Evening Star Newspaper, December 8, 1929, Page 106

10 = = = = e Russia “Glorifies” Gives Every Millhand and Streetsweep a Chance at Executive Leadership, the Experiment Now Being Tried Out Under Soviet Rule—Girls in 1 raining for All Places Their Hardy Brothers Occupy. BY VERNON McKENZIE. ENIN left a legacy to the women cf Russia. He laid down the principle that “every cook ought to be able to rule the state.” This message may be a Utopian jdeal. It may be a statement of hope. But there is no pronouncement from the mouth of any Communist leader in Russia which is being taken more seriously today. Trotsky's sister, Mme. O. D. Kameneva, rose to one of the most responsible positions in the Soviet gov- ernment, chairman of Vcks (Society for Cul- tural Relations of the U. S. S. R. With Foreign Countries). Scrubwomen and feminine factory workers sat in the All-Soviet Congress a few months ago, politically and socially the equals of those holding high executive offices. No longer, Russia pronounces, shall woman'’s interests be subordinated to man’s. At first, for some years after October, 1917, it was possible to organize only the active feminine elements, those women who had participated in one or more of the three revolutions, active plotters— mental or physical Amazons—succsssors of Charlotte Corday or her somewhat gentler sis- ters. But today actual cbservations, bolstered up by irrefutable statistics, show that amazing advances have been achieved. A Russian “new woman” is growing, differing radically from her American and British sisters. Deliberately, the Russian government is ele- vating women to responsible executive positions, even though it candidly anticipates many ghastly failures. But the government realizes that advanced political and industrial executive experience can be acquired only in the.process of the work itself and frankly admits that “the advantages received from this will fully com- pensate for the failures of inexperience in ele- vating women to responsible positions.” That's the slogan and the belief. INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY is ob- served each year in Russia on March 8. It s not a day for parading of the Pankhursts and Carrie Chapman Catts. It is a day of cele- bration, almost glorification, of the achieve- ments of the ordinary peasant woman, the girl in the mill and of the woman who sweeps the streets. A woman in Russia today hasn't much chance to remain just a woman. She must become a citizen; not a passive participant in society and politics, either. She is coaxed, coerced, dragooned, educated and almost forced to dis- play capabilities which Soviet rulers, inspired by Lenin, believe are no more innate in one sex than in the other. Russian women now com- pose approximately one-quarter of the mem- bership of factory committees, one-sixth of the membership of arbitration commissions and at least one-tenth of the membership of the cen- tral committees of the Soviet Union. Communal kitchens are springing up in nearly all the large industrial centers. “We make it our goal,” says Mme. Kameneva, “to free women from the drudgery of the kitchen by establishing large, modern communal kitchens and dining rooms.” There is an or- ganized state struggle against homework. Of course, the system of communal meals is yet insignificant, as compared with the needs. By a five-year plan it is arranged that the system shall extend throughout the industrial centers of the whole Union. During the last few months 21 large dining establishments have been constructed, or are nearing completion, which involve an expenditure in excess of $10,000,000. Early in this year there were 1,000 dining room units in operation, serving more than 600.000 dinners a day, and this num- ber has probably been at least doubled since then. In February five large steam kitchens were in operation in the great industrial centers of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Rodniki, Nizhi Novgorod and Dnieprostroy. The director of one of the largest esfablishments is a woman, and most of the personnel of this and similar kitchens are also women. USSIA is not content that these rights for women shall be available only for those of Slavic stock. With a thoroughness really Teu- tonic, this problem of equal rights is being tackled among the Oriental races which are now included in the hundred different national- ities that come under the rule of the Soviet Union. Turcomans and Uzbegs must bow to the principle of sex equality. The Adjerbaipani women have for countless generations worn the chadra, which is more concealing than the Turkish yashmak, as it covers the whole figure as well as the head, leaving only small open- ings for the eyes. The Uzbeg men, from time immemorial, have enforced on their women a net made of hair, through which the wearer can see and breath only with difficulty. Special commissions have been organized in Moscow for the abeolishment of these and kindred devices. Fach year, for the last three or four years, an increasing number of these chadras and Uzbeg “cattle, parandjas have been publicly burned on March 8. The women make the event a dramatic spec- tacle. They come to the public squares of their ancient iowns clad in their cluttering gar- ments, publicly uncover their faces and figures and cast their superfluous garments into an ever-increasing pyre. On the sireets of Moscow and other large Russian cities the new freedom of women is very evident, even to the casual observer. The Russian woman it apt t& be just as sturdy as her brother. She walks the streets with no mincing stride. - She carries loads that seem almost cruel in their weight. She acts -not only as conductor of street tars or busses. but also as driver, and swings her vehicle along at a spéed and with an insouciance that many a man might envy. There is brawn in her arm. And no wonder, when you consider her healthy heritage—83 per cent of Russians are of peasant stock. Russian girls are in training for all the positions for which their brothers may train. Along the thoroughfares women are observed acting as carpenters, plasterers and bricklayers. In the factories they work not only at the rou- tine jobs, but they are also metal workers, acetylene welders and controllers of huge, elec- trically driven cranes. To the cry, “Don’t go down the mine, daddy,” may now be added, “Don’t go down the mine, mammy,” for thou- sands of women have elected employment in the coal mine. And, of course, millions of Russian women work on the land. In Cearist days it was their “privilege” to substitute for draft Many still do, but the gradual intro- duction of the tractor is relieving both men and women of much of the most back-breaking part of farm work. It is proving difficult to educate many mil- lions of the older generation of peasant women to their new and perhaps only partially under- stood freedom. They would be lost without the chafing of their yoke. But a new generation is growing up, girls just arriving at the voting age, to whom this present Russia is the only Russia. If they remember the war and the October revolution, it is only as a vague dream. They were taught as children, these girls of today, to have pride in the equality of their sex. Brothers are neither inferior nor superior beings. In August there convened in Moscow a very unique congress. Between 6,000 and 7,000 Rus- sian boys and girls, the youngest barely 8, the oldest not more than 16 or 17, gathered in the THE SUNDAY STAR. WASHINGTON, D. C. DECEMBER & 1920, the Peasant Gir In the rural communities of the Soviet Union girls work with their father: and brothers in the fields. Soviet capital from all corners of the vast union. It was a veritable babble of tongues, probzbly more than a score of languages and dialeets being spoken. With few exceptions, these thousands of children made the trip to Moscow alone. Several came more than 3,000 miles. The occasion was the nation-wids gathering of the Pioneers, an organization open equally to boys and girls. Their discus= sions included many subjects familiar to Boy Scouts in America and also ventured boldly into political and social fields. They represent Fenunine plasterers are noi uncomnion under the Soviet regime. which employs women for nearly all the tasks formerly considered solely man’s work. a new generation which knows not serfdom. And the girls know only sex equality. They are growing up with no hampering shibboleths. Many girls even told, picturesquely, of their problems in educating their parents! Literally hundreds of thousands of girls are taking part in games, This is the more re- markable when it is considered that organized athletics were rare even -for Russian men a decade and a half ago. In swimming, on the track, on the rifle range and in other depart- ments of sport the erstwhile weaker sex is com= peting against her brothers, and occasionally scoring victories. Russia is planinng to be strongly represented in women’s events on the next Olympic games program. New York and London have their police~ women. Moscow also has its squads of police= women, but not the hatchet-faced viragos usually seen in the American and British capi= tals. The Muscovites are sturdy but comely. It would be almost a pleasure to be *“run in” by some of the more attractive—if it were not that Russian reform has not yet penctrated into its prisons. 'l‘HERE are several qualifiecd woman pilots in the Russian air force, and charming, happy-looking, competent damsels they are, too. In fact, the equality of rights even ex- tends to the army. The demand cf the Slav feminists for equal righ‘s in military service was partially granted in August and is expected to be extended later. The chief difference at present is that military training for women is not compulsory. But early in August it was announced that a limited number of women would be admitted to technical military schools. It was specified, in the official announcement, that such women would be subject to exactly the same military discipline as men. If this regulation is carried out literally, it means that woman soldiers will not receive any time off for childbirth or other special sex privileges. In all other branches of activity women are, by law, granted a long free périod, with pay, before and after childbirth. The Russian maternity-protection laws in industry are more extensive and more generous than those of any other country. Perhaps the Soviet government has its tongue in its cheek in mak- ing this latest pronouncement. During the World War, as well as in the Polish War and other minor imbroglios, many Russian women fought side by side with the men. There are said to be somé women still in the ranks, but they are-granted no special privileges and most " of them enlisted in diseuise. USSIA still is overwhelmingly illiterate, but this condition is being speedily remedied. Women are now granted an equal opportunity for education, higher as well as lower, techni- cal as well as cultural. In Moscow thousands of young students marry before graduation, some of them several years before. Divorces are easy to procure, but this liberty does not seem to have engendered license. Prof. Albert Johnson, an American statistician and econ- omist, recently working in Moscow, showed me figures to prove that there is a higher per= centage of divorces in New York than in Mos= cow. A (Copyright, 1929.)