Tens of thousands of new schools were
built and hundreds of institutes for the training of teach-
ers.
built and hundreds of institutes for the training of teach-
ers.
Soviet Union - 1952 - Soviet Civilization
.
.
.
I find that there is a good deal of ignorance
in America about conditions as they are in Russia. Several
people have asked me, 'Did you see anyone smile? ' Well,
it made me smile to be asked that question because quite
unlike the conditions in Germany before the war, or even
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? ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL PROGRESS
as I noticed them in Czechoslovakia on our way out to
Moscow, people in Russia seem happy. I think that the
reason is this: They measure everything by their own
past. "16
What the secretary of a British workers' delegation
to the Soviet Union in 1950 reported about the Russians
is of equal significance: "When you talk to them as we
did on our visit, and ask them about their living stand-
ards, they usually start right off by telling you that they
have abolished fear of being unemployed, fear of being
thrown on the scrap heap because of old age, fear of what
might happen if the breadwinner became ill, fear of not
being able to pay rent, fear of not being able to give the
children a good start in life. This complete absence of
anxiety about the future, this lack of worry about whether
there will be enough work, surely must be ranked among
the most priceless possessions. It must create a light-
heartedness and care-ffee spirit such as few of us, not even
the wealthy ones among us with their stocks and share
troubles, can imagine. It must release tremendous ener-
gies, mental and physical. "17
Typical of Soviet Russia's earth-shaking projects is
the Fifteen-Year Agricultural Plan, 1949-65. This ambi-
tious scheme, generally known as the Plan for Field Pro-
tecting Forest Belts, aims to alter the climate, prevent
drought and stabilize the harvests throughout an area in
southern Russia and Siberia that is half the size of the
United States and contains 75,000,000 people. In this
vast region west and south of the Ural Mountains the
hot, dry, relentless winds from the east have for centuries
swept over the open steppes of the Lower Volga Valley,
the Northern Caucasus and Ukraine, drying out or blow-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
ing away the vital topsoil, burning up the crops and
depositing tons of stifling dust and sand upon the fertile
fields.
The destruction of forests by man or nature -- forests
that hold the soil, preserve moisture and temper the
winds -- has been the prime factor in this process and
has in addition led to perennial floods. In his notable
book, Our Plundered Planet, the American naturalist,
Mr. Fairfield Osborn, shows how again and again in
human history the reckless felling of forests has eventual-
ly brought to the richest lands erosion, flood, drought,
desert and desolation. And he cites as deplorable ex-
amples the Yellow River Valley in China, the Tigris-
Euphrates Valley in the Near East and the life-devouring
dust-bowls in the southwest of the United States.
Insofar as Russia has been subject to this same pro-
cess, the Soviets intend to arrest it by an unprecedented
program of man-created woodlands, whose spongy floors
will retain both snow and rain, thus preventing sudden
thaws and floods, and whose bulk will act as windbreaks.
Evaporation of water from the new forest areas and from a
far-flung new system of reservoirs will moisten the atmos-
phere and cause more frequent rainfall. The Soviet
Fifteen-Year Plan of transforming the face of the earth
envisages five main steps:
First, the planting, at intervals of 100 to 200 miles
across the immense expanse from the Ukraine to the
Urals, of eight huge forest zones each consisting of several
tree-belts; second, the planting of extensive tree-belts on
the collective farms themselves, to protect the fields and
to cover some 5 percent of the total farmlands concerned;
third, the planting of bushes to hold down the sands on
over 805,000 acres; fourth, the construction throughout
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
the area now subject to drought of more than 44,000
new ponds and reservoirs; and fifth, systematization of
improved methods in crop rotation, including the intro-
duction of special grasses to bind and restore the soil.
A number of government agencies and 80,000 col-
lective farms, possessing a total of 300,000,000 acres,
are cooperating to put through these various measures.
The entire project is under the direction of the newly
created Chief Administration of Protective Afforesta-
tion, which is directly responsible to the Soviet Cabinet.
By the end of 1951, 5,790,000 acres of land had been
planted to trees and the planting completed in two of
the eight forest zones: the 100-mile wall from Stalingrad
north to Kamyshin along the west bank of the Volga
River, and the winding 300-mile belt on both sides of
the Northern Donets from Belgorod to the river's junc-
tion with the Don. During the same period approxi-
mately 13,500 ponds and reservoirs had been constructed.
Rivaling in scope the great Agricultural Plan are six
new projects recently undertaken by the Soviets in a
combined program of dams, hydroelectric power, irriga-
tion and inland waterways that surpasses in magnitude
anything of the sort ever attempted by man. The first
of these huge enterprises is the 62-mile Volga-Don Ship
Canal, which was opened in 1952. Included in this
project is a dam at Tsimlyanskaya twice as long as
America's longest at Fort Peck on the Missouri, and 350
miles of trunk irrigation canals which will carry much-
needed water to 6,790,000 acres.
The economic importance of the Volga-Don Canal
is obvious. With the Moscow-Volga Canal and other
waterways to the north, it will provide through naviga-
tion from the Black Sea to the Baltic and White Seas;
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
and will make the capital of the Soviet Union directly
accessible to oceangoing vessels from the Mediterranean.
It will link, through cheap water transport, the Moscow
and Ural industrial areas, the Don-Volga grain belts and
the Baku oil fields with the Ukraine's coal, iron, steel
and other resources; and with the outside world via the
Black Sea.
Second and third in the Soviet prospectus I have been
outlining here are new giant dams across the Volga at
Kuibyshev, temporary capital of the Soviet Union during
the recent war, and at Stalingrad, embattled city where
the tide finally turned against the Nazis. Soviet experts
calculate that each dam will produce a minimum of
2,000,000 kilowatts of electric power per year, which is
as much as the output of America's greatest hydroelectric
development -- Grand Coulee on the Columbia River.
It is expected that the two new Volga dams will go into
operation by 1956 and that together they will irrigate
some 35,000,000 acres of potentially rich agricultural
lands.
Fourth in this impressive Soviet program are a second
dam on the Dnieper River at Kakhovka, about 150 miles
below the old dam at Zaporozhe which Americans helped
to erect, and a companion structure on a smaller river
to the east. These two dams, to be finished in 1957, will
make possible the irrigation of large tracts along the
Black Sea coast suitable for cotton and other crops. A
unique feature of this project is that the main irrigation
canal, 350 miles long, will be carried across the western
arm of the Sea of Azov in order to irrigate the Crimean
Peninsula.
Fifth in this brief look at the Soviet future is the
Great Turkmenian Canal in Central Asia to be built
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
680 miles across the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
and its immense Desert of Kara-Kum (Black Sands).
The purpose of the combined ship and irrigation canal
is both to restore fertility to thousands of square miles of
sun-scorched, arid wasteland and also to connect Soviet
Central Asia by water traffic with the western part of the
U. S. S. R. and, through the Volga-Don development, with
foreign countries. The project will link together the
Amu-Darya River, now emptying into the land-locked
Aral Sea, and the Caspian Sea. It will draw its water
from the Amu-Darya and, for about two-thirds of its
length, will flow along the ancient bed of this river, which
centuries ago wound across the present desert region
into the Caspian just south of Krasnovodsk.
This canal, together with its three big hydroelectric
stations, is scheduled for completion in 1957; and will
irrigate, through 750 miles of permanent branch canals,
3,250,000 acres for cotton growing. In addition it will
provide supplementary water to 17,500,000 acres of cattle
range. The plans also call for the planting of 1,250,000
acres of trees along the canal and its main branches, and
around the borders of the newly irrigated lands in order
to confine the desert sands and to serve as shelter belts.
Six hundred and twenty miles of pipe lines connected
with the canal will bring fresh water to such cities as
Krasnovodsk, which now obtains its water by tankers or
by distillation from the salty Caspian.
One of the striking things about these remarkable
Soviet developments is the speed with which they are
being accomplished. The Volga-Don Canal, its huge
dam, and power installations were built in two years.
The two new Volga dams and installations are timed to
go into operation within five years from the start of work;
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
the two new Dnieper dams and the Grand Turkmenian
Canal within six years. Of course public ownership of
land and power in the Soviet Union is an indispensable
factor in the rapid fulfilment of these great projects.
Sixth and most spectacular is the plan worked out
by a Soviet engineer, Mitrofan Davydov. His novel idea
is to reverse the courses of the Ob and Yenisei -- great
rivers comparable to the Mississippi in length and volume
-- now flowing north through Siberia to the Arctic Ocean,
in order to drain the useless, unending Siberian swamp-
lands, to irrigate an enormous desert region in Central
Asia and to raise the level of the falling Caspian Sea.
Since the Siberian territories involved are very flat, it
is possible to block the northward course of the two
rivers by building dams only a little more than 250 feet
high.
The Ob dam alone will create the world's biggest
reservoir, with a surface area of nearly 100,000 square
miles, larger than all of America's Great Lakes put to-
gether. From this reservoir, to be called the Lower Ob
Sea, a new river will run 2,500 miles southwest, through
man-made canals, existing bodies of water and the chan-
nels of ancient rivers. It will pass through the Aral Sea,
turning its water from salt into fresh, and then flow into
the Amu-Darya River and the Great Turkmenian Canal
for its final journey to the Caspian.
The Yenisei River will later be brought into the
system by the cutting of a 56-mile-long canal connecting
it with the Lower Ob Sea. Sufficient water will then be-
come available to supply regular irrigation for approxi-
mately 61,700,000 acres of land and to water at least
74,000,000 acres more of meadow and pasture. The chief
beneficiary of these developments will be the Kazakh Re-
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? ECONOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
public, the agricultural produce of which will increase, it
is estimated, five- to seven-fold. The new Soviet-con-
structed river will be wide enough and deep enough for
navigation; and the entire project, after the Yenisei is in-
cluded, will provide the Soviet Union with 5,000 addi-
tional miles of arterial waterways. Numerous hydroelec-
tric plants will be built throughout the river-canal net-
work.
Let me quote Mr. Davydov himself on the general
effects of his scheme: "The artificially created Lower
Ob Sea and the appearance of billions of cubic meters
of water in what have from time immemorial been arid
and desert regions will have a beneficent influence on the
climate of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, as well as of
western Siberia. The climate of Central Asia will be
of a less pronounced continental character, and the sharp
annual and diurnal extremes of temperature character-
istic of this region will become a thing of the past. Over
a large part of Siberia the atmosphere will become more
humid, and the winters milder. It will be possible to
carry agriculture into latitudes where it is now precluded
owing to the severe climate. "18
Engineers and scientists have thoroughly discussed
and debated the Davydov plan. Specialized groups show-
ing a particular interest in it have been the Moscow
Institute of Electrical Engineering, the U. S. S. R. Academy
of Sciences' Institute for the Study of Productive Forces,
the Power Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences,
the Ail-Union Forestry Society, the Water Conservation
Board of the U. S. S. R. Ministry of Agriculture, the Scien-
tific Council of the Ministry of Fisheries and the Science
and Technology Council of the Ministry of Electric
Power Stations. In 1951 the Government officially ap-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
proved the proposal and allocated funds for further
preparatory and research work. Several score engineers
are now drawing up and elaborating final blueprints
under the direction of Mr. Davydov. The detailed plan-
ning and execution of the whole Ob-Yenisei Project will
take at least fifteen years.
The Fifteen-Year Agricultural Plan, the various new
dams and canals, and the remarkable Davydov project
bring out the extraordinary scale and far-sightedness of
socialist planning more effectively than any recitation
of statistics on industrial and agricultural production.
The Soviets are literally re-making nature throughout
an area as large as continental United States. They are
changing the course of mighty rivers, creating new rivers,
constructing inland seas, digging through hundreds of
miles of earth and rock, building a vast network of water-
ways, bringing electric power to thousands of economic
enterprises and millions of people, irrigating enormous
areas of land, making centuries-old deserts bloom, increas-
ing the rainfall, eliminating drought, permanently alter-
ing the climate of entire nations within the Soviet con-
federation. These tremendous programs are beyond any-
thing Goethe's aspiring Faust ever imagined and remind
one of a science novel by H. G. Wells.
The tree-growing plan, involving the planting of
billions upon billions of new trees, will not achieve its
full effects for fifty years, nor the Ob-Yenisei Project fdr
twenty-five. Truly the Soviet planners are much con-
cerned with the welfare of unborn generations and with
ensuring them the economic foundations of an abundant
life. In most countries the kind of schemes which Soviet
engineers and social scientists are continually suggesting
would be dismissed as irresponsible dreams; in Soviet
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? ECONOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
Russia these "dreams," in essence rational as well as
imaginative, go speedily into effect and become the reality
of the future.
5. Cultural Advances
One does not have to be a Marxist or a Communist
to accept the view that every great culture in the history
of mankind has had an economic or material base. Eco-
nomic foundations have of course always been necessary
for the production of the requisite cultural goods and
tools, such as schoolhouses, books, library buildings,
scientific instruments, musical instruments, paints and
other artistic media; to provide artists, teachers, writers
and other cultural workers with their living essentials;
and to make possible leisure in which to appreciate,
criticize and stimulate cultural productions.
A prime Soviet aim from the start has been to develop
an outstanding new culture on the economic foundations
of socialism; to preserve the splendid artistic and literary
achievements of the Russian past; and to extend the
opportunity for cultural appreciation and creation to the
entire population. There is no sharp separation between
material and cultural output, since these two facets of
civilization go hand in hand. The development of ma-
chine processes and scientific techniques so central in a
modern economy require a continuing expansion of
general education and scientific training; while educa-
tional and scientific expansion need a steady flow from
the factories of material equipment of all kinds.
The primary requisites for the cultural progress of
a whole people are literacy and education. Since only 30
percent of the Tsar's subjects were literate, the great
majority could not know the works of Chekov, Pushkin
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
and Leo Tolstoy. One of the first steps the new Gov-
ernment took was to organize a far-reaching campaign
against adult illiteracy. In the tense years of civil war and
foreign intervention following the Revolution thousands
of individuals contributed their time without pay to
teach reading, writing and the elements of arithmetic.
They organized classes in apartment houses and at places
of work. And tens of millions of Soviet citizens became
able for the first time to read newspapers, magazines
and books.
Simultaneously the educational system was reorgan-
ized. Even during the Civil War period they were able to
increase the school population to 10,000,000, 25 per-
cent beyond the highest school figure of Tsarist times.
Teachers kept schools open, and set up new ones, despite
cold, hunger and an appalling lack of schoolhouses, books,
pencils, and even paper. The paper shortage was partly
solved by such means as using the reverse sides of the
mounds of petty documentary records stored in local
government offices for decades. Professors gave lectures
before the workers' clubs that were being established
everywhere. This not only stimulated latent interests
and talents among the people, but also brought many
scholars and men of science out of their academic isola-
tion, compelling them to simplify and freshen their lan-
guage, to think in terms of the popular application of
knowledge.
Economic recovery from World War I gradually
enabled the Soviet Union to produce paper, publish
books, erect theatres, movie halls, clubrooms and labora-
tories, and manufacture scientific instruments and other
such equipment to extend cultural facilities beyond the
bare necessities. By 1930 the nation's economy was strong
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
enough to bear the considerable burden of free, uni-
versal, compulsory elementary education, established
in that year.
Tens of thousands of new schools were
built and hundreds of institutes for the training of teach-
ers. Textbooks were printed by the tens of millions.
During these same years the growing collectivization of
agriculture shortened the working day of the peasant so
that he had more time for reading and other cultural
activities; and he could let his children remain at school
instead of taking them out at an early age to work on
the farm.
The First Five-Year Plan saw school attendance grow
by almost 9,500,000, practically doubling. College enroll-
ment nearly trebled as the Government opened wide the
gates to workers and peasants, who had been all but
excluded under the old regime. The parallel systems of
compulsory education for children and voluntary educa-
tion for adults brought literacy up to 80 percent in 1939.
By that time 50,000,000 adults had been to school and
had acquired a taste for reading reflected in a fourteen-
fold rise in newspaper circulation and an eight fold in-
crease in book publishing as compared with 1913. In
1939-41, however, the illiteracy ratio rose as a result of
Soviet annexations in the west which brought 23,000,000
new people into the U. S. S. R. *
World War II took 15,000,000 children out of school
in the areas under German occupation; and millions
more interrupted their schooling as they went to work
for the defense effort or as the authorities requisitioned
schools for hospitals and other emergency uses. In 1944
the Government reduced the age for entering school
from eight to seven, and the first-grade enrollment dou-
? See pp. 309-312.
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? SOVIET CrVlLlZATIOH
bled that year, with 2,000,000 additional pupils. Five
years later, in 1949, the authorities decreed the extension
of free universal, compulsory education of seven years'
duration from the cities and industrial settlements to
the rural districts, where previously only four years had
been required. This new development was completed
by the end of the Fourth Five-Year Plan in 1950. It sent
school attendance up by 5,200,000, necessitating the
building of many thousands of new schools.
During the period of the Plan the number of students
throughout the country in elementary, seven-year and
secondary schools, technical schools and other secondary
establishments increased altogether by 8,000,000 and
reached the total figure of 37,000,000. College and uni-
versity enrollment climbed to 840,000 plus 470,000 in
correspondence courses. After the war the elimination
of illiteracy was resumed in the western borderlands.
And in 1950, without fanfare, the Soviet Union brought
to an end its great literacy campaigns, with adult illiteracy
virtually wiped out in every part of the country.
The regime was only eight weeks old when, with
civil war in the immediate offing, it established by sta-
tute a State Publishing House, the main purpose of which
was to issue cheap editions of the great Russian authors
whose works, under this law, were to become available
to all of the people. That aim has been pursued con-
sistently. When Albert Rhys Williams, noted American
authority on the U. S. S. R. , wanted to express what was
going on in this field, he wrote an article called "Billions
of Books. " "Bookstalls and bookstands," he said, "are as
numerous in the Soviet Union as are soda fountains in
the United States. The problem is no longer that of
awakening an interest in books, but rather of finding
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? ECONOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
some way to satisfy the truly insatiable demand. "19
On the eve of the Second World War there were six
times as many libraries, with eighteen times as many
books, as in 1913. The Nazis destroyed 43,000 libraries
with their 100,000,000 books. Yet at the end of the
Fourth Five-Year Plan there were 15 percent more public
libraries and clubhouses than in 1940. Book publishing
of all types was 84 percent higher than pre-war and six-
teen times higher than in 1913. The year 1951 saw the
number of libraries maintained by the State and public
organizations rise to 350,000, containing more than 700,-
000,000 books.
By the end of 1951 many millions of copies had been
issued of all the chief Russian classics in the novel, the
drama and poetry. For instance, the various works of
Alexander Pushkin had been published beyond a total
of 57,000,000, of Maxim Gorky beyond 59,000,000 and
of Leo Tolstoy beyond 42,000,000. Even in the rather
abstract sphere of philosophy the Soviets print editions
ranging in number from 10,000 to 150,000, including
translations of the outstanding classics from Plato and
Aristotle to the nineteenth century.
It is enlightening to compare publishing figures for
the first twenty years of the Soviet regime with the last
twenty years of Tsarist rule. Precise data are available
as of October, 1947, and are as follows:
Copies
Copies
Author
1888-1917
1918-1947
Chekhov, Anton O.
Gogol, Nikolai V.
Gorky, Maxim
Griboedov, Alexander S.
627,000
5,813,000
1,083,000
619,000
18,386,000
10,526,000
44,504,000
1,173,000
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
Copies
Copies
Author
1888-1917
1918-1947
Herzen, Alexander I.
167,000
1,810,000
Lermontov, Mikhail Y.
4,036,000
9,740,000
Nekrasov, Nikolai A.
254,000
9,648,000
Ostrovsky, Alexander N.
254,000
3,350,000
Pushkin, Alexander S.
10,711,000
35,429,000
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail
E. 231,000
7,884,000
Tolstoy, Leo N.
10,784,000
26,459,000
Turgenev, Ivan S.
?
12,432,000
Soviet publishers have also issued by the millions the
translated work of foreign authors. Victor Hugo heads
the list with more than 6,600,000 copies; Guy de
Maupassant is next with more than 4,000,000; while
Balzac, Barbusse, Dickens, Rolland and Zola total over
2,000,000 each. An official survey by the Soviet Book
Chamber in 1951 showed that books by 210 American
authors have appeared in the Soviet Union since 1918.
These added up to 44,400,000 copies, translated into no
less than fifty of the languages used in the U. S. S. R.
Jack London came first with 12,259,000 copies; Mark
Twain second with 4,267,000; Ernest Thompson Seton
third with more than 2,300,000; O. Henry fourth with
1,649,000; and Theodore Dreiser fifth with 1,445,000.
The Soviet people often celebrate the birthdays or
other anniversaries of famous world writers. Thus in Feb-
ruary, 1952, the Russian press and literary journals made
a great deal of the 150th anniversary of Victor Hugo's
birth. Publishers were getting ready for the press a two-
volume edition of his selected works to be issued in 90,000
copies; and a special subscription edition of his complete
works in 150,000 copies. Soviet readers and critics see
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
in Hugo a powerful defender of the disinherited and
oppressed, and one who fought passionately for democ-
racy and the liberation of the masses. In 1952 the Soviet
Union also celebrated the 500th anniversary of the birth
of Leonardo da Vinci.
In all of the arts progress similar to that in education
and literature has taken place. Lenin himself set the tone
when he said: "Art belongs to the people. It ought to
extend with deep roots into the very thick of the broad
toiling masses. It ought to be intelligible to these masses
and loved by them. And it ought to unify the freedom,
thought and will of these masses, and elevate them. It
ought to arouse and develop artists among them. "20 Up
till 1917 the fine arts (as distinct from the folk arts) were
the private property of a small minority at the top. The
overwhelming majority of the people did not have the
money to buy tickets for performances of drama, ballet,
opera and music. Now all this is changed. And in no
country on earth do a larger proportion of the population
share in the enjoyment of all the arts than in Soviet
Russia.
Not only do huge audiences attend professional pro-
ductions everywhere, but amateur art circles flourish by
the scores of thousands. The wide network of amateur
groups are mainly sponsored and equipped by the trade
unions, which make available to them their 8,000 club-
houses and 80,000 recreation rooms. In 1951 there
entered the national elimination contests 102,000 amateur
groups with over 2,000,000 members. Included were
14,000 symphony orchestras, brass bands and string en-
sembles, 12,000 dance groups, 25,000 choral groups and
40,000 drama groups.
During my two trips to the Soviet Union, in 1932
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
and 1938, I went frequently to the theatre, ballet and
opera and was always struck by the first-rate quality of the
performances, including presentations of Shakespeare's
plays. As a Shakespeare enthusiast since my school days,
I have been impressed by the immense popularity of
England's greatest dramatist throughout the U. S. S. R.
Shakespeare festivals are a common occurrence there and
Shakespeare's plays have been published in hundreds of
thousands of copies in at least twenty languages. A special
section of the All-Russian Theatrical Society concerns
itself entirely with Shakespeare and the Western Euro-
pean Theatre. This section organizes scholarly research
and lectures on Shakespeare, and arranges an annual
conference on his work every year in April, which is
known as "Shakespeare Month. "
Although in my opinion the quality of Soviet archi-
tecture has remained mediocre, artists and writers have
on the whole set a high record of accomplishment. The
compelling music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Khacha-
turian has won international acclaim. The work of
Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko in the motion
picture ranks as classic. Mikhail Sholokhov and Alexei
Tolstoy are among the greatest novelists of our time.
As for the status of painting and sculpture, Mr. F. B.
Taylor, an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of
Arts, offered the opinion, after a visit to Soviet Russia
in 1951, that the "Soviet standard of workmanship and
craftsmanship and all-round technical capacity in the
visual arts is the highest I know of in the world today. "21
Significant, too, was the testimony in 1947 of General
Walter Bedell Smith, at that time American Ambassador
to the U. S. S. R. , before a House of Representatives sub-
committee on Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is
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? ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL PROGRESS
setting a higher cultural standard within its borders, I
believe, than exists anywhere else in the world. I say that
advisedly. . . . I mean, at least according to my tastes, the
Soviet radio, the Soviet ballet, the opera, their puppet
theatres -- things of that sort -- are based on a higher
cultural level than that which public demand dictates
in this country. "22
Along with the enormous expansion of recreational
facilities in the arts has gone a comparable development
in sports, which are constantly encouraged by the Min-
istry of Public Health and which come under the super-
vision of the Committee on Affairs of Physical Culture
and Sport -- a body directly accountable to the Cabinet.
Scattered throughout the country are 150,000 athletic
organizations with more than 23,000,000 members and
coordinated into forty large sports societies, the best
known of which are Bolshevik, Dynamo and Spartacus.
The Government gives every aid to a broad people's
program of sports and exercise, believing that they are
essential to national defense as well as to health.
Today all citizens enjoy ample opportunity to take
part in indoor and outdoor sports of a most varied nature.
This contrasts with the old Tsarist days when the masses
of the people had neither the leisure, the money nor the
equipment to participate in sports. The upper classes
themselves were not given much to outdoor sports. Writ-
ing about the typical pre-revolutionary Russian, Sir
Maurice Baring states: "His chief pastimes were singing,
endless conversation, chess playing, broiling himself red
in steambaths, guzzling tremendous amounts of tea and
vodka. "23 The Soviet Russians have not lost any of these
particular skills, but have added a great many others.
As to chess, the most intellectual of all popular games,
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
millions now play it and enter into local, regional or
national competitions. Children are urged to start learn-
ing the game at an early age. In 1951 Soviet citizens won
the world's chess championship for both men and women.
Mr. Harry Schwartz, critical commentator of The New
York Times on Soviet affairs, acknowledges that "the
U. S. S. R. does stand pre-eminent" in chess. "Soviet pri-
macy is complete," he says, "and the U. S. S. R. has at least
a dozen players who rank at the very top of the chess
ladder, a greater number than any other country. "24
As for other sports, boating, swimming, rowing, ski-
ing, skating, ice-hockey, basketball, volleyball, soccer,
tennis, bicycling, boxing, wrestling, marksmanship, track,
cross-country meets, horseback riding, horse-racing and
mountain climbing are all popular. Tennis is for most
Russians a new game in which they are not yet very
proficient. But in soccer their teams are a match for
those from other European countries. Cross-country
racing -- on foot or on ski -- is probably the first in
popularity and in a single season draws as many as 6,000,-
000 competitors (foot) and 10,000,000 (ski).
In 1952 the Soviet Union for the first time took part
in the Olympic Games, held in Helsinki, Finland, July
19-August 3. Competing against the teams of sixty-six
other nations, the Soviet athletes, both men and women,
showed great prowess in a number of events. The Olym-
pics do not tabulate official team scores, but according to
the unofficial Western scoring system the United States
won first place with a total of 614 points, while Soviet
Russia came second with 5531^. A marked feature of
the Games was the display of good fellowship between
the Soviet entrants and those from other countries, in-
cluding the United States. After Soviet oarsmen had pre-
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?
in America about conditions as they are in Russia. Several
people have asked me, 'Did you see anyone smile? ' Well,
it made me smile to be asked that question because quite
unlike the conditions in Germany before the war, or even
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? ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL PROGRESS
as I noticed them in Czechoslovakia on our way out to
Moscow, people in Russia seem happy. I think that the
reason is this: They measure everything by their own
past. "16
What the secretary of a British workers' delegation
to the Soviet Union in 1950 reported about the Russians
is of equal significance: "When you talk to them as we
did on our visit, and ask them about their living stand-
ards, they usually start right off by telling you that they
have abolished fear of being unemployed, fear of being
thrown on the scrap heap because of old age, fear of what
might happen if the breadwinner became ill, fear of not
being able to pay rent, fear of not being able to give the
children a good start in life. This complete absence of
anxiety about the future, this lack of worry about whether
there will be enough work, surely must be ranked among
the most priceless possessions. It must create a light-
heartedness and care-ffee spirit such as few of us, not even
the wealthy ones among us with their stocks and share
troubles, can imagine. It must release tremendous ener-
gies, mental and physical. "17
Typical of Soviet Russia's earth-shaking projects is
the Fifteen-Year Agricultural Plan, 1949-65. This ambi-
tious scheme, generally known as the Plan for Field Pro-
tecting Forest Belts, aims to alter the climate, prevent
drought and stabilize the harvests throughout an area in
southern Russia and Siberia that is half the size of the
United States and contains 75,000,000 people. In this
vast region west and south of the Ural Mountains the
hot, dry, relentless winds from the east have for centuries
swept over the open steppes of the Lower Volga Valley,
the Northern Caucasus and Ukraine, drying out or blow-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
ing away the vital topsoil, burning up the crops and
depositing tons of stifling dust and sand upon the fertile
fields.
The destruction of forests by man or nature -- forests
that hold the soil, preserve moisture and temper the
winds -- has been the prime factor in this process and
has in addition led to perennial floods. In his notable
book, Our Plundered Planet, the American naturalist,
Mr. Fairfield Osborn, shows how again and again in
human history the reckless felling of forests has eventual-
ly brought to the richest lands erosion, flood, drought,
desert and desolation. And he cites as deplorable ex-
amples the Yellow River Valley in China, the Tigris-
Euphrates Valley in the Near East and the life-devouring
dust-bowls in the southwest of the United States.
Insofar as Russia has been subject to this same pro-
cess, the Soviets intend to arrest it by an unprecedented
program of man-created woodlands, whose spongy floors
will retain both snow and rain, thus preventing sudden
thaws and floods, and whose bulk will act as windbreaks.
Evaporation of water from the new forest areas and from a
far-flung new system of reservoirs will moisten the atmos-
phere and cause more frequent rainfall. The Soviet
Fifteen-Year Plan of transforming the face of the earth
envisages five main steps:
First, the planting, at intervals of 100 to 200 miles
across the immense expanse from the Ukraine to the
Urals, of eight huge forest zones each consisting of several
tree-belts; second, the planting of extensive tree-belts on
the collective farms themselves, to protect the fields and
to cover some 5 percent of the total farmlands concerned;
third, the planting of bushes to hold down the sands on
over 805,000 acres; fourth, the construction throughout
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
the area now subject to drought of more than 44,000
new ponds and reservoirs; and fifth, systematization of
improved methods in crop rotation, including the intro-
duction of special grasses to bind and restore the soil.
A number of government agencies and 80,000 col-
lective farms, possessing a total of 300,000,000 acres,
are cooperating to put through these various measures.
The entire project is under the direction of the newly
created Chief Administration of Protective Afforesta-
tion, which is directly responsible to the Soviet Cabinet.
By the end of 1951, 5,790,000 acres of land had been
planted to trees and the planting completed in two of
the eight forest zones: the 100-mile wall from Stalingrad
north to Kamyshin along the west bank of the Volga
River, and the winding 300-mile belt on both sides of
the Northern Donets from Belgorod to the river's junc-
tion with the Don. During the same period approxi-
mately 13,500 ponds and reservoirs had been constructed.
Rivaling in scope the great Agricultural Plan are six
new projects recently undertaken by the Soviets in a
combined program of dams, hydroelectric power, irriga-
tion and inland waterways that surpasses in magnitude
anything of the sort ever attempted by man. The first
of these huge enterprises is the 62-mile Volga-Don Ship
Canal, which was opened in 1952. Included in this
project is a dam at Tsimlyanskaya twice as long as
America's longest at Fort Peck on the Missouri, and 350
miles of trunk irrigation canals which will carry much-
needed water to 6,790,000 acres.
The economic importance of the Volga-Don Canal
is obvious. With the Moscow-Volga Canal and other
waterways to the north, it will provide through naviga-
tion from the Black Sea to the Baltic and White Seas;
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
and will make the capital of the Soviet Union directly
accessible to oceangoing vessels from the Mediterranean.
It will link, through cheap water transport, the Moscow
and Ural industrial areas, the Don-Volga grain belts and
the Baku oil fields with the Ukraine's coal, iron, steel
and other resources; and with the outside world via the
Black Sea.
Second and third in the Soviet prospectus I have been
outlining here are new giant dams across the Volga at
Kuibyshev, temporary capital of the Soviet Union during
the recent war, and at Stalingrad, embattled city where
the tide finally turned against the Nazis. Soviet experts
calculate that each dam will produce a minimum of
2,000,000 kilowatts of electric power per year, which is
as much as the output of America's greatest hydroelectric
development -- Grand Coulee on the Columbia River.
It is expected that the two new Volga dams will go into
operation by 1956 and that together they will irrigate
some 35,000,000 acres of potentially rich agricultural
lands.
Fourth in this impressive Soviet program are a second
dam on the Dnieper River at Kakhovka, about 150 miles
below the old dam at Zaporozhe which Americans helped
to erect, and a companion structure on a smaller river
to the east. These two dams, to be finished in 1957, will
make possible the irrigation of large tracts along the
Black Sea coast suitable for cotton and other crops. A
unique feature of this project is that the main irrigation
canal, 350 miles long, will be carried across the western
arm of the Sea of Azov in order to irrigate the Crimean
Peninsula.
Fifth in this brief look at the Soviet future is the
Great Turkmenian Canal in Central Asia to be built
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
680 miles across the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
and its immense Desert of Kara-Kum (Black Sands).
The purpose of the combined ship and irrigation canal
is both to restore fertility to thousands of square miles of
sun-scorched, arid wasteland and also to connect Soviet
Central Asia by water traffic with the western part of the
U. S. S. R. and, through the Volga-Don development, with
foreign countries. The project will link together the
Amu-Darya River, now emptying into the land-locked
Aral Sea, and the Caspian Sea. It will draw its water
from the Amu-Darya and, for about two-thirds of its
length, will flow along the ancient bed of this river, which
centuries ago wound across the present desert region
into the Caspian just south of Krasnovodsk.
This canal, together with its three big hydroelectric
stations, is scheduled for completion in 1957; and will
irrigate, through 750 miles of permanent branch canals,
3,250,000 acres for cotton growing. In addition it will
provide supplementary water to 17,500,000 acres of cattle
range. The plans also call for the planting of 1,250,000
acres of trees along the canal and its main branches, and
around the borders of the newly irrigated lands in order
to confine the desert sands and to serve as shelter belts.
Six hundred and twenty miles of pipe lines connected
with the canal will bring fresh water to such cities as
Krasnovodsk, which now obtains its water by tankers or
by distillation from the salty Caspian.
One of the striking things about these remarkable
Soviet developments is the speed with which they are
being accomplished. The Volga-Don Canal, its huge
dam, and power installations were built in two years.
The two new Volga dams and installations are timed to
go into operation within five years from the start of work;
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
the two new Dnieper dams and the Grand Turkmenian
Canal within six years. Of course public ownership of
land and power in the Soviet Union is an indispensable
factor in the rapid fulfilment of these great projects.
Sixth and most spectacular is the plan worked out
by a Soviet engineer, Mitrofan Davydov. His novel idea
is to reverse the courses of the Ob and Yenisei -- great
rivers comparable to the Mississippi in length and volume
-- now flowing north through Siberia to the Arctic Ocean,
in order to drain the useless, unending Siberian swamp-
lands, to irrigate an enormous desert region in Central
Asia and to raise the level of the falling Caspian Sea.
Since the Siberian territories involved are very flat, it
is possible to block the northward course of the two
rivers by building dams only a little more than 250 feet
high.
The Ob dam alone will create the world's biggest
reservoir, with a surface area of nearly 100,000 square
miles, larger than all of America's Great Lakes put to-
gether. From this reservoir, to be called the Lower Ob
Sea, a new river will run 2,500 miles southwest, through
man-made canals, existing bodies of water and the chan-
nels of ancient rivers. It will pass through the Aral Sea,
turning its water from salt into fresh, and then flow into
the Amu-Darya River and the Great Turkmenian Canal
for its final journey to the Caspian.
The Yenisei River will later be brought into the
system by the cutting of a 56-mile-long canal connecting
it with the Lower Ob Sea. Sufficient water will then be-
come available to supply regular irrigation for approxi-
mately 61,700,000 acres of land and to water at least
74,000,000 acres more of meadow and pasture. The chief
beneficiary of these developments will be the Kazakh Re-
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? ECONOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
public, the agricultural produce of which will increase, it
is estimated, five- to seven-fold. The new Soviet-con-
structed river will be wide enough and deep enough for
navigation; and the entire project, after the Yenisei is in-
cluded, will provide the Soviet Union with 5,000 addi-
tional miles of arterial waterways. Numerous hydroelec-
tric plants will be built throughout the river-canal net-
work.
Let me quote Mr. Davydov himself on the general
effects of his scheme: "The artificially created Lower
Ob Sea and the appearance of billions of cubic meters
of water in what have from time immemorial been arid
and desert regions will have a beneficent influence on the
climate of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, as well as of
western Siberia. The climate of Central Asia will be
of a less pronounced continental character, and the sharp
annual and diurnal extremes of temperature character-
istic of this region will become a thing of the past. Over
a large part of Siberia the atmosphere will become more
humid, and the winters milder. It will be possible to
carry agriculture into latitudes where it is now precluded
owing to the severe climate. "18
Engineers and scientists have thoroughly discussed
and debated the Davydov plan. Specialized groups show-
ing a particular interest in it have been the Moscow
Institute of Electrical Engineering, the U. S. S. R. Academy
of Sciences' Institute for the Study of Productive Forces,
the Power Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences,
the Ail-Union Forestry Society, the Water Conservation
Board of the U. S. S. R. Ministry of Agriculture, the Scien-
tific Council of the Ministry of Fisheries and the Science
and Technology Council of the Ministry of Electric
Power Stations. In 1951 the Government officially ap-
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
proved the proposal and allocated funds for further
preparatory and research work. Several score engineers
are now drawing up and elaborating final blueprints
under the direction of Mr. Davydov. The detailed plan-
ning and execution of the whole Ob-Yenisei Project will
take at least fifteen years.
The Fifteen-Year Agricultural Plan, the various new
dams and canals, and the remarkable Davydov project
bring out the extraordinary scale and far-sightedness of
socialist planning more effectively than any recitation
of statistics on industrial and agricultural production.
The Soviets are literally re-making nature throughout
an area as large as continental United States. They are
changing the course of mighty rivers, creating new rivers,
constructing inland seas, digging through hundreds of
miles of earth and rock, building a vast network of water-
ways, bringing electric power to thousands of economic
enterprises and millions of people, irrigating enormous
areas of land, making centuries-old deserts bloom, increas-
ing the rainfall, eliminating drought, permanently alter-
ing the climate of entire nations within the Soviet con-
federation. These tremendous programs are beyond any-
thing Goethe's aspiring Faust ever imagined and remind
one of a science novel by H. G. Wells.
The tree-growing plan, involving the planting of
billions upon billions of new trees, will not achieve its
full effects for fifty years, nor the Ob-Yenisei Project fdr
twenty-five. Truly the Soviet planners are much con-
cerned with the welfare of unborn generations and with
ensuring them the economic foundations of an abundant
life. In most countries the kind of schemes which Soviet
engineers and social scientists are continually suggesting
would be dismissed as irresponsible dreams; in Soviet
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? ECONOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
Russia these "dreams," in essence rational as well as
imaginative, go speedily into effect and become the reality
of the future.
5. Cultural Advances
One does not have to be a Marxist or a Communist
to accept the view that every great culture in the history
of mankind has had an economic or material base. Eco-
nomic foundations have of course always been necessary
for the production of the requisite cultural goods and
tools, such as schoolhouses, books, library buildings,
scientific instruments, musical instruments, paints and
other artistic media; to provide artists, teachers, writers
and other cultural workers with their living essentials;
and to make possible leisure in which to appreciate,
criticize and stimulate cultural productions.
A prime Soviet aim from the start has been to develop
an outstanding new culture on the economic foundations
of socialism; to preserve the splendid artistic and literary
achievements of the Russian past; and to extend the
opportunity for cultural appreciation and creation to the
entire population. There is no sharp separation between
material and cultural output, since these two facets of
civilization go hand in hand. The development of ma-
chine processes and scientific techniques so central in a
modern economy require a continuing expansion of
general education and scientific training; while educa-
tional and scientific expansion need a steady flow from
the factories of material equipment of all kinds.
The primary requisites for the cultural progress of
a whole people are literacy and education. Since only 30
percent of the Tsar's subjects were literate, the great
majority could not know the works of Chekov, Pushkin
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
and Leo Tolstoy. One of the first steps the new Gov-
ernment took was to organize a far-reaching campaign
against adult illiteracy. In the tense years of civil war and
foreign intervention following the Revolution thousands
of individuals contributed their time without pay to
teach reading, writing and the elements of arithmetic.
They organized classes in apartment houses and at places
of work. And tens of millions of Soviet citizens became
able for the first time to read newspapers, magazines
and books.
Simultaneously the educational system was reorgan-
ized. Even during the Civil War period they were able to
increase the school population to 10,000,000, 25 per-
cent beyond the highest school figure of Tsarist times.
Teachers kept schools open, and set up new ones, despite
cold, hunger and an appalling lack of schoolhouses, books,
pencils, and even paper. The paper shortage was partly
solved by such means as using the reverse sides of the
mounds of petty documentary records stored in local
government offices for decades. Professors gave lectures
before the workers' clubs that were being established
everywhere. This not only stimulated latent interests
and talents among the people, but also brought many
scholars and men of science out of their academic isola-
tion, compelling them to simplify and freshen their lan-
guage, to think in terms of the popular application of
knowledge.
Economic recovery from World War I gradually
enabled the Soviet Union to produce paper, publish
books, erect theatres, movie halls, clubrooms and labora-
tories, and manufacture scientific instruments and other
such equipment to extend cultural facilities beyond the
bare necessities. By 1930 the nation's economy was strong
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
enough to bear the considerable burden of free, uni-
versal, compulsory elementary education, established
in that year.
Tens of thousands of new schools were
built and hundreds of institutes for the training of teach-
ers. Textbooks were printed by the tens of millions.
During these same years the growing collectivization of
agriculture shortened the working day of the peasant so
that he had more time for reading and other cultural
activities; and he could let his children remain at school
instead of taking them out at an early age to work on
the farm.
The First Five-Year Plan saw school attendance grow
by almost 9,500,000, practically doubling. College enroll-
ment nearly trebled as the Government opened wide the
gates to workers and peasants, who had been all but
excluded under the old regime. The parallel systems of
compulsory education for children and voluntary educa-
tion for adults brought literacy up to 80 percent in 1939.
By that time 50,000,000 adults had been to school and
had acquired a taste for reading reflected in a fourteen-
fold rise in newspaper circulation and an eight fold in-
crease in book publishing as compared with 1913. In
1939-41, however, the illiteracy ratio rose as a result of
Soviet annexations in the west which brought 23,000,000
new people into the U. S. S. R. *
World War II took 15,000,000 children out of school
in the areas under German occupation; and millions
more interrupted their schooling as they went to work
for the defense effort or as the authorities requisitioned
schools for hospitals and other emergency uses. In 1944
the Government reduced the age for entering school
from eight to seven, and the first-grade enrollment dou-
? See pp. 309-312.
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? SOVIET CrVlLlZATIOH
bled that year, with 2,000,000 additional pupils. Five
years later, in 1949, the authorities decreed the extension
of free universal, compulsory education of seven years'
duration from the cities and industrial settlements to
the rural districts, where previously only four years had
been required. This new development was completed
by the end of the Fourth Five-Year Plan in 1950. It sent
school attendance up by 5,200,000, necessitating the
building of many thousands of new schools.
During the period of the Plan the number of students
throughout the country in elementary, seven-year and
secondary schools, technical schools and other secondary
establishments increased altogether by 8,000,000 and
reached the total figure of 37,000,000. College and uni-
versity enrollment climbed to 840,000 plus 470,000 in
correspondence courses. After the war the elimination
of illiteracy was resumed in the western borderlands.
And in 1950, without fanfare, the Soviet Union brought
to an end its great literacy campaigns, with adult illiteracy
virtually wiped out in every part of the country.
The regime was only eight weeks old when, with
civil war in the immediate offing, it established by sta-
tute a State Publishing House, the main purpose of which
was to issue cheap editions of the great Russian authors
whose works, under this law, were to become available
to all of the people. That aim has been pursued con-
sistently. When Albert Rhys Williams, noted American
authority on the U. S. S. R. , wanted to express what was
going on in this field, he wrote an article called "Billions
of Books. " "Bookstalls and bookstands," he said, "are as
numerous in the Soviet Union as are soda fountains in
the United States. The problem is no longer that of
awakening an interest in books, but rather of finding
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? ECONOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
some way to satisfy the truly insatiable demand. "19
On the eve of the Second World War there were six
times as many libraries, with eighteen times as many
books, as in 1913. The Nazis destroyed 43,000 libraries
with their 100,000,000 books. Yet at the end of the
Fourth Five-Year Plan there were 15 percent more public
libraries and clubhouses than in 1940. Book publishing
of all types was 84 percent higher than pre-war and six-
teen times higher than in 1913. The year 1951 saw the
number of libraries maintained by the State and public
organizations rise to 350,000, containing more than 700,-
000,000 books.
By the end of 1951 many millions of copies had been
issued of all the chief Russian classics in the novel, the
drama and poetry. For instance, the various works of
Alexander Pushkin had been published beyond a total
of 57,000,000, of Maxim Gorky beyond 59,000,000 and
of Leo Tolstoy beyond 42,000,000. Even in the rather
abstract sphere of philosophy the Soviets print editions
ranging in number from 10,000 to 150,000, including
translations of the outstanding classics from Plato and
Aristotle to the nineteenth century.
It is enlightening to compare publishing figures for
the first twenty years of the Soviet regime with the last
twenty years of Tsarist rule. Precise data are available
as of October, 1947, and are as follows:
Copies
Copies
Author
1888-1917
1918-1947
Chekhov, Anton O.
Gogol, Nikolai V.
Gorky, Maxim
Griboedov, Alexander S.
627,000
5,813,000
1,083,000
619,000
18,386,000
10,526,000
44,504,000
1,173,000
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
Copies
Copies
Author
1888-1917
1918-1947
Herzen, Alexander I.
167,000
1,810,000
Lermontov, Mikhail Y.
4,036,000
9,740,000
Nekrasov, Nikolai A.
254,000
9,648,000
Ostrovsky, Alexander N.
254,000
3,350,000
Pushkin, Alexander S.
10,711,000
35,429,000
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail
E. 231,000
7,884,000
Tolstoy, Leo N.
10,784,000
26,459,000
Turgenev, Ivan S.
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12,432,000
Soviet publishers have also issued by the millions the
translated work of foreign authors. Victor Hugo heads
the list with more than 6,600,000 copies; Guy de
Maupassant is next with more than 4,000,000; while
Balzac, Barbusse, Dickens, Rolland and Zola total over
2,000,000 each. An official survey by the Soviet Book
Chamber in 1951 showed that books by 210 American
authors have appeared in the Soviet Union since 1918.
These added up to 44,400,000 copies, translated into no
less than fifty of the languages used in the U. S. S. R.
Jack London came first with 12,259,000 copies; Mark
Twain second with 4,267,000; Ernest Thompson Seton
third with more than 2,300,000; O. Henry fourth with
1,649,000; and Theodore Dreiser fifth with 1,445,000.
The Soviet people often celebrate the birthdays or
other anniversaries of famous world writers. Thus in Feb-
ruary, 1952, the Russian press and literary journals made
a great deal of the 150th anniversary of Victor Hugo's
birth. Publishers were getting ready for the press a two-
volume edition of his selected works to be issued in 90,000
copies; and a special subscription edition of his complete
works in 150,000 copies. Soviet readers and critics see
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? ECOHOMIC AHD CULTURAL PROGRESS
in Hugo a powerful defender of the disinherited and
oppressed, and one who fought passionately for democ-
racy and the liberation of the masses. In 1952 the Soviet
Union also celebrated the 500th anniversary of the birth
of Leonardo da Vinci.
In all of the arts progress similar to that in education
and literature has taken place. Lenin himself set the tone
when he said: "Art belongs to the people. It ought to
extend with deep roots into the very thick of the broad
toiling masses. It ought to be intelligible to these masses
and loved by them. And it ought to unify the freedom,
thought and will of these masses, and elevate them. It
ought to arouse and develop artists among them. "20 Up
till 1917 the fine arts (as distinct from the folk arts) were
the private property of a small minority at the top. The
overwhelming majority of the people did not have the
money to buy tickets for performances of drama, ballet,
opera and music. Now all this is changed. And in no
country on earth do a larger proportion of the population
share in the enjoyment of all the arts than in Soviet
Russia.
Not only do huge audiences attend professional pro-
ductions everywhere, but amateur art circles flourish by
the scores of thousands. The wide network of amateur
groups are mainly sponsored and equipped by the trade
unions, which make available to them their 8,000 club-
houses and 80,000 recreation rooms. In 1951 there
entered the national elimination contests 102,000 amateur
groups with over 2,000,000 members. Included were
14,000 symphony orchestras, brass bands and string en-
sembles, 12,000 dance groups, 25,000 choral groups and
40,000 drama groups.
During my two trips to the Soviet Union, in 1932
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
and 1938, I went frequently to the theatre, ballet and
opera and was always struck by the first-rate quality of the
performances, including presentations of Shakespeare's
plays. As a Shakespeare enthusiast since my school days,
I have been impressed by the immense popularity of
England's greatest dramatist throughout the U. S. S. R.
Shakespeare festivals are a common occurrence there and
Shakespeare's plays have been published in hundreds of
thousands of copies in at least twenty languages. A special
section of the All-Russian Theatrical Society concerns
itself entirely with Shakespeare and the Western Euro-
pean Theatre. This section organizes scholarly research
and lectures on Shakespeare, and arranges an annual
conference on his work every year in April, which is
known as "Shakespeare Month. "
Although in my opinion the quality of Soviet archi-
tecture has remained mediocre, artists and writers have
on the whole set a high record of accomplishment. The
compelling music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Khacha-
turian has won international acclaim. The work of
Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko in the motion
picture ranks as classic. Mikhail Sholokhov and Alexei
Tolstoy are among the greatest novelists of our time.
As for the status of painting and sculpture, Mr. F. B.
Taylor, an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of
Arts, offered the opinion, after a visit to Soviet Russia
in 1951, that the "Soviet standard of workmanship and
craftsmanship and all-round technical capacity in the
visual arts is the highest I know of in the world today. "21
Significant, too, was the testimony in 1947 of General
Walter Bedell Smith, at that time American Ambassador
to the U. S. S. R. , before a House of Representatives sub-
committee on Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is
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? ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL PROGRESS
setting a higher cultural standard within its borders, I
believe, than exists anywhere else in the world. I say that
advisedly. . . . I mean, at least according to my tastes, the
Soviet radio, the Soviet ballet, the opera, their puppet
theatres -- things of that sort -- are based on a higher
cultural level than that which public demand dictates
in this country. "22
Along with the enormous expansion of recreational
facilities in the arts has gone a comparable development
in sports, which are constantly encouraged by the Min-
istry of Public Health and which come under the super-
vision of the Committee on Affairs of Physical Culture
and Sport -- a body directly accountable to the Cabinet.
Scattered throughout the country are 150,000 athletic
organizations with more than 23,000,000 members and
coordinated into forty large sports societies, the best
known of which are Bolshevik, Dynamo and Spartacus.
The Government gives every aid to a broad people's
program of sports and exercise, believing that they are
essential to national defense as well as to health.
Today all citizens enjoy ample opportunity to take
part in indoor and outdoor sports of a most varied nature.
This contrasts with the old Tsarist days when the masses
of the people had neither the leisure, the money nor the
equipment to participate in sports. The upper classes
themselves were not given much to outdoor sports. Writ-
ing about the typical pre-revolutionary Russian, Sir
Maurice Baring states: "His chief pastimes were singing,
endless conversation, chess playing, broiling himself red
in steambaths, guzzling tremendous amounts of tea and
vodka. "23 The Soviet Russians have not lost any of these
particular skills, but have added a great many others.
As to chess, the most intellectual of all popular games,
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
millions now play it and enter into local, regional or
national competitions. Children are urged to start learn-
ing the game at an early age. In 1951 Soviet citizens won
the world's chess championship for both men and women.
Mr. Harry Schwartz, critical commentator of The New
York Times on Soviet affairs, acknowledges that "the
U. S. S. R. does stand pre-eminent" in chess. "Soviet pri-
macy is complete," he says, "and the U. S. S. R. has at least
a dozen players who rank at the very top of the chess
ladder, a greater number than any other country. "24
As for other sports, boating, swimming, rowing, ski-
ing, skating, ice-hockey, basketball, volleyball, soccer,
tennis, bicycling, boxing, wrestling, marksmanship, track,
cross-country meets, horseback riding, horse-racing and
mountain climbing are all popular. Tennis is for most
Russians a new game in which they are not yet very
proficient. But in soccer their teams are a match for
those from other European countries. Cross-country
racing -- on foot or on ski -- is probably the first in
popularity and in a single season draws as many as 6,000,-
000 competitors (foot) and 10,000,000 (ski).
In 1952 the Soviet Union for the first time took part
in the Olympic Games, held in Helsinki, Finland, July
19-August 3. Competing against the teams of sixty-six
other nations, the Soviet athletes, both men and women,
showed great prowess in a number of events. The Olym-
pics do not tabulate official team scores, but according to
the unofficial Western scoring system the United States
won first place with a total of 614 points, while Soviet
Russia came second with 5531^. A marked feature of
the Games was the display of good fellowship between
the Soviet entrants and those from other countries, in-
cluding the United States. After Soviet oarsmen had pre-
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