Babbitt Bolsheviks

J. Stalin is almost the only Big Red not yet met by new U. S. Ambassador to the U. S. S. R. & Mrs. Joseph Edward Davies, who by last week had definitely hit their stride in Moscow. Considering that most diplomats and their wives in the Soviet capital figure as "Capitalist spies" in the Communist press, it was notable last week that such prominent Soviet wives as Perfume Trust Manager Zhemchuzhina* and the spouse of Assistant Foreign Commissar Nikolai Krestinsky should have taken Mrs. Davies socially in tow on a round of Moscow creches and factory restaurants while Ambassador Davies, his daughter Emlen and his valet went off to inspect the Ukraine. It was not that Mrs. Davies, the extremely rich General Foods heiress, is known in Russia for her notable philanthropies--on which she did not cut down during Depression, while she did cut down on her parties, one of which included elephants from Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus, and cooch dancers./- Moscow does not care about the 700 free meals daily in Manhattan's slums for which Mrs. Davies, who provided such amenities as "second helpings" and small tables at which impoverished families could eat together en famille, became known as "The Lady Bountiful of Hell's Kitchen." It is also immaterial to Bolsheviks that the American Flag Association, impressed by Mrs. Davies' vigor in helping its drive against U. S. crime, asked Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt to perform the act of dubbing her "The Lady of the Flag." Nor do the Russians care that Ambassador Davies was born so poor he had to help pay his way through the University of Wisconsin Law School by working as a physical instructor. The Bolsheviks seemed to like Ambassador & Mrs. Davies simply for their frank and friendly Capitalism--impressive to Russians who are always taken by "sincerity," their favorite virtue.

In the two scant months the Davieses have been in Moscow (TIME, Feb. 1), the friendly U. S. Ambassador has made it a practice to tell Bolshevik bigwigs straight off that he has no apologies to make for Capitalism and wants to hear no arguments for Communism, adding that he likes a shooting match of questions about either the U. S. or the U. S. S. R. with the answers kept as factual as possible. The shooting started when Foreign Trade Commissar Rosengoltz gave a five-hour Russian lunch for Ambassador & Mrs. Davies at his magnificent dacha or country estate adjoining Dictator Stalin's west of Moscow. Such dachi simply do not exist in Soviet newspapers or for visiting Communists, who hear all about the "austerity and simplicity" of Big Reds. However, at 1 p. m. in the dacha of Rosengoltz the heiress from Manhattan and her corporation lawyer husband, who is rich in his own right, sat down to feast with handsome War Commissar Klimentiy ("Klim") Voroshilov and pouncing Public Prosecutor Andrei Vishinsky of the Moscow Old Bolshevik trials. Three hours later the champagne was still being quaffed, and over coffee and liqueurs friendly questions & answers cracked for another two hours.

This lunch was by no means "diplomatic." It was instead an affair of the earthy type of Big Reds who are fist-deep in Russia's toughest problems and rather scorn the Soviet Foreign Commissar, "Maxie" Litvinoff, and his English wife Ivy. Later Ambassador Davies was feted at the Litvinoff dacha and had plenty of chance to see that these country places, plus the official limousines and luxuries of their owners, make the nominally small salaries of J. Stalin & Friends of no real importance, set them definitely off from Russia's masses as Mr. & Mrs. Davies are set off in the U. S. by their wealth. By a joker in the new Soviet Constitution, "The Most Democratic In The World" as Democrat Stalin's propaganda calls it (TIME, Dec. 7 et ante), many property rights have been restored to Russia's "toiling masses"--and thus to the prosperous Big Red class which today owns so much, and can now, under the new Constitution, bequeath it by inheritance to sometimes pampered offspring.* Moscow correspondents report that the new top-class in Moscow is now feeling so secure in its opulence that at Embassy parties the wives of Big Reds are dressed at least as well as and often better than the wives of the foreign diplomats; they get their gowns somehow from Paris--an impossibility for a Russian without heavy political pull at the Kremlin.

An almost daily habit of Ambassador & Mrs. Davies is to walk about two miles from their home in white marble Spasso Palace around the vast, tall-turreted Kremlin Fortress. Embassy offices are in a brand-new Soviet marble building, not in the modernistic style which used to be characteristic of Communist architecture, but an affair of Corinthian columns with acanthus-leaf capitals suggesting the First National Bank in an Ohio or Illinois city. There are not many of these new bourgeois buildings yet in Red Moscow, but they bear out in unmistakably bourgeois architecture the fact that J. Stalin & Co.-- although favoring the World Revolution of the World Proletariat abroad--are becoming almost Babbitt Bolsheviks at home in the Soviet Union.

Industrial Ambassador. Nine agents of the Ogpu, or NKVD as J. Stalin now prefers to call Soviet secret police, went last week with Ambassador Davies in the special train put at his disposal to tour Soviet industrial centres in the primarily agricultural Ukraine. His private car, furnished free by the Government, was what Russians now know as a "Commissar's Saloon Car," for really big Reds today have a private car thrown in with their State jobs. There was an ordinary sleeping car for the NKVD and correspondents, another for the Davies party to use at night and a diner in which all food was exclusively the quick-frozen U. S. product of Heiress Davies' company. Though they did take into Russia 25 refrigerators containing 2,000 pints of quick-frozen cream (TIME, Dec. 28), Ambassador Davies deprecates press references to the well-publicized Davies commissary. Says he: "The exaggerations give both Mrs. Davies and me a big laugh!"

Anyone can take exactly the same 2,000-mile trip made by the U. S. Ambassador last week, under the auspices of Intourist, the Soviet State Travel Bureau, but not with the same super-service from Stalin's NKVD. When rich Mr. Davies liked a picture in a State store so well that he paid 5,000 rubles smack down for it last week--nominally $1,000--J. Stalin's Sherlocks began muttering among themselves. These dread Soviet police sent for a nervous Russian art expert, he appraised the picture as worth 800 rubles, and the NKVD cracked down on the Ukranian State shop. It promptly disgorged 4,200 rubles and this "refund" NKVD agents beamingly carried to Capitalist Davies in his private car.

First important stop was at Kharkov, fine and flourishing "Industrial Capital of the Ukraine," the political capital being Kiev, "Mother of Russian Towns." In Kharkov rises the modernistic Palace of State Industry, "largest office building in Europe," the tallest sections 13 stories high. In efforts to get droning Red Bureaucrats inside to bestir themselves, the Kharkov managing staffs of a section of the latest Five-Year Plan have been satirized in Soviet films showing languid Communist typists squirting perfume over themselves and ogling their Bolshevik bosses--a deliberate exaggeration like all Communist propaganda. Last week Red bosses and Red typists seemed on good behavior, but Ambassador Davies hustled on out to the Kharkov Tractor Plant, thoroughly inspected the entire works, which now send a tractor off the assembly line every five minutes. Some unfortunate jinx caused the first tractor off the line as Mr. Davies approached to refuse to start. "It has been rejected," announced the Bolshevik interpreter, "and it is now sent to specialists for analysis!" The next tractor snorted off beautifully and during the Ambassador's visit no other breakdown appeared. After dropping in at the Medical Clinic and Nursery, the party drove to Kharkov's Turbogenerator and Electric Machinery Plant. Here many workers were standing about puffing cigarets, so occupied in conversing among themselves that they scarcely noticed the Ambassadorial party. In the turbine section every worker seemed sweating for dear life on a rush order. At the stately Kharkov "House of Pioneers," the Ambassador asked what it was before and was told "The House of Nobles."

"Ah, it is being used for a much better purpose now," commented Democrat Davies. "I am impressed by the work being done in Kharkov."

Next day the Commissar's car took the Ambassador to the metallurgical centre of the Ukraine near the great Dnepr River hydroelectric dam. In the heat of Russia's Revolution, some demanding comrades from the Ukraine called on the great Lenin and wanted to know what the Ukraine was going to get out of all this.

"I will write you an order here and now," replied the Founder. On a small piece of paper he wrote: "Electrify the Ukraine. LENIN." This had the force of a ukase from the Tsar, and for years "electricity" used to be a magic word in Soviet Russia, orators telling everyone as Lenin did that "Electrification, plus the Soviet Power, equals Socialism!" This dazzling equation was given practical expression by erecting the great Dnepr dam, on which 30,000 Russians toiled for five years under Russian engineers topped by U. S. Engineer Hugh Lincoln Cooper who always gave them every credit, received a reputed $125,000 in cash, had a onetime chef-to-the-Tsar cook his meals and also enjoyed a private car. Today all standard Soviet handbooks state that "nine" Dnepr hydroelectric turbines are, not only built but "in operation." In the power house last week Ambassador Davies saw six turbines, one Soviet-manufactured, the others by U. S. General Electric, was told, "the three other turbines will be running by next year!"

In this part of Russia comrades have been boasting for so many years about the boons of electricity under Communism as compared to its curses under Capitalism that they are ready primed to tell any visitor where he gets off. Manager Mirohnikov of the excellently functioning Dnepropetrovsk Aluminum Plant bustled up at once to the U. S. Ambassador and crowed: "In your country the Mellon interests are responsible for the restricted use of aluminum because they fix the price too high. Such under Socialism would not be tolerated!"

"Well, what's the price of aluminum in the Soviet Union?" smiled Mr. Davies. This led, as any question about price always does in Russia, to dispute over the illusive "real value" of the ruble. Since it has never been quoted freely on international exchange or been permitted to move without rigid State restriction across the Soviet frontier, there is no standard for comparing Soviet costs in monetary units with U. S. costs unless the frankly artificial ruble-dollar rate in Moscow be accepted. Last week the disputants never got around to working out the price of Soviet aluminum in dollars & cents, but whatever it costs, the Government is both buyer & seller, producer & consumer under the Soviet system. As the Steel Plant is regarded as "military," Mr. Davies was shown it only from a distance, and in all plants visited the "secret military section" was not shown. Next day, a Soviet "rest day," Mr. Davies saw open hearth furnaces at the Karl Liebknicht Steel Tube Plant, visited Lant Hospital.

Intourist simply does not use the direct railway line from Dnepropetrovsk to Ros-tov-on-Don. Instead an Intourist tourist must go all the way back up to Kharkov and then down to Rostov. The Intourist tourist may ask why, but never finds a Russian who seems to know. Ambassador Davies did not have to make this senseless detour, was routed direct. En route he dictated his impressions for transmission later to the State Department, cracked jokes and told Washington yarns in the vein of his good friend Jim Farley. Every winter since anyone can remember the Five-Year Plans, it has happened at Rostov that "snow is delaying car loadings." Last week there was about an inch of snow on the ground and sure enough car loadings were delayed, with costly Soviet farm machinery deteriorating in the open just after being efficiently completed inside.

About 70 combines daily were rolling off the production line last week and the U. S. correspondents were shown no trace of the "sabotage and wrecking by Trotskyists" attributed by the Old Bolsheviks trial to Rostov. Everything was going beautifully except that neither the First nor Second Five-Year Plan has yet shown Plant Manager Kartsashev how to deal with snow. In Rostov is now the largest theatre in Soviet Russia, typical of the diffusion of entertainment to the masses in which Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini are at one with the principles of President Roosevelt's WPA theatres. Cried the Ambassador, "Magnificent!"

The end of the six-day junket brought Mr. Davies and Daughter Emlen back to Moscow, where official newsorgans were pleased to learn from their reporters on the trip that the U. S. Ambassador had asked questions and taken notes on costs, wages, profits, distribution and labor efficiency as figured by Soviet managers; also their sources of labor, ages of workers, percentage of women, clothing, housing, rents, hospitalization, insurance and their definitions of "Stakhanovism"--the most disputed word in Russia (TIME, March 9, 1936).

As every comrade knows, Stakhanov was an obscure coal miner who persuaded three other miners to join with him in working as a gang to use their pneumatic drill more efficiently and thus increase production per man. Stakhanov was taken to Moscow, feted by Stalin, loaded with all sorts of presents, including a phonograph with the record Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, and ever since the whole laboring mass of the Soviet Union has been urged, exhorted, tempted and commanded to emulate Stakhanov. Sluggards who do not want to speed up their work as Stakhanov did, have in some cases assassinated Soviet managers who tried to Stakhanovize their plants (TIME, Dec. 16, 1935).

Said Capitalist Davies on his return to Moscow: "The most striking impression I gathered from my trip was the universal use of the profit motive throughout Soviet industry as an incentive to workmen. I visited factories where the 'Stakhanovites' were receiving twice and thrice the wages of other workmen. In plants we visited the directors were all men of between 35 and 40. The average age of the workers was between 23 and 27. The best organization seemed to be in factories where the conveyor-belt system is in operation. The factory tempo is somewhat slower than in the United States. About a quarter of the workers in all factories we visited were women who appeared to be doing exactly the same kind of work as men. The youth of the Soviet workers and engineers and managers was striking. Laboratories are well developed everywhere. My eye was struck by the manner in which each factory is training its engineers in the factory itself."

This was an evidence of industry-mindedness on the part of Ambassador Davies which Soviet officials have seen in no previous envoy to their Union. He is in fact the first to make even a quick inspection tour of an important section of Red Industry. Typical of 99% of the Moscow diplomatic corps are the British who carry on with a dimly-lit Embassy front hall in which concealed lamps floodlight full-length oil paintings of King George V & Queen Mary in the most elaborate of royal robes. Nobody in the British Embassy sees any more than he can help of the "bloody Bolshies" and their walks are mostly taken in the Embassy's high-walled garden. This week Ambassador & Mrs. Davies are rushing their hardest to complete nearly 50 courtesy and return calls on the other diplomats & wives. They must hurry for they have set themselves much to do before May 12.

Sea Cloud to Coronation. To the 1932 campaign fund of Franklin Roosevelt $25,000 was chipped in by Judge Robert Worth Bingham, and he has got an amazing money's worth in return as Ambassador to the Court of St. James. The Jubilee of George & Mary, the great King-Emperor's demise, the numerous pageants of King Edward's accession, the shocker of abdication, and yet another colorful, majestic burst of accession pageantry for George VI have all thrilled the Bingham family.

Mr. & Mrs. Davies chipped $17,500 into the 1936 Roosevelt campaign coffers. Months ago they leased for a reputed $10,000 quite the most magnificent house available for the Coronation. Its grounds are so extensive that one can go canoe-sailing in the lake, although this home of the second Mrs. Marshall Field III is in the heart of fashionable London. Not many years ago it was upon Mrs. Field, not Mrs. Simpson, that Edward danced attendance, lavishing flowers daily.

In Moscow last week Mr. & Mrs. Davies said they were preparing to sail by ocean liner shortly to Manhattan, then sail back across the Atlantic in their enormous oil-burning yacht Sea Cloud, which can most decoratively unfurl itself into an old-fashioned four-masted bark. The Sea Cloud was the Hussar when Mrs. Davies was Mrs. Edward F. Hutton (TIME, Dec. 23, 1935) and $95,000 duty was paid when it entered the U. S. after having been built at Kiel during blackest years of German depression. Sea Cloud ranks as one of the world's most opulent yachts, roughly matching in swank the Nahlin rented by Edward VIII for his Balkan cruise last summer. Coronation time it will lie off Southampton, taking the Davieses cruising to the Spithead naval review, and after the English festivities are over, according to Ambassador Davies this week, the Sea Cloud will cruise across the North Sea into the Baltic and tie up at Leningrad--the first right royally splendiferous yacht to make that port since it was Petrograd and yachts of Grand Dukes galore lay in the breathtakingly beauteous harbor of "the Venice of the North."

Fortnight ago the Davieses had a grand time in Leningrad, even today a city which retains in its architecture much smack of Capitalist pomp. It is also a chief Soviet industrial centre -- most unfortunately from a strategic point of view. For that matter the industrial centres of the Ukraine visited by Mr. Davies last week are located much too near the European frontier of Russia for the peace of the Soviet's military minds. Imperial Russia had enormously larger buffer territories, holding Finland, the Baltic States, Poland and great areas now part of the Balkans-- but part of Lenin's genius in founding Soviet Russia was in perceiving that unless he abandoned and threw to predatory Europe great chunks of Imperial Russia he would never be permitted to get away with founding a Communist State at all. Today Dictator Stalin is creating as much in the way of Russian centres of industry and war bases as possible behind the Ural Mountains. It is no secret that the Soviet General Staff have plans ready, in case Russia is attacked by the "alliance of Capitalist powers" her propagandists talk about, to abandon Leningrad, Moscow and the whole portion of the Soviet Union which just now forms Mr. & Mrs. Davies' world and "retreat behind the Urals." That would be the most tragic expedient the Russian nation has adopted since it "saved" Moscow by burning it down around Napoleon.

In Leningrad the Davieses sat in the same Great Opera Theatre as did the Tsars & Tsarinas. They even saw the same typically Capitalist sort of opera, namely Eugene Onegin, presented as handsomely as under the Romanovs. The theme of this opera is a poem of at times ridiculous and always entirely bourgeois flirtation and frustration--unless one is a Russian, for all Russians, whether Communists or not, love the poet author of Eugene Onegin, faintly black-blooded Pushkin, "The Russian Shakespeare."

That Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin have never seen cause to suppress Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin or even excessively bourgeois Madame Butterfly goes far to explain how Soviet Russia is now managing to like supercapitalistic Mr. & Mrs. Davies and support quietly a growing bureaucracy of Babbitt Bolsheviks.

*Name of her husband: Molotov. His job: Premier. /-Not from Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey, as that organization, which disapproves of cooch dancers, wished it distinctly understood. *Startled was the Soviet Union last week by a case which Moscow censors let go out over the cables as that of "Valdemar Lintin, pampered son of a high Soviet official and his 'dream friend' Victor Sokolov," according to United Press which further tagged what occurred as SOVIET RUSSIA'S LOEB-LEOPOLD CASE.

The high Soviet official is Supreme Court Judge Karl Lintin. The Soviet Loeb-Leopold pair, instead of murdering a Communist Bobbie Franks, were responsible for the death of Mrs. Lintin. Her son, a "mama's darling" of 16, is described as having always worn silk shirts and having his bed linen changed daily.

Fired by the Old Bolsheviks' confessions, the Supreme Court Judge's son and his sycophant decided to filch Soviet military secrets, skip to Germany where they would sell these to the Nazis, then take in the night spots of Europe. When his mother interfered, Mother's Boy Lintin slapped her, bashed in her head with a hammer, after which he and Sycophant Sokolov toasted the matricide in wine.

In Chicago the original Loeb & Leopold considered they were lucky when Clarence Darrow got them off with 99-yr. sentences. Soviet Supreme Court Judge Lintin's son last week got eight years and his "dream friend" five years in labor camps. There, according to the hopeful Soviet official press this week: "They may be regenerated into the ranks of wonderful Soviet Youth." It was pointed out that if the hammer-murderers had broken a hammer in a factory, thus committing "sabotage," they might have been sentenced to death.

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