By RALPH PARKER

OSCOW these days’is a happier looking city than I remember

ever seeing it.

brow”

A year or so ago, when there was the controversy about “‘high-
Music, a knowledgeable Russian friend said: “Are you won-

“ting why the party is so concerned about music the people can sing?
Rll you will see the reason next year.” ;

_ What's making the people sing
gene schoolgirls in the white
ra Qs they all wear these days
tang the workers in’ the
“ae the youths in the trucks
#. ing through the center of
et of course, there is the
a of solid achievement which
high ducing material rewards of
a. quality and lower costs for
 €xpended,
his, J imagine, is what my

f iY
Mend had in mind.

a is dififcult for anyone who
“a g livea in a socialist society
ing to imagine the general feel-
fekas Satisfaction caused by the
*ssful fulfilment of plans.
a oo know that the whole of
National revenue, to which
Babe contributes by his labor,
Hike § into the community’s
Uury, without the appropria-

tion
of s » re $i:
talists, ome of it by the capi

€ach

ent they know, too, that dif-
Sntial wages are paid strictly

Ag, ;
“ording to the application of

skill acquired by study and ex-
perience.

This results in a feeling of con-
fidence that the rewards for work
are fair. There is a spirit of emu-
lation, certainly, but not of envy.
e

But there are, I think, deeper
causes for happiness. The mighty
world-wide peace movement has
given people here confidence in
the stability of peace.

And here I must join issue with
my fellow correspondent Alexan-
der Werth, who seems to have
fallen for the version of the So-
viet scene that is being put out
by the British Embassy here,
when he writes about the Rus-
sians being in “an ugly mood...
very scared and rather aggres-
BIVAS cain ©

Where I think he and his ex-
diplomat informant are wrong is
in overlooking what seems to me
to be the main difference between
the mood of Russia on the eve
of the last war and today.

Then there was a feeling that

Want a new

Cc »
°ntinued from preceding page

agualizing” the railways in Brit-
t bs t is the annual payment of
. one accursed dividends that
the CNR poor and takes

®y from the Canadian | \tax-
ie to finance the yachts and
bong Ips to the Riviera of CNR
: Olders overseas.

toy, Palzamation of the two sys-
: at the present time would
layoge one immediate result—the
tail ata Close to one-third of the
enoy orkers in Canada. There is
Past Potential business and
ay to be won in the world to-
tai) a Keep both Canada’s great
Bacity ems at full working ca-
of fy, Provided the government
Suis St. Laurent will go out
Rot, ee it. Whether he does or
Tilitanee ne on the degree of
°y with which the rail

workers, along with all Canadian
labor, insistently demand that he
go after it.

All of this is but a sketchy pic-
ture of working conditions on the
railways of Canada. Today, rail
workers have no more security
than any other worker. They are
faced with the same problems—
lower real wages, layoffs, speed-
up. Railway Brotherhood leaders
for'the most part, are hand-in-
glove with management — and
many are the reports of how they
actually do management’s work.

But there is a growing move-
ment of resentment among the
rank-and-file;the grumbling and
the dissatisfaction is mounting to
pring about greater and greater
unity of the workers down below.
They have terrific obstacles to
overcome—the resistance of the

There’s no war fever
in the Soviet Union

«

while the camp of peace was
strong enough to crush the ag-
gressor, it was not strong enough
to prevent war. Now, with the
tremendous strengthening of the
camp of peace under the leader-
ship of the Soviet Union, people
fee] that the prospects are good
for preventing the outbreak of
a new war.

As for the story that the ordin-
ary Russian people are being in-
culcated with the doctrine that
all British and Americans are
enemies, this is sheer twaddle, of
a sort that I’m sure Werth would
never have written if he had been
in Moscow during the past year.

Every book, play or film
dealing with the handful of war-
mongers that hold such influen-
tion positions in British and
American life lays heavy stress
—heavier, indeed than many
British or Americans would con-
sider waranted—on the decency,
peaceableness and goodwill of the
British and Americans peoples.

The day General Doolittle spoke
of the importance of America be-
ing ready physically and morally,
to bomb the Soviet Union’s in-
dustrial centers, the inhabitants
of those cities were putting the,
last touches to banners proclaim-
ing the vital need for friendship
between the Soviet, British and
American peoples, and the next

- day they proclaimed their belief

in this slogan by carrying it aloft
in the May Day celebrations.

What Hollywood producer, I
wonder, dare end a film on So-
viet- American relations with the
hero declaring, “Friendship be-
tween the Soviet and American
people, that is the most impor-
tant task before the world to-
day!” as Alexandrov’s Meeting on
the Elbe finished?

Not one of the several plays
now running in Moscow theaters
that deal with the aggressive
plans of the warmongers contains
a line that the most sensitive
audiences could interpret as of-
fensive to the national honor of

deal

rail bosses who are among the
wealthiest and most politically
powerful in the land; the buroc-
racy of their union leadership;

- and the nature of their work

which keeps the 130,000 organzed
rail workers spread out over the

‘éntire 42,000 miles of track in

a big country.

But such obstacles were over-
come in the United States back in
1946 when the workers stopped
the trains in a great strike which
won them the 40-hour week. A
powerful rank-and-file movement
here can smash the opposition to
union militancy by union and
company bosses and make of
Canada’s rail unions a powerful
factor for, first the security
and well-being of the’rail work-
ers themselves and their families,
and for all Canadian working
people.

British or Americans.

Indeed, I should say that most
of these plays would meet with
the approval of the average Bri-
tish or American audience.

There is no doubt what the re-
action would be to the latest
satire of Sergei Obratzsov’s un-
cannily alive puppets, Under the
Flutter of Your Eyelash!

The theater, whose last pro-

duction poked fun at-stock-num-
bers on the Moscow music-hall
stage, has chosen Hollywood as
its target this time.

We see the birth of the idea
of a film version of Carmen and
its interpretation as a boost for
Marshall aid.

Smugglers make it plain to the
audience that they are carrying
cases of dried egs, spam, Camel
cigarettes, and an electric organ
which plays an anthem of parise
to American generosity.

But with a turn in the inter-
national situation the producer
decides to reshape the film into
an anti-Soviet picture in which
Carmen is a “Red agent” and the
smugglers members of the col-
lective farm the “Red Bilberry.”

The skit plays to the acompani-
ment of a hot jazz version of
Bizet’s music.
~e : ‘
Even the clever-clever boys in
the British and American em-
bassies here have had to ac-
cept the fact that Soviet living

ment, holidays, medical services
of every kind, iegal advice, sport
and all kinds of cultural ameni-
ties. :

Then there are the items that
weigh so much more lightly on
the Soviet workers’ budget: rent
(about 4 perecnt of the earnings
of the chief wage-earner in the
family), fuel, transport, outings.

The only fair basis of compari-
son between the cost of living in
the Soviet Union and elsewhere
is, consequently, one which be-
gins by conceding that by the
simple fact of being employed—
and that is a Soviet citizen’s right
—he qualifies for important
benefits that in other lands have
to be paid for by time spent at
work.

On a conservative estimate
these benefits are equivalent to
a bonus of 40 percent of the aver-
age industrial workers’ wage.

To put it in the simplest terms,
every Soviet worker receives
an “invisible” wage, which is the
means to educate himself and
his children, to keep fit and to
enjoy his leisure.

His “tangible” wage, in rubles,
goes further than any currency
in the world in meeting taxation,
rent, and the cost of public ser-
vices; accordingly, he is left with
more to spend on consumer goods
at a time when their cost is fall-
ing steadily.

At a rough estimate I
put the proportion of

should
wages —

risen substan-
tially higher this summer over
last.

standards have

What can’t be avoided is that
compared with the wage-earners
in their own lands, the Soviet
citizen has a much higher pro-
portion of his earning left to
spend on consumer goods.

First there is a whole range of
services that do not need to fi-
gure at all in the family budget
since they are perquisites of
everybody who works: education,
including courses of adult edu-

cation at the place of employ- ~
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY

available for spending on con-
sumer goods at no less than 80
percent, the rest going in savings,
taxes, rent, transport, fuel, elec-
tricity, etc.

For the secondary wage earner
in the family, as for young wor-
kers living at home, the per-
centage available for spending
on consumer goods is probably
nearer 90.

This explains why, whenever
there is a reduction in prices—
since September, 1946, every
change has been downward—
there is such a heavy rush to buy.

29, I49—PAGE 5