On the Road Back

From two travelers in the Ukraine last week came revealing glimpses of postwar Russia. One was John Fischer, associate editor of Harper's magazine, and member of an UNRRA mission which traveled in the U.S.S.R. with fewer restrictions than any foreign group has had in years. Concluding a series of articles on his trip in the current Harper's, Editor Fischer gives a vivid account of the men he found there. Excerpts:

"The Communist Party is ... a tiny, privileged ruling class marked off from the great herd it governs as sharply as any ruling class in history. It attracts the ablest and most ambitious men, because it is the only ladder to power and to all the dignities that go with it. It also attracts some sly scoundrels, but these I believe are rather rare exceptions. . . .

"Vassily Vladimirovich Khomyak was in charge of the special agency set up by the Ukrainian Government to handle the distribution of UNRRA supplies. Vassily is a wiry little man with a tired, wizened face and instinctively gentle manners. His expression ordinarily was one of harassed patience. I never once saw him lose his temper, in spite of maddening and innumerable provocations. When they became unendurable, he would merely sigh, run his fingers through his rumpled tussock of greying hair and grit his stainless steel teeth. (That's the usual material for bridgework in the U.S.S.R. because of the shortage of dental porcelain.) . . :

"Vassily reached his office about ten in the morning, left around five for lunch and a few minutes rest, then came back to his desk to stay until long after midnight. Such hours are part of the Bolshevik tradition . . . and pouches under the eyes have become almost a badge of party membership."

Junior Vice President. "In theory Vassily got his orders from Nikita Khrushchev,* governor of the Ukrainian Republic ... in practice, however, he preferred to take his troubles to his guardian angel among the heavy brass--a handsome young man named I. S. Senin, vice chairman, of the Council and one of Boss Khrushchev's fair-haired boys.

"Senin, who was built like a football player and might easily be mistaken for a junior vice president of the National City Bank, studied chemical engineering at Columbia in 1931. He wore impeccably cut blue pin-stripe suits--the best I saw in all Russia--smoked Lucky Strikes and talked with crisp, good-humored confidence. Since his job is the running of all industry in the Ukraine, it was hardly surprising that he suffered from stomach ulcers. When he was away for treatment at a sanatorium in the Caucasus, Khomyak had a good deal of difficulty in getting quick decisions out of the rest of the Council ('They just shoved my memos under their desk blotters'), but when Senin got back to town, the memos were pulled out again and things began to happen fast.

"[Boss Khrushchev], one of the 14 most powerful men in Russia, at 52 looks at least a decade older, rather like a beardless Santa Claus after a hard Christmas, because he almost worked himself to death during the war. The day-to-day performance of the men who run the Ukraine seemed to me about as good as any I've ever seen. . . . They would measure up pretty well, for example, beside such smooth-running outfits as the U.S. Forest Service or the Republican machine in Westchester County."

Dnepropetrovsk & Pittsburgh. "Each local Communist leader keeps in touch with his flock . . . looks after them with the zeal of a Tammany district leader. He attends their weddings and village dances--perhaps obliging with a few well-chosen words about The Leader--and he's the man to see if somebody needs an extra load of firewood or a travel permit to visit Aunt Tanya in Odessa. One result ... is that the ward heelers of Dnepropetrovsk and Darnitza have come to look and behave very much like the ward heelers in Pittsburgh or Memphis--hearty extroverts with the ever-ready smile, the big hello, the manly handshake, and the surefire memory for first names."

The other traveler was TIME'S Correspondent Craig Thompson, who had just returned to Moscow from a 2,500-mile Soviet-sponsored junket through the Donbas and Byelorussia. His report:

"The Donbas is important not only because of the amount of UNRRA aid it is receiving but also because it is the black-metal (coal, iron, steel) heart of western Soviet industry. Overall Soviet reconstruction can proceed only at the pace set by the Donbas' recovery.

"Of the $100 million worth of UNRRA food for the Ukraine, 50% was going into the Donbas alone, although the area was hardly one-twentieth of the total Ukraine, containing not quite an eighth of the population.

"Shelves were bent under the weight of such U.S. staples as Del Monte canned corn, Campbell Soups, Oh Henry bars, meats, fish and fruit juices. Barring a miracle, the Donbas is in for a rugged time when UNRRA supplies give out. Political reaction has already been foreshadowed by references in the Moscow press to the U.S. policy of the 'strategy of starvation.'

"In Voroshilovgrad three years after its capture from the Germans, men, women and war prisoners are still moving rubble. Neglected streets continue to be cobbled washboards. After food and clothing, living space is the most pressing concern. Though the people have been promised that in five years there will be nine by nine feet of floor space for every man, woman and child, for the present they have to make do with less than six.

Food & Machines. "From Voroshilovgrad to Stalino was a 40-minute flight over fertile land still jaggedly cut by trenches and shell holes. There the Makeevka Steel Mills were managing to turn out a quarter of their prewar production --1,000 tons daily. But an incredible amount of cleanup and damage repair remains to be done. Whatever production levels have been achieved are due to U.S. Lend-Lease-- not UNRRA-- in terms of strategic machinery--General Electric steam turbines, centrifugal compressors and the like. The same was true of the coal mine shown us at Kadievka, the furniture factory in Voroshilovgrad, and the port of Odessa. U.S. contributions of machinery and UNRRA food have been incalculably helpful to the Donbas' partial revival. But Soviet pundits tell us that these gifts are not evidence of generosity or even good will, but merely evidence of capitalism's desperate struggle for survival.

"On returning to Moscow I found in the Moscow News a Russian report of the same trip apparently intended to be helpful to English-language correspondents. 'One of my first observations of the Donbas' the report read 'was that the area's dense network of roads, which had been badly wrecked during the war, has been completely repaired.'

"It wasn't until after I had read this that I realized how bad my eyesight had become. I promptly went to see a doctor who found I had perfect vision but recommended a pink boric acid eyewash morning and night. He also gave me some medicine for my liver, which had become enlarged and inflamed due to too much riding over Donbas roads."

* Like Dmitry Manuilsky, Foreign Minister of the Ukraine, and the Ukraine's second most important figure, Khrushchev was born outside the Ukraine in Russia proper. Since 1937 no native Ukrainian has held a top job in his own country.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.