STILL FIGHTING
REFUSES TO BE BEATEN DOGGED, WILLING FIGHTER CHARACTER OF THE RUSSIANS He is the Russian, schooled in modern war and in a new social and political creed, but still fighting for the things he has always loved. The tough, hard-hitting Red Army moves forward again. It has-fought many bloody battles. This army which refuses to be beaten is more than a military machine. It is a symbol of the Russian people, of the character of the Russian man. What makes him such a dogged, willing fighter? writes Ralph Parker. You can’t begin to understand how the Soviet people have withstood and blunted the Wehrmacht’s power until you turn the spotlight on the Soviet man. How does he differ from his forbears? Has socialism created a new type of man. A smiling member of the iPolitbureau with whom I discussed these questions changed the subject, after expressing the opinon that bravery was always found in the Russian
people, but that the Russian character had been developed by economic changes. Living and Malleable It is doubtful whether those who led Russia into the revolution of 25 years ago knew the type of man that was going to emerge when the call came to defend the fatherland. Lenin, and .after him Stalin, during the interval were educating the Soviet man to make his own history, not to suffer it to be made for him, and out of that process his character was evolved in a way that could not be foreseen. It has been hammered into shape with mighty blows. Like the metal Maxim Gorky’s engine-driver Nil in “Townsmen” used to forge as a hobby, it was a “red, formless mass, malicious and fiery, which spits at you with fizzing, blazing sparks, living and malleable.” The Soviet man has an extraordinary zest for life which he had no opportunity to expre'ss before the revolution. This, like other prime comnonents of the Russian character, its capacity for faith and devotion, its extraordinary selflessness, had long been dormant. Previous regimes, instead of exalting them as does the present, have, in fact, based their power on the distortion and suppression of these qualities; But two instincts the ruling class could not suppress or sidetrack —the Russian curiosity, the desire of the masses to learn and to act collectively. Confidence,. zest for life, an avid thirst for. knowledge and the ability to organise collectively are the qualities the writer finds most prominent in the Soviet man of to-day. Two processes are going on in the. U.S.S.R. now, on which much depends. Mass training of technicians for factories and intensive training of commanders for the Red Army. Both processes
are being completed in a much shorter period than in peacetime, sometimes in a third or even a quarter of that period. The speed and avidity with which Russians absorb knowledge is incredible. Time alone will show how much of that knowledge sticks in the mind, but there is encouraging evidence from Soviet factories that lessons learned quickly produce good pupils. As for the Soviet man’s zest for life, the stubbornness with which he defends himself on the battlefield should have put an end to any theories—mostly based on the reading of Dostoievsky—that the Russians like to suffer, or have a contempt fordeath. Men fought at Stalingrad and Sevastopol as they did, not because they were not afraid to die, but because they wanted to live. Young Heroines I am always being astonished to find that modest, natural, charming young women, doing apparently rather humdrum jobs in Moscow, often have remarkable records of valour. There is one very elegant girl, doing a routine job, who a few years ago was risking her life daily on the Spanish frontier, getting children to safety. There is another, now studying medieval literature in the Lenin Library, who last month came back from a long trip behind the German lines. A third, a quiet, calm girl in her early twenties, the daughter of a famous Bolshevik, is now just back from a dangerous task at the front to nurse her wounded husband—and many others. They have the enthusism and selflessness of Russian women revolutionaries of the past, but they have also control and self-confidence and, in particular, naturalness. That is something new. New, too, is the degree to which mutual aid has been developed in Soviet Russia. Recently I asked a foreign diplomat, a keen observer of the Russian scene, who had returned there after twenty years, what changes had struck him most sharply, and his reply was that it was the way the Russians had learned to organise collectively. He himself, for instance, finds the only way of running a large establishment to his own and his staff’s satisfaction is to hold regular meetings attended by all, at which all problems .are discussed frankly and critically and in absolute democratic fashion. And that, he said, required self-discipline and control such as you would never have found before the revolution. Part of Social Unit A 10-year-old girl whose father is American and whose mother is Russian lives next door to me. She is studying to be a ballet dancer and goes six days a week to a school. Since she entered a creche when a few months old she has been educated in Soviet schools. This little girl just doesn’t know the meaning of personal property. As her mother said, “She just doesn’t use the word ‘my’. But no one could be more careful than she with the toys she brings home from school and takes back, or with the frocks issued to her there. Those belong to the school and have to be treasured. As for her own clothes, she is the usual careless little girl.” It is that sense of being a part' of a larger social unit that prevents people from scattering rubbish in the parks and breaking out of line, and which, in the factory or on the battlefield, creates smoothness and efficiency. And it is a most important factor in mastering problems of organisation.
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Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3280, 25 June 1943, Page 6
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1,008STILL FIGHTING Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3280, 25 June 1943, Page 6
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