Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1932-01-03

IERE, as in Moscow the Americans are the
] aristoeracy of Soviet society. The restau-
rants for foreigners and for Russians are
graded according to the social classes.
First and best, the American, charging $50
rllbIes a month for three meals daily; foreign
restaurant where Germans, French and many
privileged Russians eat, los rubles; higher
technical restaurant for engineers and technI-
Clans a Ia carte; technical restaurant for fore
men Office workers, petty officials a Ia carte;
better restaurant for all who can pay more,
ranging from As to rs kopeks a meal: several
workers restaurants located at the plants, with
special sections for the privileged udarniki
(shoek brigadiers) distinguished by tablecloths.
napkins, flowers and prompt service, 35 to As
kopeks, and dietary sections where workers ON
doctors orders can eat
Ninety-five per cent of the $4,000 workers
eat in restaurants, and about per cent Of their
families carry food prepared in restaurants
home, families not being permitted to eat in
restaurants.
Kuznetskstroy is said to be better provisioned
than almost any industrial center in the Soviet
Union, and communal feeding has developed
here far ahead of Moscow and other large
cities. 1t is in many ways like a great army
camp; for example, liquor is prohibited to be
sold within its environs-but bootleggerS, usu-
ally shrewd peasant women, bring liquor from
old Kuznetsk, across the river, where there Is
a government distiIlery, and sell at high prices
to the workers. Efforts to break this up do
not always succeed.
Underneath all of this is the general sordid-
ness of mass life In the Fall season, with
chill rain and deep mud and filth underfoot,
and almost no street work, epidemic of
typhoid fever is spreading. This brings me
back TO the dugout, symbol Of frontier life
On the slope above the American houses, they
sprang up like mushrooms in the rain I climb
up and thread my way among them, camera in
hand. Is it because was born in sod house
on the Oklahoma frontier that am drawn by
these novels?
There is something coy and picturesque
about them, each a different style; here is one
built like a nest, a woven birch bough basket
encaSing the sod walls; another is entirely of
sod, with wooden door and window frames and
roof; several are of white plaster on the OUT
side and look quite attractive.
Inside, if one family is allowed room to
itself, these dugouts are quite cozy and clean.
There is board floor, well scrubbed, a table,
Stools curtains at the small-paned windows,
brick stove covered with plaster and white
washed, an icon or picture of Lenin in the
corner.
DERHAPS the most depressing sight was the
"emgrant" settlement across the river
There are said to be 900 exiled kulaks-as the
independent, prosperous peasants are called-in
the colony, counting women and children,
10000 working in Kuznetskstroy, on wages and
ratlons like the rest. They have been recruited
from "Sfbulon," the great prison nearby,
special concentration camp for kulaks.
A kulak is regarded class enemy, inner
emily opposed to colectyization, and the Russian
poor and middle peasants believe that the only
good kulak is either a dead or an exiled one.
So they are shipped in freight cars across the
vast stretches to far-away Siberia, and then
turned loose either with plots of ground to
till, or to work in industry After probation
period Of two years, citizenship rights may be
restored to them
AS we drove along the country road which
wound over low hills we met professions of
people trudging stoldy. Its Sunday perhaps
they have been to the bazaar in Kuznetsk, we
thought. -H..r
But when reached the Old white church
with its towers and small green cupolas, the
iong-haired priest met at the door " ?
you are just too late, the service is over
ne said