JHE Supreme Soviet of the USSR met on July 11 after a period of six months such as the Soviet nion has never seen, six months of breath-taking decis- fons, frank speaking and determined action. Almost six months ago the central committee of the oviet Communist party and the Soviet government ued the draft of the Sixth Five-Year-Plan. At the time I called them the “‘breathtaking pro- osals for the biggest increase of prosperity any nation has er known—a peaceful challenge to the entire world.’ A month later the 20th congress of the Communist arty approved this plan, and when the Supreme Soviet vlfilment of these aims. #) Here are some of the material . alladvances registered in the past x months: @ Paid maternity leave for yerking mothers increased to 12 days from April 1. @® The working day on Saturdays and eve of public ‘holidays cut to six hours with- but loss of pay, as a preliminary troduction of the seven-hour day next year. @ The six-hour day . im- édiately without loss of pay r workers between 16 and 18. © Increased pensions for c age or disablement and for families who have lost the breadwinner from October 1. @ All tuition fees at col- ges and institutions, small as ey were, to be abolished from eptember 1. ® Increased payment to llective farmers with a sys- tem of advance monthly pay- ents and increased incentives enerally to collective farmers. At the same time measures ' ave been announced to in- rease production of milk and airy products, meat, sugar, otatoes and other vegetables. * ' Moscow’s streets are re- sounding now to the songs and Mances of young people pre- ring to leave to help with he harvest, or for pioneering ork in distant parts of the ountry, in a spirit of high adventure and Socialist en- husisam. Hardly a day has passed ithout new groups leaving rom the Yaroslavsky station or the long trek and at the me time long. streams of hildren have been leaving for Oliday camps. The railway stations are crowded with Muscovites leav- ing for their holidays and with et it had already recorded substantial advances toward people coming to Moscow from other parts of the country and increasing numbers from foreign countries, too. In these past weeks I have seen the Soviet capital under- go a sort of Aladdin transfor- mation. New lighting systems are replacing the old in many streets as more and more electricity comes to the -capital from the great new power station at Kuibyshev. New buses are replacing the old and more and more of the new type with sunshine roofs are coming into service. More and more new cars like the new Moskvich and the new Zis-114 replace the old ones on the streets. x But life in the Soviet Union is no bed of roses and’a great deal has yet to be done before conditions are as good as the Scviet people and their lead- ers want them. : The housing problem is particularly difficult and is likely to continue to be so for another 10 to 15 years. The recently published statis- tical almanack showed that last year the amount of hous- ing space per person in the Soviet Union was only 23 scientists ew advances in the USSR | By SAM RUSSELL sauare feet, which is only- the equivalent of the 1913 level and lower than the 1926 level. Despite the vast destruction uf the war, total living space has ‘increased to about 6 per- cent between 1940 and 1955. Cranes crowd the Moscow skyline in increasing numbers, and housing is now a top priority. But in spite of the tremendous program of house building (another five million houses and apartments are to be built in the current Five- Year Plan), the allocation is still largely on the basis of one family, one room, with {two or three families sharing kitchen and bathroom. The Soviet people, Know, however, that there cannot be more houses without more steel, more coal and more cement, and that is why there has been such enthusiasm for the cerca high target set for heavy in Sixth ustry in the Five-Year Plan. * Since the 20th congress, discussion has been the order of the day with frank exami- nation of past mistakes as well as of future plans among and __ technicians, ee writers and artists, musicians and teachers as well as among industrial workers and collec- tive farmers generally. Nowhere has this discussion been greater than in the ranks _ of the trade unions, and in the recent trade union con- gresses and elections stick-in- the-mud officials have been turned out and new mer®elec- ted. Trade union executives who agreed too much and too cften with managements to the detriment of the workers they represented have been sharply taken to task. * Reviewing the results of the government’s foreign policy in, the past six months, the Supreme Soviet has had sim- ilar successes to recall. The Soviet government an- nounced a few months ago a cut in its armed forces of 1,200,000 men with correspon- ding reductions in armaments and -arms expenditure. This is the outstanding result of its foreign policy and home policy too. At the last session of the Supreme Soviet, Premier Nicolai Bulganin and N. S. Krushcheyv- were able to re- port on the tremendous suc- cess of their visit to India, Burma and Afghanistan. Since then there has also been a tremendous coming and going of delegations between the Soviet Union and many countries. Most notable of all has been the visit of President Tito of Yugoslavia, whose three-week tour and discussions with the Soviet leaders finally healed the tragic breach in the social- ist world, and the visit of the U.S. Chief of Air Staff General Nethan Twining who inspected Seviet aircraft factories and alr establishments. *x All very well, some people ~may say, but how’s freedom in, the Soviet Union? What about the terrible disclosures of Stalin’s reign of terror ? These pictures show (top) Novosibirsk railway sta- tion, now the largest in the eastern part of the USSR, from which Siberians can go to the changing trains; (centre) a new oil refinery at Omsk; and (bottom) Chelyabinsk tube- rolling mill. : What about the violations of sccialist law, the unjustified repression ? The Communist party’s cen- tral committee has already indicated at length how this situation came about, declar- ing its determination to ensure that this will never happen again. And the measures that have been taken so far are the guarantee of this. The last session of the Supreme Soviet ratified new regulations giving the procur- ator-general and his depart- ment wide powers to protect individual ' citizens against arbitary action. This has been followed by decrees establishing a special division in the procurator’s office to supervise the investi- gations of the state security organs and abolishing the “ex- ceptional procedure” for in- vestigating and trying cases of alleged conspiracy. The Supreme Soviet dis- “cussed these decrees as well as a-whole series of amend- ments to the existing criminal code ensuring still further re- spect for the rights of the in- Gividual citizens. But the Soviet authorities are the first to admit that such measures, to be effective, must ~ rely on the widespread vigil- arce of the people, and that vigilance is encouraged as part and parcel of the widest and: freest discussion that is taking place inside and out- side the Communist party on ail aspects of government and party life, restoring the Lenin- ist principle of collective leedership and _ inner-party . democracy. These widespread discus- sions have actually evoked feelings of bitterness as well as regret. But they have also increased the determination among ordinary people that such things must not happen again. The Soviet people, however, have not allowed, and will not allow, the discussions of past shortcomings to divert their attention from the main ques- tions which were advanced. at the 20th congress and which paved the way for fresh suc- cesses in the cause of peace, Socialism and unity—and the results of which they have already seen in good measure in the past six months. July 27, 1956 ~PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE It Black Sea _ without - moe nn ne DOC aresty sari CaTGIT TRATTTTATINTUI AAT ERA a workingclass | Puree primera ra FT wrt