Evening Star Newspaper, December 16, 1934, Page 93

T — SN A - — THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 16, 1934 WHEAT AND EMERALDS By Richard Halliburton The Author-Traveler Views the New Russia, Where Class Distinctions Are Not Recognized and a Nation Worships Factories—The Palaces and Gardens Today. LENINGRAD, U. 8. 8. R., December 1, 1934. HE most important story in the world today—and the most interesting—is Russia. This is not a phrase from the Soviet propaganda book, nor the out- burst of a parlor pink. It is my own opinion, and no one could be more thoroughly American nor more of a champion of the right to live and pursue happiness in one’s own manner (contrary to the Soviet sys- tem) than myself. The Soviets’ tyranny and ruthlessness toward individual freedom catch my attention on a barbed hook and arouse my violent antagonism. At the same time I sincerely believe that their superhuman accomplishment toward making a new world, according to a plan which they believe offers the greatest good to the most people is of towering importance, and dwarfs the recent social achievements even of America. From the continued commercial stagnation in New York, across the sputtering political bombs in France, through the insanities and despera- tions of Nazli Germany, I swooped by airplane, abruptly, down upon Leningrad. And I found the contrast between this roaring city and life in New York and Paris and Berlin so great that I had to look twice to believe my eyes. Riding into town from the airport, I passed along streets turned upside down with pave- ment construction and walled with scaffolding behind which new factories and apartments were rising 10 stories high. My motor car had to plough throw dense throngs of busy, hurrying pedestrians, for in the fury of the new enthusiasm work goes on 24 hours a day. The noise of the traffic, the concrete mixers, the steam rollers, the steel riveters, was deaf- ening. It took me a full day to dig down under all this mass of steel, trucks and swarming work- ers who are building Leningrad, to find what I really had come to see—St. Petersburg. HE capital of old Russia was one of the noblest, most beautiful cities on earth. It haa spaciousness, dignity, leisure, wealth, power. Peter the Greai, who built it on marsh islands at the head of the Gulf of Finland, had no less vigor and imagination than the workers’ councilmen of today. With a wave of his hand he swept aside all obstacles to create public squares of enormous area and surround them with public buildings that are the largest and most lavish in Europe. The richest class of people in the world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Russian nobility, flocked to St. Petersburg. Each noble tried to out-do his neighbor in the construction of palaces and in his show of splendor. In this competition the Czars kept well in front, spend- ing money and gathering treasures to an ex- tent incomprehensible to us today. The resulting magnificence, built on the anguish and enslavement of the masses, shone with a blinding light. The Russian aristocracy developed taste, culture, sophistication. They became distinguishad throughout all other coun- tries for their regal manners, their extrava- gance, their incomparably beautiful women and lordly men. The greatest collection of pic- tures outside the Louvre found their way to the Hermitage Gallery, the music of Tschaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakof (despite his radical ten- dencies) flowed from every orchestra. The art of ballet dancing became a Russian monop- oly. St. Isaac’s Cathedral, an architectural wonder of the first magnitude, rose from the marshlands. Summer palaces were built to rival Versailles in splendor. Emeralds big as hen eggs glittered from the crowns of Russian queens. In the art and the grace of fine living, St. Petersburg, right up to 1914, led the great capitals of the earth. All this is gone, vanich>d. Leningrad hates, defames, jeers at what she used to be, just as the revenceful and bloody-fisted peasant women jeered at Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine, because, like the Czars, she had starved them in order to create immortal grandeur. On my first night in Leningrad I went to the Marinsky Theater to see a ballet, “The Hunchbacked Horse.” I felt a real surge of ex- citement. This theater was almost holy ground. Here the most exalted of the old regime gath- ered to hear glorious Russian music and waich incomparable Russian dancing. To attend the Marinsky the nobility donned their richest jewels, their whitest gloves, their most lavish gowns and uniforms. Here the Czar and Czarina, with their son and daughters, came frequently to sit in the imperial box. A more glittering, royal gathering has not been seen elsswhere, A charming and intelligent English-speaking Russian girl, and a leader in the Communist pacty, accompanied me. On the way I re- marked that the Marinsky Theater had had the privilege of first seeing Pavlova dance and of presenting Nijinsky in his early day of triumph. My companion looked puzzled. “Who?"” sne asked vaguely. Here was one of the keen- est young people I met in Russia, a *“shock brigader” of the Soviets, a fountain of Com- munistic faith and zeal. But she had never even heard of two of the three most celebrated Russian artists of the twentieth century (Cha- liapin being the third—she’d heard of him), because they happened to have lived before the workers’ party seized the government. The parks and palaces where all the imperial courts danced and dined are now the property of the Soviet workers. They make themselves at home in tl:> cace- exclusive gardens. HIS experience proved typical of 100 similar cases, typical of a distorted sense of values, from which the Bolsheviks are still suffering. Nothing is good, nothing is right, nothing is worth remembering except their own theories and their own faith. No theater have I ever seen as beautiful as the Marinsky., The walls are covered with yellow damask and each seat in the orchestra is an individual armchair upholstered with the same rich silk. At the back is the imperial box, and on the sides the smaller boxes of the grand dukes. The decoration has faded very little since they sat there. Into this regal auditorium the new masses were pouring. Some had on no coats, some had shirts but no neckties, only half the men The old Nevsky Prospect, now called October 25th Prospect, before the revolution was one of the smartest and richest streets in the world. Now it is one of the dingiest. The shops are all state-owned and only scantily supplied with cheap goods. had shaved th2t day. Not one woman wore anything but the plainest, cheapest, sack-like dress. Not a jewel, not a flower, not a graceful attitude, not a beautiful person. A sailor and his girl sat on one side of me. Two slovenly stu- dents in colorless wool blouses sat behind; next them two women with gold teeth who were prob- ably street car conductors or brick layers. From the imperial box leaned six latorers, probably from the shoe factory, eating pastry. The mu- sicians in the orchestra wore wool shirts and no neckties. No class consciousness anywhere— and indeed why should there bs! Everybody present was a peasant farmer or a factory worker or a soldier or a sailor. There is no other class left in Russia. All others have been exiled or exterminated. ‘The ballet, I am happy to report, was super- latively good. Here is one Czarist art the prole- tarians have not let die. Magnificant costumes and color and light and skill flashed from the stage for four hours. The audience ate apples all during the performance. Othe-wise they were well behaved. The violent transformation of Leningrad from imperial to proletarian is evident on every side. The ducal palaces, run down and woe- fully begone, are now workers’ apartments. The Yusupov Palace, where Prince Felix murdered Rasputin, is a “house of culture and rest” for teachers. The great suburban estates have been turned into pleasure grounds where the workers go to escape the desperately crowded quarters in which they live. HE old Nevsky Prospect, now called the Prospect of October 25, once one of the smartest and richest streets in the world, is now one of the dingiest. True, three times as many people parade it as before, but they are dressed in sacks instead of furs and have copecks to spend instead of gold rubles. The shops that once offered only the best and the most beautiful are now poverty-stricken, half empty and displaying only the cheapest and most un- attractive goods. No individual shop keeping is allowed. Every place is state owned and state supplied. Taste and quality are <4ncredibly bad. There are book stores, but only revolu- tionary histories and treatises can be bought. There are cinema houses—but only political, Soviet-glorifying films can be shown. It seems to me that the Soviets discourage their people from having anything more than the barest necessities. Clothes, flowers, motor cars, simple romantic entertainment are con- sidered dangerously counter-revolutionary in the hands of private individuals. There is very little money among the workers to buy these things with, and any accumulation of money is a capital crime. And if the Russians did have the money there is almost nothing on which to spend it. In one fur shop I bought a sheepskin Cossack hat. It cost 100 Soviet rubles. The average monthly pay for a worker is 150 rubles. My good German camera was stolen out of my hotel, and I tried to buy another one. There Continued on Ninth Page.