How It Is with Russia

The anniversary speeches in Moscow (see above) were far overshadowed, in importance and revealing detail, by an other speech -- made last August. The speech was delivered by Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. TIME Correspondent Craig Thompson got the text last week, and found in it the best report in years on how it is with Russia.

The Great Want. Kalinin's prime job is to interpret the people's reactions to Soviet policy makers and to sell Soviet policy to the people. Addressing a group of Communist Party organizers who work among collective farmers, he took grave note of rising Russian dissatisfaction, caused in part by German destruction and the cost of war and in part by a discovery made by millions of Red Army men -- men-that every country they entered in Europe had a higher living standard than theirs.

The clamor for more of the good things of life was strong; even Party organizers were grousing. Kalinin chided them: "You were grumbling here that there is not enough consumers' goods. Of course, there isn't and there cannot be enough.

It would be surprising if there were." He made no great promises for the future : "By the end of the year, consumer goods will start appearing. . . . They may not appear in great quantity, but still they will appear." Other things, such as the rebuilding of the railroads and the consolidation of Soviet political security, compete with consumers' goods production. But the possible allocation of men and materials for armament production and heavy industry would be limited--perhaps sharply limited--by the cry for galoshes and paint, for houses and leisure.

In Russia all men are not economically equal. To the grumbling Party organizers, Kalinin gave a hint as to where the first consumers' goods would go.

"Once long ago I was speaking in Kazan province. A woman said: 'Here you are walking in good boots and where are boots for us?' In those days I really had good boots, but this woman was well dressed, too. I looked at her and said: 'What do you want? That the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, the representative of the supreme power, should come to you in straw shoes?' People around cried: 'Right! Right!' Here is a stupid woman not to understand that.' "

The Masters of Souls. It was right and natural that Party organizers and officials should get the good things first. Kalinin reminded them that they take the place of many Tsarist officials, "the police chief, the chairman of the district nobility, the chairman of the elected district council, the inspector of people's education, the dean of the cathedral. . . ."

Then he added: "Not only are all the economics of the district under your leadership, but also you are rulers over the folk-souls of the people. ... If you yourselves correctly understand the system of Soviet power, then you are certainly masters of the peoples' souls. That is a fact."

Souls & Smoking Jackets. Returning Red Army men have been disturbed by an experience just -the reverse of that which disturbs American G.I.s in Europe. Said Kalinin:

"There was talk [in this meeting] of people coming home from Germany who had seen 'culture' in German villages which has made a certain impression. Our agitators must uncrown this German 'culture'. .'. . To draw an analogy: there are people in our towns and villages who hardly ever read and who are really very little developed, but yearn to dress more fashionably, to wear hats, even smoking jackets, and to use eau de cologne. . . . But by themselves and from inside themselves they are not cultured. Such appears to me to be the culture of the German burgher or kulak. This is a purely external culture, an empty one, not grasping the depths of the human soul. . . .

"The time is not far away when . . . kolkhozy (collective farms) will have many people who have graduated at least from a semiletka (seven years of elementary school)."

War Psychology. Meanwhile Soviet planners must judge between the demands on the national resources made by poverty at home and danger abroad. To allay the former they exaggerate the latter.

Bolsheviks of Kalinin's generation excor iated "capitalists imperialists" for ex ploiting patriotism and national aggran dizement in order to take the people's minds off their bellies. Kalinin now prac ticed what he used to denounce.

He did not attribute the wartime show ing of Russian agriculture to Soviet planning or to the inherent efficiency of col lective farming. Candidly, he said that "patriotism -- an outstanding rise in pa triotism" was what kept Russian food production from collapsing.

How are the organizers to maintain the wartime level of enthusiasm on the collective farms? By more patriotism; in fact, by keeping alive war psychology.

For external consumption Foreign Com missar Molotov might soft-pedal the old talk of the capitalist threat, but inside Russia that's what makes the mare go.

Kalinin put it : "Even now, after the very greatest victory known to history, we cannot for get for a single moment one basic fact --our country remains the single socialist state in the world. You can say this openly to the collective farmers. . . . Only the most direct danger which threatened us from Germany has disappeared." The Old School. Even this cogent demagoguery would not overcome all op, position. Kalinin was not wholly sorry; he hoped that the people would talk back to the organizers. (The tragedy of all successful revolutionaries is that they must hand over the power to men who were not tempered in the fires that tempered them. Part of Moscow's sense of insecurity comes from this fear of the "soft, new men.") Kalinin could remember 1905, when he led the great strike at the Putilov works, and 1902, when Stalin led the workers at Batum (see cut). Kalinin reminded the organizers:

"You had not the old school we once had. Our auditoriums were filled not only with adherents but enemies, too."

Undoubtedly pressure from the people will force some rise in living standards; the improvement will be justified as a political--and military--necessity. Noting the Red Army's watch hunger in Berlin's black market, Moscow has decided that Russia will manufacture 400,000 watches next year. Production of watches is under the direction of the Peoples' Commissariat of Mortar Armament.

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