"As You Like"

However lustily it is beaten back with proletarian hammer & sickle, bourgeois human nature will out. Recently, in an eloquent letter to the editor of Moscow's folksy evening daily, Vechernyaya? Moskva, crusading Lieut. Colonel V. Kotko self-righteously attacked one aspect of this un-Marxian state of affairs--tipping.

Wrote Kotko: "New social relations . . . make it revolting to see some remnants of the old degrading habits still present. You get a shave in a barbershop, and before you have a chance to get to the door an agile little man makes several passes at you with his clothesbrush, allegedly depriving you of nonexistent bits of hair. Having completed this 'labor,' he looks at you expectantly. The man in charge of the wardrobe hands you your coat with the same expectant look in his eyes.

"If they work on 300 visitors who each give 50 kopecks," Colonel Kotko calculated bitterly, "that makes 150 rubles additional income daily." (A highly skilled industrial worker makes 100 rubles a day.)

Everywhere in Moscow, it seems, it is the same shocking story. At the theater: "Binoculars are offered and a question about price is answered, 'As you like.' You take a program and again hear, 'Whatever you want to give.' ... All this is done so sweetly and politely ... It is disgusting because it is so degrading, and often it is just an easy but dishonest way to profiteer.

"No lenient attitude toward such happenings is permissible."

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