Russia Unveiled

Panaït Istrati

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138084674
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351619882
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

First published in English in 1931, the author of this book was throughly acquainted with Russia, both in Tsarist and Bolshevist times; he spoke fluent Russian and became an ardent supporter of the Bolshevist cause. This volume documents how his illusions were shattered, as saw through the propaganda and perceived that the Soviet system was, in practice both oppressive and unworkable.

CHAPTER II

THE TRAGIC LIFE OF THE WORKERS (1)

In town and factory—The housing of the proletarian family—Workers’ barracks—Housing problems—The new buildings—‘‘Coffin dimensions”—Conditions of work—Protection and security —Medical supervision—Enormous increase in accidents—Remedial measures.

When the condition of a country’s working classes is examined, it is possible to gauge its general characteristics by various facts. Tables of statistics with coefficients, percentages, and comparative estimates provide one avenue of approach to the question. But though there is certainly no intention to dispute in these pages the value of this method, it must be noted that only persons in a position to realise the significance of these data in relation to each other can duly appreciate their importance. For example, a knowledge of wages is only profitable when it can be compared with the price of primary necessities and with the demands made upon the workers.

It seems, therefore, that the best way of giving an idea of the daily life of the workers in the U.S.S.R. is to describe the conditions under which they live and work. Statistics will then assume their proper proportions.

It might be possible to quote from personal experience, but if the reader is to be spared the examination of all challengeable statements, it is preferable to have recourse to the properly authenticated reports found in the Soviet Press which, besides being supported by the necessary documentary evidence, are characteristic in themselves and provide illustrations of the general situation. It is as well to remember in this connection that the whole of the Press in the U.S.S.R. is directly or indirectly subject to the orders and under the control of the Secretariat of the Bolshevist Party.

The following passages are taken from “Pravda”: “Not one family out of 150 has been able to find the accommodation allotted to it on legal principle; sometimes two or three families, eight or nine persons, live in the same room. Children are crawling about nearly everywhere; human beings are crowded together on top of each other in dirty, verminous surroundings. A putrid stench poisons the atmosphere” (March 26th 1925). These were the conditions in the Karl Marx factory at Vyazniki in the province of Vladimir. The same paper, on March 29th, mentioned the acute housing problem in the Ural province: “The number of workmen not provided with lodging now reaches 5,000 at factory N., and 1,000 in the district round P., 2,500 at Z., etc.” In Sormovo, a town of 32,000 inhabitants, “more than 50 per cent.of the dwellings do not satisfy even the most elementary sanitary conditions” (“Pravda”, April 3rd). In the province of Moscow, in factory L.: “There are rooms in the workers’ barracks in which nine or ten individuals live together; people are forced to sleep on the ground; there is no ventilation, the atmosphere being thick and stifling” (“Pravda”, April 17th). At K., in the province of Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, in the workers’ barracks: “Two families live in nearly every small room; there are bugs and cockroaches.” In other adjacent buildings: “The situation is even more lamentable; hygienic conditions simply do not exist … etc.” (“Pravda”, May 6th). On the same date and in the same newspaper appears the report on conditions at Kostroma: “The great scarcity of accommodation is very marked, more than one thousand families of workers are living amidst horrible conditions….” In the textile industry at Moscow: “More than 75,000 workmen and employees still require lodging.” Then in the gold-mines of the Lena district: “The workmen live wretchedly in big, dark sheds; families and unmarried persons being indiscriminately mixed. The more fortunate cram themselves into hovels, two or three families at a time. Many have no mattresses and sleep in their clothes. No ventilation at all: dirt, and vermin” (“Pravda”, May 27th). In the factory E., Moscow province: “It is doubtful whether anything could be worse than the accommodation there, the dormitories in particular. They are low, suffocating buildings with not even the smallest windows; there is a reek of stoves…. The beds are camp-beds, made of wood; everything is verminous and the lighting is of the most primitive kind (“Pravda”, June 5th). In the factory, called the October Revolution, at Lugansk: “The housing problem has assumed incredible proportions. Some families of workers have found shelter in sheds, others in rooms, two families in each. A great many unmarried workmen have not even that, and spend the night at the station” (“Pravda”, June 6th). At Kadievka (Donetz) there is accommodation for 2,400 out of 4,200 workers and their families. “Many lodgings have only one room, and the consequent overcrowding is appalling. Each room accommodates two families or five to six persons. Four hundred of these lodgings are unfit for human habitation … etc.” In the factory known as the Red Rose, at Moscow: “People live with unweaned children in damp cellars, two families in a room, and sometimes more than that. The husband sleeps in the dormitories and his wife joins him there” (“Pravda”, June 20th).

The following is an account of how the Moscow municipal workers are housed: “Three men sleep in two beds, placed side by side; some on the dirty floors, in the corridors, under the beds. Women with children at the breast live in this filth, in this heavy, smoky atmosphere. There is no system of lighting and the courtyard has been turned into a latrine….” (“Pravda”, June 24th). The workmen in the Profintern factory in the province of Bryansk live in sheds; “families of eight, twelve, or even sixteen persons, often occupy a room of 5 square archines or 27 square feet. This results in the spread of infectious diseases, particularly tuberculosis, from which 80 per cent.of the workmen are suffering” (“Pravda”, July 11th). In the province of Nizhni-Novogorod, at the Stenka Razin glass factory: “The situation is very bad with regard to housing accommodation. There are bugs in the workmen’s dormitories as well as dirt and dust. Many sleep in the woods, in the drying-room, or in the loft” (“Pravda”, July 26th). At G.-K., in the province of Vladimir: “The workmen live in narrow, damp barracks, all in a ruinous condition, and some families which are stricken with typhoid and venereal diseases live in sheds. Living conditions in these barracks are dreadful beyond imagination. In winter the inmates are frozen; in summer rain falls through the roofs; everything is rotten, crumbling. They are not workmen’s rooms but kennels” (“Pravda”, August 26th). In the province of Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, at a certain factory Z.: “The Commission has established that there is an appalling lack of housing accommodation, and declares that the most elementary rules of hygiene have been violated. Sometimes two or three families, comprising twelve or fifteen persons, live in very small houses where the total living-space is 7 to 9 square archines (37 to 48 square feet), half of it being occupied by the stove and other utensils. A female worker and her three children live in a stinking lavatory of 3 square archines (16½ square feet). Many workmen live in sheds and cellars. One woman was literally thrown out into the street” (“Pravda”, September 13th).

Such were the reports to be read in “Pravda” of Moscow alone, for just a few months of the year 1925. These various cases were noted during a hurried and very cursory reference to this paper. An examination of the five principal organs published in the capital and of hundreds published in the provinces and in the federated states would reveal a thousand examples, providing a striking picture of the workers’ misery.

What further developments have there been with regard to this state of affairs? For the majority, matters have gone from bad to worse in face of the rapid increase in population, in cities and in industrial centres, compared with the almost negligible progress made with building operations. It will be quite worth while to scan the pages of some newspapers for 1926 and to give in a brief summary the chief characteristics of the situation. The reports could not be quoted at length on account of the unavoidable repetition of facts.

The “Trud”, the Central Communist organ, is perpetually protesting against these miserable conditions. “In the tobacco plantations of the northern Caucasus, at B., the women actually sleep on the ground on thin palliasses on the same spot as they work; tobacco dust penetrates into their respiratory channels and causes much sickness. Lavatories are non-existent” (Number for March 25th). Generally speaking, in the metallurgical trades, the average living-space is 7 square archines (37 square feet), or sometimes 4½ square archines (24¾ square feet) in certain districts. At K., in the barracks, where the workers belong to different gangs, there is one bed for every three workmen, who take it in turn to sleep in it. The new workmen, of whom there are a considerable number owing to the development of industry, sleep in the stations, near the blast-furnaces …” (April 14th). “In Moscow, casual labourers are piled up as many as ten to fifteen in corners where there is barely room for two; in one basement, twenty-six workmen sleep on the floor, lying closely together. The majority, however, spend their nights in the stations or on the street” (April 20th). “Miners in the Ural district sleep in barracks on the floor; they have no lavatories or drying-rooms. Many have to live two or two and a half miles away from their work, and this distance has to be covered sometimes twice a day on foot.” (April 29th). On June 2nd the same paper stated in a general article that in the metallurgical trades the living-space per head was only 38 square feet and at Moscow 24 square feet. In the textile trade, 282,000 people lived in intolerable conditions; a number of railway-workers slept in tanks and wagons….

The “Rabochaya Gazette” called attention to the situation in the turf-pits at T.: “The workmen sleep entirely unprotected from the wind on the scene of their labours and are worried by mosquitoes” (June 15th). At the Sparrow’s Mount brickworks in Moscow, “workmen lie on bare boards, or on the ground without mattresses” (June 23rd). “In the Communist Vanguard factory, sometimes as many as fourteen workmen live in one small barrack-room; nearly every room is divided into two stories, like a ship’s cabin. There is one family to each of the planks which act as ‘stories’. Pregnant women and little children are continually falling off on to the hard ground” (June 23rd). In the L. manufactory province of Moscow, “the piling up of human beings, one on top of the other, is appalling; in the France barracks, 40 rooms are occupied by 80 families, comprising 250 persons”. But these are really fortunate compared to 600 workmen who are forced to find shelter in the “isbas” of the surrounding district and live there “among bugs, fleas, cockroaches, in a damp and mouldy atmosphere, thick with smoke and soot, in the closest proximity to cattle”. “People sleep on planks and tables as well as under them; at night it is impossible to get out of the room, for the whole floor-space is covered with human bodies” (June 24th). Marietta Shaginyan gives a picture in the “Zarya Vostoka”, of Tiflis, of the housing conditions among the manganese miners of Chiatura: “There are about 2,000 workers living in dark, smoke-filled tents in groups of twenty; one-half of these sleep on planks, the other on the ground. There is no drinking-water, nor are there lavatories, baths, or ambulances; and the workmen’s skins are eaten into by the manganese” (Numbers 1, 136 et seq., March). In the Red Ray glass factory in the province of Pskov, the 500 workmen live in a town where all the buildings are worm-eaten and rain and snow fall almost straight through on to the occupants; there is living-space of 107½ square feet for ten or twelve persons (“Trud”, October 30th). In the Ural district, at the T. factory, newly engaged workmen, as well as students from the trade school, have no lodging and sleep in the station: children sleep in the factory, under the turbines.

All these facts are taken quite at random from bundles of newspapers published in 1926; it would obviously be quite impossible to read them all. These examples of existing conditions will make for a better understanding of the general situation, at the same time giving life to the bald statements of figures as given, for instance, in connection with the miners in the “Vyestnik Truda” (Number 10, 1926). The writer of this report declares that the situation is growing worse on account of the increase in men available for employment: 30,000 workmen will be homeless in the Donetz region by 1927; in the oil-fields 40 per cent. will be without shelter at Baku, 25 per cent. at Grozny. Dwellings are small, insanitary, and in ruins everywhere in the Kuznetsk district in Siberia as well as in the Moscow basin.

Semashko, the People’s Commissary of Health, wrote in “Pravda” on March 25th 1926 about the condition of young workers, and revealed the results of an inquiry which had been instituted two years previously. Thirty-three per cent.had no beds, and 40 per cent. lived six and even more to a room. (We shall see that the situation gets steadily worse.) In these conditions the health of young workers was deplorable. An inspection of 79 factories and works revealed the fact that out of 1,585 adolescents, 1,120 were ill. These figures were in no way exceptional, but in the words of the newspaper which reported them, “they are unquestionably typical” (“Trud”, July 2nd 1926). At Yaroslavl, more than half the young workmen were suffering from tuberculosis or anæmia. In the Krasny Perekop factory alone, 600 apprentices were ill (“Pravda of Youth”, October 1927). But time and space do not allow of quoting further extracts from the Press in this connection. It is quite easy to imagine the widespread demoralisation which would result from such conditions. Yaroslavsky, a high Government official, in alluding to one aspect of the question, made the following statement at a conference (The “Krasnaya Gazette” of April 15th 1926): “Is it possible to describe as Communist a state of affairs in which parents are obliged to satisfy their sexual needs in front of their children owing to the lack of space in their lodging?” It is easy to imagine the endless tortures suffered by the wretches forced to “live in these dormitories, barracks, cellars, holes, and hovels”.

Assailed with complaints on this subject, the “Trud” gave a whole page to the housing problem on April 20th 1927, “Everywhere”, ran the report, “one finds the same distress, the same cramped accommodation, dirt and diseases.” Several examples were given of these dreadful conditions, and figures were quoted which showed that there were still not enough new houses to accommodate a greatly augmented population. At Tver, in the Proletarian factory, the workers had sheds in which were kinds of cages, each containing five beds, five trunks, and five ikons. One of these sheds alone provided shelter for 5,000 people. Damp cellars were used as lodgings and children fell ill; some of the workmen were obliged to walk from seven to eleven miles to their work. In the textile factory B., near Moscow, workers’ town settlements were over-populated, and there was much sickness among the children. Many of the latter were corrupted sexually by witnessing the promiscuous intercourse existing between adults (“Trud”, May 22nd). In the Moscow-Narva district in Leningrad, the living-space was 21½ square feet per person; fifteen houses were declared unsafe and 650 people had to be turned out at a moment’s notice, though there was no other kind of accommodation available for them (The “Evening Krasnaya Gazette”, November 28th). It was established by an inquiry carried out by the inspectors of peasants and workers in all the great industrial centres (Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, Stalingrad, Tver, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, Saratov, etc.), by the order of the Council of Commissaries, that everywhere habitable space was increasing less rapidly than the population (“Trud”, July 7th) .

Now to turn to some cases from the following year (1928). At Stalino, in the Donetz district, only 125 out of 2,500 labourers were housed at all, and these were literally piled up on top of each other in the dormitories; on each palliasse three men had to take it in turns to sleep. Everything was repulsively dirty and the noise of machinery deafening (“Pravda of Youth”, January 5th). At the Red Weavers’ works, on entering a workman’s house, an indescribable, intolerable stench assailed one’s nostrils caused by rotten cabbages, dustbins full of scourings, slops, the reek of stoves and appallingly filthy water-closets. Walls were worm-eaten and the floors dirty to the most repulsive degree. In the dormitories beds were pushed close up against each other and there was not room to put a stool down. People slept, played cards, smoked, cried, and quarrelled in them (“Pravda”, April 1st). At the workers’ barracks in a brick-works (province of Moscow) it was found that there was an insufficiency of accommodation in the dormitories, which were dark and filthy and where it was impossible to breathe. The same conditions existed at the Proletarian Victory factory near Moscow, and sleep was quite impossible. Nine four-storied barracks in the Rykov factory provided shelter for 5,000 people; some even lived in the cellars, which were crawling with vermin (“Pravda”, April 3rd). The “Pravda of Youth” reported the facts revealed by an inquiry made into conditions at Leningrad where 45 per cent. of young workmen were found to be lodged in the vilest of dwellings; in the Ural district, 61 per cent. were crammed into overcrowded buildings and 58 per cent. slept on the ground. The situation was the same in the Donetz region (April 3rd). In the Krivoy-Rog basin, the workmen’s settlements were not fit for human habitation; most of them lacked water, light, beds, and cleanliness (“Izvestia”, April 18th). The delegates to the Miners’ Congress gave a description of their comrades’ miserable lives: the old buildings, they said, were falling down and the new ones already needed thorough repair. Workers were packed in “like sardines”; one story became three stories because people not only slept on the beds and underneath, but above them on planks stretched across the room. Everywhere there were vermin and parasites. “We are ashamed to describe the conditions”, said one speaker. In some places the ground was cemented and the children fell ill: in others the streets were veritable sewers; there was a lack of water for drinking and washing, etc. (“Izvestia”, April 27th).Half of the 200,000 young workers employed in the Donetz slept on bare boards and in sordid hovels (“Pravda of Youth”, May 11th). Two eminent official controllers, Soltz and Peters, denounced the authorities concerned for their failure to relieve the situation in spite of their ability to do so. Near a factory called the Red Echo, the workmen were piled into old and dirty barracks; at K., there were seventy people to every room, etc. (“Trud”, August 2nd). Men employed on the Dargom Canal slept in unclean hovels which were infested with vermin and where the rain came through the roof; there was one wash-stand among 200 men (“Trud”, August 10th). At M., the shed windows were broken, roofs had holes in them, walls were cracked, and there was an entire lack of wash-stands and stools. In many other places, principally at Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, the same conditions prevailed (“Pravda”, September 23rd). From the platinum-mines in the Urals came the same story of sheds with cracked walls, cold, dirt, vermin, and of workmen forced to take it in turns to share the most disgusting bunks imaginable (“Trud”, October 31st). At Makeyevka, in the Tomsky factory, the sheds were pestilential and rubbish was left lying about for months at a time. There were no wash-stands or clothes-rooms, and often no electric light; most of the windows were broken (“Trud”, November 1st). “The workers’ settlement in the Astrakhan fisheries is perpetually covered in dust; the sheds are dark and worm-eaten. They provide shelters for families, unmarried persons, and drunkards all mixed higgledy-piggledy together. One building, nicknamed the “tomb”, though reputed to be uninhabitable, was occupied in 1926 by seven families. But after it had been decided many times to evacuate it, still more partitions were removed and a further batch of people was crammed into it” (“Pravda”, November 4th). At the Eighth Trades UnionCongress many delegates denounced the housing conditions. One of them remarked that there could be no talk of a cultural evolution when as many as eighty to one hundred persons were crowded closely together in the dormitories. A railway-worker declared that he and his comrades slept in cellars, old trucks, or even in holes. In fact, the representatives of all the industrial regions, without exception, aired their complaints and grievances, each describing the particularities of their respective “prisons” (“Trud”, and other papers, December 14, 15, 16, 18).

Finally, a few examples will be given for the year 1929. In the Don basin the same cry was heard. “We live so much piled up on top of each other that we are being suffocated.” Dilapidated houses were overcrowded and newly constructed ones soon fell into the general state of disrepair; masons were forced to sleep under miners’ beds, and vice versa. This resulted in the demoralisation of the workers, who promptly took to drink (“Pravda”, January 22nd). At Leningrad, for only 1,245 out of 45,200 labourers engaged in building could accommodation be found. Houses were being built for approximately 4,000, leaving therefore 40,000 without shelter of any kind (The “Evening Krasnaya Gazette”, March 22nd). In the previous year 120,000 casual labourers had entered the district round about Moscow, and this year (1929) 180,000 were expected. But there was only room for 2,000 in the night-shelters, so that the remainder would have nowhere to lay their heads (“Pravda of Youth”, April 2nd). The Soviet authorities carried out an inquiry into the lot of these casual labourers. In one room, measuring 172 to 215 square feet, ten or sometimes twelve men were found crowded together, generally sleeping in their clothes, sometimes even on the ground. Many of them slept in the night-shelters, thus coming in contact with the off-scourings of the population. “It is impossible either to rest or to wash in our shed,” wrot...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• I. AN INTRODUCTION TO SOVIET LIFE
• II. THE TRAGIC LIFE OF THE WORKERS (1)
• III. THE TRAGIC LIFE OF THE WORKERS (2)
• IV THE TRAGIC LIFE OF THE WORKERS (3)
• V. THE POWERS OF DARKNESS
• VI. THE “DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT”
• VII “SOCIALISM IN FIFTEEN YEARS”
• AFTERTHOUGHTS
• INDEX