Frivolous Alexandra

For many months Moscow citizens and U. S. visitors have learned to look sharp when street car No. 56 swung around a curve. At the throttle of No. 56 was buxom Motorwoman Alexandra Semeena, and Alexandra was a caution. Disdaining brakes, she made elderly Reds leap for their lives as she clanged through the streets. Heaven help the pushcart that, dawdled in her path. Last week, a month after the event, Moscow papers reported the end of street car No. 56.

Motorwoman Alexandra had permitted a personable young man to ride the quarterdeck of No. 56 with her. With throttle open, brakes off, they whizzed downhill from Dzerjinski Place to Theatre Place while traffic scattered and passengers clung screaming to their seats. At the bottom of the hill the car jumped the tracks so violently that its body was torn from the trucks. One woman was killed, six persons gravely injured. Alexandra Semeena, built of stern stuff, was unscathed. Inspectors discovered that the brakes were in perfect condition, had not even been applied.

Had Alexandra not been a proletarian in good standing, had she wrecked the car as an act of sabotage to hinder the success of the Five Year Plan, she would either have been shot or exiled to a Siberian lumber camp. Because she was a true proletarian, had killed one and injured six only in a girlish madcap mood, she got off with 18 months in jail. She did not get off without a scolding. Editorialized a Moscow newspaper:

"She received a number of administrative rebukes for speeding, for deliberate changes of route without instructions, bearing witness to her unpermissibly frivolous relation to responsible duties in urban transport."

To improve interurban and maritime transport, the Council of Labor and Defense made two important rulings last week. At present important Russian trains arrive at their destinations from two to 24 hours late. The Council decreed that in future the pay of locomotive engineers would be docked for lateness, that all train crews would be paid on a piecework basis. All train crews must run 1,125 miles or 192 hours each 30 days. If the average is less than that, pay is docked: if it is more, pay is increased up to 140%.

In all maritime nations but Russia, the master of a vessel at sea is an absolute monarch. He has absolute control over his crew and passengers, can marry or bury them. Until last week discipline on Soviet ships was in the hands of trades union committees, elected by the crews, which might consist of a cabin boy, two oilers and the purser. It did not work so well. Last week by order of the Council of Labor and Defense, Russian captains became in fact masters of their vessels again.

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