The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (61 page)

We walked around part of the farm. There was no running water in any of the houses but they all had electricity and I frequently saw a one-burner electric plate on top of an old wood range. Toilet and bathing facilities were old-fashioned—usually a privy and a bathhouse.

Every inch of land seemed to be in use. Even where small fruit trees had been planted there were growing crops. The farm had a maternity hospital and a baby clinic but, in case of serious illness, the farm people went to hospitals in Tashkent. There was a nursery, a kindergarten and a school. Children were taken care of at these institutions while their parents worked in the fields, but nursing mothers could leave their work and go to the nursery at stated hours when feedings were given.

The manager of the farm said that there had been a steady increase in production in recent years, but this collective also had increased in size and it was difficult to know whether it was operating more efficiently and getting a greater yield from the land or had just acquired more acreage. Later, in Moscow, I talked about farm production with Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, who was making his third visit to Russia. He was interested in Russian agriculture and had been in the new area in Soviet Asia where a large region was being plowed up or the first time.

The senator felt that there was serious danger that the new land might turn into a dust bowl as happened in parts of our Southwest after the protective grass had been stripped from the plains. He said he had written a letter to Mr. Khrushchev warning him of this danger, but that the Communist party chief had not seemed to pay any attention. Later, talking to a deputy minister of agriculture, I asked him about this problem, but he said that a thorough investigation had been made before the land was plowed up and that the top soil was found to be more than three feet deep.

The Russians, incidentally, had imported some of the famous Santa Gertrudis beef cattle from the King Ranch in Texas for breeding purposes. They had been shipped to Russia several years earlier and I was told that they had disappeared. I was curious about them and eventually inquired at the Ministry of Agriculture about what had happened to them.

“Oh, they are the special pets of the minister,” I was told. “They were shipped to the southern part of the Ukraine and they are still there and thriving. They have also had plenty of little ones!”

The College of Music and similar institutions illustrate how the Communists operate. Forty years ago there were no music schools in the area and the songs of the region were handed down from generation to generation. Then Moscow decided that it was important to preserve the culture of each of its republics and this was an example of how they were doing it. The college in Tashkent has 350 students and 150 teachers, who constantly watch for gifted young people so that they can become teachers or enter a musical career anywhere in the Soviet Union. The state provides 6 million rubles a year to operate the college, which also had sponsored some 30 theaters for students of drama in the Uzbek Republic.

On Sundays Tashkent was alive with music. There were little squares where singers gathered on platforms to entertain whoever happened to stroll by. There were dancers and musicians, too, and the crowds wandered about from one place to another, listening to the music.

We made a quick trip by air to Samarkand, and were met by two women, who were local officials, and a historian, who told us much about this capital city of Tamerlane. The government has spent heavily to restore some of the old buildings in the “blue city” and there are wonderful old tombs with colored inlays on their façades, including the tomb of the first wife of the Mongol conqueror and the tomb of Mohammed’s cousin. Earthquakes had destroyed many of the buildings but there were still two domes of an extraordinary blue color. There is also a large hospital for bone tuberculosis, which we visited and where I was impressed by the docility of the children.

The most important things I learned about the Soviet Union—and the things that may be most difficult for democratic peoples everywhere to comprehend—came to a focus when I visited the city of Leningrad. I had been absorbing various ideas from the time I landed in Moscow and was gradually approaching certain conclusions on the basis of what I had seen and heard. But it was at the Leningrad medical school, which puts great emphasis on pediatrics, that I really saw what was happening in Russia and what this may mean in the world-wide struggle between Communism and democracy.

The influence of Dr. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a physiologist and experimental psychologist, on the Russians today is tremendous. I knew vaguely that, before his death in 1936, Dr. Pavlov had conducted many experiments and made extensive studies of conditioned reflexes and that the Soviet government had built a special laboratory for him. But I had not realized until I saw some of the results of his work at Leningrad and elsewhere that he may well prove to be far more famous in history as the father of a system that seems to be turning the masses of Russia into completely disciplined and amenable people.

I had told the Intourist people that I would like to go to the institute of medicine oriented toward pediatrics, where I could see their methods of handling children. At the institute they asked if I would like to see an experiment. Thirty-two children taken at birth from lying-in hospitals, whose parents had died or abandoned them, were being trained. The purpose of the training was to see whether they could develop in an institution and be as advanced, healthy and happy as in an ordinary home.

The nursery was well equipped. While the head teacher and several doctors watched with me, one of the nurses, a solid, friendly young woman in white uniform and cap, demonstrated the kind of training given the babies. It was here, I later realized, that the Pavlov theories were being put into practice. The same pattern is followed in all nurseries and also by mothers training their children at home.

A six-month-old baby was brought to the nurse for his daily conditioning. The routine was simple—to hold two rings out to the baby and persuade him to pull on them as the first step in the exercises. I noticed that the baby already knew what was coming and what he was supposed to do. He held out his hands to grasp the rings as soon as he saw the nurse. Then, after holding tightly to the rings throughout the exercise, he dropped them without being given any signal and shifted to the next exercise. This was using his legs and he went through the routine without any direction from the nurse. Then he lay rigid, waiting to be picked up by his heels and exercised on his head. After that the nurse picked him up and hugged and kissed him and spent some time playing with him as any mother might do with a small baby.

This attitude of affection and loving care was customary, I observed, with children of all ages at all the institutions that I visited. The next group I saw consisted of four children about a year and a half old, who went through a more complicated routine. They came in, like a drill team, took off their shoes, put them neatly in a row and pulled out a bench from the wall. One after the other, they crawled along the bench, then walked on it, then crawled under it. Then they climbed up on exercise bars. They knew exactly what to do and when to do it, like clockwork, and when they had finished the routine each one walked over and sat on the lap of a nurse. The nurse lowered them down backwards to the floor and pulled them up again in another exercise. Then the children put on their shoes, put the bench back in place and went out. This kind of training in behavior goes on year after year as the children grow up.

What, I asked myself, does this mean in ordinary life outside the nursery or schoolroom? And as I watched the children I knew that I had already seen some of the answers in the conduct of the Russian people, the generations that are growing up or have grown up since Dr. Pavlov conducted his experiments and drew his conclusions about the conditioning of reflex action.

Because of lifelong conditioning, the government can depend on the mass of the people—there will always be exceptions—to react in a certain way to certain stimuli. The Russians today are a disciplined, well-trained people; not a happy people, perhaps, but not likely to rise up against their rulers.

But more than this—much more—Americans should never forget that by controlling the entire economy the Soviet dictatorship can use this disciplined people to do things that are difficult if not impossible in our free economy. The Communist leaders are aware of this power and know how to use it. They put far more emphasis and far more money into scientific and research projects, for example, than we do. To take just one field of endeavor: in 1956 the Russian schools graduated about 26,000 doctors. In the United States, we graduated about 6,500.

In the Soviet Union free medical care appeared to be one of the things most highly valued by the people. The Health Ministry has agencies throughout the country but the rules are made in Moscow, with some adjustments for local conditions. To become a doctor one must attend school for ten years and then study at medical school for six years and then give three years of work to the state. The emphasis at first was placed on public-health doctors. After completing his work for the state a doctor may choose his specialty and have three more years of training. I was interested to discover that a doctor is not supposed to work more than a six-hour day.

The whole Soviet Union is divided into health districts. We visited one district center in Leningrad for the care of mothers and children. It deals only with healthy children. Those who are ill are sent to a hospital. The district has 19,000 children. There are three nurseries in the city and four outside where children are sent for a more healthful atmosphere. There are 18 kindergartens and 11 schools in the district. The district medical staff of 91 persons includes 51 doctors, each of whom spends two hours in the center and four hours making calls. They told us that only one child under a year old had died in the district in 1956 and only four children under sixteen had died. There was no venereal disease and no prostitution in the district. It is significant to note that there are more than 35 such centers in Leningrad alone, with 2,000 doctors devoting themselves purely to preventive medicine.

We later visited Sochi, far to the south on the Black Sea, where there are 50 sanitariums owned by government-run industries or by trade unions. If a doctor certifies the need for a worker to go to a sanitarium during his month’s vacation, 70 per cent of the cost of his care is paid by the union. The worker pays for his transportation, at a specially low rate, and also pays 30 per cent of his expenses during this vacation period. In cases of serious illness, the time spent in a special hospital or sanitarium is not counted as vacation time.

At Sochi there is a remarkable arrangement that permits either men or women workers going to the sanitariums to take along their spouses, but at extra cost. I saw many husbands and wives enjoying the beautiful beach at Sochi, lying in the sun or swimming. The people spend much time and thought preparing for their holidays; in fact, I never realized how important vacations were until I heard them discussed so fervently in the Soviet Union.

I have written mostly about agriculture and medicine in Russia, but the government is just as keenly aware of the need for research and for generous financing in other scientific fields. There was in Moscow with us an American, Seth Jackson, who was a member of a United Nations delegation visiting Russia to study problems of forestry, particularly logging. He was a technical expert from our Department of Forestry, and it was his opinion that Russia was ahead in forestry research.

“The Soviet Union has surveyed all of its forests through the efforts of the Institutes for Research in Forestry,” he said. “There are twelve such institutes in this country and they have steadily improved the machinery used for logging and other purposes. The United States hasn’t ever mapped all of its forests.”

There was another thing that interested me in regard to the Soviet encouragement of scientific progress. Able students have been given every opportunity to work freely, but I wondered what right they had been given to think. So I asked one scientist about it.

“Oh, we are encouraged to think freely just as we are given every encouragement to work,” he replied, with a smile. “We are free to discuss, to challenge and to think whatever we please.” But if you ask any of them a political question, they invariably reply, “We know nothing about politics.”

Later in Moscow I had an interesting meeting with the Committee of Soviet Women, who were trying to arrange for an invitation to the United States. “Why is it so difficult,” one of them asked, “for us to get visas to visit your country? We have been trying for two years to arrange a visit through the State Department but have failed miserably.”

“Are you sure,” I asked, “that your own government would give you permission to leave Russia?”

“Certainly,” she said. “We have been given unequivocal assurances from our own government.”

I told them that I would try to get a group from the National Council of Women of the United States to look into the problem and possibly take some action at the State Department. These women had a great desire to see America and I felt sure that it would benefit us to have a greater interchange between the Russian people and our own people. We have completely different backgrounds and our lives are completely different. But we have to see to understand. Possibly after seeing America they would prefer their own way of life but such interchanges might lead us to sufficient understanding to work out the kind of peaceful coexistence our leaders talk about but seem unable to achieve.

There was one other phase of the conditioning of the Russian people that I observed everywhere I went in the Soviet Union, and it is one of particular importance to Americans at present. The most familiar symbol in the country is the dove of peace. You see it wherever you go. I saw it painted on the sides of trucks on the streets; I looked down from the tower of Moscow University and saw a great white dove outlined in stone in the lawn. It was on posters in distant villages. The finale of a circus I attended featured the release of a flock of doves over the audience, following a patriotic speech.