VII. Speak on the Soviet Union's achievements in different spheres of life. Make use of the text and the additional passages given in Exercises V, VI. 1 страница

UNIT FIFTEEN

THE SOVIET UNION TODAY

Topics and Texts for Discussion ^*

1. V. I. Lenin, the founder of the first socialist state.
2. The Great October Socialist Revolution, a turning point in the history of mankind.
3. The USSR, a voluntary union of free nations.
4. The new Constitution of the USSR.
5. Fundamental human rights guaranteed to Soviet citizens.
6. The Soviet socialist way of life.
7. Large-scale construction in the USSR.
8. Contribution of Komsomol members to the economic development of the country.
9. The USSR, a champion of peace and co-operation among nations.
10. The USSR, an active member of international organisations; growing international contacts.
11. An outstanding personality (a statesman, a scientist, an artist, a distinguished worker).
12. Holidays and festivals in the Soviet Union.

THOUGHTS ON THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

I

In 1917 the common people - no longer passive - moved out into the centre of the stage. Sweeping aside their one-time rulers and their retainers, the people on the vast Eurasian plain extending from the Baltic to the Pacific brought their long latent abilities and energies into action.

Upon them, their adequacy to cope with the great historic task that history thrust upon them, Lenin staked the future of Russia and the Revolution. His supreme confidence sprang from his deep first-hand intimate knowledge of and belief in the people.

It was my good fortune, too, soon after coming to Russia in the spring of 1917, to gain this high respect and confidence in the power of the people - increased of course in later journeys to the Soviet Union. My insight came from first-hand contact with the people - from mingling with the workers in the factories of Petrograd and Nizhni Novgorod, from the soldiers in the barracks and from long talks with Bolsheviks. Out of this came a high respect for their endurance, tenacity" abilities, readiness for new ideas and skills, inventiveness - all of it convinced me of their future success.

Thus, at the very outset of the Revolution, I had an advantage over most of the so-called experts on Russia, journalists, publicists,

historians. They might know the history of Russia, know the programs of the many parties and leaders, know the diplomats and foreign emissaries. But for the most part they really did not know the people. And it was the people who were the Revolution.

In every crisis the Soviet people have been magnificent, adequate to the demands made upon them.

In writing as I have about the Russian people, all the time I have been writing about Lenin. In mind and temper they are almost identical; for Lenin personified those outstanding Russian human qualities and characteristics - sympathy for the oppressed, hatred and anger at the oppressor, a passionate search for truth - in him they were developed to the highest degree, to the nth power, and lifted him into the ranks of genius. That word, "genius", is applied to him by almost every foreigner who came into close contact with him, who felt the impact of his personality.

II

As Lenin stepped up to the podium at the Smolny, he was greeted by a thundering applause. Stilling it with a wave of his hand, he said: "Comrades! We will now take up the building of socialism!"

This was spoken in a simple matter-of-fact manner and for the moment few in that tense assembly grasped the full import of those words. But, sitting by my side, John Reed - always alert to the crucial and the dramatic - hastily jotted them down in his notebook and heavily underscored them. He rightly discerned that in that sentence there was dynamite enough to shake the world, and - we may add - to continue to shake it to this day.

It declared that the socialist order for which generations had toiled and fought and died was henceforth the objective of the peoples of a sixth part of the earth.

(Abridged from "Through the Russian Revolution" by Albert R. Williams.)

CONSTRUCTION ON A GIGANTIC SCALE

"Siberia will add to the might of Russia." Ai. Lomonosov

The Soviet Union has an area of over 22 million square kilometres crossing eleven time zones from East to West and several climatic zones, as far apart as tundra and subtropics, from North to South. It is easier to compare the Soviet Union with continents than with countries: it is a little smaller than Africa, bigger than South America and three times as large as Australia. Economic development is going on all over these vast expanses.

How to build, what and where? A multitude of factors have to be taken into account before the time for decision-making comes. For it is not just a matter of "taking" oil, or gas or timber from Nature only to abandon the whole field afterwards like a depleted gold vein.

Every region earmarked for development is laid out as a territorial unit in its own right with everything necessary for human life. This applies to the environment as well: Man's relationship with Nature is seen today not as one designed to bring it into submission at any cost, but to invite it to co-operate on terms of mutual benefit.

The projects of pioneering development are sited in places with widely different natural conditions. For it is, indeed, just as senseless to speak about the North or Siberia in general as it is to speak so about Europe.

Tuymen Region lies within the latitudes of Finland, Sweden and Norway, that of Bratsk-Ust-Ilim and Sayany between latitudes 50° and 60° N., that is, in those of Britain, Holland, Poland or Denmark. It is there that the Baikal-Amur Railway is being laid.

But a geographic latitude is not enough by itself to provide a full idea of the natural conditions of the regions. There is no Gulf Stream over there to mollify winter cold as there is round the British Isles, and the taiga jungle and swamps are quite a problem for transportation.

And, all this notwithstanding, those regions do have a tremendous power of attraction, since they are of immense economic value, first and foremost. They contain four-fifths of this country's commercial coal and natural gas reserves, three-quarters of its timber, and about four-fifths of its water-power resources.

The potentialities of those areas are far from studied in full. Their exploration is still going on, and with a swing. The Siberian Branch Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences has its research centres in 50 cities and towns. Besides, there are about 80 seismic, permafrost, biological and comprehensive research stations on Siberian territory.

Man has advanced far into the North, having set up there not only his winter camps, stations or bases, but modern big cities as well. There are now 368 cities and big townships in the Northern regions of the USSR and in its Eastern regions. City •status is awarded to some twenty settlements every year, including those which have sprung up in pioneering development zones. And that means that they have crossed the quality frontier (in terms of amenities and population) which distinguishes a city from a trail-breakers' settlement.

One cannot fail to notice the consistency in implementing the programme to develop the Northern and Eastern regions. Total industrial production of Siberia and the Far East is now 450 times as great as it was in 1913.

* * *

In recent years the new term "territorial-industrial complex" has been used more and more frequently in the USSR. It is used in connection with the vast regions in which major branches of the

economy are being developed in an integrated, interrelated way, on a strictly scientific basis.

These complexes, like planetary systems around the sun, are formed in orbits around "electric suns" - the Bratsk, Ust-Ilim, Krasnoyarsk and Sayan-Shushenskoye hydroelectric power-stations.

One such complex, located in the Angara Valley, integrates the industry over an area exceeding the territories of Denmark and Holland.

This complex began to mushroom in the mid-1950s, when construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power project got under way. In 1965 came the turn of the next project of the Angara cascade - the Ust-Ilim.

The Ust-Ilim station will generate electricity for a powerful timber industry complex in the area: 7,4 million cubic metres of timber will be annually harvested over an area of hundreds of thousands of hectares. But perhaps this will endanger the ecology of the district? Not at all. A system of protection and growth replacement of Siberian forest is being practised. Felled trees are being replaced by an equal number of newly planted saplings.

One cannot list all the enterprises which have been, are being, and will be constructed around the powerful Angara hydroelectric power projects. But all are immense, operating on the most up-to-date production processes and strictly observing the rules of environmental conservation.

In Siberia many definitions include superlatives: the longest rivers, the deepest lake (Baikal), the greatest investment, the biggest building projects... And the hardiest people, the temperatures here run from +40° to -50° Centigrade.

Whoever works east of the Ural Mountains feels himself in the centre of the stage. The primary reasons for this are not so much material incentives, but rather moral ones. The pioneering spirit, this is what comes first.

PROJECT OF THE CENTURY

The Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) is called with good reason the "construction project of the century".

For it is more than a railway - it is destined to lay the groundwork for the future intensive industrialization of over 1,5 million square miles of Eastern Siberia and solve the transport problems of a slumbering area as big as Western Europe.

It is not just the volume of work that makes BAM such a mammoth undertaking. Advancing at the rate of 200 miles a year, it is winding its way through some of the world's most difficult and varied terrain.

It will cross seven high mountain ranges, cut through virgin forest and waterlog swamps, pass over permanently frozen soil and through earthquake zones with hot subterranean springs; it will operate in places with temperatures that can drop to 60 degrees below zero or rise to 40 degrees above. Consequently, the railway has called for

the solution of many new technological problems and for completely new building materials and techniques.

Farmlands of great potential, reserves of timber, coal and iron ore oil and gas, diamonds, gold, copper and tin will have an outlet, when BAM is completed. Almost all the minerals of the earth are there.

Running several hundred miles north of the Trans-Siberian line, BAM follows a shorter route, which touches the northern tip of Lake Baikal.

The implementation of the project will relieve the intensive pressure of traffic on the present Siberian "land-bridge" which, as the speediest and most economical east-west cargo route, is becoming increasingly popular with foreign exporters.

An earlier plan for a second railway across Siberia had to be abandoned when the war broke out. The few hundred miles of track already laid down in the west were dismantled for use on the Stalingrad front.

BAM construction began in. 1972 under an updated plan geared to the expected technology of the next century, when Siberia's industrialization will be well and truly under way.

A branch line already reaches out to the north, probing the wealth of South Yakutia, where coal reserves alone are estimated at millions of tons.

The whole of mineral-rich Yakutia, which stretches to the Arctic Ocean, will eventually be crossed by the railway. It will pass through Yakutsk, the capital, and then continue to the north-east coast of Magadan, thus opening yet another Pacific outlet for cargoes to the East.

Engaged on the project are over 90,000 men and women, from cooks and construction workers to engineers and administrators, and their average age is 22.

In addition there are teams of ecologists, geologists, medical and other specialists who go before the builders all along the line. For in no way will the inroads of industry be allowed to upset the balance of nature and deprive future generations of the splendours of those untrodden lands.

BAM has become a Young Communist League project and 150,000 young people have responded to its call for volunteers. But it is not a job for the weak or faint-hearted, and nowadays no one gets to Siberia without first proving his or her worth on a construction site nearer home.

The workers are employed under contract and wages are three times the national average. But the incentive for most young people is the spirit of adventure and the desire to be part of a daring and history-making endeavour.

They expect to return home when they have completed their work, but.it does not always turn out like that. Stirred by the wonders of Siberia and the prospects of the good life they are helping to build in the towns that are mushrooming all along the route, many of them

marry, start a family, and finally decide to make the region rithe permanent home.

People of all the Soviet nationalities are working on the grand project. And as a young man from Georgia put it: "It's good we have come here together, like one big family - a real international. Life and work is much more interesting in such a family group."

BUILT BY STUDENTS

Every summer thousands of Soviet college and university students lay aside their textbooks, pack their rucksacks, put on their green uniforms and, by plane, train and boat, move off to various parts of the country. All these young people, members of building teams, take part in this mass movement of Soviet students.

It all happened when some Moscow students decided to try their hand at building a major project.

In 1959 Kazakhstan was developing its virgin and long-fallow lands. Thousands of people had come to work on the emerging giant grain-growing state farms. Housing for the newcomers was then one of the key problems,

On hearing this the Moscow students said they would build living quarters for these people. At that time few believed that students during their two months' vacation could give serious help, but the people in charge on the virgin lands agreed to let them try.

During that first summer 339 physics students of Moscow University built 16 small houses in Kazakhstan. Shortly, students from other Moscow institutes and from other Soviet cities followed suit and the building movement attained unexpected proportions.

Student teams have progressed from building modest houses in pvillages to erecting more sophisticated constructions, including industrial ones. Now plaques saying "Built by Students" and street names such as "Students Street" appear as autographs of the young builders in many Soviet towns and villages.

In this building work young people become fully aware of their responsibility. To a belief in their skill and ability, which is so vital to 20-year-olds, they respond with enthusiasm and selflessness. The quality of their work matches that of professional builders. All who join a summer building team are offered a special course in one of the branches of construction.

Experience showed that the students' life and work on building projects required some uniform regulations, which brought into being the Rules of the АН-Union Student Building Association. The Rules say that each student joins a team on a voluntary basis, each team enjoys extensive independence in the organization of its work and living conditions and maintains democracy within its ranks.

In the Association's Centre in Moscow, which co-ordinates the activities of all construction teams, hangs a map studded with little red flags all the way from Kaliningrad in the west to Kamchatsk in the east, from the northern Kola Peninsula to the Soviet southern

borders. There are about a hundred of them. They indicate the number of students' building teams in the various regions, territories and republics. But if one tried to mark the position of the groups working in each district the number of flags would exceed fifteen thousand. The amount of construction work accomplished by students over the last five years equals a town with a population of one million.

THE BASIC LAW OF THE COUNTRY

"Everything for the sake of man, for the benefit of man."

The 1977 Constitution represents the country's fourth Basic Law. The first constitution (RSFSR) was adopted in 1918. In legal terms it defined the birth of the country of socialism at the outcome of the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 and the class essence of the new power.

Several years passed. In the meantime, the young country had gained strength and stood firmly on its feet. In 1922 the Russian Federation and other Soviet republics formed the USSR. The USSR Constitution of 1924 formalized the voluntary union of sovereign Soviet republics into one single socialist state and set out its principles.

The 1936 Constitution proclaimed the victory of socialism, it reflected the triumph of socialist relations in the country (by that time exploiting classes had disappeared), and brought into line with this system the organs of power and management, as well as the principle of elections. Universal, equal and direct right to elect by secret ballot was introduced.

In the past 40 years profound changes have- taken place in the country. A developed, mature socialist society has been created in -the Soviet Union. The Soviet State, which arose as the dictatorship of the proletariat, has grown into a state of the entire people whose highest aim is to build Communism. All this has found reflection in the new Constitution.

The right to work is considered to be the foundation of all our social and economic rights. The previous 1936 Constitution defined this as the right to guaranteed employment. The new Constitution extends this provision: now each and every person is not only ensured employment, but must also be provided the opportunity of choosing a profession, type of job and work in keeping with his or her inclinations, abilities and training.

Under socialism the right to work is fundamentally connected with the right to education. According to the new Constitution this right is ensured by the institution of universal, compulsory secondary education and broad development of vocational, specialized secondary and higher education.

The USSR Constitution of 1977 also proclaims and guarantees the right to rest and leisure, the right to health protection, the right to maintenance in old age, the right to housing, etc.

The political and personal rights and freedoms of Soviet citizens are formulated in the new Constitution more fully than in the previous constitution. Among them is the right to take part in the management and administration of state and public affairs, the right to submit proposals to state bodies and public organizations and critisize shortcomings in their work,

In accordance with the principles of the Soviet state the rights and freedoms of citizens of the USSR are inseparable from their obligations.

Citizens of the USSR are obliged to observe the Constitution of the USSR and Soviet Laws. It is the duty of every Soviet citizen to work conscientiously and maintain labour discipline. The sacred duty of every citizen of the USSR is to defend the Socialist Motherland.

Soviet society is a society of true democracy, the political system of which ensures effective management of all public affairs, ever more active participation of the working people in running the state, and the combining of citizens' real rights and freedoms with their obligations and responsibility to society. "It is a society," says the USSR Constitution, "in which the law of life is concern of all for the good of each and concern of each for the good of all."

FOR THESE STUDENTS JOBS ARE WAITING

Every year about 4 million Soviet teenagers finish ten-year general education school.

What happens to these school-leavers?

Many continue their education, which is tuition-free in the USSR. They enter one of the higher schools which have an enrollment of more than a million students in Moscow alone. In addition, there are thousands of junior technical colleges and vocational schools (educational establishments in which teenagers acquire industrial skills).

More than half the school-leavers, however, start working at once at factories, construction projects, on collective and state farms, and in various offices.

It is hardly necessary to explain what the first months of independent work and the first contacts with new people mean to any young worker. Not only the administration, but also the local organizations of the Komsomol see to it that the "adaptation" period goes smoothly and that the young workers enjoy all the privileges due them. The Komsomol also helps the young workers of an industrial enterprise to improve their skills.

Thus, secondary school-leavers have an alternative: to continue their studies or to start working at once. Does this mean that one excludes the other? Not at all. Many young workers are evening students at higher schools and technical colleges - working in the daytime and attending classes in the evening. Also, there are correspondence schools which provide materials for independent study, consultations with teachers, and examinations.

Of course, to combine work with study is not easy. That is why young workers receive additional paid leave to take exams and to do their school assignments. The administration of an industrial enterprise is not permitted to send students on long business trips or to give them work that will interfere with their studies. Last but not least, during their work on and defense of their diploma projects, they are given a four-month leave on average monthly pay.

Whichever way school-leavers choose - to work or to study - they know that they will acquire a trade or profession, an interesting job, and will be provided with ample opportunity to realize their ambitions.

CAR PLANT IS A REAL EYE-OPENER

(Colin Williams visits the Togliatti car factory)

The plant is a real eye-opener. Its layout permits a smooth continuous production flow from the foundry and metal shops, to the press shops, body welding, paint shops and eventually to the three main assembly lines.

The plant has not only been designed to ensure maximum efficiency of the production processes, but nothing seems to have been spared to make the working conditions exemplary.

Going through the works, I was struck by the spaciousness of the workplaces, the cleanliness and the excellent air-conditioning system. With the natural exception of the foundry and mould shops, 1 thought the conditions could not have been improved.

There are 33 canteens strategically 'situated, one storey up, so that it takes a worker a matter of five minutes or so to reach his place at the dining-room table from the production floor.

Each of the canteens seats 1.000 at a time, so a whole shift can be fed at a single sitting in about 20 to 30 minutes.

As I moved from one shop to another, I asked about the accident rate and got the same answer: "No major accidents this or last year" or "very little working time lost as a result of minor injuries".

The policlinic, situated in the factory grounds, boasts a super dental department with facilities in the main surgery for giving treatment to ten patients at a time.

Now the plant has got into its stride, the trade union has seven bases at resorts like Sukhumi and Sochi, where their members can take a holiday or a rest cure. Last year 30,000 received trade union vouchers for such holidays.

The plant works on a two-shift system - one shift starting at eight in the morning and the second shift at four in the afternoon. There is a break every two hours and an hour is allowed for the lunch break. The plant works a five-day week.

The deputy director told me that social and technological factors made a two-shift system the most suitable and economic for them.

One had to bear in mind, he said, that with 38 per cent of the workers being women, a third shift would entail additional siaff and reorganization of the creche-kindergarten facilities and so on. In general, anyway, they were opposed to night work as this disrupted social and family life.

But with all the excellent facilities available to the workforce, the fairly high level of wages and high standard of working conditions, there still remains a major social problem associated with the monotonous nature of mass production work.

To try and resolve this problem of monotony, workers are encouraged to acquire two or three skills and to raise their qualifications. This facilitates a change over to various other jobs on the assembly line and earlier promotion to more skilled operations.

All-in-all the set up of the factory and the town is impressive and if this is the model for the new industrial regions of the country, it says a lot for the superiority of Socialist planning, which places the emphasis clearly on the well-being of the people.

(From "Morning Star", March 30, 1976.)

EQUAL RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

The first Socialist state gave women not only equal rights but also equal opportunities to take advantage of these rights.

Special family and labour laws provide conditions necessary to Soviet woman's development of her intellectual and business capacities on an equal footing with men in the sphere of activity she has chosen.

92 per cent of all able-bodied women work or study; women account for about 60 per cent of all specialists with a higher and specialized secondary education. While 49 per cent of industrial workers are women, they constitute 73 per cent in education and 71 in culture and among scientists women account for 40 per cent.

That women play a truly big role in Soviet society is seen from the fact that they constitute about 30 per cent of all deputies in the USSR Supreme Soviet. The percentage is still higher in the Soviets of the Union Republics and the local Soviets. The number of women elected to the Soviet Parliament is steadily growing.

Thus, the Soviet experience shows that given equal rights and opportunities women can be equal to men in every respect.

THE LAST "NOMAD WOMAN" OF KAZAKHSTAN

She is called the last "nomad woman" of Kazakhstan by the members of her family when they help her pack and see her off for the umpteenth time. Sometimes she is away for weeks, and sometimes even for months.

Patchaim Tajibayeva's job takes her out to the steppes or to the mountains where from time immemorial nomad Kazakhs had been

driving their herds from watering place to watering place, and from pasture to pasture.

However, at the present time geologist Patchaim Tajibayeva's route takes her not over Kazakhstan alone, but from the capital of the republic, Alma-Ata, to Moscow, and thence to parts still farther away from home. She is a member of international associations, and often represents the Soviet Union at geological congresses and conferences. Her scientific papers have been published in India, Japan, Great Britain, Spain, Australia, France and Mexico.

She was born in a remote part of an old nomad area in the northern foothills of Tien Shan. The year was 1920, the third after the October Revolution. Everything was changing in the land of the Kazakhs - the customs, laws, and relations among people, their ideas of the world around them and about one another.

After a thousand years of domestic slavery, the Kazakh women secured equal rights with men. Patchaim was a little girl at the time.

From the very outset Soviet power declared war on illiteracy. Under a decree issued in 1919, all children, from the age of seven, were required to go to school.

Patchaim was clear in her mind as to what she would do on finishing school. The people she had looked up to most were teachers, and she therefore wanted to be one herself. She passed the entrance examination to the Alma-Ata Teachers' Training College, and completed the course with flying colours. But she did not become a teacher. The fast-changing times offered her a different profession, and she did not reject it.

In the late 30s, Soviet Kazakhstan changed beyond recognition It was no longer the backward, slumbering land it had been at the time of the October Revolution. Most of the nomads were now settled. The peasant farms were collectivised, and agriculture was developing. Huge deposits of minerals were discovered, and their extraction became the basis of the development of industry in the republic. All kinds of qualified specialists, technicians, engineers and scientists were in great demand, and Patchaim chose geology. She explains her choice as follows:

"In those days discoveries in geology followed one after another. A great deal was being written about the explorers. I was carried away by their daring and fortitude, by the romanticism of the profession.

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