WHITE TO RUBY RED

All Moscow knows famous

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‘fairy garden of lilacs’

THERE IS A garden on Mos-
cow’s Novo-Peschanaya Street
that has become one of the sights
of the city. It is easy enough: to
find—you need only ask the first
passerby. the way to Leonid
Kolesnikov’s garden. In season
even that is unnecessary — the
sweet scent of flowers will lead
you straight to it.

In the spring and early sum-
mer the small wooden house
where Kolesnikov lives is all but
smothered by the riotous pro-
fusion of lilacs of every imagin-
able shade of color. Have you
ever, in your wanderings through
a museum, found yourself stand-
ing spellbound before a work
whose wondrous beauty makes
you catch your breath in pure
joy? That is just the effect that
Kolesnikov’s fairy garden has up-
on the beholder. Artists have
not yet found the colors, nor
writers the words to convey its
beauty.

Alexei Tolstoy, when Kolesni-
kov showed him around the gar-
den, exclaimed: “You are creat-
ing pure beauty, Leonid Alexeye-
vich. I’d always thought that
lilacs were just lilacs. Today I’ve
seen a fairy garden of lilacs.”

The garden with its more than
400 varieties of lilac is indeed
a thing of beauty.

One shrub bears dark ruby
flowers that gleam luminously in
the — sunlight. The “Moscow
Beauty” variety consists of large
clusters whose delicate petals
seem to radiate a soft glow on a
bright sunny morning. The
“Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya,” nam-
ed in honor of the girl patriot
tortured and hanged by the
Nazis, is an azure blue. And
the “Ivan Michurin,” dedicated
to that great Russian scientist
and transformer of nature, cai-
only be described as of a ravish-
ing beauty. Its white clusters,
faintly tinged with blue, srow
as long as 11-13 inches, and the
individual flowers seem incred-
ibly large; they measure up to
1.18 inches.

.Many people come to the gar-
den to admire the “Moscow
Morning” lilac. Its color is hard
to define: the tints shade off im-
perceptibly from delicate rose to
white. And when the sun plays
upon it, pale lilac tones sudden-
ly glimmer amidst this luxuriant
bouquet. é
In the centre of the garden
grows one of the most beautiful
shrubs of all, with flowers as
white as driven snow. Kolesnikov
produced this variety just after
the war and named it “Branch
of Peace.” .

* * *

KOLESNIKOV planted his first.
shrub some 30 years ago, back
in those hard days when the
young Soviet Republic was only
beginning to recover from the
disastrous effects of the war
years. Food and fuel were scarce
and many factories stood idle.
But the new life had already
dawned and nobody thought it
strange that Kolesnikov, recent-

ly home from the front lines, .

dreamt of planting a lilac garden.

He started out modestly
enough, transplanting merely
known varieties to his little yard.
Only later, after studying the
principles of Michurin, did he
begin experimenting with new
varieties—with more and more
suecess each year—until scien-
tists began to take notice of his
work and help him.

His garden was unusually live-
ly in June 1941. Many new vari-
eties bloomed that summer. It
was the fullest fruition of his
efforts he had yet attained. And

s

he was already thinking ahead
to still more wonderful varieties
when the war broke out and he
went off to the front. In the fall
an enemy bomb came crashing
down and the “fairy garden,” or
“Tilae dream,” as people called it,
was no more.

When he was invalided out of
the army, Kolesnikov went back
to his hobby. Within two years
the “lilac dream” was again a
reality whose fragrance pervad-
ed all Novo-Peschanaya Street.
The “Branch of Peace’ now
grows in the very centre of the
bomb crater.

For this garden and the new
varieties of lilac he has produced
Kolesnikov has been awarded a
Stalin Prize, an honor conferred
for the most important achieve-
ments in science, engineering
and art.

What makes Kolesnikov’s work
important? An entry made in
his notebook by one of the visi-
tors to his garden, a doctor by
ae puts it very succint-
y:

“Leonid Kolesnikov has
shown that decorative garden-
ing is a new form of art destin-
ed to bécome a necessary com-
ponent of the architecture of
the sotialist town.”

That, in a nutshell, is the goal
the owner of the magic garden
has set himself. His lilacs al-
ready ornament the squares and
parks of Moscow, Leningrad,
Alma-Ata and other Soviet cities.
And now he is busy evolving still
more magnificent varieties | of
lilac to adorn the squares front-
ing the capital’s multi-storied
buildings and the grounds of the
Moscow University on the Lenin

Hills—BORIS PROTOPOPOV.

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Py RT : =

Hitler's generals not innocent
... neither are these two books —

TWO MORE pairs of rose-tint-
ed spectacles are offered to the
Canadian people so that they
may look upon Hitler’s surviving
generals and find that their for-
mer bitter enemies are now their
friends.

The first, The German General
Staff, by Walter Goerlitz (Hollis
and Carter), sets out to prove

that the military clique which -

devastated Europe in two world
wars really wanted peace all the
time. :

The second, The Romme! Pap-.

ers, edited by Capt. B. H. Liddell
Hart (Collins),. is designed to
further the “Rommel legend” of
a soldier of genius and a not-at-
all - a-bad - chap-even-if-he-was-on-
the-other-side type of general.

Why all this trouble to turn
the world’s most dangerous kill-
ers into angels of sweetness and
light? Because,no fewer than 40
of them are scheduled to re-
appear upon the scene under
U.S. management as the com-
manders of the West German
army.

* * *

BUT THE REAL nature of the
men who for over 100 ssars de-
termined Germany’s military
policy emerges from Goerlitz’s
book in spite of the author.

We see the German Army as
“a thing which lay beyond the
influence of public opinion and
was untouched by any spiritual
force or inspiration coming from
the people themselves.”

At every stage in German his-
tory we see it ready to take the
side of-reaction against the peo-
ple, from the time of the great
popular movements in 1848 right
down to the present day.

In 1918-19 “Hindenburg, Groen-
er and Sleicher were, haunted
by the spectre of Bolshevism”
and in 1944 “Rommel was rely-
ing on holding a line from Memel
along the Vistula and the Car-
pathians in the East, while armis-
tice negotiations were opened in
the West.”

It was this idea of turning the
Second World War into an anti-
Soviet campaign which lay be-
hind the attempted assassination
of Hitler in June 1944.

There was no political opposi-
tion to the Nazis among the
German generals—only the wish
to preserve the Germany Army
intact and secure the assistance
of the Western powers to carry
on the war against the. Soviet

Union. -

¢ Among the men even now

eat

on toed

|
b | —
i

oh. Se

trying to achieve that end
Lieut.-General Hans Speidel, for
merly Rommel’s chief of stall,
now top “adviser” on the cre
tion: of a new German Army all
only a short time ago a guest 0
the Churchill government 1
Britain.

The new build-up of Rommel
is above all a build-up of Speidel
his military heir, who subscribes
wholeheartedly to Rommel’s view
that “war is bound to come with
in the next few years betwee?
Russia and the Western powé!s-

Another “adviser” already of
ficially in the field is, Heusine™
who was one of Hitler’s closes

‘ : «ons
associates as chief of operatio®
on the Russian front.

Another certainty is Guderia®
who as chief of the German 8¢?
eral staff immediately after t
1944 bomb plot demanded that
every general staff officer ee
come a “National Socialist Le@
er-Officer” or resign.

Former Panzer commander yon.
Manteuffel: is also on the list. :
was a close associate of SS Ge?
eral Sepp Dietrich and Real
with him Hitler’s regard 45
“truly revolutionary” general.

It will need more than thes
two books, more than the see
of similar whitewash jobs one
coming off the press to make hat
Canadian people believe +
such men are their friends. AN

—FRED PATEM

———j

ws

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