THE UKRAINIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN CANADA (1907- 1918). Peter Krawchuk. Progress Books: Toronto, 1979. Paper $2.95. _ There is little written on Cana- dian working class history there- fore this short history of the Uk- Ukrainian Sa jaoenae inaconcentrationcampin1916 because rainian socialist movement is they were from Eastern Galicia which, under the domination of the most welcomed. Austro Hungarian monarchy, was at war with Canada. As the author says ‘‘a complete THE JERK, directed by Carl Reiner. Story by Steve Martin and Carl Gottlieb. Starring Steve Mar- tin. The Jerk is a movie which reflects and exploits the contra- dictions and confusions | of present-day life. It is a movie full of racial and class stereotyping. It is a movie sprinkled with anti- monopoly sentiment but ulti- mately conveying a resignation to economic chaos. It is a cynical movie, and itis a funny movie. Most of all, it is a movie which is designed to soothe, to placate, to defuse the Martin in The Jerk: rage that we feel at the injustice around us and the frustrations of our lives. Although it acknow- ledges many of our complaints about the system, it finally tells us to forget, to ‘‘get happy.” Steve Martin plays the title role of a white man raised in a rural shack by a poor Black family. He leaves home after learning that he is not the natural son of his mother, played by Mabel King. He hears some “easy listening”’ music on the radio and decides that his kind of world is out there. He ventures to St: Louis and finally to California; is accidently catapulted into fantastic wealth; loses his money in an unexpected lawsuit; lands in skid row; and is finally rescued by his Black **fam- ily,” who take him home again. It is a story of rags to riches to rags to rich rags. ° Laughter at reason’s expense This Black family is portrayed” as doing nothing but dancing and singing around a broken-down shack — until they strike it rich on commodity futures with money Martin has sent them. After that they dance around a bigger shack. They never seem to work, are always well-fed and happy. They are a white man’s fantasy of Black contentment — an old lie re- created. One senses that the filmmakers intended this to be some kind of *‘joke,”’ but then felt nervous about their joke, and tried weakly to atone for it by picturing the only other Black prominent in the film as a jury foreman. Martin’s character is not exact- ly, or not only, a ‘‘jerk.”’ He is naive and well-intentioned and performs many spontaneous good deeds but is always buffeted by a cruel world. He is manipulated by employers, shot at by a crazed killer, abused by one sex-crazed girlfriend and adored by another pristine Shirley Temple-type. The film’s sexism is notable. There is some truth in the pre- mise upon which the movie’s thin credibility and humor depends — i that many of us feel our world to be ‘‘out of control and irrational.”’ This may help explain why ‘*The Jerk” is drawing crowds. I is a tonic for confusion, an absurd es- capist fantasy which draws laugh- ter from misfortune in the old slapstick tradition. And following that tradition, for all the mis- fortune, no real suffering ever oc- curs. Martin is never hit by the bullets and even on skid row he is jovial. We know, rationally, that suffering and. pain come from such situations. The humor de- pends on distracting us from this reality. The distraction comes in the sheer unpredictability of the gags. In a tender moment on the beach, when all is still, Martin's girl- friend pulls out a trumpet and starts blowing. In an expensive restaurant, he asks the waiter to take back the 1966 vintage and bring him some ‘‘fresh wine.”’ When the gunman attacks, he es- Working people in the movies TORONTO. — The Labor Education Group is sponsoring a series of films at the Revue Reper- tory on Roncesvalles Ave. called . Working People in the Movies. The five month series has an impressive line up of both com- mercial and documentary fea- tures including: The Molly Maguires, The Grapes of Wrath, PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 8, 1980— Bound for Glory, Blue Collar, Controlling Interest, Harlan County USA and more. A$10 ticket will get you into six screenings. Tickets are available from the Revue Theatre, 531-9959 or by mail from the Film Series Task Group at 129 Indian Road, MER 2VS. Page 10 capes in a car with no tires — only wheels. Some of the gags are funny. But overall the movie is a cynical in- sult. It insults Black aspirations and denigrates the reality of ra- cism. It belittles the odds. that confront individuals who single- handedly seek to fight their way out of poverty. With its happy en- ding, it suggests that all ultimately works out for those who are good-hearted. Laughs are a healthy thing, but not at the expense of all reason. — Bruce Caraway Tackling a cold land history of the Ukrainian socialist movement in Canada‘has not un- fortunately been written to date. I hope that in this outline, to some degree to illuminate as objectively as possible, the emergence and development of the Ukrainian socialist movement in Canada based on existing documents as well as personal conclusions hav- ing acquainted myself with mate- rials and articles contained in the newspapers of that period”’. Socialist ideas were introduced into Canada, by those immigrants who had some knowledge of scientific socialism and experi- ence in the class struggles of their home country, against the de- veloping capitalist system. This was true of the Ukrainian immig- rants. The book traces the activity of those early socialist activists be- ginning with Kyrilo Genyk a Galicia immigrant. The author traces the trials and tribulations of building a socialist organization made difficult by the inavailability of written texts on scientifig socialism. In the ab- sence of a stable theory, per- sonalities played a major role, created a great deal on instability and held up the development of the organization. Despite these and many dif- ficulties the movement did grow and played an important role in spreading socialist ideas among the Ukrainian population helping them participate in the day to day struggles of the people. A second period of the move- ment began with the emergence of the newspaper ‘‘Robochy Narod” and the organization of the Federation of Ukrainian So- cial Democrats. While still suffer- ing from leadership differences it assumed a more mass and solid character. With the arrival of Matthew Popovich and Ivan Nacizivsky the organization was strengthened ideologically and its internationalist position became much firmer. The author leaves no doubt that the struggle for the minds of the people is long and difficult. But despite obstacles and difficulties, despite zig zags'along the road as long as these idea’s meet the ob- jective needs of the times working — people will be won over and thes¢ idea’s will be victorious. The Progress edition of Kraw- — chuk’s work is a translation from the Ukrainian and is a shortened version of the original. It is in- teresting reading and a welcomed addition to the sketchy informa- tion on the development of the socialist movement in Canada. — Norman Brudy ee _. What it was like in that other depression VOICES OF DISCORD: Canadian Short Stories from the 1930s. Edited by Donna Phillips, intro- duced by Kenneth J. Hughes, New Hogtown Press, 1979, 224 pp., paperback $3.95. Twenty-six short stories from the Depression years have been gathered into a collection, five from the pages of Masses, eight from New Frontier, twelve from Canadian Forum and one from Queen’s Quarterly. The stories are about factory workers, jobless people, farmers, the young, the old, middle-class types, politicians, social workers and others caught in Canada’s deep-down crisis of those other grim times, five decades ago, which spread destitution, nur- tured fascism and incubated World War II. Represented in Donna Phillips’ well-balanced selection ‘of remarkably-incisive observations of the period are writers who were not yet well-known — Sinclair Ross, Dorothy Livesay, Luella Bruce Creighton, Mary Quayle Innis, A.M. Klein, Bertram Brooker, Dyson Carter, L.A. MacKay, Kimball McIlroy and others. They wrote each in their indi- vidual manner, they recorded di- verse situations and areas of our national breakdown. This book tells us what it was like. Some of the writers were liber- als, some were socialists, some Communists; some were “‘unat- tached.’’ Their common impulse was indignation, compassion, conscience, hope. They told their stories in deeply-felt human terms. Their kind of dedication is sorely needed today. It strikes me that most of the stories are remarkably original, off-beat and explorative in technique, style and social out- look. Without exception they are compelling tales, vivid and richly diverse in form and shrewd in their insights. ‘‘The system’’ was seen at close quarters and found inhuman. It is difficult in this space to choose from among the titles for individual comment; each has something special, moments of unhappiness, outcries of anguish, a wry aside, small and large ‘tragedies, a flash of humanity. Profoundly observant is Dyson Carter’s ‘‘East Nine’’, a moving story about an industrial accident. Subtle, wise and deeply-sensitive is Dorothy Livesay’s ‘‘Case Supervisor’, a study of troubled social workers in a confrontation with acute poverty. Alice Buta- la’s ‘‘A Day in Town”’ is about the bleak and heart-breaking ex- perience of a penniless farm couple. John Ravenhill’s ‘‘The Hero Returns’? focuses on a small-town domestic tragedy of prejudice and war. Mary Quayle Innis, in ‘‘The Party’’, looks at petty social climbers. The poet A.M. Kelin has a sardonic piece on the art of begging. Each story has something to say and says it very effectively. USSR population rises MOSCOW — The popula- tion of the Soviet Union has reached 262,436,000 as of January 17, 1979, an increase of 9% or 20,700,000 on the 1970 figure. Kenneth J. Hughes’ introduc- tion assesses the anthology in — some detail. (Prof. Hughes ~ teaches English at the University of Manitoba and is a member of | the editorial collective of Cana- dian Dimension.) He expresses concern about what he describes as ‘‘correct-linism’’ and com- plains about ‘‘dogmatic notions that continue to plague the left.” He thinks that creative writing and literary criticism have been — hampered by narrow criteria im- _ posed from the left. Undoubtedly there were and are sectarian, leftist critics in - Canada and elsewhere. Their in- transigeance has sometimes inhi- bited some writers. But surely Hughes himself, in his warm ap- preciation of the collected stories, tacitly admits that the ‘‘dog- matists’’ were not all that effec- — tive. When I helped launch Mas- ses during the Thirties we heard many debates on “‘art vs. propa- ganda,’’ but most artists who — came to us then were not too much concerned about separating art from politics or ideology. On the contrary, they were vehe- — mently partisan; their partisan- ship enhanced their art. ‘Hughes’ views are debatable; they should not be dismissed ‘out-of-hand. ‘His introduction is, on the whole, a thoughtful com- mentary on an earlier time of crisis and a sympathetic, even en- thusiastic tribute to the left-wing writers of the past. — Oscar Ryan Oscar Ryan is the author of Soon to Be Bern, anovel that spans the turn-of-the-century and Depres- sion years. It is scheduled for spring publication.