RUSSIA: The Old Woman

Only woman in the Soviet Union who gives Joseph Stalin a piece of her mind when she feels like it is spunky old Nadezhda Krupskaya, the Widow of Lenin. Several years ago she vexed the Dictator by demanding that Soviet schools be opened to every Russian child, even the moppets of onetime Tsarists, priests, capitalists and kulaks. According to a popular Soviet jest about Stalin, he roared: “Tell that old woman that if she doesn’t shut up and mind her business, I’ll appoint a new Widow of Lenin!”

Last week the Old Woman quietly had her way. Dictator Stalin issued an order absolutely forbidding discrimination against Russian children because of their antecedents, barred even inquiries by school authorities along this line.

Under the Dictator’s new orders Soviet pupils in Moscow, where 72 new schools were completed this year, will be inspected when they arrive each morning to see that their faces & hands are washed, their clothes neat. They will obey their teachers, behave with respect to elders, and show kindness to everyone. Parents, hitherto at the mercy of children who have been systematically encouraged to act as Communist spies and informers upon nonParty adults, were told that they will receive radio lectures on their new parental rights & duties. Lest all this go to the heads of Russian parents, they were warned not to start thrashing disrespectful, disobedient or unkind offspring.