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PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN 68

By NELSON CLARKE

HAT are the prospects for
peace in the new year?
th In One way or another,
€ Tribune has been placing this
Question before its readers every
ad for 20 years. For we are
ae In the beginning of the
an decade of the titanic strug-
4 a impose peace on the war-
makers—on those forces which
i their drive to stamp out
Ben freedom and progress
verywhere in the merciless
Pursuit of profit, have kept hu-
Manity on the brink of the ther-
MOnuclear precipice.
a 1S perhaps worth a moment
dig Teflection that the ultimate
peer of World War III has
ied. been staved off for a per-
th Some 20 months longer than
rt time which elapsed between
aa oD o the First World War
e inni :
ond, ginning of the Sec
But no one would want to
S€ too much hope on that fact

alone. Not at the end of 1967,
when the puppets of Laos and
Thailand are obediently cooking
up all the old familiar lies about
“aggression, to provide the
White House and the Pentagon
with the pretext to escalate the
war in South East Asia to a yet
more desperately dangerous
levels.
fo)

Certainly, we would have to
say that the United States rulers
have been and are continuing to
create in Indochina a threat to
world peace as grave as any of
the countless crises for which
they have been responsible
through more than 20 years.

And yet, there is solid ground
for believing that for all the
darkness of this moment, the
dawn of a new day of peace is
coming.

e

This hope arises specifically
around the issue of ending the
war in Vietnam which is central

to the whole question of peace
and war in the world today.
Peace in Vietnam would create
new more favorable opportuni-
ties for damping down all the
other powder kegs around. the
world—Berlin, the Middle East,
Cyprus — to mention only the
most menacing.

If we compare the crisis of
Vietnam with those which have
gone before, we will see one
deeply significant difference.

The true nature of the beast,
which is United States imperial-
ism, is being\revealed for all
men to see.

Around the world it has be-
come clear that the source of
war, the brutally naked aggres-
sor, the ferocious enemy of lib-
erty is this military-industrial
complex which has its lair in
Washington.

e

It is of course of special im-
portance that. this truth has
come home to millions of Ameri-
can people, that the moment of

protest against the war in Viet-
nam, while drawing strength
from all that is best in American
democracy, has reached a level
quite unparalleled in the history
of that country. That crisis is
cutting deeply now into the
whole fabric of American so-
ciety, reaching into the halls of
congress, sowing fear and un-
certainty even within sections of
the ruling class itself.

And in our own country, so
well placed to influence the
United States, already the pres-
sure of the Canadian people has
moved away from the hypocrisy
of quiet diplomacy, and will yet
compel the complete dissocia-
tion of Canada from the US.
aggression.

e

For this great clarification of
the central issues of the 20th
Century, the world will forever
be indebted to the Vietnamese
people—not only for their un-
dying heroism, but for their re-
-sourcefulness and political skill

which they have learned in bit-
ter decades of struggle for their
freedom. The fundamentally
changed nature of the world has
also been forcefully revealed in
the flood of help that has come
to Vietnam from the Socialist
countries, above all from the
Soviet Union. May the solidarity
that is represented by that aid,
and by the mass movements of
workers and all other democrats
around the world receive fresh
momentum in 1968 from the re-
newed efforts of the Communist
and Workers’ parties to unify
their struggle for peace, against
imperialism!

For it is true now as it has
been true through all the years
of the Cold War and shooting
war, that the breakthrough to
peace will come only as a result
of the united actions of millions
and millions of people in all
countries who have come to
know that peace is in their
hands, and they must fight for

‘it as for life itself.

Modern Moldavia
a flourishing Repu

By BERT WHYTE

Tribune Staff Correspondent

KISHINEV

OLDAVIA, youngest of the
Soviet republics, is famous

for its boundless orchards

and vineyards, year-round sun-
i he and beautiful women. Add
© these pleasant attributes
SOme three and a half million
Tiendly people, a stable econo-
Ha and a flourishing young in-

Ustrial base, and you have a
Capsule picture of modern Mol-
davia,

It was not always thus. For
Centuries Bessarabia — as the
Country was formerly called —
Was one of the most backward
areas of Europe. It held first
Place in the incidence of tuber-
Culosis—and was the last state
© use soap. Some 80 percent of
Women were illiterate and 70
Percent of the men; and “litera-
cy” in many cases meant one
year’s schooling and the ability
© write one’s name.

Officially, the Moldavian Soviet
OCialist Republic was formed
= Aug. 2, 1940, but the coun-
f Was occupied by fascist
Orces during the Second World

War, and actually has had only
22 years development as a SO-
cialist state.

Before the war Kishinev, the
capital, was a backward provin-
cial place, with a population of
100,000, no sewage system, and
no building higher than two sto-
reys because the town was situ-
ated in an earthquake zone.
More than a century earlier,
when the great poet Pushkin was
in exile there, he had written:
“Cursed, cursed Kishinev, my
tongue grows weary cursing
you.”

Too bad Pushkin couldn’t re-
turn to life and visit Kishinev
today. He would find himself in
a thriving, modern city of 300,-
000 people; a green city of parks
and playgrounds; an educational
centre; the home of 92 young
industrial enterprises. And he
would be pleasantly surprised to
discover that the one-storey cot-
tage he lived in from Septem-
ber to November 1820 had been
restored and turned into a mu-
seum in his honor. He would be
thrilled to visit the capital’s
magnificent library, containing
one and a half million books, and

ij
pleased to see the flowering of

culture in modern Kishinev—a
drama theatre, opera house, etc.

After driving around the

town to obtain an initial general’

impression, we interviewed An-
atole Damaskin, chairman of the
executive committee of the city
council. ““A good correspondent
receives five percent of material
and adds his own 95 percent,”
he quipped—and then went on
to give us so many facts that it
is difficult to use more than five
percent of them.

After the war, he said, other
Soviet republics sent help of all
kinds to Moldavia. Kishinev had
been 75 percent destroyed and
needed to be almost completely
rebuilt. Architects and scientists
rejected the old theory that be-
cause the city was in an active
earthquake zone (a quake in

1940 wrecked many homes and

caused casualties in lives) only
two-storey buildings were feas-
ible. Determined to escape box
architecture, buildings of various
shapes, sizes and heights were
erected—many five-story apart-
ments, and some of seven and
nine storeys. In 1968 an 11-
storey apartment block and a
15-storey hotel will go up. The
city will also build a new opera
house with 1,200 seats, a 2,000-
seat circus, and a Pioneer Palace.

Old Kishinev’s mud _ streets
are but a distant memory. Most
avenues are paved today, and
the transportation problem is
handled by 280 buses, 200 trol-
ley buses and a fleet of 750
taxis.

Pre-war Kishinev had no in-
dustries. Even today it could
hardly be called a major indus-
trial centre, but it boasts a num-
ber of growing factories and
plants which turn out tractors,
washing machines, pumps and
precision instruments.

Following our interview with
Damaskin we visited the preci-
sion instrument plant. Half the
2,000 workers are women, and
the average age of all employees
is 24 years. The plant has 260
engineers and technicians. Much
of the work is very exacting, re-

quiring the aid of microscopes.
* I asked one young girl in an
assembly room how she liked
the five-day work week, which
was only recently introduced.
She said it suited her fine, be-
cause the full. two days off gave
her more time for recreation and
study.

In another department I talk-
ed with a 17-year-old girl oper-
ating a huge drill. She seemed
to be the only girl in a roomfull
of men, but she told me one
other girl operated a drill on an-
other shift. She had finished
technical school, but was con-
tinuing her studies at night —
perhaps some day she’d be an
engineer.

Because most of Kishinev has
arisen since the war, one comes
across few reminders that the
city is five centuries old—it cele-
brated its 500th birthday last
year. At the Arch of Triumph,
there is a 1,440-pound bell cast
from Turkish guns captured by
Kutuzov more than a century
and a half ago.

Look at a map of Moldavia
and you will see that it is shaped
something like a large bunch of
grapes. That is fitting, for this
republic of rolling hills and fer-
tile soil holds No. 1 place in the
Soviet Union for its grape wines.

There are 541 collective farms
and 78 state farms in Moldavia.
The collective farms were start-
ed in 1949; their profits have
risen from 70 million roubles in
1950 to 742 million roubles in
1966.

Georgi F. Antosick, first dep-
uty chairman of the Council of
Ministers of Moldavia, gave us
some interesting figures on farm
production. Before the war there
were 250,000 hectares (a hectare
is 2.47 acres) of vineyards, but
war destruction brought the area
down to a meagre 30,000 hec-
tares. Consequently, in 1945 the
state was able to store only
15,000 tons of grapes; but this
year it will store 750,000 tons.
Before the war there were 81,000
hectares of gardens; after the
war only 35,000; but now the
figure has risen to 183,000 hec-
tares.

Moldavia has 180 wine facto-
ries producing wines and cog-
nacs which have won more than
100 medals at international ex-
hibitions.

Canning fruits and vegetables
is a major industry in the re-
public. Visiting one fruit farm,
I sampled two varieties of Can-
adian peaches which thrive in
Moldavia’s rich black soil.

The republic produced 60,000
tons of good-quality tobacco last
year and aims to boost produc-
tion to 100,000 tons by 1970.
Other important agricultural
products include corn, sugar,
beets, sunflowers, wheat, hemp,
soya beans and essential‘ oil
plants.

Our last fact: Moldavia, the
once backward and disease-
ridden Bessarabia, today has
more doctors per 10,000 people
than the United States, Britain,
France and Japan.

JANUARY 12, 1968-_PACIFIC TRIBUNE —Page 9

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