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FORTY YEARS OF PROGRESS

Soviet Union wins recognition
of industrial achievements

By ANDREW ROTHSTEIN

T IS probably difficult for younger people to imagine how primitive Soviet industry and its

! workmen seemed to foreigners long after the Socialist Revolution of November 1917.
“Good will on the part of the workmen does not count for much in a question of in-

dustrial production, and whatever may have been the good qualities of the Russian, per-

severance has never been among the most striking,”
(Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution.)

Vandervelde, in 1918.

So wrote also Bertrand

in 1920, of “the lazi-
ness and en OSs of the
Russian workman” and thought
it doubtful whether “enough
day-by-day detailed energy
would exist for the socialist
reorganization of industry.”

(Theory and Practice of Bol-
shevism.)

Years later, at the end .of
the first Five-Year Plan (1932),
British Labor leader Hugh

still found it “hard to
that trained skill of
could increase at
the rate needed: he would not
wager which would win in
the “grim struggle” between
“the efficiency of socialist
ples and the inefficiency
‘heir execution.”

}
Dalton
believe”

every kind

One of his co-authors of
Twelve Studies in Soviet Rus-

sia, T. G. N. Haldane, went
even farther
He wrote of “the general

lack of efficiency and organ-
Russia when com-
pared with Western European
. the general dif-
sae in educating the agri-
population to the use

i74t} in
ization mM

: @
Xt

what expert

BOTTOM:
Tadjik SSR,

representatives from capitalist
countries have been saying in
recent months, less than one
generation later.

Between November 1956 and
March 1957, Me‘alworking
Production, a British technical
journal, published a lengthy
survey of the Soviet engineer-
ing industry by British tech-
nicians.

They found that Soviet en-
gineering research and devel-
opment organizations were on
a “fantastic” scale, “quite un-
like anything we know in this
country” — as was also the
technological training program.

Soviet delevopment engin-
eers “are busily turning out
the type of standardized ma-
chines which may well give
them the ascendancy over the
West.” Their permanent ex-
hibition of machine tools in
Moscow is “both ex‘ensive and
impressive” and “automation
is very much to the forefront.”

The Anglo-American embar-
go on-exports of machine tools
to the USSR annoys Soviet
engineers, but it won’t hold
up the Sixth Five-Year Plan;
in fact; they are _erenared to
export Soviet-built ones.’

That month, too, the British

wrote the Belgian Socialist leader

Iron and Steel Federation
published the report of a Bri-
tish technical team which vis-
ited steel works in the Urals

in the summer of 1956.

They found that productiv-
ity there was “about equal to
the average for the American
industry (though this did not
apply as yet to the whole steel
industry of the USSR) and
was a splendid performance.”

They were struck with the
way every latest technical im-
provement was being constant-
ly applied in new plants, and
paid tribute to “the native

genius and knowledge of the-

Russian engineers.”

How have the Soviet people
achieved these and many sim-
ilar results contrasting so viv-
idly with the difficulties of 25
years ago?

Russia was training engin-
eers three times faster’ than
Britain. .. . Wide employment
of skilled women in Russian
industry suggested that Brit-
ain was neglecting a source of
increased supply of good en-
gineers -Engineering had
been made one of the most at-
tractive careers in the coun-
tryy ....There was also a re-
markable development in the

TOP: ‘The world’s Brees proton synchro ton has been “put into Sonne aS at the Toint
Nuclear Research Iinstitute’s high-energy physics laboratory at Dubna in the Moscow region.
With this synchroton physicis's have created the highest energy of particles ever attained.
A view of the new Kairak-Kum hydro-electric project under construction in the

TOP: An artist’s drawing of the 420, 000 kilowatt atomic

Sa

power plant being built in the Soviet Union. Cost of electricity
generated by this~plant, which will have water-type reactor

will be no more than that of ordinary hydro-electric plants. i

BOTTOM: Central control panel of the atomic power plant—_
the world’s first—built by the Soviet Union three years ago
This plant is being used to train staffs for the new large atomie

power plants now under construction or on the planning poards:

education and training of en-
gineering technicians.

Such tributes abound in the

report of a nine-man mission
of the three institutes on their
visit in September last year.

The London Times Scietce
Review wrote in similar terms

of the training of scientists,
and added that it is not only
quantity which has been pro-
duced: “the fact that quality
was being achieved also, at
least in the physical sciences,
has penetrated only slowly to
outsiders.”

But
ports only
tion: “How?”
fempt to
Why?”

these and similar re-
answer the quest-
Most don’t at-
answer another:

Only one has had the cour-
age—Dr. T. P. Colcough, lead-
er of the iron and steel team.
His:remarks need to be quot-
ed in full:

“In most countries the steel
industry has been based on the
result of individual inventions
or discoveries and has .grown
to meet the demands of indus-
try. Capital requirement has
been’ provided by "private en-
terprise, and in the progress of
industry has been controlled
to a large degree by the gen-

A

10

‘Ny

i

t

t

aii

N

eral economic. conditions pr |!

vailing in the industries white : 4

needs it is the function of Hh 4k
steel industry to serve.

“Under such conditions the i
rate of progress must be _ le
iable, and much of the card J
and individual effort invest {
inevitably fails to meet its ju Te
reward. Wy

“On the other hand, the t
steel industry in Russia
been- deliberately planned, ® x
to meet existing demands, "| \(
to make possible the crea¥®” |)
of new engineering and in of
trial activities. The sovie’ i!
steel industry has been 55" 9
ed of a ready outlet for } A
products and there has awe U
been every incentive, hoth } ; i
ternal and external, to striv
for maxirhum production am 4 q
efficiency.’ eft ay

Capital, transport, powy ah
materials — all are read 4)
available, he says. a 4

That is to say, public kates q
ship of industry, transp?” aN
the land, etc., in the USSR ~ 4\)
in. other words, socialis™ ‘sf ‘
has made possible true pia :
ning of industrial develo joy
ment, and of the educ®™, |
and training required fOf = y
success. ;

That is why the cola :
which 40 years ago, was indv? ly
trially so far behind no" ty
stands inthe front’ rank: a

October 25, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAG?