“SOCIALIST CITIES”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 983, 28 May 1930, Page 6

“SOCIALIST CITIES”

APARTMENT HOUSES WITH 10,000 TENANTS REORGANISING RUSSIA A lively discussion is proceeding in Moscow as to the form and character of the new "Socialist cities” which are supposed to spring up all over Russia in the near future. Some of these cities of the future will be built around large plants, such as the Stalingrad tractor factor, and the Dnieprstroi hydro-electrie plant, which ar.e now in process of construction. Others are expected to be centres for huge State and collective farms. Two theories have been put forward in regard to the building of these cities. An engineer in the State Planning Commission, Mr. L. Sabsovitch, a prolific writer on the subject of the organisation of daily life in the Communist society, advocates the creation of cities with a population not exceeding forty or fifty thousand. The inhabitants of these cities are to dwell in huge apartment houses, each housing from two to ten thousand tenants. In these dwellings housekeeping, in the old sense of the word, will cease to exist. People will all eat in highly mechanised restaurants; - mechanical devices will take care of cleaning and laundry. Children, according to Mr. Sabsovitch’s theory, are to be separated from their parents at an early age and brought up in special colonies, or children’s homes.

Another theory regarding the construction of new towns, which has behind it the authority of the wellknown architect, A. Pasternak, advocates the building of small houses along the main roads of communication. This, in the opinion of its authors, would avoid the evils of excessive congestion, so visible in the crowded quarters of the present-day large cities. The problem of communication would presumably be solved by the general use of the automobile. While there is still a considerable element of fantasy in all these theories, Russia is unmistakably undergoing very great economic changes, which, if carried to a conclusion, will probably transform to a considerable extent the living habits of the people. Prom bringing the peasants to sink their holdings in collective farms, it may be only a step to covering the Russian roads with automobiles, or even to establishing the children’s colonies of Mr. Sabsovitch’s imagination, although this last scheme has evoked a vigorous dissent of .no less an authority in Communist education than Mme. Krupskaya, the widow of Lenin.