GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Changing human nature
subject of Soviet novel

A BACKWARD farm, with ord-
inary people—many of them as
backward as the farm.

How often we are told by the
eynics: “Ah, you can’t change hu-
man nature—selfishness, laziness,
quarrelling, money-grabbing —
it'll be just the same in the
Soviet Union.”

And how such critics would
have crowed had they seen what
was happening on the First of
May Collective Farm in the Dis-
trict of Ugren, in 1946.

Here — under capitalism _—
would be good material for a sor-
did and thoroughly gloomy novel.

But the woman writer lived
among the backward farmers,
and found their story wasn’t
sordid or gloomy.

She found the farm was chang-
ing and that as the farmers
changed their farm they changed
themselves too.

Ordinary people became lead-
ers, discovered hidden talents
that no one had suspected. Hus-
bands and wives learned to know
each other after being spiritually
separated for years. Teamwork
grew, a collective spirit, a pride,
a happiness. ...

The recovery of this farm from
the devastation of war is the
story of Harvest, by Galina Niko-
layeva (obtainable in Vancouver
at the People’s Cooperative
Bookstore, 337 West Pender,
price $2.25). She has based her
Stalin Prize novel on this reality.
The result is both real and excit-
ing.

* * *

HERE ARE people like our-
selves, with their weaknesses,
their stubbornness, their
troubles. .

The war has taken their best
people, seared their lives with
personal sorrow. The soil is

poor, the equipment far from the
best.

With the cattle starved, horses
sent to the front, machinery
‘worn, out, many of the men dead
or wounded and the fields ne-
glected, the ee oe spirit of
the farm has vanished and each

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family fights for itself alone.

They extend their own land
holdings, keep back seed, work
up bast and flax at home to sell
on the market—all at the ex-
pense of the collective.

This is the situation that faces
Vasili Bortnikov’ when he re-
turns to take over as farm chair-

man, after five years in the army
and in hospital. His first. re-
action is to try to drive the
people back to collective work,
but in vain.

Personal leadership and friend-
ly discussion, not force and dic-
tation; joy in work, not threats
and goadings, humility and re-
spect for the individual’s needs
and latent potentialities—these
are the qualities, Vasili discov-
ers, that are required in a farm
chairman.

Step by step the sceptics are
routed. Human nature does
change, but not by force nor
by any sudden change of heart.

The basis of the change is
technical advance, electric pow-
ef, new farm machinery and,
above all, new knowledge of
meteorology, of agronomy, of

stock breeding. The new tech

niques furnish. the possibilities
for creating and then develop-
ing collective work, and thus for
human advance.

If the possibilities are grasp-
ed, still further technical de-
velopments in turn become pos-
sible.

In the great clash between
new and old that takes place in
this book there are no. supermen,
nor yet statistical average men,
but real and gloriously.- varied
men and women, building social-
ism, who come alive in the pages.

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EXHIBITIONS IN LONDON, ROME

Picasso's latest work shows
return to earlier humanism

TO WHAT extent is interest in
the modern art movement (which

is no longer so modern) main-

tained by reason of the large
fortunes sunk in it?

While the explanation for its.
_ existence must lie elsewhere, the

speculation is not without point.
The Picasso exhibition now
running. at the Lefevre Gallery

in London, for instance, is as

much a financial as an artistic
matter. a

Picasso is indeed good busi-
ness. This exhibition of 17 works
is valued at around $150,000, in-
dividual works at between $900
and $19,500 each.

These are the highest prices
the works of a living artist have
ever fetched. It is possible to
pick up modest works by Rem-
brandt and Rubens in the sale-
room for less.

Any sustained political attack
on Picasso would certainly lead
to a serious depreciation in the
price of his pictures. And as
he occupies such a key place ‘in
the modern movement, this
would in turn tend to undermine
the whole fabric Of a trend in
art that is “officially” patronized.

Why do the wealthy spend
such sums? The pictures fit in
with their mood. Picasso’s early
work (the exhibition covers the
period from 1897 to 1936) re-
flects the chaos and disintegra-
tion of a way of life.

On the other hand, unlike -so
many members of the abstract
and near-abstract schools, Picasso
began as an artist who recorded

life as he saw it.
* * *

THE FOUR WORKS in the ex-
hibition done during and shortly
after Picasso’s student years are
delicate portrayals of people in

the post-impressionist manner
then current.
Then come the _ years of

changing style in- which, signifi-

_.fantly perhaps, the fiercest and

most savage breakdown of the
subject occurs during the thirties,
the time of the rise of fascism.

The exhibition takes us “no
farther than this. It is not
intended to. Since the war
such pictures as ‘‘Massacres in
Korea” show a return to his
earlier humanism. ‘

This time, while still bearing
traces of his years of experiment,
the intention is militant, politi-
cal.

At the receiving end are the
Americans responsible for Ko-
rean atrocities. Picasso’s most
recent paintings, now on view in
Rome, deal with the theme of
peace and single out American
germ warfare methods.

A study -of Picasso’s art, still
imperfect as a popular language,
thus ends where it began. The
orbit of its interest is again
man—but at a more advanced,
humane level.

Phone

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