The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-10-26
By Burck

vantages and gains both cultural
and material that the revolution
brought to artists, but the anxious
care of the freed working class of
the Soviet Union, with its magnifi-
cent rush forward, with its face to
the future, that, nevertheless, Moth
ing of the old that is worth any
thing shall ever be allowed to
perish.
Studies DramaticS
To match him, there stood for
ward from among the udarniks, not
only the young poet, Filatov men
toned above, but a girl of 20, VAL
entina Romanova, daughter of a
worker in the mill, graduate herself
of the Factory and Mill Appren-
tice School and of course a good
worker, technically. She is a crane
driver. But in her spare time, in
the dramatic circle of the club of
the mill workers, she had made
such progress, shown such talent,
that she is not only we'll known in
all of the plays these amateurs put
on, but is being sent next year for
course in a school of drama, to
be a professional actress.
Such cases of the recognition and
promotion of talent are common
everyday experiences in the life of
workers in the Soviet Union, and I
do not mean to make them the
special theme of this article. What
the reader should see here, though,
in all this is picture of the in
herent democracy of the social sys-
tenn. Where under capitalism will
you find radio companies rushing to
broadcast the social functions, the
parties, of workers, find them rec
ognizing good workers as heroes of
the community whom every one
vans to hear about? Where else
but in the country where workers
rule would such things be news?
Where in capitalism would you
find workers, among themselves,
discussing and settling problems of
the sort that were discussed here,
or deciding what radio programs
should be given? Where else are
workers taking up as serious prob
lem of their lives the relation be-
tween classical and folk music?
Certainly not in America, where
the problem is much more likely to
be the question of resisting wage
cut, the question of how to make
ends meet under currency initiation,
the questions of layoff, discharge,
high prices, low wages, unpaid
rents, dispossesS notices.
The very nature of the problems
discussed by Soviet workers in their
leisure hours, in their parties, is an
indication of the difference in the
social system. Here the bread and
butter problem is settled, there is
no danger of wage cuts or unem-
ployment. Here the worker is in
terested in production and becomes
hero in the community by raising
production, not because it may save
him from starvation but because it
guarantees more and more of the
good things of life. Here he has
already time and inclination to
seriously discuss music, to sing
about lilacs in the mill.
He knows that he gained this new
position through the success of the
volution against capitalism,
through the abolition of capitalism,
and he is preparing to celebrate
that victory with tremendous dem
onstrations next month. Here he
knows that it is the workers state
that preserves these fruits of vic
tory, and he is preparing next
month to re-elect from his own
midst the Soviets that are his in
struments of rule in that state. 1t
is almost certain that among that
group of udarniks arguing at
Kaisik's party there will be some
of the legislators of the Soviet
State, for one of the slogans of the
approaching elections is: Send the
Best Udarniks to the Soviets!"