Free Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy MacLean Page B

40,000 must have been a typical Russian provincial town. Now, twenty years later, it could boast a population of close on half a million. Some of the old churches and official buildings still survived but the latter were completely outnumbered and overshadowed by the vast modern constructions which had sprung up of recent years and were still springing up: factories, department stores, Government buildings, cinemas, clubs and blocks of flats.
    Seen, or, better still, photographed, from a distance these were impressive both on account of their size and of their up-to-date design. But little attention had been paid to detail. From nearby or from inside the new buildings were considerably less impressive, shoddily constructed and roughly finished. Indeed in many respects they compared unfavourably with the more solidly built and better-finished houses of the old regime. Sverdlovsk had manifestly been modernized in a hurry and the fine asphalted streets of sub-skyscrapers tended to tail off into muddy lanes of wooden shacks. In the outlying parts of the town where the majority of the working population lived there were no paved streets and no stone or brick houses; nothing but mud and hovels.
    But in spite of these imperfections, Sverdlovsk gave an impression of energy and progress. The new factories seemed to be working day and night and, although the finest blocks of flats were of course reserved for the new bourgeoisie of Party members, high officials and highly paid skilled workers, a considerable number of more modest buildings were being built to provide accommodation for a considerable proportion of the population and do something to relieve the appalling housing shortage.
    Shopping facilities seemed to be confined to one street and indeed to one shop, an enormous Universalmag (State department store). This, by Soviet standards, was well fitted, while the selection of goods for sale was no worse than that to be found in Moscow stores and the prices roughly equivalent to those current in Moscow. As usual, the counters at which the necessities of life were on sale were besieged by a seething crowd of anxious would-be purchasers while there was far less demand for fancy goods and ‘luxuries’. In the side-streets the usual queues were waiting outside the kerosene and bread shops. In Sverdlovsk as in every other Soviet town half at least of the shop-windows were filled with Soviet-made scent and soaps.
    Considerable attention seemed to have been paid to providing amusements for the population or rather for the portion of it which has the time and money to be amused. One of the most striking modern buildings was the ‘Dynamo’ sports club, an organization with branches all over the Union, whose members are drawn from the new Soviet
jeunesse dorée
. A fine neo-classical building which was presumably the Governor’s residence under the old regime has been converted into a school and Communist Boy Scouts’ Club and the garden in front of it into a playground for the children. Near a new basalt-faced block of Government offices and flats for Government officials was a large new cinema and dance hall and there were other cinemas and theatres in other parts of the town. On the outskirts, an attractive ‘Park of Rest and Culture’ was being laid out on a large scale in a pine wood on the shores of a lake.
    But, in spite of all these means of recreation, the crowds which thronged the badly paved streets looked uniformly and profoundly depressed. Almost all were poorly clothed, badly shod industrial workers or rather industrialized peasants. The smartly dressed members of the new bourgeoisie, so conspicuous in Moscow, were few and far between.
    On the whole I felt little inclination to linger in Sverdlovsk and it was with feelings of relief that, after rising at three in the morning and waiting for some hours on the station platform, I learned that there was one vacant berth on the incoming train to Novosibirsk. I decided to