Red Notes

Knives & Needles. Frightened sick people in the Ukraine kept on trudging to Comrade Dr. Nelski despite his nickname, "The Slasher." With 600 major operations to his credit up to last week, he reigned as Chief Surgeon of a group of Soviet hospitals at Kiev. Nurses sometimes fainted at the gory gusto of his "carving." But always Comrade Dr. Nelski sewed up his gaping incisions with admirable neatness -- as neatly as a cobbler stitching uppers to a sole. Last week a stern Kiev judge sentenced "The Slasher" to six years in jail. He had confessed that his real name is Ivan Kolesnikov, his true profession shoemaking. Eight years ago, amid the chaos of post-Revolution Russia, he stole the diploma and paraphernalia of a certain assassinated Dr. Nelski, palmed himself off as a surgeon on ignorant Tashkenters. "I looked upon him as a man of practical efficiency," testified Kiev's Comrade Health Director, and four Health Inspectors stoutly praised the Slasher. All were arrested, will be tried for "criminal incompetence," probed to see if they have taken bribes from shrewd Cobbler Kolesnikov. Stars & Stripes. Raucous foghorns and tooting whistles dinned a welcome last week across the harbor of Novorossiisk, bustling Black Seaport. Slowly in steamed the little S. S. Exford, flying stars, stripes. Excited Soviet stevedores cheered. Now there would be more work, plenty of tchervontzi (banknotes, 1 tchz. = $5.13) to earn. The little Exford, owned by Manhattan's pioneering American Export Line, hove into Novorossiisk as the first ship of the first direct and regular service to be established between the U. S. and Russia since the War. Other A. E. L. ships will follow at ten-day intervals, crossing the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Sea in a total of 30 days, stopping at Novorossiisk, Batum and Odessa. Collectivization Day. Every autumn there is fierce squabbling and often fistic battle between Russian farmers and the Soviet grain collectors empowered to cart away the surplus portion of their crops. The collectors pay a fixed low price for what they take, perhaps a fifth of what the grain fetches at clandestine sales. Vexed peasants long ago tried "passive resistance," refused to sow more than enough grain for their personal needs. But ruthless Dictator Joseph Stalin is outsmarting the peasants with a policy called "Confiscation & Collectivization." Last week he celebrated "Collectivization Day" while mujiks glowered and grumbled. When a peasant does not sow and reap on all his land it may be confiscated by the Government, proclaimed a "collectivist farm," and thereafter worked by communized cultivators who may or may not include the former owner. Last week the Government announced that 3% of all peasant farms in Russia have been thus collectivized. Five million communized yokels now toil on 60,000 collective farms comprising what were once more than 1,000,000 peasant homesteads. In these "Grain Factories" snort Ford tractors.