if Soviets train © for Olympics hibition, | Occasionally there were pat- & of field and marsh, and elere were a_ great : » Small workshops, Be and, beside the river, — where floating land- Be aces and restaurants re towed in autumn for re- - and repainting. Though ae @ Moscow Huckleberry nn must have spent excit- R pais on ‘that stretch of 7 Iver bank it could only ee as an eyesore. f Is area had long been BF cduled for redevelopment. pcer the 1935 General Plan = iS) 8 Q n ee tversity were erected SS € Lenin Hills. But up : ay last year little seem- © have been done. transformed : Sos Few things that I cn: aeons in the Soviet 2 uring the many years 4 ue been here have given pt " vivid an object lesson Beit Russian genius for : aes out public works on * Rone scale. Russian— e, Oviet — architecture is ©-m at its best when work- 4 on a large ‘scale. in. dominating this area 4 pve Muscovites used to ( eee because it was and Si ull of luzhy (pools) Buin . is the Lenin Stadium. * of reinforced concrete : and faced with ceram- z deserves by its superb i of. grace. and a architectural achiéve- Ouiit i. 4 people that has f eScow-y. Dnieper Dam, the AY staai olga canal, the Kir- souncil um in Leningrad, the The in of Ministers’ Build- Market central Moscow, the = “hall in Yerevan and fines, Straight-forward build- ay jleats Central Stadium, which pees Stands in a green = a trees that still Branses ittle shy line great ihich of asphalt with Mill so oScow feet, I am sure, ls ae become as familiar (B thay mae with the walks do Aes er recent addition i city’s amenities, the Ericult i POunds, oe: Exhibition — By RALPH PARKER MOSCOW q + in spring last year you had stcod on the terrace at the top of Lenin Hills and looked down across the river ee towards Moscow itself yeu would have seen in . fee und a large, rather desolate-looking area half nclesed by the bend of the river. On the left it ran up q the battlemented walls of the Novo Dievichi Monastery, on the tight’ almost to the: grounds of the Building Ex- In this park there are other sports. buildings and grounds —130 to be exact with more still being built. These include a smaller stadium for tennis, basketball, volleyball ete; a swimming stadium with a diving pool as well as a 50- metre swimming pool, and a roofed Palace of Sports. In all there are 21 sports halls, 11 football grounds, 4 running tracks, 29 tennis courts, 16 volleyball and 15 basketball courts. Further, this vast complex is provided with restaurants, tea rooms, refreshment halls, post offices and a press room with telephonic connections with the whole world. Every detail seems to have been thought of. I noticed a whole network of water pipes ready to be connected to soft- dink stands to ensure that Muscovites drink out of properly-washed glasses. The first. important sport- ing event to take place in this new sports stadium was the Spartakiad of the Nations of the Soviet Union, an event for which preparations had been under way for the past 18 months. ; This Spartakiad is the bold- est attempt yet made in this country to involve millions of people in sports of every kind. During the past 18 months thousands of new sports or- ganisations have been formed —in the RSFSR alone over 7000. ; As a preliminary to the Spartakiad were held mass competitions in factories and farms; sports meetings were organized on a district, re- gional and republican basis. During May, June and July this year each of the 15 re- publics and the cities of Mos- cow and Leningrad held their own Spartakiads In all some 12 million people competed. An elaborate system of qualification during~ which nearly 200 new USSR records —and 50 world records—were sot up resulted in some 10,000 athletes winning the right to participate in the Spartakiad of the nations.., In the modern world sport has proved itself to be an important means for break- ing down barriers between na- tions. A Kutz or a Chataway can be no mean embassador of his people. Soviet sportsmen have contributed much to. the Res, | % Moscow’s new Lenin Stadium * In the past few years basketball has become a popular sport in the Soviet Union, btit it © wasn’t until the Russians met the Americans at Helsinki that the USSR began a hunt for timber-toppers. They’ve come up with a dandy in seven feet, six and one-half inches Vasily Akhtayev, shown here preparing to score against a Moscow team. The big fellow plays for the Kazakh Republic all-star aggregation. outside world’s knowledge and understanding of -the country they have-represent- ed in London and Wolver- hampton, in Calcutta and Tel Aviv, in Djakarta and Lyons. During the _ past seven rnonths alone 80 groups of sportsmen from 28 countries, consisting of 900 people, have visited the Soviet Union, while during the same period 121 Soviet sports groups con- sisting of over 1300 people have journeyed to 36 foreign lands. These figures speak of a real effort on the part of the USSR to join that great brotherhood of people who consider that the right place te conduct international con- tests is the sports ground, not the battlefield, that the med- als that the modern man can wear most proudly are those won for running faster, jump- ing higher, throwing farther than his brother men, not for shooting more of them. The new sports. grounds in Moscow have been laid out strictly in conformity with Olympic standards, and people here are looking forward to the Olympic Games being held there one day. Nearer in view is the World Youth Festival of 1957. It is with that festival in mind that tens of thousands of Sov- iet students and young work- ers have been volunteering to build this stadium For every professional hand em- ployed there were dozens of willing helpers. _ Today the flags of the 15 Soviet Republics fly at the entrance. The day is not far off when the flags of a hun- éred nations will fly there. August 24, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 15 in, the construction.