IN the workers' town, near our Youth Commune, live the Betkins. We first became acquainted with them through Victor, the oldest boy. On a search for his pals, he happened one day into the factory's Youth headquarters, while we were there. A student at the Karl Liebknecht University in Moscow, where be has been sent by the plant to train as an engineer, he had come to spend his free day at home, among his former shop-mates.
That evening, several from our place go over to drink tea from the Betkins' steaming samovar. Many a snowy night since we have drunk tea around this polished, battered veteran. For who could help liking the Betkins?--from Olga, the mother, to eleven-year old Kolya, who shows each newcomer his wooden hammer, made at school and decorated with red, lop-sided stars.
In taking you to them for a visit, it is worth knowing that life in this household and that of its members is generally typical of the new Soviet family--a subject about which many foolish, untrue things have been written abroad, especially by the American press.
The family is by no means "abolished" in the U.S.S.R. On the contrary, it is recognized as having its part to play in building the new day. At the same time, family life, which undergone many changes in the past, is continuing to change, dropping off out-of-date aspects, adding new~features. One thing is being deliberately abolished--the unequal position of woman, while the oncoming generations, in rights and status, have at last come into their own.
The modern Soviet family is transforming itself into something more useful, more free and on the whole, far happier than that which has existed up to this time in either Europe or America.
There are seven in the Betkin family. The father is a sandyhaired, quiet man nearing fifty. He repairs transmission at the plant. When not busy with Party and union work, or attending a meeting of the workers' housing committee, his main pleasure is to sit, smoking his pipe, listening to the radio, reading papers, studying one of his technical books, or helping his youngest children with their lessons.
"Study hard," he urges them. "In your Ma's and my time, workers' kids didn't have such chances as you. She never got even to read and write. Do your best, because you'll help run this country. We're our own masters now."
Last year Ivan was a delegate from his shop to the town soviet. When he talks of the old, bitter days, Olga's more ready, colourful tongue breaks in, running ahead.
She is a vivid, active little woman, whose restless, calloused hands speak of long years of hardship and endless unbegrudging toil. There are tired lines about her mouth, but a spring to her step and a shine in her dark eyes. Around her head is wound a red kerchief. By the end of the day, strands of hair have worked their way out, straggling behind her ears. Her children run to greet her, pouring out their news while peeping into her shopping basket. She listens with the same close attention that she has given, earlier to her shock-brigade leader's report, in the factory.
Olga Betkin is one of those countless working women whom the revolution has brought to life. She is on fire with growth --her own, the children's and "our Pyatiletka."
Next to Victor, who is twenty, comes Tonya. Her eyes ate the deep blue of the neat blouse she is wearing. A toboggan cap is perched on her fair, straight hair, her cheeks are still flushed from skiing. After school hours at the technical institute, where she is studying to become, like her brother, an engineer, she goes far a ski or skate with her companions, or perhaps to the club's movie. She is always glad when Vic is home, and can go along.
Paul, just entering his teens, as well as little Kolya likes outdoor sports, too. They spend their mornings on their skates or sled, as their school doesn't begin until noon. (The local schools are crowded, like everything else in this fast-growing city, so that it is necessary to have two sessions a day, until the new school is completed.)
Vera, who is fifteen, doesn't skate every morning, as she helps out with the housework and shopping, while her mother is at work. This concerns Olga, who watches to see that the girl does not overdo, and gets her fun along with the rest. Next year a community house in the workers' town will be opened up, with its modern laundry and public dining hall. Then the family can take their evening meal there. Vera's shopping trips will end, and Olga won't spend part of her free day doing the wash.
Olga prepares breakfast before she leaves with Ivan for the plant. There they eat two nourishing, well-cooked meals each day. The children have their breakfast together and warm lunches at school. At night, everybody eats at home, although frequently someone is away, attending a class or meeting. The Betkins' home is like dozens of others which I have visited. Tidy, simple, with plants in the windows, fresh counterpanes on the beds, a table loaded with books and papers, and a beautiful crocheted table cloth laid out in honour of "company." On the walls and chest are family photos: the children, taken at summer camp; Olga, in a gym suit, snapped with friends while on her paid vacation in a rest home; Betkin, sitting in an oyster shell frame astride a rock near the Black Sea, in the background rise cliffs and a picturesque villa which once pleased the fancy of a rich merchant but now houses vacationing workers.
In an honoured place are pictures of Lenin, Stalin, Krupskaya and Voroshilov.
The apartment is not large. In fact,: t is a bit crowded, six living in two rooms. (Victor lives in the university dorm, at Moscow.) Many apartments in this workers' town, which already house five thousand, have three rooms, besides the kitchen and bath. Yet the Betkins consider themselves lucky. Olga says, "You should see the place we lived in before we moved here, six years ago! All of us jammed into one room, and the ceiling so low I could reach it by putting up my hand. It was dark and unhealthy, especially for the little ones. Here we have electric lights, running water and fine surroundings. Every year, when our plant adds new houses to our town, I'm glad, seeing more families move in."
She glances around, smiling half apologetically. "We don't have as fine furnishings as some. Our family is big and our income, while enough, doesn't leave much for fancies. And to tell the truth, we don't care about that." At present Ivan is earning 200 rubles a month, Olga 90, and Victor is receiving a student's allowance, in addition to free tuition, of 55 rubles. Next year he'll get 75, and the third term, 110. Tonya could also receive an allowance, but the Betkins find they can live comfortably on their present budget of 345 rubles, so they do not ask it from the school.
"The main thing," Ivan adds, "is we feel secure. The haunting fears of our old days, of being turned out of our home, of me losing my job--these are gone forever. It used to be, when anybody fell sick or a child was born, we worried how to get a doctor and with what to pay him. Now all this is free. For instance, Tonya fell ill some time back. You wouldn't guess it now, would you, to look at her. She had lung trouble. With all expenses paid by the state social insurance she was sent to Marsesky sanitorium, near Moscow. And there she stayed, until entirely well."
Ivan draws on his pipe.
"We can't be evicted. Our work is steady. When Olga and I are too old to work longer, we'll get pensions. All this keeps our minds content and free for other things."
Olga breaks in. "Of course we still have to scheme how best to manage, and there are things we want we haven't yet got. Sometimes meat runs short at the store, or sugar gets low. The big thing for Ivan and me, is how our children are getting such fine educations. And we're studying too." It is true: every member in the family, from Kolya up, is studying hard, and enjoying it. Each is absorbed in his round of social activities. This also is characteristic of most Soviet families, although not all are as active or developed as the Betkins.
Neither are all families as united in outlook. Not rarely there are differences, between parents who insist on the old ways, and the youth who are all for the new. Often the differences are between religious parents and their free-thinking children. Again a boy grown heart-sick quarrels with his backward peasant father because the latter will not join the collective farm. An old-time type of mother nags at her young Communist daughter because she is always away from home, off to meetings, and seems to have no idea of "marrying and settling down."
However, my impression is that family dissensions are far less frequent here than in America. The main bases of such frictions--economic hazards and generally disorganized social environment--are fast disappearing, while working to bring about a new world tends to unite rather than separate the younger and older generations. Where differences exist, no parent has the right to coerce a child or impose his will, ipso facto, on his offspring. If this happens, the youth may appeal to his comrades and the government for aid.
Paul, Vera and Kolya tell us, breathlessly and in relays, how their Pioneer bands go to the factories, during noon-hour, to check up on how workers are keeping their machines and doing their work. "When we find a careless fellow," Paul declares, "we clean up his machine for him, and he's ashamed of himself. We find out if everybody is literate and gets his papers every day. Oh, and lots of things like that." Kolya, grinning, describes how the Pioneers gather before the factory gates in the morning, chanting taunts at the late-comers "who're hindering our Five-Year Plan."
Last summer, when they were at camp, the older children like Vera and Paul went to help the peasants several mornings a week. They sorted seeds and separated good bags from the torn ones that needed mending, and sometimes helped weed. It was only far a couple of hours each time. Vera explains, "We took turns going, after our morning dip. Always we talked to the farmers about what they were reading, and how important their collective farms were for our country. The farmers brought to our camp milk and eggs. It was great fun."
Tonya and Victor are active in the Comsomol. Four years ago, Olga joined the Communist Party. When she hesitated, asking "Do I know enough? It was only a few years ago that I learned to read; and how'll I manage extra duties?" her comrades at the plant told her, "You're the kind that belongs in the Party." They reminded her of what Lenin had said about working women helping to run the state.
"This has become true for me," Olga says. "Once I was a drudge, today I'm a member from our shop to the soviet. Of course, it makes it harder in a way, here at home, for me to do all these things. I'm gone a lot. Ivan understands and helps out, in a way a lot of men won't. If there's something to be done here, he does it as willingly as I."
Paul leans close to his mother's chair. "That's the way it is, eh, Ma? We're all comrades, ain't we Ma?"
The samovar gives a homely snort, reminding us of our waiting tea.