an exceptional stan-
dard in contemporary Moscow. Two
and three-roomed flats for work-
ers’ families are now the rule. Gas,
pipe-lined from Saratav on the Vol-
ga, has been brought to scores of
thousands of new and old Moscow
homes since the war. oe

‘Kuznetsov pays less than six
percent of his income in rent. He

cannot be evicted, for as a citi-

to a home.

He is an elected member of the
house committee, one of the ten-
ants’ representatives at. meetings
held periodically with the house
manager, who is responsible for
heating, outside repairs, snow clear-
ance and the upkeep of the gar-
dens, the common recreation room
with its Red corner, and the big
drying room under the rafters. _

zen of Moscow, he has the right -

Africans fight
against French

colonial

rule

—NEW YORK

Unionsts are in the lead of the greatest united movement against

colonialism ever to sweep across

French Africa, Secretary General

Abdoulaye Diallo of the Trade Unions of the Sudan told a press con-

ference here.

Diallo, now in the U.S. as a World Federation of Trade

Unions delegate to the United Nations Social and Economic Council,
said this movement, the rally of Democratic Africans (RDA), now

embraces all French colonial possessions on that continent.

colony, the Ivory Coast, it has 80,-
000 registered members out of a
total population of 2,300,000 and
has scored significant electoral vic-
tories.

The French have resorted to di-
rect violence in an attempt to
smash the RDA, Diallo said. In
February 1949, they arrested eight
of its leaders who are still held
without trial in a prison at Grand
Bassan. In December the jailed
men staged a 17-day hunger strike,
which they halted only on orders
of the RDA.

The RDA then organized mass
demonstrations on their behalf, held
despite many arrests. This was
followed by a complete boycott of
French goods not only in French
possessions but also in neighbor-
ing British colonies. In January,
1950, at Djemborkoro, the French
fired on a demonstration, killing
two persons and wounding many.
Casualties were kept down only
because many Negro policemen ig-
nored orders to shoot.

Since the rise of RDA, Dialo
said, the French are attempting to
replace all Negroes who hold ad-
ministrative posts with Frenchmen.
The old trick of bringing Africans
from one area to serve in another
is no longer any use, since tribal
disputes are dying out with the
rise of a new national feeling.

Although unemployed French
workers are going to Africa in
search of jobs, they can no long-
er be easily used against the
African movement, Diallo stres-
sed. The French General Con-
federation of Labor (CGT) has
fought side by side with African
unions, he said, and the Catholic
Confederation of Christian Wor-
kers (CFTC) has come out for
equal wages for black and white.
Only the Force Ouvriere (Wor-
kers Strength) has lent itself to
the purposes of the French admi-
nistration, Diallo said, quoting one
of its leaders as saying recently at
Dakar, West Africa, that Negro
workers “should not aspire” to
equal pay with whites. Asked about

the influence in Africa of the AFL,

In one

CIO and the recently formed Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions,
Diallo said: “They have none.”

“The CIO, AFL and ICFTU are

for the Marshall Plan,” he said.
“Africans know that the Mar-
shall plan demands a wage freeze
throughout the French empire
and, by driving workers out of
jobs in France itself, puts a load
on the labor market in Africa,
with the result that Negroes lose
the better jobs.”

“They also know that Marshall
plan coffee, for example, is driving
African coffee off the world mar-
ket, causing misery on the planta-
tions. Therefore they are against
the Marshall plan. How can a
trade union group that supports it
gain their confidence?”

Furthermore, he said, “the ICF-
TU has the support of, and itself
supports, the governments with
imperial possessions in Africa. The
Africans are against colonialism.
Therefore, they support the CGT
and the WFTU which are alsa
against colonialism and have shown
this in deeds, as in the WFTU-
backed French workers! strikes
against arms shipments to Indo-
China,”

Trade union council

reborn in Shanghai

+SHANGHAI
The Shanghai Trade Union Coun-
cli has been reborn. a4 f
Originally founded in 1925, it was
driven underground in 1927 by
Kuomintang attack. The rebirth
Was announced at the end of a 5-
day session attended by more than
1,500 delegates representing 930,000
unionists, some 87 percent of the
total number of Shanghai workers.
Speaking on behalf of the Chin-
ese People’s Republic and the Com-
munist party, Mayor Chen Yi prais-
ed Shanghai labor for helping the
government ‘take over plants, re-
store communications and resume
production.

e

dramatic escape from the FBI has
‘become legendary here in Eastern
Germany. :

“You might want to. know,” said

Pisler, “how with over a million
and a half unemployed in the
Western Zone, and with every
third worker in Western Berlin
out of work, we here in the Eas-
tern Zone have made such tre-
mendous economic strides?”

Yes, that is the big story in
Eastern Germany. Two weeks in
Berlin and the Eastern zone had
given us the impression of tremen-
dous reconstruction activity.

But more important is the re-
establishment of economic stability.
Besides the private stores that man-
aged to survive the bombings and

the postwar dislocations, Berlin and

was formerly Goebbels’ propaganda ministry.
he. said, “‘is the successful reconstruction of our economy -on a peaceful basis.”
_ Eisler is a very popular man in what he proudly calls “‘the youngest republic in the world.”

‘ernment stores,

By JEAN and LOUIS DAVID

‘Powerful unity growing in
all Germany,’ states Eisler

—BERLIN

* Gerhart ‘Eisler, press chief of the German Democratic Republic, spoke with us in his office in what
“What is most fundamental here in’ Eastern Germany,”

His

all of the Eastern Zone are now
dotted with huge newly built gov-
No more than a
year old, these’ stores sell every-
thing unrationed — from food and
textiles to furniture and optical
goods.

And, unlike last year, German
workers have now enough money
to buy food and other items apart
from their regular rations — ra-
tions which, incidentally, are
steadily increasing.

In one year prices on many items
have fallen a good 70 percent, and

| within another year German eco-

nomists see the end of rationing
for all items except some meats
and fats.

In the beginning of 1949, the
East Zone started its two-year

plan, which aimed at putting the
economy back where it was in

1936. In less than a year of ope-
ration the zone’s economy is hum-
ming along at 75 percent of 1936
and should finish the two-year
Plan months in advance.

Eisler’s explanation for these
economic and productive, spurts
Was simple. “The basis was laid in
1945-46 with the agrarian reform
and the transfer to the people of
the great monopolies and mines of
the Hitler government and their
collaborators. These two basic fac-
tors made possible a start to demo-
cratic economic recovery. Plan-
ning was possible because the new
nationalized plants make up 40 per-
cent of the zone’s industrial capa-
city.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 3, 1950 — PAGE 3