Silver for Shoes

When a Russian needs more food or clothing than his ration card entitles him to buy, he can go to the special Torgsin stores which sell only for valuta (foreign money), if he has any valuta--a difficult thing for a Russian to obtain. Last week the bars went down a little. To increase the State's stock of silver, Torgsin was authorized to accept silver plate and old jewelry as valuta. Next day Torgsin stores were jammed with hungry, ill-clad natives, eager to swap silver for rough clothing and such luxuries, dear to Russians, as smoked salmon, butter, caviar, vodka. Prices were steep. It took a kilogram of silver (2 3/5 lb.), worth about $7.80 in Manhattan, to buy one pair of Torgsin shoes. Two pounds of butter cost 137 grams of silver with other prices in proportion. If silver-bearing Russians wanted rubles, Torgsin clerks gave them twelve rubles per kilogram of silver. This would make the ruble worth 65-c-, whereas its official value is supposed to be 51-c- and it actually sells on clandestine exchanges for from 3-c- to 20-c- per ruble. Only place where Moscow citizens may buy foreign goods with rubles is the Custom House. There unclaimed articles, articles seized at frontier stations are auctioned off. Last week United Press Correspondent Eugene Lyons reported a few prices:

1 leather windbreaker (stained, used) ... 360 rubles 9 pairs silk stockings ... 325 9 badly worn dresses ... 190

Despite such chaos in ruble values the Soviet State Bank can boast that its bonds are endorsed by the second son of Morgan Partner Thomas William Lament. Son Corliss does not belong to the Communist Party, calls himself a "critical Communist sympathizer," has an extremely pretty wife who is a member of the Socialist Party. Last summer they toured Russia. Last week critical Corliss told a meeting of 500 Manhattan radicals to "Buy Soviet 10% bonds! They are the safest bonds on the market today. . . . The once stupid Russian peasant louts are now replaced by as intelligent a people as I have ever met. They are alert to world events, politics, modern thought. True, they have a food crisis and many of them haven't shoes but their devotion is lifting them up to a different plane." Unlike dogmatic Russian Communists who are positive that there is no future life, Son Corliss has recently set down his speculations in Issues of Immortality (Holt, $1.50, 198 pp.). Neatly he poses the question whether or not Modern Man goes to a Modern Heaven, replete with conveniences to which he is accustomed.

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