WHO runs Red Podolsk? Managing a city, even of sixty thousand, is no mean job! When it is a town that has tripled itself in the last eight years, taking another jump to eighty thousand during 1932, then it is some job indeed. Think of the problems that arise when everything, from ash cans and water mains to supplies of potatoes and meat, hospital beds, public nurseries, school space, and new apartments, must repeatedly multiply themselves, trying to keep pace!
Yet, throughout the Soviet Union, thousands of towns and cities are undergoing just such booms--reminiscent of the old pioneering days in the west or when oil was first struck in Texas and Oklahoma, with towns springing up like mushrooms overnight. There is that same stirring bound forward that lust for clearing wildernesses, that willingness to face hardships, and the and dogged patience for overcoming any obstacles that may lie ahead.
Podolsk men, women and even its children move to this rhythm. Their thoughts and daily tasks take on the ruddy colours with which life replays its pioneers.
The resemblance to the old west, however, hardly goes beneath the surface. Podolsk's growth is solid, permanent--not according to the caprices and anarchy of capitalism, with its speculators, land grabbers, Hills and Harrimans. Here no laws of each-for-himself-and-the-devil-take-the-hindmost.
Podolsk's expansion, however tempestuous, is always according to plan. A socialist plan, based on the principles of common ownership in the essential means of life, and the century-old ideal which has at last become practically realizable--"all for each and each for all."
Podolsk is not a mushroom. It is a young oak, whose branches are still bare, but whose roots run deep. How is this socialist city-in-the-making managed, and by whom? Perhaps the very question is misleading to American readers, calling up pictures of the Al Capones, Jimmy Walkers, and lip-service-socialist mayors of Milwaukee and Reading. Pictures of gang rule, and the Fords, Morgans and Mellons watching the show and their money bags through narrowed eyes.
Running Podolsk is another matter. Spend an hour or so, wandering through its main streets and by-lanes. You will find only one or two militiamen. What is the need for a big police force when there is no gang rule to maintain, and no unemployed? Stationed near the depot, the lone militiaman has a rather dull time of it, answering questions, directing the not-heavy traffic, and pulling in an occasional drunk who has to be sobered up.
"Running" Chicago, Washington or Detroit includes clubbing unemployed and war veterans, evicting every day several hundred penniless families from their homes. Crowding into nearby wastelands, these exiled build themselves shanty towns out of cast-off lumber, dubbing them "Hooterville" and "Prosperity's Around the Corner--which one?"
In Podolsk, no evictions are allowed. The only exceptions are those cases where a person is convicted by his fellow-workers of being a public nuisance, for continual rowdying and neglecting his job, or doing the sly work of the class enemy.
Contrary to cities abroad, plastered with to rent signs, every room in Podolsk is occupied and then some. Its city council members are losing sleep, searching for enough builders, brick and mortar to complete the year's housing program which the population demands. So strong are the claims that a man has on his shelter, and so strict the regulations about forcing him to move, that many incidents arise which to a foreigner seam strange at first and a little amusing. Several skilled workers, for instance, have found themselves better jobs in Moscow; yet the Podolsk machine plant cannot make them move from the workers' town until the Moscow plant is able to give than apartments in the Red capital. So they commute each day, and the local soviet has to worry not only over its own building program but Moscow's as well. A man and woman may quarrel, even become divorced, yet neither can evict the other; the problem is for one of them to locate a new room!
Running a Soviet city is clearly a different matter from the customary business that passes for government in other parts of the world. Where dollar diplomacy has been replaced by genuine working class democracy, many problems automatically disappear. At the same time, when the concern of a city's management is not with enriching a few but rather with seeing that the masses ate well-fed, well-housed and their cultural needs cared for, here are many new problems that have to be met--problems that in other countries are "solved" by the simple method of being ignored! Finally, the soviets have the job not of how to keep the population quiet, but its opposite-- how the working masses can most quickly master all the intricate and varied tasks of their self-government.
In Podolsk, as in Moscow or Tashkent, it is mechanics, housewives, engineers and building labourers who are conducting affairs of state. This is the composition of the Podolsk Soviet, which is elected every two years by general meetings held in every factory, school, hospital and other places of work:
From the First State Machine Factory...142 delegates
From the Cement Plant..................25 delegates
From the Cracking Plant...............28 delegates
From the Factory No. 17................25 delegates
From the Construction Department (includes engineering staff and building workers) ... 7 delegates
From the Housewives (organized in Housing Co-operatives)...45 delegates
From the Department of Education (includes teachers, etc.)..3 delegates
From the Health Department (doctors, nurses) .....................4 delegates
From the Public Employees ..............3 delegates
From the Closed Co-operatives (store-clerks)...6 delegates
.
Total................................288 delegates
Podolsk happens to have no agricultural population. In village and regional soviets, there are naturally large numbers of farmers, also.
Representation is not on a territorial basis, as in the United States, but on the basis of occupation. In this way, electors know their candidate intimately, as only those who have worked alongside a man come to know him. Likewise, the representative understands his electors' problems and wishes first hand. Periodic reports ate made by each delegate to his constituency, which follows his work closely, both checking-up and giving him aid.
For every hundred persons employed in an organization, one delegate is allowed. All vote and are eligible to office, except that tiny fraction of one per cent who belong to the old exploiting classes, preferring to live off the labour of others. Such are the kulaks (rich farmers who hire labour), speculators, business men, priests, former tsarist officials, and members of the old regime's secret police. As these elements are fast disappearing altogether from the Soviet scene, practically the whole population has the right, and exercises it, of participating in government. In our Podolsk machine plant, for instance, ninety-nine per cent of the workers and employees took part in the last elections. In America it is customary for about half this percentage to go to the polls.
The elections themselves are not the ballyhoo, vote-catching, money-slinging, ward-heeling, vote-for-Hoover-or-you're-fired affairs with which the old-line parties periodically descend upon the American people.
Elections in he U.S.S.R., whether to a trade union committee or soviet, are periods of widespread, intense mass agitation and activity. In every department of shop, school and office, boxes are placed, and above them signs: "Think Whom to Elect." Shop papers and the town press are full of workers' letters and proposals. From suggestions for new candidates which are written on slips and deposited in the bares, each organization draws up its list. This is presented to its general meeting. If objections are raised to any candidate, these are heard and, if found valid, his or her name removed. Tasks for the coming year are outlined, based on critical estimation of the past year's work.
Industrial workers compose exactly four-fifths of the Podolsk Soviet. Imagine this situation in Pittsburgh, Harlan, or Lawrence. That is, working class instead of big business rule. Factories would open, bread lines disappear, and the "Hoovervilles" move into good quarters vacated by their wealthy occupants.
At the time the 288 members of the soviet were elected, forty per cent were Party members and ten per cent Comsomol. All talk of the foreign press, that only Communists can hold office in the Soviet Union, is seen to be bosh. Work in the soviet, however, and struggling for socialism, has so raised the class-consciousness of these men and women that today, eight months later, the proportion has risen to eighty-one pet cent (forty-four per cent Party members, and twenty-seven per cent in the Comsomol). One-fourth of the delegates are women, among whom are our friends, Olga Betkin and young Sonya Prokoronia.
The soviet elected from its number an executive committee of eleven, and its president and vice-president, Comrades Ekyakov and Gdomisov. Ekyakov has a long record behind him as worker and civil war veteran; likewise Golornisov, who has been a rod-maker in the former Singer plant since before the war. Only these two are freed during term of office from other work. All other soviet members remain at their machines or desks, giving their evenings and free time to their civic tasks. A small staff of engineers and technical help, employed by the soviet, give necessary aid in carrying through town projects.
The delegates organize themselves into various commissions or sections, such as Communal (which deals with housing), Industrial, Finance, Health Protection, Education, Administration (which includes militia and civil courts), Co-operatives (concerned with food and other supplies), Construction and Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. This last is the vigilant eye of Soviet power to which any citizen can appeal when he feels same injustice has been done, or laxness crept in, being sure that a prompt investigation will follow.
Podolsk has taken an a new face since it came under Soviet control. It used to be a dingy town, little more than a village with dirt paths for sidewalks, kerosene lamps for lighting. and without sewerage or water mains. All water had to be carried in buckets from the street pump. Only Dixon and wealthy merchants lived otherwise. There were many rich estates in the region, with large parks and palaces, one of which had a picture gallery valued at 600,000 rubles.
In the town was a large dumping ground, where refuse was buried, for a price, by the merchant Kulekov. He also owned the baths and the one small theatre.
During the rainy season, the mire got so thick that a good horse could easily disappear in the mud!
Since the Revolution, Podolsk has become modernized, with good gutters and asphalt pavements. All except the outer fringe of old houses have been electrified. These last will be wired during the current year. The new workers' town, housing five thousand, has gone up, as well as many other apartment buildings, while former one and two-story houses have added to their height by two floors. The soviet estimates that some forty per cent of the population are living in newly constructed houses. Nevertheless, this is far from enough. Many families are crowded. Others are living in nearby villages, traveling each day to their work and home again in the evening. Industries and population are growing faster than building.
The Construction Department has far more, rubles than it can spend, for lack of materials and workmen. But with the unions, factory committees, and everybody after them demanding that they carry through the full building program, construction has speeded up in the last six months. The program for next year is staggering, yet they say they will accomplish it, and no doubt they will.
Some twenty miles of water main and sewerage have been laid in the city, with another eight miles to be added in the coming year. Also the first tram line will be laid next year, and five more buses purchased. One has to have hiked the miles about town that we have, to appreciate what this will mean.
Feeding of the population has been undergoing the most striking changes of all. The household drudge, tied to her stove and broom, is passing, although her day of freedom has not as yet completely arrived. Bread once baked in hundreds of tiny individual ovens, is now turned out in neat brown loaves in the town bakery to the amount of fifty tons a day. With the towns expanse the plan is to build another bakery which will double output. Every factory and place of work has its dining rooms and buffets where, at moderate cost, two and three course meals are served to those employed, twice a day. There is need for more public dining rooms and restaurants, which the new communal building in the workers' town will party satisfy.
Besides three dining rooms, our machine plant has ten buffets serving its thirty departments. In five of these, where there are health hazards, free milk is distributed daily to those working there. In addition, the plant has its own co-operative stores, which supply the workers with clothing, and such food supplies as ate needed at home. A sovkhoz (state farm) is attached to the factory, furnishing the plant's restaurants and co-operatives with milk, meat, butter and vegetables. Not enough, it must be added, and at too high prices. The cooperatives are still a weak link in the plan of socialized feeding.
The state farm was in bad condition when the factory took patronage over it, two years ago. It was poorly equipped, with three hundred instead of the needed six hundred workers. Things were so run down that cowsheds were actually standing without roofs! The workers held meetings, working out plans for help. In huge mass "subbotniks" they came with their banners and singing, repairing broken tractors and helping till the fields. Culture brigades brought books and new ideas to the farm and village. In order to purchase much needed equipment, the workers voted to contribute 25 per cent over the value of their share of stock in the co-operative. The state bank gave generous credit terms, with which to purchase needed machinery. The sovkhoz in consequence has much improved in its supply for the plant, although it has not reached its capacity. The co-operatives also require better organization Sonya is putting in much of her free time, together with other members of the soviet section, on supplies, checking up on their co-operative's work.
The new kolkhoz (collective farm) markets which recently opened up in Podolsk, as elsewhere in the country, are bringing down prices and adding extra supplies of fresh vegetables, meat and milk products for the town's population, all of whom have expanding demands which so far always run ahead of supply.
At the same time the machine plant is beginning to utilize its scrap to make small household utensils that the farmers as well as the city population need more of.
As Sonya observes, "The solution of out problems lies within reach of our own hands."