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In the ninth installment of “Report on the Russians,” as published in the Coleridge Blade on Feb. 7, 1946, William L. White discussed social engineering as practiced in Russia. White noted that after the Red army occupied a country, people who could not adapt to the new Soviet system often were deported to labor camps in desolate regions of the far north or east.
After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, more than 1.5 million Polish civilians were sent to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and northern Russia. Entire families would be loaded into box cars with a wood-burning stove in one end for heat and a hole in the floor at the other end for a toilet. Needless to say, many deportees did not survive the long trip to the labor camps.
“It is an axiom of social engineering to separate families,“ said White. “Thirty or 40 men are packed into one box car while the women and children are packed into another.“ In most cases the families would never be reunited.
“This is not done out of needless cruelty,” said White. “But because men are suited for more rugged work than are women and children, it is the practice to send the men to the lumber and mining camps in Siberia, while the women do better in the brickyards and farms in Kazakhstan.“ Despite Russia being a one party state, elections were held. After identification cards were checked, voters were handed a ballot containing only one party-approved name. All eligible voters were expected to vote. Those who did not could face punishment including a trip to Siberia.
After visiting Moscow and Leningrad, White’s party was flown to Magnitogorsk on the eastern side of the Ural mountains. The Urals divide the European part of Russia from the Asian part.
Magnitogorsk is located near the site of a mountain that contained an estimated 300,000,000 tons of high-grade iron ore. By contrast only 100,000,000 tons of high grade ore was left in the iron range mines near Hibbing, Minn., and it was being used up at the rate of 27,000,000 tons a year during the war.
Magnitogorsk was the Soviet counterpart of Pittsburgh or Gary, Indiana. As the American party was being driven to the city’s biggest steel plant, their car was delayed by a long column of ragged-looking women marching four abreast on their way to work at the plant. They were escorted by military guards carrying rifles.
After leaving the steel plant, they visited a brick factory where they saw women carrying bricks by hand after each processing operation. As they were leaving the plant, they saw another column of women being escorted to work by armed guards.
In another installment, White told of visiting a collective farm in Kazakhstan where all the workers, men and women alike, were required to share the work. When the crops were harvested certain expenses were deducted such as taxes, payments for farm equipment, and possibly a contribution toward paying for equipment for the army.
After expenses were deducted, about 90 per cent of the harvest was sold to the government at a low fixed price. The remaining 10 per cent would be divided among the workers either to eat themselves or to sell in a local market.
Under communist theory, all people were supposed to be equal. In practice, however, there were many inequalities. High communist officials lived in the palaces of the former aristocracy and had assumed most of their privileges. Ordinary workers lived in tiny apartments and had few privileges.
Similar disparities prevailed throughout the entire economic system. Another example of class distinctions could be seen in the food rationing system. At the very top of the social pyramid were high Kremlin officials who were provided with delicacies unobtainable in Russia at any price.
Red army officers and lesser government officials also were well taken care of. “He’s got everything a commissar should have,“ remarked an American correspondent about a certain party official, “a motor car, a wife with peroxide hair and gold teeth, and a dacha (country house).“ For ordinary Soviet citizens, there was a sliding scale. First class workers were allotted 600 grams of bread each day. Second class workers received 500 g. Office workers were allotted 400 g. Old people, children, and invalids received 300 g.
During a visit to a factory lunch room, White observed that ordinary workers were served buckwheat porridge with black bread and borscht (a type of beet soup). The foremen, who dined in a separate room, received the same food plus black caviar.
Engineers received the same food as the foremen plus white bread, butter, and more expensive caviar. The menu in the directors’ room included wine, vodka, champagne, caviar, smoked sturgeon, veal, beef tongue, and chocolate cake. Such was life in the “socialist paradise” that was Soviet Russia in 1944.
This pair of articles represents a brief summary of William Lindsay White’s lengthy “Report on the Russians” published in the Coleridge Blade between December 1945 and April 1946.
When White’s report was first published in 1945, World War II was still raging and the Russian still were our friends and allies. Thus White’s report sparked intense criticism from Soviet diplomats, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose president had invited White to accompany him on the trip.
It should be noted that White could not have observed personally many of the things he wrote about, such as the deportations mentioned above, as he and his party were under close supervision at all times. They were allowed to see only what the government wanted them to see. Nor were they permitted to question the system. But the things White wrote about did happen.
Recent polls have found that a significant number of young Americans would like to see a socialist form of government in this country. But as William Lindsay White reported, life in Russia after 25 years of socialism was far from paradise.
Be careful what you wish for kiddies or you may wind up on the Joe Stalin diet plan.
Next Week: Back to more area history.
