USSR seen through a glass, darkly

‘Let George tell it’

By BERT WHYTE

MOSCOW—‘My glass is half
full,” says the optimist. “Alas,
my glass is half empty,” moans
the pessimist.

Reporters from the West who
pay flying visits to the Soviet
Union are more apt to”fall into
the second category. They bring
along their preconceived doom
and gloom attitude towards the

land of socialism, and view
everything through a_ glass,
darkly.

Into this category falls George
Radwanski, a Montreal reporter,
whose three long articles about
his four-week visit to the USSR
were featured in The Toronto
Star recently.

Let George tell: it:

“In Moscow, an_ endless
stream of trucks roars past the
towers of the Kremlin through
boulevards 30 yards wide, spew-
ing black exhaust fumes into

‘air already sour with the smell
of human sweat and stale black
bread: ..2

That’s the

same, Moscow

How can one person get so much so wrong

By JOHN PEET

BERLIN — The people of the
GDR are too dim-witted to move
into the shade when sunburnt,
have few accomplishments, can’t
wash their hair, and get into
trouble with the police if they
wear their shirts hanging out.

None of this is remotely true,
but it is recounted at great
length, together with a lot of
other oddities in an article
signed ‘Steven Kelman” in the
U.S. magazine “New ”Yorker
dated Sept. 30, 1972.

Throughout the Cold War
period there was a wide range
of misinformation about the
GDR in the western press, rang-
ing from vicious propaganda in-
ventions to the merely silly.

In recent years, with millions
of foreigners visiting the GDR
annually, the woolier stories
about the GDR have tended to
disappear, and articles on the
Republic, though often hostile or
ill-informed, have, in the main,
borne a_ recognizable resem-
blance to reality. For several
years now, for instance, no west-
ern newspaper appears to have
published that old story about

During the world-wide campaign to free Angela Davis, youth in

which Western pollution ex-
perts say is one of the cleanest
cities in the world.

As for the half-full, half-
empty glass illustration I used,
listen to George being pessimis-
tically “objective”:

“His (Dr. Balakshin’s) rent is
$13.20 a month and it hasn’t
changed for almost 30 years. In
reality, more consumer goods
are being produced and sold to-
day in the Soviet Union than
ever before. But the output still
isn’t sufficient to keep pace with
the increased spending power
and the rising expectations of
Soviet consumers.”

Yes, indeed. Low rents. Rising
incomes. More consumer goods,
rising expectations. A sad story.
Not like the West—rising rents,
lower real incomes, growing un-
employment, a plethora of un-
sold goods.

Shortage of some consumer
goods in the Soviet Union?. De-
finitely. That’s why emphasis in
the current five-year plan is on
production of more consumer

Christmas trees being banned in
the GDR: it never was true, but
it went echoing on from year to
year.

But now, one late September
day in 1972, Steven Kelman’s
article entitled “Letter from East
Germany” appears in the “New
Yorker.” I note the fact of its
‘publication in the “New Yorker”
more in sorrow than in anger,
since I have always held this

journal in esteem. The magazine ~

is an odd mixture of luxury ads,
excellent cartoons, fine-grained
prose, topped off quite frequent-
ly with a dash of good old radi-
cal conscience on issues like the
Vietnam war. :

But for some reason (tempor-
ary insanity seems the only pos-
sible explanation) the usually
discriminating editors of the
“New Yorker’ accepted this odd
article by Mr. Kelman, an article
which carries us right back to
the days of the “I-was-the-first-
redblooded - American - report-
er - to - dare - the - wilds - of -
starved - and - Christmastree-
less - Soviet - Germany” style of
journalism.

It is a long article, covering

l

the GDR took part actively. Photo shows young people signing a

scarf during an exhibition on her life and work.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1973—PAGE 10

Paaa Yo

et

goods, better quality, etc.

A housing shortage in the
Soviet Union? Yes, there is. Dur-
ing the Second World War some
1,710 Soviet cities and towns
were completely destroyed and
25 million people became home-
less. Imagine Canada devastated
from Halifax to Winnipeg. We’d
also have a housing shortage
that would take decades to
overcome. But last year alone
300,000 Muscovites moved into
new flats. The same thing is
happening all over this vast
country. It’s the biggest housing
construction boom the world has
ever seen. Take your head out
of the sand, George.

And George visited Murmansk,
on the 69th parallel, “the black
city where the sun doesn’t shine
at all 56 days of the year.”

That’s socialism for you —
turning off the sun. Of course in
the capitalistic Canadian Arctic
the sun shines all the year round.

In Murmansk our inquiring
reporter met a worker who liked
his job, was earning good wages,

nine full pages of the magazine
when you discount the ads; ine-
vitably some of the facts he
gives are true (there is in fact a
square called the Alexanderplatz
in the centre of Berlin, for in-
stance), but his’ facts are gar-
nished with such a garble of non-
facts that a number of western
journalists permanently station-
ed here in Berlin doubt seriously
whether Mr. Kelman ever actu-
ally visited the GDR; others
question whether there is such
a person at all, since it appears
unlikely that an actual living
person could get things so
wrong at such length.

All passages below printed in

italics are extracted direct from
the thoughts of Steven Kelman:

“The German Democratic Re-
public is a country whose ac-
complishments are few, and for
that reason the official enthusi-
asm for those that do exist can
.be almost boundless.”

Here Mr. Kelman is in a min-
ority of one. Over the past few
years hundreds of respectable
conservative western journals,
ranging from the London
“Times” through the “Chicago
Tribune” to “Time” magazine
have paid tribute, often grud.
gingly, to the “East German
Economic Miracle,” which they
all agree is something of an ac-
complishment.

“On each floor of apartment
houses nearby (to Alexander-
platz—ed.) where well-off bure-
aucrats and professional people
live in comfort, people stepping
out of the elevator are confront-
ed with portraits of Communist
Party leaders.”

Was Kelman in another coun-
try altogether (If it’s Tuesday,
this must be Ruritania)? In my
25 years in Berlin I have never
noticed these portraits, so I ask-
ed around; nobody I queried
could recall seeing or hearing of
this remarkable be-portraited
apartment house.

“One day, I was invited to go
out hiking and sight-seeing in
the Erzgebirge Mountains, near

~Dresden. Before we left, my

_Last year alone, 300,000 Muscovites moved into new flats. ©
biggest construction boom the world has even seen. .--

and had bought a $7,200 co-
operative flat in sunny Moldavia
“to move to when I retire.” But
George now hastens to tell us
“another part” of the story. No
names, no pack drill, so, says
George coyly, let’s call him Yuri,
because he “would almost cer-
tainly go to jail” if his real name
was revealed.

“I am a Communist,” Yuri
told George. “If communism
came to your country, the Com-
munists would kill you or put
you in jail for being a capitalist.
If capitalism came to our coun-
try, we would not be harmed.
That is the big difference! .. . I

hosts told me that I had_better
tuck in the polo shirt I .was
wearing; the police might object

. if it was out.” —

Other passages of the Kelman
Papers mystify or infuriate GDR

audiences who have been ex-.

posed to them; this paragraph
has them rolling in the aisles. On
any hot summer day, up to half
the men you see in the GDR,
town or country, wear their sum-
mer shirts outside their trousers.
The GDR police. must be slip-
ping.

“Furthermore, it is possible to
believe that a product like sun-
tan lotion is useless only until
One views the endless sunburned
bathers lining East German
beaches, where lotion is unavail-
able.”

If you can fight your wa
through the thickets of Mr. Kel.
man’s prose, this means that the
people of the GDR are too dim to
come in out of the sun if they
get a sunburn. A wide range of
sun lotions, oils and creams has
been available in quantity in
the GDR for many years now.
The only Surprising thing is
that Mr. Kelman admits that the
eae now and then in the

: ke ees eke ‘Pepsi-Cola’
uttons than buttons su i
Angela Davis,” ps

Button-wearing is in any case
unusual in the GDR: my daught-
er of sixteen, well-acquainted
with the East Berlin youth scene,
reports nil sightings of Pepsi
buttons; there was a scattering
of “Free Angela” buttons when
they were relevant, apparently
all imported from button-orient-
ed countries,

“The choice of meats the day
I went (to a store—ed.) was pig
tails, beef bones, or hearts.

Pork chops are now available
somewhat more often than they
were several years ago, but they
still create good-sized lines
when ihey make an appear-
ance.”

Official figures show that the
average statistical GDR citizen
ate nearly threespounds of meat
weekly in 1970, which is an

. awful lot of pig tails. Foy
parison, meat consumption
“U.S. is about 3.5 pounds

hate the Soviet Union.” :
If George’s readers iy
this, they’ll believe evel)
But. George, of courses |
best Western newspaPel
tion, plumps for “object,
“Neither of the two ™ ft
telling the whole truth 47
in “his own country, © ét
neither of them could
whole picture.” ‘i
Only George, with the)
age of a four-week tout ie
him, is: capable of comPy
understanding everything
the Soviet Union. alt
The mind boggles. :
away, George!

As to pork chops, the :
show GDR _ citizenS gf
through 84 pounds of Pq
person annually, compar ig,
pounds per person in thé ~
States. Fi

“East German world | (
devote far more space ho
of the Soviet Union ~~
maps of Germany.” ff

For Mr. Kelman, this ty
“Fast Germany’s clieMiy
subservience” to the
Union. About the only
does prove is that Mr.
cannot even count. The § eo
school atlas devotes 22 ets
maps of the GDR and W& off
many, and 14 pages to My
the Soviet Union; and ©
ack Hausatlas,” the aif
big GDR world atlas, pk
pages of maps of the Gy
West Germany, and * oot
of maps of the Soviet Oe y
‘Even if Mr. Kelman Sof
had been correct, his St
would have been of stuk it
irrelevance. The large *
cellent atlas published by :
Times,” London, conta!
pages of maps of the
Kingdom, and 18 pages ic
of the Soviet Union, wh jo
cording to Mr. Kelman?
means that Britain is =
state of the Soviet Unio® |

Late News: Earlier ing
article we questioned th
ence of a U.S. write!
Steven Kelman; it really f°
brain strain to believe Ms)
person, unaided, ‘could Fy
much so wrong. Later (a)
show that he really exist
the man seeing a giraffe | jf
first time, I still refuse t°
it.

Ker

af”

Even later stunning news :
we go to press, reliable 5
ligence comes to hand 4 if
us that Mr. Kelman has RE
a whole book on the G2"
for early publication }
York. For once, ~wolrGag@
fail us. G

—Abridged from the ’

Democratic Report