Primer by Denny

In order to write a series of plain and simple dispatches setting forth in primer fashion how things are today in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the New York Times's Moscow correspondent No. 2, careful Harold Denny, recently went on leave to Paris and last week was typing busily. Uncensored, he dealt with such Russian fundamentals as:

Wages: ". . . In twenty years the revolution has made so little progress toward emancipation--if it has not. indeed, retrogressed--that the Soviet worker is among the most exploited in the world. . . . And the State has proved that it can be as hard a taskmaster as any capitalist boss and can enforce its will with a police power infinitely stronger than any coal or iron police or venal 'company' sheriff in the United States.

" 'Surplus value,' which is one of the foundation stones of Marx's philosophy--the amount that the worker gives the employer in labor above what is received--is exacted in the Soviet system too. In Russia that surplus value is being used to extend capital construction, to build up a military establishment and to maintain a swollen army of bureaucratic functionaries who probably consume more of the workers' toil than the proprietor class in capitalism. . . . Inefficiency holds down the wages that the Soviet can pay--and it, like any capitalist employer must make a profit or go out of business--and enormously increases the cost of everything the Soviet citizen buys. It makes [the worker's] real wage extremely low. And the quality of almost everything he buys is so bad that the goods could not compete with capitalistically produced goods for a minute in any free market."

Freedom: "There is a range and vitality to the Soviet arts that is far superior to the fare available in Germany, for instance. Yet, as in Germany, the Soviet theatre is largely presenting classics. Few original works of value have appeared since the revolution. . . .

"Conceding what I believe to be true--that the Soviet regime is sincerely doing all it can materially for the people as a whole--it has, nevertheless, utterly eradicated freedom of expression on any except the most innocuous topics. . . . The result is an intellectual servility, a sycophancy, a hypocrisy that is simply degrading."

Employment: "There is no unemployment now simply because there is a constant labor shortage. . . . The labor shortage has been made more acute by the fact that inefficiency, bureaucracy and the prevalence of parasitic functionaries have greatly reduced labor productivity. Foreign engineers have estimated that four times as many persons, or more, are required under Soviet conditions to turn out a given production as are required in the United States. . . . But industry is going badly from top to bottom. . . . The Soviet has given industry everything in materials, but has failed to give the most important thing of all--freedom to executives to use their own initiative and to make their own decisions, confident that if a high percentage of decisions are correct an occasional error will be forgiven. In the Soviet an executive error may land a good man in prison under terrible charges of wrecking. ..."

Resources: "In any judgment of Russia one must bear in mind that the country itself is enormously large and enormously rich, with every essential raw material and adequate food supplies. It must be remembered also that the Russian people have enormous powers of resistance. They can 'take it,' else they would never have survived the frightful years through which they have passed.

"Whereas a year ago the Soviet authorities were shooting the bearers of names famous in Bolshevism and less than three months ago the greatest generals the Red Army had developed were executed, now the Government has got down to shooting cooks as terrorists because they put rotten meat in officials' stew, and women attendants in a nursery for poisoning children's foods for counter-revolutionary purposes.

"Untold thousands more have been arrested in every part of the Soviet Union. . . . The people have become used to it. Their sensibilities have been dulled, and, I think, there is a certain fatalism in their attitude."

The Constitution and the Reason: Stalin gave Russia last year "The Most Democratic Constitution in the World" (TIME, Dec. 7 et seq.) under which the first parliamentary elections are soon to be held. In his primer the Times's, Denny opined: "There is a strong suspicion in Moscow that the election campaign and the purge [executions] are related. With every one who has ever opposed Stalin dead, exiled or imprisoned, the election can be held in perfect safety. . . .

"The political police have retained one all-important right of which little is known outside Russia. This is the right of administrative exile. The political police, without recourse to a court at all, may exile a person for five years to any place they wish. Such exile may be only from the principal cities, in which case the exiled person may lead a reasonably comfortable life and earn his living anywhere else. Or it may be to some dreaded place such as Solovetsky or some wretched Siberian camp. Such five-year exile sentences, I am told, can be renewed indefinitely, so it is possible to keep a person imprisoned, or virtually imprisoned, for life without a trial and without public announcement. . . .

"Thus it is evident that the supreme Soviet authority has ample means by which to dispose of anybody it wishes despite the new Constitution."

Correspondent Denny was not thrown out of Russia last summer after the Times had printed the remarkably frank series of dispatches he smuggled out uncensored (TIME, July 5). "So far as I know," he said last week in Paris, "I am going back to Moscow.'' After all, Mr. Denny is the Times's No. 2. Its No. 1, famed Walter Duranty, consistently writes up Stalin and his State in terms such that a high Soviet official recently declared in Moscow: "We consider the New York Times the best newspaper in the United States!"

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