e

@ A report on Russia’s post-war plan

standards of 1936.”

Building from

the ruins

Soviet plants, built and
expanded in new areas
during the war, like those
in the Urals shown here,
have been assigned an
important role in meeting
the requirements of the
Five Year Plan.

—MOSCOW.

This was the reply I received when, in the course of a re-

oe | F WE reap a good harvest this year we may be able to get back to the living

cent discussion, I asked how conditions now compared with the pre-war years

of 1937-38.

It is a common experience in any chat with workers, farmers and intellec-

tuals I have met in Russia, White Russia and the Ukraine to find that the year. 1939-40

is recalled as one of socialist
prosperity.

“How well we should be liv-
ing now if there had been no
war,” a woman collective farm-
er on the Karl Liebknecht farm,
near Odessa, said to me, and a
score of times I have heard
this cry. -

The year 1936 saw the suc-
cessful completion of the Sec-
ond Five-Year Plan. That meant
that the collectivism of agricul-
ture and its mechanization, and
the socialist industrialization of
a backward country had been,
in the main, achieved.

The heavy base of Soviet in-
dustry had been laid and the
production of consumer goods
begun.

Stalin was able to say, “Life
for us has become more joyful.”

From 1936 to 1940 there was
a steady and rapid rise in liv-
ing standards.

Allocations of housing space
were increased. Food was abun-
dant.

Radio sets and silk stockings,
bicycles and motor-cycles and
similar comforts flowed into the
shops in mounting auantity and
quality.

The seven-hour day in indus-
try was universal.

Then came the war. Then vic-
tory. And with the victory stock-
taking began.

Farmers came back to their
farms and found desolation and
ruins. Workers returned to their
factories and homes, to wreck-
age and ashes.

The first days of homecom-
ing in thousands of towns and
villages all over the Ukraine and
White Russia were spent in
making dugouts for dwellings.

FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1947

And then began the tilling of
the soil, with spades where
there had been tractors; the
clearing of twisted- masses of
steel, with bare hands where
there had been modern machines
driven by electricity from well-
equipped factory power houses.

N early 1946 the first post-

war Five-Year Plan of re-
construction and _ rehabilitation
was ready and anounced, a plan
which is if anything more am-
bitious than those of the pre-
war years.

The principal feature of the
work in 1946 was the recon-
version of industry.

Restoration’ of factories and
mines, rebuilding houses, equip-
ping farms—all depended on the
successful and speedy . carrying
through of this task. :

Simultaneously, rehabilitation
went on in the western regions
of the Union aided by the in-
creasing return of demobilized
soldiers.

But despite all this, produc-
tion in the industrial region of
the Ukraine was still less than
half of prewar output.

However, the basic work done
last year has enabled consider-
able advances to be made in
the first quarter of 1947.

A comparison with output for
the same period last year shows
remarkable increases in all sec-
tions of basic industry.
Production of  pig-iron, — steel,
coal, oil, has gone up steadily.

Agricultural equipment has
been treated as a priority re-
quirement, and the result is
that the output of tractors has
nearly doubled this year, while

lorries, buses and locomotives
have also increased.

The housing program threat-
ened to be held up seriously

by lack of building materials.

‘So special efforts have been

put into increasing production
there, and cement and _ slate
production has more than dou-
bled in the year. ,

There are jobs which have to
be done first, yet at the same
time essential consumer goods
have increased too.

The production of boots and
shoes, for instance, is nearly
doubled, and that of wool and
cotton fabrics has increased by
50 percent.

Those examples are enough to
show how successfully the re-
construction is being tackled,
though nobody attempts to deny
the fact that life is still hard.

But this is only the beginning
cf the second year of the Plan.
And there are great hopes that
this year’s harvests will provide
an abundance of food, rein-
forced by the first results from
Uzbekistan and the Turkmenian
Republic. '

@

HE problem of increasing the
productivity of labor is con-

stantly stressed in the press and .

in the factories. This, too, is in
large measure an after-effect of

. the war,

Seven million working people
were killed in battle. This means
that a large part of the popula-
tion experienced in industry and
mechanized agriculture was lost
—and this problem is being met

by huge industrial training
schemes.
Meanwhile, the need _ for

houses is even more urgent than

a a ee ee Sh ae Tr eS a ee Ne ee beg es Sea A OS

before. And more houses mean

an up to date building-materials
industry and new prefabrication
factories, which in turn demand
more steel, coal, timber, factory
equipment, all of which are
still in short supply.

As a result, it is probably
true that the large-scale opera-
tion to solve the pressing. hous-
ing problem in the towns will
not get fully under way until
well into the third year of the
Plan,

But meantime building is g0-
ing on in town and countryside
with the means available and
with much private initiative and
improvisation.

As in the earlier Five-Year
Plan simultaneously. with 4@
month by month stepping up of
production the foundations are

being laid for far greater out-
puts toward the end of the
Plan, and for the one which
will succeed it in 1950.

OSCOW is building an

‘outer circle’ line for its
underground railway system.
I have just looked over two
of the stations of the new
line, both of which are due
to operate in 1949, although
the whole of the line will not
be complete until 1952.

I was accompanied by Ab-
ram Tankilevich, chief en-
gineer of the building organ-
iation of the Moscow metro.
I. was able to see for myself
the extremely difficult condi-
tions in which the work is
taking place. \

As Tankilevich remarked:
Moscow’s subsoil took no ac-
count of the possibilities of
metro construction—and mak-
ing the tunnels watertight is
the biggest problem.

At one point 2,500. cubic
metres of water are pumped
out every hour.

But the problem is solved
in all. its aspects. And the
working conditions of metro
builders have been improved.

This improvement has been
effected by better planning
as a result of the experience
‘of giving each worker more
room on the job and also by
improved and stricter me-
thods of inspection by the
trade unions.

Fatal accidents are rare—
even though the tunnellers
often have to work in bulky
water-proofed clothing with
water cascading all round—
and are only about six a
year.

eS
HE main technical improve-

on the metro is that all the
lines now have metal casings.
The first was concrete-lined.
‘The improvement in ma-
chinery supplies has made
this possible, and Tankile-
vich told me that whereas
only two tunnelling shields
were available in 1933, there
are 42 on the present con-
struction. *

Only 20 percent of the first
excavations were done by ma-
chine, but now the figure is
80 percent.

I saw one of these shields
in operation, the arm of its

_A new line for the Metro

~ ers,

ment since the first work:

great erector swinging down
to pick up the steel casing
section, weighing close on a
ton, and lifting it into posi-
tion halfway up the side of
the new tunnelling.

ETRO-building in Moscow
is not a luxury. The ob-
ject is to clear the streets
ultimately of trams and to
leave free passage for more
up-to-date means of  trans-

port.
'

The outer circle will run
through 18 of the capital's
districts taking in over two
million of the population
hitherto not served, by the
metro, linking them not only
with their homes and the
centre but also with the
suburbs. .

The metro construction or-
ganization is responsible not
only for building the tube,
but also for housing its work-
Already there are spe-
cial workers’ townlets hous-
ing 15 to 20 thousand people
on the outskirts of Moscow
and more are being built in
the center.

So far as the personal lives
of the metro builders are
concerned, the progress they
have made under Socialism is
perhaps best illustrated by
another story told by Tanki-
levich.

KE himself is the son of
Jewish peasants from @
small Ukrainian settlement.
Neither of his parents could
read or write.

When his grandmother was
told that he was building the
metro she commented: “He
wouldn’t be such a fool. He
knows there is plenty of
room for him above ground
so why should he start build-
ing under it.”

There is no doubting the
enthusiasm of the workers
for this job and the compari: | .
sons which they make with |~
the metro systems of Londo®,
Paris and New York empha-
size only their determination
that Moscow’s system should
be really the last word i?
workmanship, efficiency 2?
style. °

ow

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