GEORGIA - HAPPY SOVIET REPUBLIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5296, 8 January 1947, Page 7

GEORGIA - HAPPY SOVIET REPUBLIC

no iron curtain in indolent caucasus Here in this capital of the Georgian Soviet Republic, the Recl Army men and the police wear the same uniforms as in Moseow, the same slogans on the same red banners urge the people on to greater effort under the same Five-Year Plan. The portraits of the same Soviet leaders hang oii the walls and in the shop^ windows — all these are the same in Tiflis as in Moscow, or for that inatter anywhere in the Soviet Union. For here such things are standard, writes Edmund Stevens in the Christian Science Monitor.

Yet even in this sameness there is a subtle difference. The people wearing the uniforms are different, as are the civilians — darker, stockier — their very gait is different, less h,urried and nervously abrupt, their faces not pinched with that preoccupied careworn look that makes even the young in postwar European Russia often seem 'unaccountably old before their time. Even the familiar features of the Soviet leaders look younger and fresher in the pictures in which local artists have given them a marked Georgian cast. Vivid Flowers Bloom Tiflis, like Moscow, is in the Sov- j iet Union, yet so unlike Moscow in j atmosphere one wonders whether cli- : mate is not more important than | political and social systems in shaping | man's character. The massive leafy eucalyptus trees ] that canopy the broad main streets of Tiflis and the vivid flowers that ; bloom in carefully tended beds along ; the curb would never survive the rigors of Moscow winter not the pressure of Moscow trafflc.

Nor would the southern indo- ; lence that softens relations between men and resists rationalisation be ! tolerated in the north. In many 1 respects. Tiflis seerns far more like ; a town in Italy or Spain or for that j matter, Mexico, or South America. ' Yet it would be oversimplifying j matters to attribute all the fldfferences between Georgia, or the Caucasus in i general, and European Russia to the j climate or local tradition. Compared with the regions to the north and , east, Georgia got off lightly in the ' war. _ j People "in Tiflis will point out one j or two places where German planes j dropped stray bombs, but without such | expert guidance the visitor would look j in vain for sigms of war damage. i The Germans had expected this | pearl of the Caucasus to fall in their i laps uninjured. They even had people . assigned to take over various func- i tions in the town, all worked' out ! down to the last detail. In fact, when ; I was in Libya during the 1943 cam- | paign I interviewed a German sergeant who had been prepared to manage the Tiflis radio. After the Caucasus retreat he was transferred to the Afrikakorps. The Georgians are very proud of their war record, they cite the long list of Georgian heroes of the Soviet Union, the impressive number of | Georgian generals, which also includes a Generalissimo. They take credit for saving South Caucasus from the Germans, and contrast their own loyalty to the Soviets with the treachery of the Chechens and Ingushi. But the fact remains that Georgia itself was never a battlefiekl- nor

were its manpower and material resources drained dry. This, plus the lavishness of nature, vastly simplifies the problems of * postwar reconstruction. i Rich Soil Abounds To-day, standards of living in Georgia are well above the Soviet average. This is especially true in Western Georgia, along the Black Sea coast whioh, thanks to ai'mple rainfall and the richest soil in the world, is a veritable paradise of citrus fruit and tea plantations. But agriculture is no longer the country's sole source *of wealth. Georgia has the richest managanese deposits in the Soviet Union and a new rapidly developing heavy industry — powered by hydroelectric stations along its mountain rivers. The growth of heavy industry in Georgia was stimulated during the war, when, for a time, the South Caucasus was virtually cut off from the rest of the country. Under the latest five-j'ear plan, Georgia's industrialisation will continue. Additional hydroelectric stations are. being built and numerous machine-building plants, include an automobile factory with a yearly capacity of 30,000 vehicles. Th'us without destroying the country's indiviflual or national character, the Soviet system continues to make steady inroads. Tiflis itself is a city of sharp contradctions. Its modern quarter, with broad, well-planned streets, boasts more new imposing buildings in proportion to its size than any other Soviet eity I have 'ever seen, includmg new apartment houses and a vast palatial hotel, many of them constructed" on the eve of war. But beyond the modern city stretches the old Oriental quarter with its narrow crooked alleys, tumbledown houses and bazaars, as picturesque and smelly as those of Cairo or Teheran. Yet one usual feature of Oriental cities is notably and pleasantly absent — there are no swarms of beggars. And even though people in the mass ■ are dressed shabbily , thei'e is little of that abject poverty that characterises much of neighhouring 'Iran. This is still the Orient, but an Orient with the breath of hope and progress. \

One notable feature of Tiflis and Georgia as a whole, is the fact that the Georgians are very much masters in their own house. There are Russians in practically every town and •city — settlers from the north in search of sunshine and better soil — but the Government offlcials high and low whom one encounters, the managers of factories and heads of organisations, are Georgians almost to a man. The country is Georgian, the city is Georgian, and they aim to keep it so. The soprano of the Tiflis opera, a Russian, was dismissed when she failed to learn Georgian, a voluble gutteral language unlike any other known tongue. The Georgians are fiercely proud of their history and ancient traditions. Queen Tamara and the great Georgian poet, Shota Rustaveli, are among the main topics of present-day Georgian conversation, even though both these I worthies lived in the twelfh century, Georgia's golden age. Loyal to Traditions I Practically every Georgian can re1 cite by heart verse after verse of

Rustaveli's epic, "The Knight in the Tiger Skin." The nationalist feeling still runs strong and a recently published History of Georgia textbook for secondary schools reads almost like the Almafiach de Gotha in listing and glorifying ancient kings. Annexation of Georgia by Russia in 1800 is therein described as the least of three evils, the alternatives being subjugation by Turkey or Iran. But- the hook adds that since the Revolution, Georgia has become an equal partner in the S-oviet family of nations. The book contains many pictures of historic Georgian churches and other monuments of Georg'iait civilisation which it emphasises are now on Turkish soil — like the Armenians, the Georgians have their territorial claims on Turkey. In general, however, there is not too much intcrest in foreign affairs — the outside world seems very far beyond the mountain-hemmed herizon — and the people are by nature hospitable and friendly to foreigners. Travel is easy and not subject to restraint. A friend of mine, a well-known British journalist who works for a hig London newspaper combine, travelled for a whole month through Georgia and the Caucasus on his own, riding local trains and busses, hitch-hiking when no other means were available. When he sent in his stories, his home office refused to print them as they did not fit in with the iron curtain. On the whole, the Georgians live their own lives and are quite pleased with themselves. And no Georgian fails to mention the fact that Stalin, too/ is a Georgian.