The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 23, 1926, Page 12

A Holiday Excursion in Leningrad Moscow Correspondence by William F. Kruse. O Russian workers believe in holi- days? They surely do, and they —and their social order—makes use of them on every occasion to broaden and enlarge the workers’ fund of knowledge of his country, his class, his tradition, Thus over practically every holiday vast mass excursions are arranged by which thousands up- on thousands of workers spend a few days in cities far from their homes, there to become acquainted with their fellow workers and their conditions and achievements, Over the Christmas holidays Mos- cow and Leningrad exchanged 2,500 excursionists. The immense tasks of organizing such a vast pilgrimage with the perfection of system and or- der that prevailed thruout, was no small accomplishment It was no free- for-all affair but a pro-rata quota was assigned to each ‘“Meskon,” to each trade. union unit in Moscow. Thus ten workers could go from among the hun- dreds in the Comintern, ten from the Gosplan, five from another, etc. The actual choice of those who were to ge devolved upon the union committee, The expenses of the trip were neglig- ible—less than the cost of the railroad fare for a fifteen-hour railroad trip, say New York to Cleveland, and four days’ food;-shelter and entertainment, Only eighten rubles, ($9.00) were charged. A circular was distributed to those in- tending to make the trip outlining the program and what was to be tak- en along—bedding, lunch for the train, a cup, coap and towel, etc.—and also instructions to appear at one of the many clubs at Sunday noon before the trip for further instructions. At these meetings the itinerary was ex- plained in detail, the accommodations to be furnished were exactly describ- ed, questions asked and answered and *frandates distributed. The day before the trip the shop chairman distrib- uted a final notice giving exact time of gathering at the station, which trams and busses reached it, and yet with every necessary detail covered. TT\HE station at the time of departure iL was jammed yet there was not the slightest confusion. Thanks to the directions everyone knew just exactly what to do and where to go. Here and there a call from some belated lost sheep would lift itself from the crowd: “Vtoraya gruppa!” and an answer from some corner or other would give the needed directive. Everyone eame -on time—that is, nearly everyone. Those who waited until the last minute were good nat- uredly but sharply kidded by their companions. Anyone who did not come on time was entirely out of luck for the train left on the minute—and ‘all: groups we saw were full. i? A word as to our monitor, or “Star- osta.” A finer type of human would be hard to imagine. He was a big, blonde engineer from the Gosplan, standing at least six feet, eight inches in height, without an ounce of excess weight on him. He looked after his flock like a veritable shepherd, seeing to it that all 30 were present, that they had their baggage, then that they were supplied with sleeping places, that all had had a chance to see what was to be seen, and that the voluntary translators had fully explained the im- portant points to the unfortunates who could not understand Russian. Aside from the Comintern group he was the only party member in the 20 excursionists, and there were only stemp. meetings and of the first provisonal governments. Here we find our sleep- ing quarters, generally two groups to a room, men and women in differtnt rooms. Our beds are straw ticks placed on blackboards laid over long benches. Not eider-down on feather- weight springs, to be sure, but a wel- come improvement over the bare boards of the train. Whenever the en- thused excursionists really get ready to get to bed they could sleep on a picket fence in a boiler shop. After eating bread and tea (one EATS tea in Russia) we are shown around the building in which we are housed, It is a fine old structure,. of purest classic line, with magnificent colonnaded hall and rotunda. The princes for whom it was built may turn in their graves at the thot of the student bulletin boards in the lobbies, and the Red Army airplane in the grand salon. As we pass from room to room attention is paid to the his- toric events that transpired in each. SHORT walk takes us to the Smolny Institute, a one-time fin- ishing school for noble damsels, but now better tamed as the seat of the Bolsheviks and of the workers’ and sol- diers’ deputies during the stirring No- vember days of 1917. Here we also see the room in which Lenin lived and worked during this period. This fin- ishes the official sight-seeing for the day—but the free-lance touring just begins after a quick supper at the school. A short street car ride takes us to the Nevsky Prospect and here the thousands of excursionists from Moscow and elsewhere lose them- selves in the other thousands of prom- enaders. It is Christmas eve and the churches are just letting out their worshippers, almost exclusively older people and of unmistakably bourgeois These also add themselves t the masses on the Nevsky—but differ- ent masses these—hundreds of sturdy sailor boys of the Baltic fleet—85 per cent of whofi are members’ of broad, well-lighted, the sidewalks laid with beautiful tiles, the shops spark- ling with lights and exceptionally tasteful window displays. All in all, Leningrad is a much broader—a Eu- ropean—a world—yes, almost a cos- mopolitan city, whereas Moscow is typically Russian. Both are extreme- ly beautiful, but in two widely differ- ent ways. Much German and some French is spoken on the streets, the natives are so interested in their vis- itors that mistaken observations (in German) passed among us are on sev- eral occasions quickly caught up and corrected by passers-by. Unfortu- nately the reconstruction of the Nevsky is not typical of all parts of the city, many blocks of walls or erst- while fine buildings still gape and yawn uncovered and untenanted. Only when industrial and comercial Soviet Leningrad not only regains its pre- war strength but far outstrips it will these beautiful walls and unfinished buildings be needed, _—- next day takes us to the top of of St. Isaacs Cathedral, From this, the highest point in the city, a beautiful panorama unfolds itself, and it is ably described by a young woman teacher who has climbed the long This tremendous church was built by forty years of stairs with us. forced labor of the serfs and how the tremendous monolithic columns of red granite—fifty feet high and at least five feet thick they seem, the coating of frosted snow making them seem made of mauve velvet,—how these bat Komsomol and only one per cent al- together nonpartisan. The Nevsky is thru the receiving sheds where we see plenty of stuff with American labels. “Packard LEights,” “Fords,” these, with their sub-label “Amtorg” tell what lay beneath the mysterious ban- quet of American financiers favorable to Soviet trade—that banquet so mys- terious that every news agency in America frantically and vainly called their Moscow representatives for two days for the story, and they could not get it until after it had appeared in the Pravada. This is not the first time that the truth about America has ap- peared first in the Russian language. Long ago Lenin wrote a most illumin- ative treaties on the American farm- ing problem which, now being trans- lated into English, will We eagerly sought after in America, The harbor shows many improvements, mighty new electric cranes, new inventions of automatic conveyers, all these are proudly shown us. A _ visit to the steamer “Krasnoya Znamya” (Red Flag) finishes the day. Across the slip, under steam, lies the ice-breaker “Lenin,” the most powerfully engined ship in the Baltic, bar none. Like the leader whose name it bears its service is greatest when obstacles and danger are most menacing and ordinary pow- ers are unequal to the occasion. Nearby lie the “Bolshevik” and the “Karl Marx,” as well as a big Swede and a German. 4 ris day following there is a trip to Tsarskoe-Selo, the one-time subur- ban home-site of the czar and his sa- traps, and now a city of splendid chil- dren’s and adults’ recreation homes. These erstwhile domiciles of a dozen parasites really make the most splen- did playgrounds for thousands of workers’ children. A very few of the palaces are maintained as museums of antiquity and the immeasurable for- tunes spent on the amber and ebony and marble are as much beyond belief as. the inutterably bad taste of the} - S; themselves,,.when they in- sisted on putting thru their own ideas of decoration. The former palaces of Catherine and of Alexander, which were in use up to 1917, are open to visitors. The latter’s interior furnish- ing especially shows a striking taste- lessness. The best that can be said for it is that here the czar quit czar- ing. Finally Peter and Paul Fortress, a sociated with the suppresion of every | popular uprising against the hated au- tocracy, from the Dekabrists to the Bolsheviks. This also is now a mu- seum and crowds come eagerly to look at the cells where their onetime champions were held, tortured, or exe- cuted, Some of the cells are located far below the Neva’s water line, Back across the river we find Rus- sia’s “Louvre,” the “Hermitage,” in which countless art treasures have long been stored. Whole rooms filled with original Rembrandts, Rubens, Van Dykes and other old masters, sev- eral Raphaels and a _ sculpture by Michael Angelo are here with count- less other treasures. This collection hes been greatly enlarged by works taken from various private collec- tions. A passage leads into the Win- ter Palace which is rapidly being con- verted into a modern museum of Rus- sian art. Thus in a very real and practical sense the workers feel that all this wealth filched from, their fore- bears by the czars and capitalists has been restored to them. Very proudly these workers, many of whom went thru the thick of the revolutionary battles, now say to one another: “Well, anyhow, our fight was not in vain.” A Series of Wonderful Stories by Michael Gold will begin in the next issue of the New Saturday Maga- zine Supplement of The Daily Worker. You should not. miss. any of these stories @byithis won derful young American artist. A subscription is the best way to make sure of receiv- ing the entire series in regular order. PPT PVA V VAT SAV VV VAAN two Komsomol (Young Communist League) members—the great mass be- ing every-day nonpartisan workers for whom the Soviet government is open- ing undreamed of opportunities for travel and recreation, RRIVING in Leningrad after night of singing and jollification and a little sleep—we load our bag- gage on a sled and march off to one of the many colleges in whose class- rooms and the excursionists are quar- tered, In our case it is the Zinoviev \ Communist University, formerly the Tauride Palace, scene of the Duma monsters ever got into place with the primitive machinery then used is a mystery to the building trades work- ers in our group. In the church itself Christmas mass is being said before a mere handful of devout worshippers as hundreds of callous excursionists wander about. The excursionists. pay no more atten- tion to the priests than to the paint- -ings and carvings, they impatiently await their turn to get up into the , tower to look at the city, Christianity, One-Hundred-Percentism, Lynching, General — From the church to the harbor, An-} Dawes and-General Bootlegging all covered by the skirts of the other little lecture, then a long tramp' ku klux klan. —