THIS IS A LABOUR l}10NTHLY

PUBLICATION

After reading it, you will wan t to know

about

LABOUR MONTHLYThis Ma gazine of Internati onal Labour, the only periodical oj

its kind in lite English language , was founded in 1921. Tho se werethe troubled post-war years when the British Labo ur M ovement ,[allowing , Black Friday ', was under savage attack from a rulingclass which had been intervening all over the world to check therevolutionary tide in the youn g Soviet Union, in Ire/and, in India ,in China and in Europ e.

Th e Editor, R. Palme DUll, whose Notes of the Month early 11'011

world-wide faille for their masterly Marxist analysis of currentevents. wrote in thos e first Notes of July , 1921: • Ther e has, untilI /o W, been no maga tin e in this countr y devoted primaril y to report­ing and explaining to British workers the devel opm ents of theLab our movement in oth er countries; and of the need for such re­porting and such explanation the world situation of Labour is theclearest proof. For the present attack of capital on Labour is inter­national in its character '.

For each of the 30 years since that dale. und er his unb rok en 'cdi­torial guidance, this journal has increased in influ ence throughoutthe world . No t only has it carried on its primary task of interpretingevents in other countries for th e British mo vement ; it provides atru th jul picture of trends within the British Lab our movement forthose overseas. No wonder it is read with close attenti on in no lessthan 55 countries todav, Co ntributors have includ ed : Henri Bar­bussc, Geo rge Lansbu ry, Clara Z ctkin . Tom Mann , S. Sakla tvala .Havelock Ellis. Mulk Raj Anand, Ralph Fox , Marc el Cachin , J. A.Hobson. Madam e Sun Yat-sen, Leonard Barnes. Ma o Tse-tun g,Gordon Childe. Sean O'Casev, Harrv Po/litt, D. N . Prill and manvtrade union leaders. . . .

1s. all newsagent s. Or 12s. annually (13s . overseas) from DeptT.. 134 Ballards Lane. London. N.3 .

THE TRUTH ABOUT U.S.S.R.D. N. PRITT, x.c

WHY is it so difficult to know the truth about the U.S.S.R.'?Principally because the half-life of capitalism cannot be prolongedeven for a few years if the mass of the people in the Western Worldand in Asia and Africa once realise the progress that U.S.S.R. ismaking. In consequence, the whole propaganda machinery of the• free world' (alias' Western Civilisation' alias' our way of life"alias' Civilisation' alias' Christianity') is employed to prevent thefacts coming into full light. News is suppressed, falsified, distorted.Stories arc invented. Fantastically silly criticisms are poured outill streams. I often feel, indeed, that if a conscientious and well­informed enemy of the Soviet Union were to read our press hewould be horrified by the nonsensical criticisms and would expostu­late that one could make a better, if less exciting, job of it if oneconfined oneself to the facts.

And I recall that in April, 1950, when one of the many delcga­lions of visitors to the Soviet Union was being selected from rankand file British workers-most of the delegates being members ofthe Labour Party-our Government propagandists paused in theirshouts of 'Why don't the Russians let our workers go to theircountry to see for themselves? ' to persuade some of the employersof the proposed delegates to threaten them with the loss of theirjobs if they went. The delegation went, saw, and returned, eagerto tell their fellow-workers-their comrades, if I may be forgivenfor using a subversive word-what they had seen; but they found99 per cent. of the press unwilling to print a line of what they wrote:or said!

After my own visit in the summer of 1950, I want to comparesome of the stories that are told with the truth as I saw it with myown eyes. I read the British press regularly, having a strongstomach; having really a strong stomach, I read the American presstoo. The general picture I get from them is that what seems to meto be the first and greatest working-class state is in reality a land of• dark forces', a slave state, a police state. terrorised and tyrannisedby eleven men in the Kremlin, who are .plotting to march their

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down-trodden slaves in milli ons across E urope to Calals. in ord erto ' impose' th e horr ors of Communism on a ' fr ee wo rld '.

But when I look for myself, not a t the pr ess bu at th e fac tua levidence-at the U.S. S.R ., what do I find ?

Th ey are do wn-troddc n slaves in a police stale, we a re asked tobelieve. No w, th e firs t necessi ty for those who tyr annise over do wn­trod den peop le is to make sure to tread them do wn and ke ep th emdown. It is not sa fe to give th em more educ a tion than the mi nimumneed ed to make them profi tably ex plo ita ble, for it put s ideas ofrevolt in th eir head s. You m ust have a strong and' reli able'judicature, appointed from the centre. It mu st eith er be removableby that centre or it mus t be irremovable but carefully hand-pickedfor cla ss loyalty so that i t will be in no danger of lap sing intoprogressive sentiment. You must give no scope to the seeth ingmas ses to rise to pow er or influ ence. You mu st not g ive th emopportunity to criti cise- it's too infecti ou s. And you mu st not riskasking them to expr ess enthusiasm for the ' lea de rs' who treadthem down.

How do the' dark force s' in Mo scow set about this mighty taskof holding down 200,000,000 ' slaves ' ? How do they limit educa­tion ? They pour it out in a flood! Th ey have the highest school­leaving age in the world; for the school year 1950-51, 45 ,000,000text books were printed and supplied for the 6,500,000 school­children of the Ukraine (one-fifth of the U.S.S.R.) alone. They havethe biggest thirst for learning-and the highest thirst-quenching­in history. And they teach their victims in detail the history of everyrevolution there ever was. What a way for intelligent tyrants to keeptheir' dark world' safe for tyranny!

A judicature'? Ye s, a judicature in which the courts which hear99.9 per cent. of the cas es are staffed by one professional judge andtwo lay assesso rs. Th e jud ge is elec ted by di rect sec ret universalbaIl ot of th e down -trodden slaves of the d istr ict in wh ich he is tocement th eir tyr anny, and the ' slavcs' eve n have th e right, bypopu la r vot e, to reca ll and dismiss him bef ore his term is up. As afurther safe guard the two lay as sessors, work ers elected by the samekind of vo te, sit on th e bench with the judge and ca n over-rul e himif they thin k fit. ADd . as if t rat were not enough, th e Constit tisnand the Codes pr vide 1. e accused -i.e., any d V'l -tr dden 51'vcwho may rev-i t-\ it 'l ' r;:? ts Of ~ece~ce ' ~re~'er <1I'J [Y'0 r e rea-lily

available than they are in any oth r system of law in the world, andthat at a time when the' free world' is devising ever newer methodsof obstructing the defence, including a particu larly 'good ' one(which I as a lawyer can well apprecia te) of sentencing defencecounsel, without trial, to imprisonment for contempt of cour t,, pour encourager les autres '.

And, in that slave state, the victims, provided with all the meansof escape, are in fact committing crimes in rapidly diminishingvolume; in many districts the amount of crime has shrunk to one­sixth of its level a few years ago.

As for the danger of letting the brightest of your victims rise toinfluential positions, the truth is that, everywhere one goes, onefinds young men and women who have come up from the ranks,by hard work and study, to posts of great importance . There theyare subject to incessant criticism not just from above but from theworkers, the Communist Party , and the Trade Unions; and if theydo not do their job properly they go. I have seen many institutions,for example, a vast steel works, a Moscow sky-scraper-where thewall-newspaper provided for the free expression of criticism by the, victims' was full enough of complaints, mostly against theaccountancy department!-a cotton mill, and a collective farm, runby young men and women who had come up by their own merit,and with no advantages beyond the infinite opportunities this slavestate provides for merit; two of them were' M.P.s', i.e. membersof the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., elected by free universalsecret ballot and thus put into a position to speak their minds andthe minds of their constituents. (l wonder what the British workersthink of Cripps' explanation that they, in our country, with its longtraditions of education and working-class struggle, cannot provideenough intelligent people for such posts! I know what the Sovietworkers would think of itl) •

Enthusi asm for their tyrants? Well, Comrade Stalin had hisseventieth birthday in December, 1949, and people sent himpresents. Tho se that had so far been unpacked when I saw themin September, 1950-there were still many to deal with-fill twolarge museums. You never saw such wealth of ar t and workman­ship, such evidence of affection and devotion. Old treasures, newmasterpieces, peasant work, industrial produc ts, letters from school­children and old men, from the Arctic and. the near-tropics. Amongthem were som of the loveliest things I have ever seen, some of

the simplest as well as the most elaborate expressions of comradelydevotion. (One present was an exhibition of 3,765 /lew varieties ofseeds, developed by the ignorant slaves since the Revolution.) Whata way to snub tyranny when you get a chance!

No, they are not down-trodden (not even when they try to crossthe broad streets of Moscow in the teeth of floods of cars which thetyrants are selling to any of their victims who can save up £200­and hundreds and even thousands of workers and peasants can).Who is there to tread them down? Not the Government whichbehaves as we have seen-the Government which they freely electand need not re-elect. Not any landlords or factory owners orbankers! L'etat c'est eux! And they are not minded to tread them­selves down.

Tyrants plotting aggressive war? Threatening to march acrossEurope to Calais? They tell us that too!

To do that, you must begin by preparing your populationpsychologically for the effort and sacrifice of war. War that isgratuitously and aggressively undertaken on other people's territory,particularly if it is to be fought by the armies of a consciouslyworking-class state against other working classes, is very differentfrom war thrust upon a people in the defence of its own country­and it calls for much greater material preparation. It is not an easyjob to prepare people's minds for such a war, or for preparationfor it. It has taken the United States, with all its colossal press andradio barrage, four years or more to get its on the whole prettygullible, and much less consciously working-class people into a war­like state of mind. How long would it take to get the friendly,rather slow and cautious minded Soviet peoples, who insist onbeing convinced through their intellects rather than through theiremotions, into such a state? For they know war. How do you makeaggressive war attractive to such people as those I saw in Kiev, whobuilt a fine kindergarten in 1937, saw the Germans blow it up in1943, could not get round to rebuilding it until 1947, and now run itwith tender human care? How persuade them to run the risk ofhaving it atom-bombed by trigger-happy American airmentomorrow, with the possibility of rebuilding it in 1960, if Mr.Charles E. Wilson, the Director of the U.S. Office of DefenceMobilisation, was being too bloodthirst-optimistic on January 17,J951, when be spoke at Philadelphia (city of brotherly love) onthe topic, of course, of tile !?:cscrvation of peace? II estimated

the prospect s of the survival of the :WO millions of Soviet citizens,when confronted with the forces of ' American civilisation' defend­ing peace and Christianity , in these words: 'We may also be ableto save a few millions of those Russian bodies from destruction '(i.e., to kill, say 190,000,000) 'and preserve them for a better life.Certainly that is an objective consistent with the aims and under­standing of an enlightened and civilised people'. There are 170new kindergartens in Kiev alone, and they asked me how manywe have in Britain. I explained the difficulties; we are spendingso much on munitions . They replied, without too much bitterness:'Yes, to make war on us'. And a few minutes later, as we parted,the children cried out: 'Give our friendly greetings to all thechildren of Britain " and the Director sent her good wishes to themtoo.

How would you get a group of collective farmers into the moodfor more war, when they have a history like one I visited in theUkraine, a history typical enough? Their farm was reduced by theNazis in 1943 to two cottages and a mass of debris. The fourhundred men who should have rebuilt it were away in the armyfighting the Nazis and there was no-one there but four old men andthe women. The women and those who did come back-half ofthem were killed at the front fighting for them and for you and forme and, alas, for the people who are now beating the drums of waragainst them-got the farm and the cottages rebuilt somehow, andare now planning to built a magnificent' agrogorod ', one of thenew country towns, concentrating several villages, to give theinhabitants' all the good points of town life', and to narrow stillfurther the differences between workers and peasants? Persuadethem to support a scheme to have it blown to pieces again, will you,Messrs. Churchill and Dulles and MacArthur and your Nazi friendsthat you are picking out of the prisons where you ought rather tobe joining them yourselves?

Have it blown to pieces, for what? Why, to 'communiseEurope', they tell us. The best way to make Europe go Socialist,so that it may qualify to start on the journey to Communism, is toleave it alone! Anyway, Soviet Communists hold the view-and itis their own view on which they act-that you cannot imposeSocialism from the outside, which is one more good reason for notabandoning vast fields of constructive work, facing millions ofcasualties and endless destruction , and incidentally . antagonising

scores of millions of hesitant or friendly people in every country inyour path, to • march to Calais' for a purpose which cannot beachieved in any such fashion.

If the colossal and lunatic and criminal task of persuading suchpeople to support an aggressive war were to be attempted (by theGovernment of a country with a finer record for seeking peace anddisarmament than any other in the world) how would the tyrantsset about working up the slaves? By war propaganda, I suppose, bysomehow presenting the launching of a war as something attracti ve,­profitable, or any way, necessary. Well, there is no trace of anysuch propaganda to be found in the U.S.S.R. On the contrary thereis more propaganda than ever before for peace, and against anyidea that war is wanted, or is necessary, or is inevitable. Everybuilding, every hoarding, the notice-boards of every institution , thepages of every newspaper and periodical, call: •Peace. Peace. Insiston peace. Struggle for peace. Work for peace'. The StockholmPetition, with its 115,275,940 Soviet signatures-virtually the entireadult population-collected in a few weeks, was only a part of thegreat struggle. And Stockholm was followed by the WarsawCongress, with its call for legislation declaring war propaganda tobe criminal. The Soviet Union has taken that up too (or, if it besaid that the Soviet Union dictates to the World Peace Movementwhat it is to do, then the Soviet Union has decided on this declara­tion').

How in the name of all that is bloodthirsty can you inspire aJust for aggressive war in people to whom you have given such anti­war talk, such hopes of happy peace, after the war experiences thatthey have had? The truth, on the contrary, is that it has beendifficult to make these peace-loving people realise how serious thethreat of war from outside really is; and even those who fullyrealise it continue to cherish friendly feelings for the workers every­where. Wherever I met and talked with them they sent greetings tothe British workers, and exhortations to them to intensify thestruggle for peace, and to make their government join in thatstruggle.• Tell all the peasants and workers in Britain that thecollective farmers here stand for peace, and strive for it. Urge themto do the same. We must all be one family' came spontaneouslyfrom one chairman as we bade good-bye; and from a mother whohad lost all her six children in the war: •Do British mothers realisefully what war means? If they do, they will fight hard for peace '.

• Will you ask schoolchildren in England to exchange letters withus? ' came from war -orpi ans in Kiev, most of them with tatt oo­marks and numbers on their arms, put all by the Nazis who hadbut chered their parents in front of them, just for being Jews-theseNazis whom the Amer ican and British Govern ments- and even theFr ench!- pro pose, in defiance of treaties, of common decency, andof the interests of hum anity and pea ce, to re-arm against the SovietUn ion (the 'twent ies an d 'thirties a ll ove r again, with some differ­ences that they will soon find out) , whilst Ei~enhower assures themthat they ' did n't lose their honour ' in the war. He'll be telling themsoon, with hid eous tru thfuln ess, that they didn 't lose the war itself.

It is a littl e hard for some of us-or do I mean it is tragicallycasy?- to under stand why certa in governm ent s in the West actuallystop people from supporting peace propaga nda, so discouraging tothe war spirit which they pr ofess to abh or.

Incidentally, if the ' men in the Kremlin' were thinking of war,and if they read -as no doubt they do-the detailed plans paradedin HIe American Press for dropping atom bombs on Moscow on theday the war starts, from the handy bases supplied by the' Labour'government of the Soviet Union's British' ally', whose PrimeMinister has the insolence, as pointed out in the September issue ofLabour Monthly, to chirp warnings against 'the enemy within'(and then goes on to tell them, in a speech on January 27, 1951,that nobody is threatening theml) , they would not be working nightand day, summer and winter, to build eight skyscrapers in Moscow,which make fine targets. (Inci dent ally, the behaviour of thisAmerican Pres s does at any rate enable us to claim that the BritishPr ess is not the ba sest in the world , if the Daily Herald does notmind my saying so).

But there are more stories: the who le Soviet economy is devoted10 war preparations; vast forces are engaged; it is . guns beforebutt er ' .

Thi s, if you plea se, from ration-ridden Brit ain , which even beforethe 1951 increase in its Gad arene ar ma ments race had little butter,suga r, meat , bacon, was reducin g the building of sorely-neededhou ses and stopping that of schoo ls and hospitals and was threaten­ing more and more of such cu ts, jus t becau se the whole economywas geared to war preparati ons; and they will not change their cryabout the Soviet Union just because it has become plain to the

whole world that the Western count ries-and they alone- arecarrying war preparations to the point of bankruptcy.

What is, in truth, the position in the Soviet Union? It is true, ofcourse, that however magnificent the human energy available there,it would always have been possible to carry the drive for a fullerlife forward faster if more hands had been available; and to armagainst threats from the West has always been a nuisance, althoughunavoidable. Every extra tank means thirty or forty tons of steelless for housing, and every extra soldier means slowing up theproduction, somewhere, of something useful. • We need peace likewe need air, for we have millions engaged in creative work', saidone of them to me. Nevertheless, there is no sign whatever of stintingon consumption goods, nothing, for example, like the breakawayfrom the first Five-Year Plan that had to be made when they sawdearly and so early the menace of Hitler-and had no Chamber­Jains among them to welcome it-nor like the restrictions onconsumption goods that followed. There is no skimping of cultural­or scientific expenditure, no hesitation to embark on vast schemesof capital production of long-term advantage-schemes which couldnot even indirectly be of use in war or war-preparation for years tocome, and would have to be shelved indefinitely if war started. Lifeis growing gayer, and not going greyer, as it tends to do underMarshall law. There is more food-27 per cent. more in 1950 thanin 1949-at prices that people can pay, and prices, not wages, aresubstantially reduced at intervals. Wages were 19 per cent. up in1950 on 1949. The quality of the food is superb; after all, thisSocialist economy is producing food for itself to eat, not for LordTomnoddy to sell at a profit. At a sausage factory, for example, I -­saw that sausages are made out of good fresh meat! and 50 percent, more sausages were sold in 1950 than in 1949. Food is illincreasing variety as well as quantity and quality. The meat suppliedin 1950 was 35 per cent. more than in 1949. Rationing, of course,'Went three years ago. Butter is not yet very cheap and margarine isavailable; but few people buy it. They prefer butter, and can afforda good deal of it-many times our ration. (Butter before guns, andbutter before' marge '). Textile goods and ready-made clothing aremuch more plentiful than they were, and much less dear. (Suitsbefore uniforms).

In kindergartens. creches, schools, orphanages. in that formerlytextile-hungry land, you see good, well-embroidered linen table

cloths and bedspreads. Even in one of the corrective labour campswhich humanely replace the dreary loneliness of closed prisons­the camps which the propagandists call ' slave-camps '-I sawembroidered linen window-valances. A village shop told me thatthey had sold fourteen hair-mattresses in a fortnight.

The new Metro stations in Moscow are like palaces . Cars abound- good cars, cheap cars. Adverti sements urge you to buy them; youwalk in, put your money down, and drive them away and theprivate purchaser gets them much more cheaply than factories orgovernment organisations.

Building goes on everywhere , in town and country, at a greatspeed. Good architecture, good workmanship, greatly-improvedequipment. Modern building technique is fully developed; pre­fabrication has been carried a very long way; building materialshave been brought up to high standards of quality, lightness ofweight and variety . A bad' bottle-neck' in building-material supplywas eliminated some time ago by vigorous efforts, four Ministriesbeing set up especially to tackle it. (In some countries, fourMinistries would do four times as much harm as one).

Collective-farms get all the machinery they need, and all thepetrol they need, too-dear, dear, why didn't one manage to bombBaku in 1940? And they plan in many places to build' agrogorods'of the kind mentioned above. Labour and materials are availablefor this too; they are not drawn off into armaments.

In a Moscow cotton-mill-the old Trekhgornaya-all thechildren of workers under seven years old go to the sunny holidayresorts on the Black Sea for three months in the summer, theirparents paying little more than a nominal charge; and the samemill is spending Rs.I,8oo,000 (say, £45,000) out of its funds tobuild a camp near Moscow for the children over seven-they arenot really the responsibility of the mill at all, but' we think of themas our children '-and part of that money is going on sculpture tobeautify the camp. (Sculpture before guns).

Cultural work is equally little cramped. No effort is spared, forexample, to ensure that the ballet, the opera, and the drama arethe finest possible; they are surely the finest in the world.

I picked up a copy of Pravda one day, and looked at the theatreannouncements. For once, strangely, there was a day without ballet;but there were for that one day, operas by Borodin and Verdi, plays

by Shakespeare, G. B. Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Ostrovsky, Tu rgenev,Lope de Vega, a Czech playwright and an Esthonian, and twoSoviet writers, besides a farce and two musical comedies (and everycne of these would be thoroughly well-rehear sed and each part,down to the smallest, well played). Ju st in case this should be anunusually good day, I looked at Pravda of the next day, and foundGlier's wonderful ballet, The Red Poppy, a Mozart Opera, Strauss'sFledermaus, a Spanish play, plays by Tolstoy, Gorki, Gogol,Ostrovsky, Vishinevsky, Fedin and Korneichuk, two other plays bySoviet writers, and a Georgian musical comedy. One of these copiesof Pravda gave up a fifth of its space to a very careful and criticalreview, written by three Academicians, of the first volume of thenew Soviet Encyclopedia, And I am reminded by Mr. Andr ewRothstein's Pelican' History of the U.S.S.R.' that the works ofPushkin appeared in seventy of the languages of the Soviet .Unionbetween 1917 and 1940, whereas from 1894 to 1917 they appearedin only eleven, and those all major European languages. The worksof Chekhov appeared in fifty-six languages-and 15,000,000 copies,between 1917 and 1940, compared to five languages and 600,000copies between 1894 and 1917. Shakespeare has appeared inseventeen languages, and Dickens in fourteen, since 1917; before,they were each in only three or four.

Lectures, endless courses of instruction, and lively discussions atpublic meetings abound, with free and open-and often ernbarra s­sing-' questions to the speaker ', Most of the experienced lawyers,for example, give courses on law and practice to younger lawyers,and to factory clubs; it is even recorded that lectures on theft andits consequences reduced the rate of 'loss of materials' substan­tially in some cases.

Universities are extending or wholly rebuilding; scientific instituteshave' all the money we require, for we are scientists in a Socialiststate ', The Institute of Law, for example, continues its lavishresearches into the law and jurisprudence and legal history of a llcountries, including our own, as a normal part of general cultur aldevelopment. They ask me; , Do you study the laws of the U.S.S.R .in your country?' I cannot give a very happy answer to thatquestion, but by good fortune I am able to answer another questionon a narrow point as to the recent developments of English' case­Jaw' on contributory negligence. We recall that one of Vyshinsky'sbooks deals fully with the English law of evidence , a branch of

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law which not many English lawyers can expo und very well; andanoth er lawyer produces for my inspection six Ru ssian translationsof standard English text-books, written by lawyers of definitely• unrevolutionary , outlook.

The same picture is to be seen in every branch of cultural life.Yes, culture before guns. The guns , you may be sure, are there. Itis well that they are. I am sure that guns in fact get priority, up tothe exact point which they are held to be necessary for safety indefence, and no further. The really encouraging fact is that aneconomy not yet abundant in material things finds that it can safelykeep its supply of guns and war material of all kinds at a levelwhere, with no help to its economy from' outside', it can presentthe appearance of 'Butter and culture and everything else that isconstructive and enjoyable before guns '-something which, ofcourse, would be absolutely impos sible if it were arming not fordefence but on the vastly greater scale-say seventy and more percent. of the budget, like the U.S.A.-called for by aggressiveintentions. (The only possible alternative to this cheerful conclu­sion, for those who insist on believing that the U.S.S,R. is armingto the teeth, is that it is so overwhelmingly rich, in spite of its terriblewar losses, that it can at one and the same time shoulder the costof an arms race which cripples all the other competitors, devotegreat resources to the vast schemes of capital construction I shallmention in a moment and raise the whole standards of Iivinc,consumption, education and culture of its peoples. It is not yet , intruth, as rich as all that. No doubt it would be, if it had been leftin peace; and no doubt it will be, if it is left in peace for a few mo reyears. But it is not yet so.)

Perhaps the most remarkable of all proofs of the Soviet attentionto peaceful development, of its confident expectation that the forcesof peace in the world will prevail, and of its own firm intention tomaintain peace, is to be found, if one measures the evidence interms of effort involved and of the years that must elapse l-eforethey' pay a dividend', in the new schemes of hydro-electri c andirrigation development. Over a period of a few weeks in the summerof 1950, no less than four vast schemes were announc ed, followedby a fifth at the end of the year. The first-the largest so far in theworld, in terms of kilowatts-is based on damming the Volga atKuibishev; it is to improve the Volga navigation and irrigate vastareas of land, as well as produce electricity for towns and villages

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and indust ries. The second is similar in its general obj ects , r.nd isbased on damming the same mighty river at Stalingrad. The th irdwill take the great Amu -Darya river , which at pre sent flows intothe Aral Sea, off into the Caspian. On its way, it will bring backinto cultivation, after centuries of idleness, the vast desert of Kara­Kum, potentially among the richest agricultural lands in the world .

The fourth scheme will carry water from the Dnieper from justabove the famous Dnieper dam at Zaporozhe south-eastwards tothe Crimea, cross the Sivash, and end at Kersh , on the eastern tipof the peninsula. It will irrigate vast areas of good but thirsty landin the southern Ukraine and the northern Crimea. An-I the fifthcovers the completion of the Volga-Don Canal, begun before theSecond World War and stopped by that war. This will be 'only 'about sixty miles long, but it would look like a very large under­taking ill most other countries.

Truly, all these schemes won't help a' march to Calais' i.ny timein the next ten years. But they will make millions richer -s-and noone will be exploited, no one will draw a dividend on shares, 110

contractor will make a profit! It is in truth by this aspect o~

socialist development that the fury of the dying capitalist world ismost vigorously aroused. It is really unforgivable to rob the worldof poverty, to withdraw from the hungry out-reaching arms of thesick and weary capitalist economy that cannot live without newareas to exploit, first one-sixth, and then another slice, and another,until half the world is progressing in ' slave' states, free of exploita­tion of man for other men's profit. This is what in truth producesall the hatred, the lying, the distorted propaganda, the accusationsof war-mongering (levelled insolently against the only economy thatcan only flourish if it has peace, by the large economy that can onlyavoid slump by war). This is the main source of the tension, thehysteria, and the neuroses, which we now have to combat. Whatthe 1917 revolution founded was a new world which mortallyoffended those who drew profit from the old. 'Splitting the Atom.indeed', said an Ukrainian poet to me, 'we split a pretty big atomin 1917'.

Oh! hilt there is no freedom there! is the next cry. I sometimeswonder why we should be told that. Is it that we are to hate thembecause they are not free? Or that we are to go to war because theyare not free? Or what? But it is as much worth answering as the

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rest of the nonsense that is poured . out against them by thepropagandists of the West, in whose countries freedom to speak­er even to think-without losing your job, freedom to travel in orout, freedom to earn your living even in a boom, are diminishingdaily, with no protest from the' specialists in freedom' who railagainst the Soviet Union.

You are free in the U.S.S.R. to speak your mind, to argue, tocriticise. You are not free to advocate counter-revolution or therestoration of private property in factories or land; but I couldn'tfind anyone who felt that to be a deprivation! You are not free tocommit treason, or espionage. You are not free to commit crimes­and ever fewer people commit them.

You are free to develop, to educate yourself, to choose your joband your leisure; you are free from exploitation; you are free fromthe nagging fear of unemployment, of poverty through illness orold-age. You are free from pretty nearly every ill that human elIortcan remove.

It is said that you are not free to disagree with Lysenko! Well,the controversy which Lysenko won was argued freely, openly,democratically, for years. It was finally won in 1948, by one sideproving their case by evidence; and because they won, and hadtheir way, the great afforestation plan to cure drought will takeless than two-thirds of the time it would otherwise have taken, andsave nine-tenths of the cost. And, because Lysenko was right, theyare growing good hemp. The American press said he was wrong;he said he was right; so a collective farm grew hemp, under hisinstruction, 13 or 14 feet high. (They led me to it, and I measuredit). You can, of course, disagree with Lysenko if you like, but youcannot insist on the Soviet Union injuring its economy by actingon theories that his arguments and experiments have shown to bewrong.

But, it is then said, Th ere is all iron curtain on injormation. Theyknow nothing of what happens outside, in the' free' world.

(Again, I ask, why is this said? Ought we to have a war becausethey are ignorant? Just to • lam 'em "I)

The truth is that the ordinary daily paper in the U.S.S.R. devotesbetween one-quarter and one-third of its space to news from abroad.On the conflict in Korea, for example, Pravda and Izvestia printedregularly, whilst I was there, the communiques of the North

' .l3

Korean Government , and of the American Government, and ofReuter, all in full. Everyone who talked to me of foreign affairs­comprising a wide variety of people-knew as much as, and oftena great deal more, than I did about them; they asked me embarras ­sing questions as to how much British people know about the SovietUnion, and what we learn of it in our schools. (In their schools,they learn English history, and many of them learn English. Theyall learn one foreign language, and they learn them well),

I saw in films and theatres many caricatures of Hollywood andother Americans and British; I had to admit that they were just.(I even had to make this admission about a character in a musicalcomedy, who had failed at everything he had ever tried, and saidplaintively, ' Nobody appreciates me here; but in the United Statesa man like me could become President '),

Finally , I have it on the authority of Mr. Churchill, that ' TheRussians are barbarians', He must mean this, for he put it in acabinet minute at the time of the battle of Stalingrad, when he waspublicly praising our allies for a military operation which inflicteda colossal and decisive defeat on von Paulus and his armies­probably the most heroic, most costly in human lives, and mostefficient military operation in the history of the world! Once again , Idon't quite know what we are expected to do because they are ' bar­barian s " Are we to' make war on them in order to make them lessbarbarous, or to show our own cultural superiority? (Mr. Churchillcertainly meant us to get ready to do so, even then, in 1942; forhe talked of getting all of Europe, including Spain and Turkey, tohelp us prevent them' overlaying the culture and independence ofthe ancient states of Europe '), But I would like to examine this• barbarism', In what does it consist? In their education? In theirballet, their opera, their theatre , their films? In their decent, simplemanne rs? In their readiness to help each other ? In their friendshipfor all who will meet them even half-way? In their tender care forchildren? In the way they have lavished, to give a few examples,months and even years of labour slowly restoring the eighteenthcentury beaut y of the statues and fountains and buildings ofPeterhof, and of the churches and palaces of Pushkin (TsarskoeSelo), all wantonly smashed up by the Nazis? In their rebuilding ofthe Kiev University, in a time of shortage, much more expensivelythan they need have done, in order to retain the fine architecturalstyle of the original building? In such striking facts as the response

14

to a competition for amateur song and dance shows in the Ukraine:there were 700,000 entrants, and a fortnight's hard work to adjudi­cate? In 1,700 concerts given in a month in Ukrainian villages byparties from the Kiev Opera? The plain blunt truth is that they areby now the most cultivated , i.e., the least barbarous, people in theworld.

There is an iron curtain no doubt, and the leaders on one side ofthat iron curtain ought to be in a mad house-indeed, in a sense,they are in one. An-d, certainly, in the world's history there wasnever such a concentrated pack of lies as they tell. Even Goebbelsand Hitler, whose phrases they often echo almost textually, didn'thave quite such a wide field, or splash about in it quite so much.

Nothing can stop the ever forward march of this new civilisation,except war. That is one reason why some people are mongeringwar, and we must stop them. We must, we can, and we will. And solong as we help to do so, we shall be rewarded with wholly newdevelopments, new standards, new culture, new security, new, real,peace. We shall have cause for pride to be in the same world withthe peoples of the Soviet Union.

15

LABOUR MONTHLYPAMPHLETS

/30th ANNIVERSARY 1951 SERIESI ----

No.1:THE SHA W MEMORIAL

A Memoir by R. PALME DUTT, with Shaw'sfamous article, 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat',from Labour Monthly, 1921. 32 pp. Unusual photo-

graph. Is.

No.2:THE WAY TO PEACE

by J. D. BERNAL, F.R.S.

24 pp. 6d.

No. :;:TR UTH ABOUT THE U.s.S.R.

by D. N. PRITT, x.c.16 pp. 6d.

No.4:MAO TSE·TUNG'S

remarkable work on knowledge and practice, entitled'Concerning Practice'. First English translation.

16 pp. 6d. Available March 15, 1951.

Order from all 1 'ewsagents, or Dept. T., 134 Ballards Lane,London, N.3

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RUSSIA TODAY

THE ANGLO-SOVIET JOURNALWINTER, 1950/1951 (Vol. XI, No.4)

Problems of Plann ing E. l.okshinReconstruction of Moscow A . M . Tcr pigorevSovie t Ethnogra phy S. T olsto ySov iet Notebook D. N. PrittS :' ECIA L R EVI EW- ARII CL E : Sociali sm and the tnd ividual,

lI y 1[ . La IH:01l 1aIII a Ill! .\. \\" t ' ~t . revir -wi II:..:'.\I. D . Kn ilia t-i a Ill! F. Y . K on - t alit inov.

SI'RING, 1951 (Vo l. XII, No. I)Fac tory Workers' Ed ucat ion V . D. Eroj ccvNew Sov iet Litera ture an d Dram a R. ParkerReports on 1950 Visit to the U.S.S.R.

e. L. Wr ell. L H urry . and A . R oths tein .T he C on cept of Biologica l Spe cies . . . . T . D. Lysenk o

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