Rockwell Kent

MERICAN artist Rockwell
w Kent recently presented
‘his collection of 80 paintings
and over 800 sketches and
drawings to the Soviet people.

_ Estimated to be worth 250,-

7 900 dollars the collection is to
be housed in the Pushkin Gal-
lery in Moscow and the Hermi-
tage in Leningrad.
[ The gift, the 78-year-old art-
| 4st, told a press conference
} here today, “Is a token of my
} deep respect for the Soviet
People.”

Tt was, he said, “a sort of
Peace Prize for the greatest
beace act of all history — the
—_

ROCKWELL KENT

collection to Russia

; Soviet people’s

gives

call before the
United Nations for
disarmament.”

Mr. Kent, who said he want-
ed his pictures, and
large collection of books which
he has either written or illus-
trated, “to have a good home
and to be in good hands.”

Mr. Kent offered the col-
lection to an American
museum seven years ago, and
its director accepted with
pleasure. But after Mr. Kent
had been summoned before the
witch-hunting McCarthy com-

universal

also a

it e museum authorities} :
al Ss = |the taking over of that octo-

refused to have anything to
do with him.

leo Tolstoy:

|\Nobleman Who

JN November people all over ie
~& the world marked the 50th ;
Becniversary of the death of

Leo Tolstoy, great Russian
} Writer whose novels, plays
fd short stories have en-

} "ched the culture of all man-
king,

Tolstoy’s life (1828-1910)
'COvers almost an entire cen-
| tury in the history of Russia,
} “ulminating in the revolution
—%f 1905.

) 7

jj  Folstoy’s immortal novel
| War and Peace” was written
% the 60’s, the era when the
€mocratic movement in Rus-
pia was developing.

Picture of - Tolstoy and
Chekhov taken in 1902.

of his works, Tolstoy presents
the idea of the moral superior-
ity of the common people over
the representatives of the up-
per classes.

“War and Peace’ is a nat-
lonal epic as well as a magni-

' ficent novel. It contains -hund-

Teds of characters all extraor-
| Tinarily real, and thousands
| °f scenes pictured with a real-
‘sm previously unknown in
| World literature. It can be de-
| Scribed as a cross section of
€ rushing movement of life.

By birth and education a
nobleman, Tolstoy broke with
his class and came to express
the feelings of the Russian
people. “I look from below,
with 100,000,000 tillers of the
soil,” he said.

| Following “War and Peace”
} ©8me the novel “Anna Karen-
tha, ” in which Tolstoy lays
are the morals and manners
“of the upper class and shows
€ tragedy of a woman in

| bourgeois society.

In all his work there is a
deep hatred of oppression. In
his novel “Resurrection” he
showed the role played by the
Church, the-ezarist. courts, the
police and other instruments
of the autocracy, and revealed

In this novel, Lenin saw althe sorrow and suffering of

| Tue picture of life in Russia | the people.
*fter the abolition of serfdom.
When ~ the czar - ordered
For the ‘scope and depth|thousands of workers and

Which life is drawn,

arenina”’ is in no way infer-
lor to “War and Peace.” In
his novel, as in many other

“Anna| peasants to be executed after
the defeat of the 1905 revol-
ution, Tolstoy’s protest -was
heard throughout the world.

Learned

ito ‘Look From Below

“T cannot remain silent,’ he

said.

that the instigators of
and their representatives.
“Why do we leave these men
in peace, and not throw our-
selves on all these emperors,
kings, ministers and generals
and fling them ‘into
asylums?” he wrote.

of capitalist culture which has
found its most complete ex-
pression in present-day Amer-
ican literature with its extol-
ling of perversion, sadism
and treachery.

“The art of the upper class-
es,” he wrote, “has ceased in
the course of time even to be
art and has come to be substi-
tuted by counterfeit art.”

No one had a greater right
to pass judgment than did
Tolstoy. Many believe him to
be the greatest- writer the
world has seen since Shake-
speare. Tolstoy was equally
at home in the domestic and
heroic spheres of man’s life.
His work ‘combined an intense
realism ~ with’ psychological
depth and a beauty of form
and language.

.There is not a country in
the world where this view is
not widely held in - literary
circles. But it is in the Soviet
Union above all where Tol-
stoy is a ~ household name,
the vast majority of the peo-
ple being - acquainted - with
some of his work.

insane |

Seoene BOOKLET ON

NATIONALIZATION

“NATIONALISATION” by H.

Fagan. Lawrence & Wishart,
London, 1960. Available at
People’s Co-op Bookstore,!
307 W. Pender, Vancouver.!
64 pages, 50 cents.
HE demand for the-nation-|
ee alization or public owner-}|
ship, of various industries, has!
been included in. the program)
of the Canadian trade union}
and farm movements for many |
decades. During the provincial! |
elections in B.C. last August, |
the CCF, B.C. Federation of!
Labour and the Communist|
Party all’ called for the public}
ownership of power, including}

pus, the B.C. Electric. More}
recently the Communist Party |
has launched a strong nation-
wide campaign for national-|
izing U.S. monopolies in Can-|

j}ada. (If tiny Cuba can do it,!
| why can’t we?)

Just what is nationalization?

| Is it the same thing as social-

| ization? How should it be car-!
| ried out?
| ization contribute to the strug-

What can national-|

gle for socialism? These and
many other questions are dealt

| with and answered in this fine

Tolstoy hated capitalist civ- |
ilization. He realized full well|
war |
were the predatory capitalists |
lamination of the

British publication, one of the
“Socialism Today Series.”
The booklet is actually a
thorough-going and critical ex-
nationaliza-
tion program initiated by the
British labor government in
1945. It explains how this gov-
ernment took over what were!
run-down industries such as
coal mining and railways, com-

| pensated the owners far be-|
Tolstoy foresaw the decay |

yond their actual worth and|
modernized them to provide}
cheap services and fuel for the}
big privately owned monopol-|!
ies of Britain.

These industries were na-|
tionalized with the agreement}
of the British monopolists,

they are controlled by boards |

composed of representatives of |
the British monopolists, they!

| lessons in it for Canada.

serve the needs of the mon-
opolists and served in fact to

strengthen British imperial
ism.

However, one thing was
[clearly proven, namely that

such publicly-owned industries
can produce better results than
privately owned. The_ booklet
explains that the mass of Brit-
ish workers today want to see
nationalization extended still
further, but that there is a
concerted campaign by the
monopolists and their Tory
government, supported by
right wing labor leaders,
strongly opposed. The British
monopolists wanted national-
ization of certain industries,
whose cheap _ services they
needed in common, but to ex-
tend it any further might en-
croach on their profits.

The booklet makes
that the decisive thing about
nationalization is: in whose in-
terests, under what conditions,
and under the control of which
class is it to be carried
through? ‘Obviously the aim of
labor must be to have nation-
alization serve the well-being
of the people, to have such in-
dustries controlled by labor
and to use them to help break
the economic stranglehold of
the monopolies.

Although this booklet is
about Britain, there are many
In the
ranks of the labor and farm
movements of our country
there is also still much un-
clarity about nationalization.
although Cuba is setting an in-
structive example! Written in
that popular, clear and well-
documented style that is so
characteristic of British Marx-
ists, this booklet is a valuable
contribution to the understand-
ing of this important question.

clear

|The time spent in reading and

studying it will be well spent
indeed.
@ BEN SWANKEY

NORMAN BETHUNE

China Honors
Norman Bethune

PEKING — A
memorating the 21st anniver-
sary of the death of Dr. Nor-
man. Bethune was issued here
by the ministry of posts and
telecommunication.

stamp com-

Bethune is known to hun-
dreds of millions of Chinese as
the great Canadian surgeon
and member of the Communist
Party of Canada who gave his
life in the cause of Chinese
freedom.

December 2, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9