RUSSIA: Behind the Smile

The picture of the new Russia that is laid before travelers, and sometimes believed by them, is of a land where burdens have eased and coercions lessened, where silk dresses and TV sets for the masses are either in the stores or just around the corner. But last week Russia’s new rulers publicly let the smiling mask slip. Items:

¶ Russia faces a severe shortage of grain. Drought and storms had heavily cut har vests in the Ukraine and the Volga region. The Kremlin’s long-range remedy — Party Secretary Khrushchev’s grandiose scheme for plowing up virgin land in Siberia and Kazakhstan — had not proved as painless as had been promised. Though an area greater than the total cultivated land of Great Britain had been plowed up, it had been done only by snatching technicians and tractors from West Russian farms, and when those ran out, by drafting men and women from their villages and factories. Then the Kremlin found another source of “volunteers” — young army conscripts who “requested,” in whole formations, to be sent to the new areas instead of returning to their homes.

¶ Despite concessions to the workers, labor productivity is “insufficient,” said the Soviet’s Master Planner, Maxim Saburov, at the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution. “Many works and factories are not working rhythmically.” Absenteeism runs as high as 25%. The remedy: “The further tightening up of labor discipline.”

¶ Soviet writers had been encouraged to speak up, differ and even criticize in the brief post-Stalin honeymoon. Saburov brusquely called them back to heel: “Our Soviet literature is called upon to carry into the masses the ideas of Communism, to show what is advanced and progressive, and to castigate what is backward.”

¶ The new regime had allowed many churches to reopen, visitors reported, but the press had launched many attacks on various religions. Last week Party Secretary Khrushchev brought order into this paradox by decreeing that “in the future, party organizations shall in no manner permit any insults to the feelings of believers and clergy or any official interference in the activity of the church.” Khrushchev had his own Marxist reason. “Insulting attacks . . . can only lead to strengthening and even intensification of religious prejudices among the people . . . Patient, well-organized, scientific atheistic propaganda among the believers will help them finally free themselves.”

Under the new “collective leadership,” as under Stalin, the Russian workers still had nothing to lose but their chains.