The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-08-24
Youth in U.S.S.R.
Through Fascist
Sbectacles
YOUTH IN SOVIET RUSSIA, by
Klaus Mehnert. Harcourt, Brace
and Company, So.
Reviewed by GEORGE LEWIS

@ ONAAAP NAAJB Vs.
Reviewed by GEORGE LEWIS
Klaus Mehnert was born in Rus
STA in 1906. Eight years later his
family moved to Germany, where
he has lived ever since. He made
trips through the Soviet Union on
many occasions. He speaks Rus
sian fluently. He has many friends
among the Komsomols young
Communist League members). In
1882, on the basis of his extensive
knowledge, he published a book, in
German, called youth in Soviet
Russia" now translated into Eng
lish.
The book is full of facts, written
clearly, with great pains taken by
the author not to tell lies. The his
DRY of the Komsomol is a splendid
chapter. How many know that in
May, 1917, in Petrograd, young
workers were organized into a
league of "Work and Light" whose
manifesto began with, SIT cannot be
the business of youth to take part
in the struggle against capitalism?
Mehner tells US how the Bolshevik
party worked inside this league to
head off this budding fascist youth
movement.
The youth communes. the litera-
ture of the Soviet youth, their edu-
cation, their work on the collective
farm, their morality and culture"
facts on all of these are given by
Mehnert with great efforts to be
truthful.
1t is surprising what pains Meh-
merit takes to tell the truth. Surpris-
ing because from &, very first chap
ter the reader is made aware of
Mehnert's fundamental hostility to
the proletarian revolution.
Here is a bright young man con-
fronted with heroic achievements
which he cannot and does not deny.
Yet his bright young mind has been
so poisoned with the bourgeois
poison of idealistic philosophy that
he sees in this great mass socialist
construction not the forces liber-
ated from capitalist oppression but
the product of an advertising cam
paign. In the Soviet system, he
writes "the production and exploit
tation of emotional tension are
cleverly calculated means of state
craft"
Slogans Are Not Sausages
If an advertising scheme is all
that is needed, then Hoover's "Buy
Now" campaign would have solved
the crisis long ago. The American
bourgeoisie is now trying to tell
the American workers that the crisis
will be ended by putting a blue
eagle in every store window. Hit
ler's publicity machine is grinding
out slogans every day like sausages.
But slogans are not sausages.
blue eagle in every store window is
not a chicken in every pot. The
Five Year Plan has nothing in COM
mon with the schemes of capitalist
witch-doctors.
Mehnert is a bright young man
He writes that ''it is impossible to
be neutral in Russia" But he
thinks that it is possible to be neu-
trail anywhere else. In Germany,
for example. There, he believes,
there is no class struggle. In Ger
many, he believes, victory can be
achieved only if the struggle is
fought, not by one class alone, but
all healthy and selfless forces
among workers, bourgeois and
peasants"
Mr.. Mehnert says he doesn't be-
lieve in catchwords like Capitalism"
or Socialism" But he wants "vic-
tory" Whose victory? TIL e
slogan that Mr.. Mehnert believes
in, of being neither for nor against
Bolshevism, but for Germany" (the
emphasis is Mehert's) has led to the
temporary victory" of Hitler.
Mehnert recognizes that capital
ism has been tried and found want
ing. He admits the question of I'M
employment cannot be solved. Yet
he rejects the dictatorship of the
proletarian. 1t worked in Russia
That he admits. But in Europe we
must have, he tells US, European
solution"
We were once told that Russia
is not advanced enough for pro-
letarian revolution. Now Mehnert
tells US that Germany is too adj
vanced for the Marxist principles
of class struggle. Any argument
will do for one who, at the cost Of
mass hunger and mass murder, still
insists on a capitalist fascist ecu
ropean solution"