E. Delafield - The Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition)

"Many people make that mistake," he remarks somberly. "They think that because they have visited with an interpreter a few museums, schools, hospitals they know something about this country. They do not. They know nothing ."

In that case I ought to get a refund from Intourist. They sent me out here on entirely false pretenses.

"Another thing," continues the doctor, evidently warming to his work, "not only is it impossible to know anything about Soviet Russia without a profound knowledge of Russia under the Tzars; it is also absolutely impossible to judge of it in any way correctly at the present date. For that you would have to come again, say in twenty years' time."

How unreasonable he is. If I come to Russia again in twenty years—which God forbid—it will be in a bath-chair.

"So it would really take a whole lifetime," I dejectedly suggest, "to understand exactly what is happening in the Soviet?"

"More than a lifetime. Two or three generations."

I give up, altogether, the idea of speaking my mind about the U.S.S.R. to the Russian doctor. I must find somebody else.

II

I am inspired to choose one of the Odessa Intourist guides. She has a more pliable outlook than most of them and is married to an Austrian husband. She has been abroad, to France and Austria and America.

"Did you like America?"

"Yeah, America was fine."

"Perhaps some day you will go back there. Would you like to go back?"

"Perhaps. But it is not a free country,"

"Not a free country?"

"The workers there are slaves. The women are slaves," says the guide firmly.

"I really don't think they are. American women always seem to me to have a great deal of liberty."

"No. They have no liberty. They cannot do the work that the men do."

"But I don't think they want to."

"In the Socialist state a woman is the equal of a man in every way. She can become a mechanic, an engineer, a bricklayer, a mason. If she is expecting a child she does no work for two months before and one month after it is born, and she gets her money just the same while she is nursing the child—"

I know all this. I have heard it, and more than once, from every guide in every town that I have visited. The treatment of the expectant mother is the cheval-de-bataille of the whole Soviet system—and a very respectable cheval , too—but it cannot, surely, be the answer to every question, the triumphant last word in every discussion?

"I think the care that the Government takes of mothers and children in Russia is most excellent—but on the other hand, there is not very much individual freedom for women in the upbringing of their children. It is all really in the hands of the State."

"The children are very happy. You have seen the crèches, the little beds for them to sleep on in the daytime, yes? Each child has its own toothbrush."

"I know. But the mothers don't see very much of them, do they, if they only have them home at night?"

"In the daytime they are at work. They have the right to work."

"Supposing they didn't want to work, and would look after their children at home?"

"Some of the women become Stakhanovite workers. Then they have privileges given to them—an extra room or a wireless or perhaps a car. We have many like that."

Yes, I know that too. In every factory there is a board bearing photographs of the Stakhanovite workers—who are usually distinguished for their capability rather than for their looks.

I cannot help feeling that the guide is not keeping to the point of the discussion—or even trying to do so.

"The experiment that is being tried over here is most interesting, but it seems to me to allow very little scope for individuality. Isn't that one of the drawbacks to the Communist system?"

"There are no drawbacks to the Communist system."

One looks at her in mingled admiration and despair. Admiration because she has been drilled into such blind and stubborn loyalty to her employers, and despair because it is so obviously impossible to conduct any discussion on such a basis.

I make one more effort.

"But surely there must be a few drawbacks to every system, to begin with, until it has been perfected. For instance, the complete lack of privacy must be trying, such a number of people all living in one or two rooms. Even in the hospitals. I suppose there's no such thing as a private ward."

"Here in Odessa, on the way to the sea, the houses that used to belong to rich people have all been converted into sanatoria for the workers. Those who need it are sent out here for a month, two months, as they require, by their trades unions."

"I know. I've seen them."

"There are beautiful gardens to those houses. They can sit there. And they can go and bathe in the sea."

"That's splendid. Do the workers who need a holiday choose where they go or is it settled for them?"

"They are told by the Government where to go for their holidays."

"That's what I meant. There isn't a great deal of freedom. Don't some of them feel they'd rather decide those things for themselves?"

"Sometimes the doctor orders special treatment. We have near here very celebrated mud-baths that cure all kinds of rheumatism."

It is like a conversation from an old-fashioned travel book:

"'Where is the band-box containing hats of which I asked you to take care, you good-for-nothing fellow?'

"'Sir, if you and your lady will rest awhile at the Inn, there is a fine view of Mont Blanc to be obtained from the parlor window.'"

Nothing is to be gained by going on talking with the guide. I shall have to speak my mind elsewhere.

But how difficult it is! Russians do not want one to speak one's mind. It is true that they like to talk, but they do not in the least like to listen. Least of all, do they like to listen to criticism of any kind. Well, perhaps they have their reasons for that. Only once do I go so far as to ask the lady who shows us round a Palace of the Pioneers in Rostov whether she would not like to visit some similar institutions in England or in America.

"Have you such things in England and America?"

"Yes, certainly. They are not called Palaces of the Pioneers, but we have technical schools and kindergartens and clubs for children and young people."

(The Palace of the Pioneers partakes of the nature of all these institutions, and has a really excellent marionette-show in a special little theater, into the bargain.)

"If you visited some of these places in other countries you could compare them with your own. It would be very interesting."

"No," says the Comrade, employing the simple form of flat contradiction favored by so many of the Comrades. "No, it would not be interesting. We do not wish to see how things are done in capitalist countries. When the foundation is wrong the building cannot be right. We know that our way is better."

I should like to tell her the story of the two Army chaplains, of whom the Church of England padre said to his Roman Catholic colleague:

"After all, you and I are both serving the same God," and met with the reply:

"Yes, indeed. You in your way, and I in His."

But if I did tell her she wouldn't think it funny, nor would she see its application to the official attitude of the U.S.S.R.

One can only congratulate the Government on the thoroughness with which it has seen to it that everyone coming into contact with foreign visitors upholds the theory that Soviet Russia has attained to earthly perfection within the past twenty years and has no longer anything to learn.

I wish one could talk to the old people or the people living in remote villages or the few remaining White Russians who still stay on and contrive somehow to live.

Stories filter through, from time to time...of people who try to get away and can't, of people who live hunted lives, in cellars, of people who are serving long terms of forced labor, as prisoners...Nobody really knows the truth.