The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-02-08
Plenty to Drag
About in This
Soviet City
BY L. MARTIN

finest in the Soviet Union, with
five floors of clubroons, an audi
forum seating 1000, huge windows
that make it bright as day inside,
a restaurant, gymnasium-and the
interior decorated by the finest ar
lists in the Ukraine.
When we paid visit, the wreck
ers hadn't got around to pulling
down miserable little hovel squat
ting on the same lot where the new
club towers. So there it stood, a
study in contrasts-the capitalist
past and the Soviet future.
Only a few years ago the whole
city of Kharkov was at much the
same level as that hovel. 1t was
a dirty little trading city Of 10000,
its growth retarded not only by
feudal conditions but by Russian
oppression of the Ukraine. The
Ukrainians suffered a double eX-
ploitation, not only as workers and
peasants but as members Of sub
ject nation.
TO get an idea of their conditions,
l visit the Polish Ukraine today,
where Polish capitalism prevents
UrainianS from making any eco
nomic advance, forbids the use Of
their language in schools and
shoots them down if they protest.
A capitalist press correspondent
this summer asked a Polish govern
lnent official why nothing had been
given out about a recent slaughter
of scores of Ukrainian peasants by
Polish troops. He was told that
Ukrainian peasant uprisings in Po-
land and their suppression were no
longer news.
GROWTH
Kharkov suffered, too, during the
civil war that followed the Rus
sian Revolution, falling into the
hands of Denikin and other white
guardistS. Only after the Russian
Ukraine was liberated from these
capitalist paid hordes and a Soviet
Republic established did Kharkov
begin its present growth.
Today Kharkov's population has
grown from 10000 to 100000. 1t
is a center of heavy industry and
administrative capital of the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Its
southern railway station, once used
by 10000 passengers a day, now
serves 25O,O0O a day. And Khar-
kov continues to grow at the same
breathless pace.
TRAVEL south from New York or
1 Chicago about as far as 1t is
from Moscow to Kharkov. Here,
too, you will find a change in the
majority of the population, even
greater than the change from Rus
slams to Ukrainians. Not only are
eyes darker, but skins are darker,
too. Here is q warn1-blooded peo-
pie from sunny lands, with racial
genius as different as can be from
that of the colder whites.
This Negro people, who are the
majority in Alabama, Tennessee,
Mississippi and the rest Of what is
called the BLACK Belt" now groan
under conditions even worse than
those Of the Ukrainians under
Czarist rule. They, too, are doubly
exploited, not only as workers, ten
ant farmers or sharecroppers, but
as members Of subject race.
Their cities, or the Jim Crow sec
lions of the white mems towns, are
as every bit as low level as was
old Kharkov. They have been kept
in these conditions by brute force
the terror of the Ku Klux Khan
and lynching bee, and the legal VIC
lence of the white mans law.
The Soviet Ukraine was freed by
the joint revolutionary efforts of
the Russian and Ukrainian work
ing classes under Communist lead
ership. And since then the
Ukrainian workers and peasants
free to rule themselves, to use their
own language and develop their
own culture, free at any time to
separate from the rest of the Soviet
Union, but finding more advantage
in remaining in a free federation
of workers republics-have shown
how great civilization they can
build. In the spirit of revolution
airy competition the workers OF
Kharkov are always eager to go
Moscow one better. And the two
cities are running pretty close
race in the matter of progress.
experimentation
FOR NEGROES
One day the Negro workers and
poor farmers Of America, in alli-
ance with their exploited class
brothers of the white races, will
win their freedom, too, through a
Soviet revolution. They will then
be free TO develop their country,
the so-called Black Belt Of Amer
lea, as the Ukrainians are develop
ing theirs. The hideouS novels
and shantytoWrs of the South will
disappear, as such novels are dis
appearing in Kharkov, and Negro
cities and Negro culturs will be free
to grow in comfort and beauty.
Only the Communist Party, unit
ing in its ranks Negro and white
workers, as 1t lnites the workers
Of every race, has raised the slogan
Of the self-deter1nination of the
Black Belt--the right Of the Ne
groes to run a country Of their own
in that region where they form
the majority Of the population.
Only through a Communist revolu-
ton will this goal be achieved, as
the freeing OF the subject peoples
has been achieved in the Soviet
Union.