The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-01-23

room, men and women IN dlnertnt
rooms. Our beds are straw ticks
placed on blackboards laid over long
benches. Not eider-down on feather
weight springs, to be sure, but a well
come improvement over the bare
boards of the train. Whenever the en-
Unused excursionists really get ready
to get to bed they could sleep on a
picket fence in boiler shop.
After eating bread and tea Zone
EATS tea in Russia) we are shown
around the building in which we are
housed. 1t is fine old structure, Of
purest classic line, with magnificent
colonnaded hall and rotunda. The
princes for whom it was built may
turn in their graves at the thot of the
student bulletin boards in the Hobbies,
and the Red Army airplane in the
grand salon. AS we pass from room
to room attention is paid to the his
toric events that transpired in each.
A SHORT walk takes us to the
= Smolny Institute, a one-time fin
ishing school for noble damsels, but
now better famed as the seat of the
Bolsheviks and of the workers and sol
diers' deputies during the stirring No
vember days of 1917. Here we also
see the room in which Lenin lived and
worked during this period. This fin
ishes the official sightseeing for the
day-but the free-lance touring just
begins after a quick supper at the
school, A short street car ride takes
us to the Nevsky Prospect and here
the thousands of excursionists from
Moscow and elsewhere lose them
selves in the other thousands of prom
enaders. 1t is Christmas eve and the
churches are just letting out their
worshippers, almost exclusively older
PEOPLE and of Enthusiastically bourgeois
stamp. These also add themselves T.
the masses on the Nevsky-but differ
ent masses these-hundreds of sturdy
sailor boys of the Baltic feet-S5 per
cent of whom are members Of the
Komsomol and only one per cent al
together nonpartisan. The Nevsky is
broad, welllighted. the sidewalks laid
with beautiful tiles. the shops spark
ling with lights and exceptionally
tasteful window displays. All in all,
Leningrad is a much broader Eu-
ropean-a world-yes, almost a cos
mopolitan city, whereas Moscow is
typically Russian. Both are extreme
ly beautiful, but in two widely differ
ent ways. Much German and some
French is spoken on the streets, the
natives are so interested in their Wis
itors that mistaken observations lin
Germany passed among us are on sew
eral occasions quickly caught up and
corrected by passers-by. Unfortu-
nately the reconstruction of the
Nevsky is not typical of all parts OF
the city, many blocks of walls or erst-
while fine buildings still cape and
yawn uncovered and untenanted. Only
when industrial and comercial Soviet
Leningrad not only regains its pre-
war strength but far outstrips it will
these beautiful walls and unfinished
buildings be needed.
THE next day takes us to the top of
1 of st. Isaacs Cathedral. From
this, the highest point in the city, a
beautiful panorama unfolds itself, and
it is ably described by a young woman
teacher who has climbed the long
stairs with us. This tremendous
church was built by forty years Of
forced labor of the serfs and how the
tremendous monolithic columns of red
granite-fifty feet high and at least
five feet thick they seem, the coating
Of frosted snow making them seem
made of mauve velvet,-how these
monsters ever got into place with the
primitive machinery then used is q
mystery to the building trades work
ers in our group.
In the church itself Christmas mass
is being said before a mere handful