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What the Ss ovie ‘ .
people think |

By ARCHIE
JOHNSTONE

MOSCOW

With the exception that the
phrase “here. in’ England”
sometimes reads “here in Am-
erica” or “here in Australia,”
the following passage from
one letter is typical of a num-
ber of letters I have received
recently:

“Here in England there are
as you know, sharp divisions
of opinions on many questions
in which the Soviet Union is
directly concerned ... Living as
you do in the Soviet Union
you must see different. sides
of these questions and various
‘signs of the changing times’
that we cannot see from here
. .. SO perhaps you might be
able to help people like myself
to ‘get our thinking straight’
on some of the questions I
have set out below.”

Frankly I have not got my
own thinking straight (in the
sense of having reached firm
conclusions) on many of the
questions put to me, and what
few conclusions I have reach-
ed are based less on on-the-
spot observations than on al-
most interminable discussions
with Russian and non-Russian
friends and on my insatiable
reading of letters to the editor
columns in various Western
progressive publications.

True, there are plenty of
“signs of the changing times”
here, but these signs could be
read in a dozen different ways
by a dozen different observ-
ers and, because I have more
personal opinions than con-
crete evidence to offer, I ask
that this be treated more as a
contribution to a letters column
than as a dispatch from a Mos-
cow correspondent.

For instance, I could, in
answer to a number of ques-
tions about the “progress of
democratization,” give many
examples showing that the
‘progress is better than I would
have thought possible, and
many other examples of pro-
press so slow that it makes me
tear my hair. In ordinary cir-
cumstances these examples
would make good journalistic
“copy.” (Krokodil, Soviet hu-
mor magazine, has had many
joke-cartoons on the subject)
but they simply would not add
up to one well-balanced, in-
formative picture.

My own summing up, for
what it is worth, is that the
progress in this field is far
too uneven and, on the whole,
not quite fast enough. But my
summing up can be construed
as that of a typically, or more-
than - typically, “impatient
Westerner.” The people with
the biggest stake in this “demo-
cratization’ are obviously
much more satisfied with the

rate of progress than many
Western sympathizers are.

*

The reference to impatience
brings me to one of two points
which, “living as I do in the
Soviet Union,” I feel are not
always given the weight they
deserve by contributors, to let-
ter columns.

When a writer uses the
phrase “Russian historical and
geographical factors” it often
sounds like. (and is often dis-
missed as) just another issue-
dodging formula. That, I in-
sist, is wrong. The more one
knows about Russia, the more
weight one gives to those fac-
tors. The trouble is that they
are sO numerous, so varied and
so complicated that you simply
can’t explain them adequately
in short space.

I shall mention here only one
of these factors: The Russians’
attitude to time is very dif-
ferent from our own. If you
want to be critical you could
say that they don’t value time
so much as we do and that
they lack our sense of urgency.
If you want to lean over the
other way you could say that
they- have a broader and more
philosophical or even a more
“poetical” attitude to time than
we have. In support of that
argument you could mention
the almost visionary farsight-
edness without which they
could never have conceived
their great long-term projects
whose full benefits will be en-

joyed not by the planners but
by generations not yet born.

What, you may ask, has that
to do with — say — Hungary?

I had a long discussion re-
cently with an old engineer
workng on one of the Volga
dams. He was violently (and,
I must add, untypically) criti-
cal of what he described as the
“mishandling” of the Hungar-
jan situation and of the “lack
of faith-in the good sense of
the common people.”

“But,” he added, “look at
that dam over there. It will be
standing there and getting on
quietly with its job long after
you and I are gone and long
after the blunders of today are
forgotten, or at least seen in
their proper perspective.”

I could not help commenting:
“A few years ago you wouldn’t
have dared to speak like that
about the powers-that-be to a
foreigner” — a point I men-
tion because it answers, in part
at least, questions I have been
asked about the voicing of crit-
icism.

I wish I could add here that
the press adequately reflects
the great increased volume of
criticism, from below upwards,
that is voiced nowadays in pri-
vate discussions and at meet-
ings large and small. The sit-
uation is much better than it
was a few years ago (when it
was frankly deplorable), but; I
feel that what used to be said
about Soviet literature can now
be said about the Soviet press
—it “lags behind Soviet life.”

The situation as regards lit-

Memorial to Mo ther Bloor

On a gentle slope in Har-
leigh Cemetery in Camden,
New Jersey, is being prepared
the permanent memorial of
red granite to Mother Ella
Reeve Bloor, pioneer American
socialist.

The spot is one of her own
choosing. She wanted to be
buried near Walt Whitman.”
“my friend when I was a girl.”

During the last years of
her life it had become a cus-
tom for her to lead a small
pilgrimage to the Whitman
memorial, usually in July,
about the time of her birth-
day.

There had been talk of the
kind of monument. Someone
who had worked with her in
the days when she led the coal
miners suggested a large block
of anthracite. Another wanted
a rough hewn boulder just as
it comes from mother earth.
In the end it was decided to
use a block of red granite
polished by skilled hands.

On this red granite the fol-
lowing-inscription will appear:

ELLA REEVE BLOOR

July 8, 1862, August 10, 1951.
BORN DURING THE WAR
TO FREE THE SLAVES,
SHE DIED REJOICING THAT
HALF OF MANKIND WAS
FREE. CALLED “MOTHER”
BY COUNTLESS WORKERS,
FARMERS, NEGRO AND
WHITE, WHO FIGHT FOR A
BETTER WORLD, SHE LEFT
TO US HER CHILDREN THE
BUILDING OF A SOCIALIST
AMERICA AND A WORLD
AT PEACE.

oe

erary criticism is in my op-it has been one of the most

inion rather worse than a mere
lagging behind life.

During the “Stalin era’ I
could forgive novelists who
glossed over that whole slice
of “reality” that was affected

by what today’s over-simplif-~

iers call the Cult of Person-
ality; but I could not forgive,
and I still cannot forgive,
those critics who criticized
novelists for their “lack of so-
cialist realism,” and their “fail-
ure to give a true reflection
of reality” when those critics
knew all too well why the
novelists wrote as they did.

It seems that many of the
old critics are still at their
same old stand. Whether they
are churning out the prescribed
portion of butter for some duly-
established novelist or recoil-
ing in horror from some writ-
er who dares to break new
ground, they use what amounts
to a special grammar of their
own, a grammar which forbids
the use of phrases like “it
seems to me,” “in my opinion,”
“T think,’ and so on.

* ;

Do newspaper writers feel
much concern about the dis-
sensions in the ranks of pro-
gressives in capitalist coun-
tries? If they do, they don’t
show it.

But please note that all this
has to do with individual ap
proaches to what, in their or-
igin at least, are “private prob-
lems.” In the much wider
realm of. “public problems,”
where errors can be speedily
corrected by legislative ‘and
administrative means, things
are going very well.

The gigantic task of “re
habilitation” was completed
long ago. I have met a num-
ber of people who spent many
years in the prison camps, and

deeply emotional experiences
of my life to note that not one
of them lost their basic faith
in the Soviet regime..

Now to a point which I think
is just as widely relevant and
just as often overlooked as the
“historical and geographical
factors” mentioned earlier. Call
it the “NATO factor.”

Many Western left-wingers:
who are critical of the “Soviet
attitude” as regards Hungary
and various other matters, ex-
ternal or internal, are also
critical of NATO, the Eisen-
hower Doctrine, and: the con-
tinual rejection by the Western.
powers of Soviet proposals for
disarmament and the lessening
of international tension.

In other words, ,they con-
demn one party in the interna-
tional arena for menacing an-
other party; but they also
condemn the menaced party
for actions and attitudes which,
if one probes deep enough,
could be shown to be a natural
reaction to that menacing.

“Living as I do in the Soviet
Union,” I venture the opinion
that if these critics could put
themselves in the position of
a people on whom, so to speak,
the guns of NATO are trained,
they might swing round to the
opinion that the actions and
attitudes they criticize are, in
the circumstances, not merely
justified but inevitable.

@ A top flight British news-
paperman, Archie Johnstone
went to Moscow in 1947 as
editor of British Ally, the Brit-
ish government’s official Rus-
sian language propaganda jour-
nal in the USSR. He resigned

in 1949 because of Britain’s
cold war policy and remained
in the Soviet Union to write
and comment on Soviet life.

MARCH 29, 195% — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 10