The reconstruction of Minsk is an interesting story reflecting the courage of its builders. In a totalitarian system, great forces can be brought into play under rigid controls and support . . . The architectural planning may be anything but modern, but it is in the manner of almost all Russian cities.
With the airport serving as its eastern boundary, we find a large, spread-out township in appearance, one city only. The skyline pierced with factory booms and chimneys betrays its industrial background; I say “in appearance” because the tallest building here is the nine-story black apparatus house flanking the main street, Prospekt Stalinskaya, which is over two miles long and the only such boulevard in the Republic [of Byelorussia]. All other streets are narrow rock-laid streets, curving through the city like rivers of stone branching off the main street, ending at the other end in extensive parks. The design and content of this prospekt is very reflective of the sites of this city. From north to south, this straight-as-an-arrow vein of the city includes in the first two miles the central district of the city, the Hotel Minsk, and the Main Post Office. The hotel was built in 1957 on the direct orders of Khrushchev, who was grieved at the fact that only one old, dilapidated hotel existed at that time when he paid an official visit to this, the capital of Byelorussia. The hotel was built in three months, a record for the entire Soviet Union, and has over 500 rooms. A modern, well-built, well-serviced hotel, box-shaped, it serves many tourists traveling from Germany and Poland through Minsk to Moscow.
The Post Office handles all mail coming in and out of the city. Built in 1955, it has four columns at its entrance in the Greek style.
Next down the prospekt are a clothing store and children’s store. The central movie house, the best one in Minsk, seats 400 people in a small unventilated hall. Next to it stands a shoe store, across from it the central beauty shop, the main drug store, and orspranon (Russian food store) and furniture store. Next is the Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose head is a tough military colonel, Nikoley Aksionov of the “people’s militia.” He holds the title Minister of Internal Affairs. Around the corner is his subsidiary, the KGB, Committee for Internal Security (Intelligence and Secret Police). Across from the Ministry is the ever-crowded Prospekt Book Shop, and across from this is the even more crowded restaurant, one of five in the city where for two rubles, a person can buy fried tongue or plates of chicken with potatoes and fried cabbage, instead of just kotlets (bread and ground meat patties) or schnitzel (with a little more meat and less bread) and beef steak (pure ground beef patties) served with potatoes and cabbage and sometimes macaroni. These are always served at workers’ dining rooms and stand-up cafés for they open at night. And sometimes sweet rolls, coffee, fall fruits, salads and tomatoes can also be bought. Down from this café called “Springtime” is the bakery shop. Here for 13 kopecks a person can buy unwrapped bread (white), for 7 kopecks, sweet rolls of different kinds, and for 20 kopecks black bread. (The black bread loaf is twice as large as the white, therefore cheaper per kilogram and more in demand. Also, black bread remains fresh for an exceptionally long time due to the hard crust.)
Across from this bakery shop is the confection place. Here is a kid’s dreamland of sweets and chocolate, although owing to the climate, chocolate costs four times as much here as in the U.S. For four ounces one must pay 60 kopecks. Chocolate is much in demand since Russians have a vicious sweet tooth. Here there is always a crowd. Further down, we come to the only department store in Minsk, the GUM, which means “State Universal Store.” Here one may buy anything sold in the smaller specialized stores and sign up on the list for refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, even cars (none of which can be bought anywhere outright). The waiting list for refrigerators (112 million sold from 1952 to 1958) is three months, and the same [length of time] for vacuum cleaners. For cars, the waiting list is anywhere from 6 months to a year, depending on which of the three existing types one puts a down payment on. The Moskvich, which costs 2,500 rubles, is presumed to be the best so the waiting list is almost a year for that; however, the Victory and Volga are a little cheaper and so one can expect it [delivery] after only a six or seven month wait. Cars are bought more or less to order here. The styles are not very impressive. The Moskvich looks like a box on wheels, while the Volga looks like a 1938 Studebaker, which, by the way, is what it is modeled after, “America’s prewar aid.”
Motorcycles and television sets can, however, be bought on the spot for ready cash. A good high-powered motorcycle costs 350 rubles and their quality is apt to be better that that of the more complex automobile. Television sets cost anywhere from 80 rubles for a 6-inch-by-6-inch screen to 350 rubles for a well-made television [with] a 22-inch screen. Other models (light table models) cost 190 and 145 rubles. Here ready-made suits of rough material can be bought. The cheaper style, a double-breasted blue for 110 rubles, or a better-made three-button suit for 250 rubles. [A] jacket costs 40 rubles and two pair of pants for not less than 15 rubles. There are a few cheap ones [jackets?] in stock. They usually cost 30 rubles.
Just before we come to Stalin Square, the end of the central district along the prospekt, we find the two automats, or stand-up cafés. These cafés are located across the prospekt from one another. The internal and external structure is exactly the same at each; both places serve the same dishes at the same prices. Why these were not built at opposite ends of the central district, or even at opposite ends of the square, is not known. Although it would, of course, be more convenient. The reason is [perhaps] that the architectural plans for all the cities in the Soviet Union come directly from Moscow which, as one can imagine, is a big responsibility for the architect. Since in the USSR one pays for a mistake with one’s head, it seems that the logical reason for the standard architecture is that to build the street in [the simplest fashion] is therefore the safest way. Another characteristic and interesting structure in Minsk is the Trade Union Building. This houses an auditorium, offices for the training and costuming of the amateur groups who perform here periodically, and a small dance hall. There is not, as one might assume, the office of any trade union. They do not exist as we know them (since strikes or negotiations for higher pay or better working conditions are not allowed; of course, suggestions may be made by any worker but these are all handled through the local Communist Factory Committee and are passed along or shelved as it suits the Committee). An imposing structure, it looks like a Greek temple with figures atop the V-shaped roof supported by large white marble columns all around. However, a close look reveals not naked Greek gods but, from left to right, a surveyor complete with scope, a bricklayer holding a bucket, a sportswoman in a track suit, and a more symbolic structure of a man in a double-breasted suit holding a briefcase—either a bureaucrat or an intellectual, apparently.
It may be explained that in the Eastern European custom, all citizens upon reaching the age of 16 years are given a gray-green “passport” or identification papers. On the first page is a photo and personal information. On the following four pages are spaces for registering addresses, this including rented rooms. On the next four pages are places for particular remarks as to the conduct of the carrier—a place better kept blank. The next three pages are for registering places of work; then the next page is for marriage licenses and divorce stamps. These passports are changed for a small charge every five years. A lost passport can be replaced after a short investigation for 10 rubles. All persons regardless of nationality are required to carry these at all times. In the Soviet Union, nationalities are also marked on passports. For instance, a Ukrainian is marked Ukrainian; a Jew is marked “Jew” no matter where he was born. An immigrant is listed by place of birth, as is the case of the many immigrants in the USSR. Also on the pages for “special remarks” (usually of a criminal nature) immigrants have a short biography printed, such as: Carlos Ventura, born in Buenos Aires, 1934, resident of Buenos Aires till 1955, occupation student, immigrated to USSR 1956. This is enough to ensure that any and all who read this passport will give Carlos, a
long with any other of his fellow immigrants, the proper treatment and attention so that he never gets too far away from his registered address without a good reason or reaches too high a position at work. But otherwise, immigrants in the USSR, a relatively few French, Spanish, and Eastern Europeans, are treated with more respect than the Russians accord each other . . .
Twelve miles outside of Moscow is a “show” collective farm for foreign tourists who ask to see a genuine, average collective farm. On it is almost every imaginable help to man possible, including automatic milkers, feeders, even automatic floor cleaners. The collective farms at this place, along with their counterparts of the same sort south of Leningrad, have well-built apartment houses with food and clothing stores built right into the first floors.
For the benefit of everyone who doesn’t want to be duped, I suggest you take the Moscow-to-Brest highway for 24 miles until you come to Uesteech, where by asking directions, you can, in five minutes, find a real collective farm, a village of the small black-mud-and-scrap-wood houses seen throughout the Soviet Union. Although it’s 50 minutes from the Kremlin, it doesn’t have electricity or gas. Inside plumbing is unknown and the only automation is that done with a broom. There are 45,000 collective farms in the Soviet Union of this type, as well as 7,400 State farms run directly by the government. Collective farmers and their families number 65.5 million people, or 31.4% of the total population.
True, the collective farmer may own chickens or pigs or even a cow, as well as his own piece of land, usually a quarter of an acre, but the isolation and agonizingly hard work summer and fall offset these “advantages.” Nowadays, although still without electricity, collective farms have wire-fed radio programs and speakers in every house. This is part of the propaganda system instituted by Stalin to “bring the cultural level of outlying collective farms up to the level of the city dweller.” Therefore, although there are no lights, there is always the incessant roar of loudspeakers. School attendance for the children of collective farmers is compulsory, as it is for all children up to the age of maturity, that is, up to the age when they receive their passports, sixteen. Public schools are in general box-shaped 3-story affairs with no particular decoration. Teachers receive 80 rubles a month in these general educational institutions. Discipline, from the students’ viewpoint, is strong. Starting school at the age of seven years, [a student] is taught to keep his Pioneer school costume, which all students must wear, neat in appearance, is taught to stand rigidly at attention when any adult enters the room or when the teacher asks a question. His studies, particularly foreign languages, are apt to be harder and more complex than their American counterparts’. Science is also stressed, as well as patriotism and Soviet history. An attitude toward his studies of complete seriousness is instilled in him at an early age. Young Russian students are apt to appear rather more bookish than Americans . . . .
Public care centers for young and old are an established principle in the USSR. Thousands of rest homes, sanatoria, and hospitals are scattered around the Black and Caspian seas, the “resort area” of the Soviet Union. For any worker to get a reservation to one of these places, he should apply to the factory committee for a pitburov, or ticket reservation, after showing that he has the right to his three weeks’ vacation (thirty days for persons engaged in dangerous occupations or mining). He may buy the “Petrovkso” from Minsk to the Black Sea-Yalta resort area for three weeks at a cost of 70 to 100 rubles, depending on the class of service available. If [he is] a member of the trade unions (a worker pays 1% of his pay earnings as dues every month), he may only have to pay 50% of the total cost if [his vacation] is [booked] at a trade union-built house of rest . . . . Service at these places includes three good, balanced meals a day, the attention of doctors and nurses, sports and sailing facilities, private beaches, excursions, and all necessities.
More modest workers can, however, afford journeys to rest homes nearer home, in the case of Minsk, to Zhomovich, located in [a] pine forest three hours from Minsk. Here the same services, minus the beaches, fruit, and sun, can be had for as little as 25 rubles for two weeks.
The capital of Byelorussia has 12 institutions of higher learning including a university and Polytechnical Institute. These institutions are engaged in turning out highly trained specialists for the national economy. The city has many secondary schools, colleges, vocational, and factory schools. These schools teach a rigorous 5-year course of vocational and political subjects. Hostels for students are located near their respective Institutes, students non-resident in Minsk live here. Often these numbers exceed the rooms available and many have to rent rooms in the city. All rooms, 15 by 15 feet, house 5 to 6 students, with just enough room to allow metal beds to be placed around the walls and a table and chairs in the middle. There is not room enough for closets so clothing is kept in suitcases under beds. Here, except during the three-month summer vacation, students live and study for 5 years. Common rooms with stoves [for cooking] are also available at the rate of one common room per 8 student living-quarters. The cleanliness of linens, rooms, and the entire dormitory falls upon the students. The number of students in the USSR in 1960–61 was 2,396,000. [The] U.S. figure is 1,816,000 or 102 students per 10,000 [population]. All students in higher educational institutions receive stipends or grants of money at the rate of 40 rubles per month regardless of their chosen vocations. For excellent or outstanding grades, a student may receive a maximum of 50 rubles a month. Thus all students are paid to study in the Soviet Union, unlike the United States where students must pay tuition to learn. This is the reason why the Soviet Union turns out almost three times as many engineers (159,000 in 1959), twice as many agronomists, 477,200 technicians and other specialists. This is why the Soviet Union has more doctors per 10,000 population (18.5 in 1960) than any other country in the world. ([The] USA had 12.1 doctors [per 10,000 population] in 1960.) Regardless of the lack of dormitories and crowded living conditions of the students, . . . we could definitely learn from the rigorous and highly specialized educational system of the Soviet Union, a system which jointly and carefully instills political as well as vocational training into each and every student. Just as at the factories and plants, each and every Institute has its corps of Party chiefs, sectional and class, for teachers and professors as well as for students . . .
The radio and television station in Minsk is a four-story cement building located at No. 6 Kalinin Street near the small river Svishloch. Behind it stands the impressive 500-foot steel radio tower, the highest structure in Byelorussia. This radio tower and building are enclosed with high fences and patrolled by armed guards with dogs. Entrance into the courtyard must be through the building itself and persons cannot enter without a special pass shown to an armed guard. Performers are taken to a separate studio near the city center, where the productions and performances are fed back to the station and then to the broadcasting towers. In this way, the all-important communication system is guarded against sabotage or take-overs of the sort often achieved by Latin American counter-revolutionary or malcontent elements.
Near the television tower, 4 blocks east on Dolgabrodskaya Street, stand two more towers, approximately 200 feet each. They are not engaged in broadcasting. Quite the opposite, in fact. These very apparent landmarks with high-power cables strung between them are jamming towers, used to blank out high-frequency broadcasts from abroad. The main targets of these jamming towers are the Munich and Washington transmitters of the Voice of America programs, although they are also sometimes employed to disrupt the BBC and French broadcasts in Russian. These towers are likewise guarded by armed guards and entrance to the wire-enclosed blockhouse and tower area is forbidden except by passes. The amount of voltage used by these towers is known to be tremendous when one considers that necessary lighting at workplaces is only grudgingly turned on, even on cloudy days. It is ironic and sad to think of the tremendous waste, and [the] effort the Soviet Government goes to in order to keep other peoples’ ideas out. But the jamming fr
equencies are only half those of the Radio Moscow propaganda programs which may be heard on any short-wave radio in the United States—and without jamming. These Radio Moscow programs assure people that the Iron Curtain no longer exists, never did exist, and is in general a fictitious slander against the Soviet Union thought up by reactionaries, sic!!* . . .
Other means of distributing propaganda are through the agitpunks or, in English translation, “agitation points.” These are located at desks or in small offices open 16 hours a day. They are manned by volunteer Communist or Young Communist Party members. They are [locations] for the distribution of pamphlets, bulletins, and other Party literature, and for the more or less informal meetings of groups of Communist Party members. Formed in the early 1920s, they were then “points” of armed workers located near each other who could down “White” uprisings or conveniently arrest anyone in the neighborhood. Now their functions have slightly changed but it’s still known that any member may come in and report disloyal comments in an unguarded moment on the part of any citizen—there is always a telephone handy here. In Minsk there are only 12 movie houses but 58 agitpunks in the telephone book. They can be recognized at a distance by red flags and banners draped over the doors and windows of the respective buildings.
The Young Communist League or YCL embraces all young people from the age of 16, as soon as they outgrow the children’s Pioneer League. Ninety percent of all persons between the ages of 16 to 26 belong to this organization, although they may attain Party membership as early as 19 or 20 years [of age]. Signed on as soon as they receive their passports at 16, they receive a YCL Party ticket and must pay small dues of 70 or 80 kopecks a month. After this, they are obliged to attend YCL meetings, go on harvesting trips on weekends during the fall to collective farms to help bring in the potatoes and grain, and to keep their studies up to high standards. A violation of conduct or refusal to toe the line will result in expulsion from the League and is a block to personal progress in the Soviet Union. Membership is considered a reference in hiring in factories or in institutions reviewing requests for a place at higher educational institutions, but expulsions are fairly common, about 20% being expelled before reaching the age where they may be chosen for Communist Party membership. A young student may become rather popular and powerful by being elected to the post of YCL secretary in his class at school or at work. A sure way to success is to remain at this post in one’s local school or Institute, maintaining high standards of marks and discipline until chosen for Party membership. In this way, young people get a taste of what the Party can do for them if they have the right attitude. At our shop, the YCL secretary is Arkady, a tall handsome lively Russian of 24 with a broad grin. He reminds one of a Texas or Oklahoma boy. His father is a minor bureaucrat, while his mother works as a nurse. Therefore, they have a full three-room apartment. His brother, also a YCL member, is the youngest and last member of this family group. Arkady has worked at this factory for 5 years after serving his 3 years in the navy in the Black Sea. He was only recently elected to the post of YCL secretary in our shop after the former person received CP membership. Usually an easy-going fellow if you don’t get him riled, he takes his YCL duties seriously, collecting dues on every other payday (which are the 5th and 20th of the month) of 1% of the total paycheck, that is, 1% of 80 rubles, 80 kopecks. He checks off names and is responsible for turning in the cash to the factory YCL Committee and for helping to draw up the list of drozhniks who shall have the duty during the month. Drozhniks are “volunteer” civilians who patrol streets and parks as peace- and order-keepers. They are given a special card which they carry and when on duty wear red armbands . . . Drozhniks always walk in groups of threes and fours; often women and girls are seen in this capacity. This custom is relatively new and is not generally used except on Saturdays and Sundays, when there are boisterous groups of teenagers and a large number of drunks to be seen. Both these types of groups are on the downturn at least partly due to these “volunteer” efforts. Besides helping to draw up the list of drozhniks in their respective shops, the YCL secretaries are expected to set high examples of work and political “propriety” to their fellow workers and to help the shop and section leaders get to know their workers . . .