The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1931-11-10
The New Russia, No. s.
HOME MEANS
ONE ROOM IN
SOVIET RUSSIA
Families Live in Flats,
Sharing One Wash Sink,
One Bathroom.
BY JULIA BLANSHARD
stan Writer for NEA Service and The
Times. Sent TO Soviet Russia Especially
for This Series.

Times. Sent to Soviet Russia Especially
for This Series.
Copyright. 1881. NEA Service. Incl
If you kept house in Russia
You would find that you consume
more time and get less done than
you would in any other country in
the world.
You could not step to the corner
chain store and order list of sta
pies to be delivered.
You could not phone your butcher
Tor meat and vegetables.
You would have to 90 in person
Tor everything, bring it home your
self and often have to wait in queue
Tor hours to buy milk, potatoes,
fresh fish and the like. Moreover,
there might be nothing left that
you wanted by the time your turn
comes.
In September I saw the first
truckload of frankfurters delivered
that Moscow had seen in over
year. Before the man had half
unloaded the truck there was
waiting line of buyers two and
half blocks long.
Machines to Get More
Where you live. what you would
eat and the amount of food and
clothes you are able to buy would
all depend on the kind of work you
or your husband did.
For Russia, short of practically
all staples and hampered by made
quate distribution methods, rations
essentials and issues food cards to
workers, according to their relative
value to Soviet society.
You would find it an advantage
to be married to an expert machin-
lst rather than bank president.
Machinists are in the first cate
CORY" Of government food cards.
They are allowed the largest ra-
lions of meat, fats, sugar and bread.
If you are a statistician or other
brain worker, you will rate only
fourth category food card.
Moscow has no streets of private
homes. Apartments are everywhere,
big stone apartments built on the
edge of the sidewalk with no lawn
or trees in front, but usually with
huge courts between them.
If you lived in Moscow, you would
live in one of these apartment
houses and would climb to your
floor with no thought of an ele-
vator. And you would be lucky if
you had more than one room.
But your rent would be low, for
rents are levied for a small per-
centage of your salary, regardless of
rooms or location.
You would have electricity and
running cold water You would
have furnace heat or a big, built-in
Russian wood stove. You would |
have no vacuum cleaner, or even a
modern broom. You probably would
use a Russian broom, made of twigS
tied to handle.
If you we're an engineers wife
and held down a job yourself, your
family might live much as do Ossip
Ivanov Palovlich and his lawyer
wife, Nina Petrova.
Each Has own Signal
They, their two children and
Nastya, the peasant girl maid, live
in two rooms of a second floor nine
room apartment that used to be-
long to a doctor and his wife.
Ossip and Nina are the only fam
lily in the apartment that has two
rooms! The other seven have one
room apiece for the whole family.
There is one bathroom, one toilet,
one wash sink in the apartment for
twenty-five persons. Sometimes a
queue waits in line for the toilet.
Eight women cook meals in one
kitchen, where in winter big range
facilitates matters. In summer each
woman has one or two primus stoves
portable one-burner kerosene
Lamps on which the majority OF
Russian women cook.
You ring the bell four short rings
when you go to see Nina and OSSip.
Each family has its own signal.
If you were an American woman
married to Russia citizen, you
would live as these women live.
In Moscow I met a slight, deli
cate woman I had known in Amer
lea, now the wife of Russian Com
munist. When 1 had seen her be-
fore she owned the last word in
Paris clothes.
In Moscow she wore a plain blue
Jersey suit none too new, be-
ret and sturdy oxfords. She wore
no makeup and had her lovely,
shiny, long black hair cropped.
Next-FashiOns in Soviet Rus
STA. What women wear, what they
think of their figures . How ones
wardrobe is selected and what it
sS.z-5t=.