It may be taken as a general rule, however, that in Bolshevist Russia
the children are given very serious consideration. After the needs of
the army have been served come those of the children. The army very
naturally gets 100 per cent of its needs in food satisfied. Then come
the children, who are better fed than the adults, which means in fact
that a very large part of the adult population of the towns gets not
more than 25 per cent of its needs in food unless it can supplement
the ordinary Government rations. A modification of this appalling
state of things lies in the fact that part of a man’s wage is paid in
kind, and that in addition to his roubles he gets food. Otherwise, the
extravagant nonsense of prejudiced newsmongers might come true, and
corpses be found lying about the streets of Moscow and Petrograd.
A noteworthy and admirable feature of the educational system is the
school for Adult Education. These schools are springing up everywhere.
It is realised that the greater part of the Russian people are
illiterate, and the defect is sought to be remedied by giving the
older folk opportunities of attending all sorts of evening classes.
We visited one of these adult evening schools, and saw grown men and
women with young people and children join together in singing, dancing
and dramatic performances; saw their sewing and their painting, their
sculpture and their design; and without being a Communist one could
heartily congratulate those who were responsible for bringing so much
light and happiness into the lives of men and women for whom these
good things had been unattainable in the past.
The perfect pleasure of this occasion was once more marred by one of
those incidents, become painfully numerous by this time. I was asked by
a young Communist if I would take a letter to his relative in Berlin:
“But please,” he said, “I will not hand it to you openly or it would be
necessary to explain and there might be trouble.” How I got the letter,
I shall not disclose; but I handed it to its owner in the hotel in
Berlin, who rejoiced with mingled tears and smiles to learn that her
loved one was alive and well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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