The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-08-12
PRIMARY NEEDS APPROXIMATE IN
 RUSSIAN MINDS
Desire for Personal Com. fort UnderIieS Five.
 Year Plan Work
By EUGENE LYONS

UnAted Press Staff Correspondent
 Moscow -- Under the surface of grandiose social undertakings. flamboyant political slogans and oeaseless class struggle the ele- mantary personal needs and ambi- tions of the individual Russia run deep and persistent. He seeks food, clothes, shelter. safety and a modicum of amusement.
 These primary needs are felt here perhaps more profoundly longed hardships with food sup plies, the overcrowded housing conditions In the cities. the cronic shortage of wearing apparel. have made these things the central ob- jects of thought. conversation and dreams.
 The original draft of the Five Year Plan made specific promises of more to eat. With the Russian passion for statistics 1t foretold exactly how many more pounds of foodstuffs the average Soviet citizen would consume by the end of the half-decade.
 Lost in Shuffle
 This aspect of the Plan is scarcely mentioned in the later
  lost insofar as official memory Is concerned. The authors evidently under estimated the price that must be paid for their scheme.
 Since the plan was inaugurated, the system of rationed food has become 50 much part of every day routine that the purchase or foodstuffs without official cou- pons and without restrictions as to quantity seems to the ordinary Russian inconceivable.
 The rations vary in different parts of the Union, but nowhere are they more than enough to support life. Every Russian be- four or five of these categories. the first and most favored of which is restricted to manual workers. These receive twice as much bread and other products as the second category. where office and brain workers are placed.
 The gradations are finely marked, 50 that in n single cate- Rory there are subdivisions A and E. Transfer from category two into category one, or from one-B to one-A means more food or a chance for q pair of shoes. No wonder 1t is worked for, fought for and coveted!
 Category Changed
 When the government feels 1t necessary to encourage or placate some district 1t transfers 1t to q recently for certain types of scien-- tific workers and intellectuals and 1t is doing so now with some tech nical sDecialista in industry.
 The Kremlin maneuvers It's stocks of food and other con- sumption goods as q general man. euvers an army. Supplies arc shifted quickly to re-enforce weak ening sectors of industry, to stim- ulate construction work in some crucial undertaking.
 While there has been no real increase in recent months in the amounts of rationed food avail able, Improvement in methods Of The method of "closed distribu- tories' has been adopted through out the country. This means that the person entitled to rations is "attached" to specific store and can obtain them only there.
 The actual rations for q mem- her of the most favored category In Moscow at present include ap- oroximately the following: Two pounds of bread daily. one-half pound of butter monthly. about one-half pound of meat q day when there is any, from 10 to 20 eggs c month in the summer time. 50 grams of tea monthly, five bounds of sugar monthly. For lower categories the quantities arc sharply reduced. Moreover. the rations are not always forth
 Most manual workers and many office workers supplement their rations with ono relatively good meal in their factory or institu- tion restaurant: plain. monoton- ous but wholesome and extremely cheap. The growth of these fac tory Kitchens has solved the food problem for hundreds of thou- sands.