INVERTED SNOBBERY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 390, 26 November 1932, Page 2

INVERTED SNOBBERY

many vacancies SHORTAGE IN PROFESSIONAL " YOCATIONS CAUSING ' CON.CERN. "" ' ■' t » %. •* NEW SOVIET CAMPAIGN. The Soviet Union to-day is faced with a serious shortage of 'candidates for many .professions'Jwrifes'the Moscow eorrespondent oi ihe Oserver). There are poi iePLOUgh' teachers, 'doctors, lihranians, economists, hooklceepers, trained workers in the co-ope-rative shops. It° is estimated that Russia proper (not counjfcing some of phe affiliated reP'ublics) in ihe current year lacks. almost 13, Q0 0 doctors and over 25,000 teachers, measured hy the needs of the hospitals and schools. A main factor in this shortage, and one which is arousing a good deal of concem and public discussion, is the unwillingness of young people to enter such professions as medicine ,and teaching, fndustry to-day attractp a disproportionately large share of the graduates of the Soviet higher schools. Wh'ile the engineering schools and courses are overcrowded, the medical and pedagogical instiiutions have many vacant places. P,art of the explanation, for this situation is to be foupd in a curious f orm of inverted snohbishness that has developed in Russia since the Revolution. -There has been so much glorification of the manual worker and of the factory that the typical Young Communist often looks" with disdain on the idea of entering a profession which is .not directly connected with industrial production. This conteinpi and dislike foji some professions is reflected in letters which 'Komsomolskaya Pravda,' organ of the Union of Communist Youth, has been publishing on the sub ject. One eorrespondent of ihe newspaper cites as a common expression' of ' feeling. — ' '.'Whai, I am a highly skilled tur'ner, shall I hegin to ieach children or- to cure the sick?"

"Desertion." Cases are cited when only one or two out of sixty or eighty applications of prospective students are for places in non-industrial schools. A Young .Communist teacher in White Russia writes with considerable bitterness to the eifect that other Young Communists who began as country teachers "deserted" their posts, and, despite sentences of expulsion which were passed a'gainst them by the local organisation, found better places in the towns. A eamp'aign of propaganda and education has been launched against the "anti-intellectual" mood which prevails amonf some Young Communists. - The subject was discussed at the conference of the Union of Communist Youth which took place here last summer, and more recently Mme. Krupskaya, Lenin?s widow, who has been an ac'tive educational leader in Russia, published an article addressed to the younger generation, urging them to go into non-industrial professions on a larger scale and pointing out that the doctor and the librarian are as necessary in their fields as the 'engineer is in ihis. The distaste for the teaching and medical professions is by no means purely sentimental. A skilled worker in a large factory is often better off than a doctor or t'eacher as regards wages (private practice in Russia has practically vanished except for some of the older and better known medical practitioners), >and also as regards food supply, which is much more imp'ortant than money wages under pre-sent-day Soviet conditions. Woi'kers' Privileges. Moreover, the worker in Russia enjoys some privileges, as against the intellectual in such matters as the preferential admission of his children to higher schools. While this discrimination has been formally abolished for some classes of brain-workers (engineers, professors, and teachers, for instance, a.re supposed to send their children to the universities on the same basis as manual workers), in practice the discrmnaton sometimes still exists, and there are some categories of intellectual workers who have not yet been even formally placed on the same basis as the manual workers. . ' The denuding of some of the professions may in course of time lead to an elimination of the discrimination in favour of manual as against intellectual labour. The slogan of creating a classless society by the end of the second Five-year Plan seems po point in this ' direction. A considerable change in Soviet traditions and psychology will be necessary, however, before th'e principle of absolutely equal treatment for .hand and"brain workers can be established.