RUSSIA: Primer by Denny

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In order to write a series of plain and simple dispatches setting forth in primer fashion how things are today in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the New York Times's Moscow correspondent No. 2, careful Harold Denny, recently went on leave to Paris and last week was typing busily. Uncensored, he dealt with such Russian fundamentals as:

Wages: ". . . In twenty years the revolution has made so little progress toward emancipation—if it has not. indeed, retrogressed—that the Soviet worker is among the most exploited in the world. . . . And the State has proved that it can be as hard a taskmaster as any capitalist boss and can enforce its will with a police power infinitely stronger than any coal or iron police or venal 'company' sheriff in the United States.

" 'Surplus value,' which is one of the foundation stones of Marx's philosophy—the amount that the worker gives the employer in labor above what is received—is exacted in the Soviet system too. In Russia that surplus value is being used to extend capital construction, to build up a military establishment and to maintain a swollen army of bureaucratic functionaries who probably consume more of the workers' toil than the proprietor class in capitalism. . . . Inefficiency holds down the wages that the Soviet can pay—and it, like any capitalist employer must make a profit or go out of business—and enormously increases the cost of everything the Soviet citizen buys. It makes [the worker's] real wage extremely low. And the quality of almost everything he buys is so bad that the goods could not compete with capitalistically produced goods for a minute in any free market."

Freedom: "There is a range and vitality to the Soviet arts that is far superior to the fare available in Germany, for instance. Yet, as in Germany, the Soviet theatre is largely presenting classics. Few original works of value have appeared since the revolution. . . .

"Conceding what I believe to be true—that the Soviet regime is sincerely doing all it can materially for the people as a whole—it has, nevertheless, utterly eradicated freedom of expression on any except the most innocuous topics. . . . The result is an intellectual servility, a sycophancy, a hypocrisy that is simply degrading."

Employment: "There is no unemployment now simply because there is a constant labor shortage. . . . The labor shortage has been made more acute by the fact that inefficiency, bureaucracy and the prevalence of parasitic functionaries have greatly reduced labor productivity. Foreign engineers have estimated that four times as many persons, or more, are required under Soviet conditions to turn out a given production as are required in the United States. . . . But industry is going badly from top to bottom. . . . The Soviet has given industry everything in materials, but has failed to give the most important thing of all—freedom to executives to use their own initiative and to make their own decisions, confident that if a high percentage of decisions are correct an occasional error will be forgiven. In the Soviet an executive error may land a good man in prison under terrible charges of wrecking. ..."