Labour Conditions in Soviet Russia. II. The Living Conditions

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  • Labour Conditions in Soviet Russia. II. The Living ConditionsAuthor(s): V. Hffding and B. P.Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 7, No. 20 (Jan., 1929), pp. 349-360Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4202281 .Accessed: 16/06/2014 10:19

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  • LABOUR CONDITIONS IN SOVIET RUSSIA.

    II. THE LIVING CONDITIONS.

    HOUSING.

    THE conditions which have already been mentioned 1 in con- nection with the grants to the workers for rent, and also their insufficiency for the most necessary repairs, taken together with a disorderly utilisation of the nationalised houses, led to their gradual collapse, and to a steady fall in the house- space allotted to the individual worker, and also to the individual inhabitant generally. A further limitation of this house space is to be appre- hended in the course of the next few years. Although for sanitary reasons 8 square metres per person were regarded in Soviet Russia as the smallest admissible housing space, as early as I923 the average housing space actually amounted to 6 8 square metres: in I924 it sank to 6, and in i926 it reached the sad limit of 5-6. In some districts and towns the housing space allotted to the individual workers is even considerably smaller than the average given above. Especially unfavourable are the housing conditions in the mining area in the Donets district in South Russia. In accounts -of the conditions which prevailed there, taken from Soviet literature, we find such expressions as the " coffin-standard."

    Anyhow, the Soviet Government has for the last few years assigned very important sums, up to hundreds of millions of roubles, for the building of new workers' dwellings. But firstly, even these important sums are still far too little in view of the collapse of the nationalised houses, and secondly, the application of this money is usually so irrational that the building of new houses swallows up disproportionately large sums.

    What a serious form the solution of this problem has taken for the Soviet Government can be seen from the following calcu- lation. According to communications of the Supreme Council of Economy, for the next five years, only to keep up the existent

    1 See Slavonic Review for June, I928, No. I9, pp. 67-76. 349

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  • 350 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

    and extremely low norm of 6 square metres per person, not less than 4,500 up to 5,000 million roubles will be required. On the other hand, in the already mentioned very optimistic economic programme for this object, not more than 2,290 millions could be allotted. Dealing with this state of things, the Moscow Izvestia, from which we have taken these data, comes to the conclusion, which is equally certain and pessimistic: " It is clear that in the next few years we have to expect a still further reduc- tion of the housing norm."

    On the actual state of housing conditions for the working population, we shall find better information than that of any statistical data in the descriptions which appear from time to time in the Soviet press.

    The organ of the Communist Unions, Trud, on I9 January, i928, remarks, among other things, that in the Ural factories, in some workers' settlements I7-I8 workers dwell on a floor-space of 2 square sazhens, or about 5 square metres. " This riddle," writes the newspaper, " is solved by a three-shift system; that is, one and the same bed in the course of 24 hours is used by three workers in turn for sleeping."

    Another account is to be found in thie same newspaper of 2o January, I928, and describes the conditions at the new glass factory " Dagestan Fires " in the Caucasus, built by the Soviet Government itself. As to the workers' dwellings there, we read: " The pressure is unbelievable. One inmate receives only 3.9 instead of the present accepted estimate of 9 square metres. 95 per cent. of all the dwellings are extraordinarily overcrowded; 59 per cent. are in a really terrible sanitary condition. The fault of this lies with the management of the factory. Can one still speak of cleanliness if the floor has not been washed since the summer ? (the description refers to January) . . . 50 per cent. of the dwellings are damp . . . 76 per cent. are cold." To excuse such conditions the Bolsheviks are fond of the argument that the bad dwellings for workers are the "' inheritante " of capitalist industry. As to this excuse, we are interested by the comment with which this Communist paper closes its description. The paper writes: " In such hair-raising inhuman conditions lived the workers of the Dagestan Fires, a factory which was to be built according to the most up-to-date technical requirements."

    Both these descriptions deal with the conditions in the pro- vinces. To complete the picture we quote a sketch, contained in the Komsomolskaya Pravda of I4 January, I928, of a home for working women in the middle of Leningrad-as the author writes,

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  • LABOUR CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA. 35I

    "ten steps from the Nevsky Prospect." This sketch bears the significant title " The Catacombs," and runs thus: " The horror of the subterranean refuges of the time of the Christian persecu- tions breathes on one from these cold, dark corridors, from these vaulted roofs, from these window-openings without frames or glass. Thirty young girl workers in factories live there . . . I never saw anything more terrifying than this horrible naked misery . . . From such a life it seems impossible ever to return to cheerful, happy and honourable work, to bright human enjoy- ment . . . In dark holes, fouled with rubbish and dirt, by the mournful, flickering light of smoking and stinking little lamps, massed together, perishing in filth, and squashed close together, live these unfortunate creatures . . . In one of the rooms, on the. remains of a plank-bed, on a heap of tattered rags, under a dirty horsecloth, lies Anna Ivanovna; for three months she has been lying there, broken by some undefined disease; she eats what anyone gives her and is slowly dying under the eyes of her hapless companions."

    The latest events in the Donets regions, connected with the arrest of the German engineers on the charge of " sabotage," have brought further into the daylight the desperate housing condi- tions and generally the working conditions in this region. Thus the Communist Trades Union leader, Schwartz, who had been charged to investigate the conditions on the spot, in an interview of 22 March in Trud, made the following statement on the sub- ject : " In the workers' dwellings even the most modest comforts are lacking. In their barracks the workers sleep on bare boards; mattresses are not supplied. The result is that in some of the works young persons of i8 are already suffering from tuberculosis."

    FREQUENCY OF ACCIDENTS AND WORKERS' INSURANCE.

    Accidents in industry, a sad and, to a certain extent, inevitable phenomenon of our modern technique, Socialists and Communists of all countries are fond of ascribing to the greed for profit of the capitalists, who, it is asserted, for fear of prejudicing their gains, do not take the necessary measures for the protection of the workers. The Socialists assert that the transfer of industrial undertakings into the hands of a proletarian Government, if they did not altogether remove, would extraordinarily reduce the number of accidents. When we read such assertions, the experi- ences of the last ten years under Communist rule in Russia are particularly instructive.

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  • 352 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

    What they show us is as follows: i. The number of accidents, in comparison with the pre-revo-

    lutionary period, has considerably increased. 2. There is a threatening increase from year to year, both in

    the old factories and in the new ones built by the Bolsheviks. As to the first point, let us take from the great number of

    similar communications one of the last from the newspaper The Bolshevik, I927, No. I7, p. 87; we quote from an article from the pen of Marcus, entitled "Questions of workers' protection in the Platform of the Fifteen" (that is, of the fifteen Members of the Communist Opposition). According to the statements in this article, experts have very thoroughly examined this question in nine of the biggest textile works in Moscow, and have come to the conclusion that the total number of industrial accidents, in comparison with the pre-war time, has risen from 23-9 per I,OOO workers in I9I2 to 48 in I926-that is to say, that it has more than doubled. The writer of this article does not fail to mention that there is no hope of an improvement in the near future. He writes :-" Accidents with us are very frequent ; their number grows continually, and what is worse, in spite of the increase of the sums allotted for protective measures, and there is at present no prospect whatever of a diminution of the number of accidents." The official Soviet statistics for the second quarter of i926-27 (January to March) show a recent big rise in the number. For the whole of Russian industry, there were 52'I accidents for every I0O,OOO full working days, that is 34 per cent. more than in the same period of the previous year. In the mining industry the increase in accidents for I926 alone is 78 per cent., for the leather industry 83 per cent. (Principal Statistics on the Situation of Labour and Industry, I927, vol. IV., p. 30.)

    Even if from time to time sums are assigned for protective measures against accidents, experience shows that the Com- munist factory directors generally think fit to use these sums for other purposes, or even not to use them at all. Thus in the industrial year I926-27, in the Ural factories, of the 294,000 roubles assigned for protection against accidents, only II,OOO in all were paid out, while the rest remained unused, though the accidents were steadily increasing (Trud, 7 January, i928). That here we are not at all having to deal with a legacy of capital- ism is clear, among other things, from a very definite allusion of the organ of the Labour Commissariat, Voprosy Truda (Questions of Labour), for December, I927, p. 7. This newspaper establishes that even in the newly built factories, where all the modern

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  • LABOUR CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA. 353

    requirements for the protection of the worker against accidents could and ought to have been provided for, far too little of this kind has been done. Recently the Communist leaders of the nationalised Russian industry have shown more and more of a tendency to ignore the insistent prescriptions of labour protection, or to submit them to revision quite in the sense of " indulgence to the management." If it is in the interest of the Communist rulers as employers, as " possessors " of the nationalised industry, they do not hesitate to abolish even such rules of labour protection as have been accounted for ever so long by Socialists of all coun- tries, and not only by them, as the inviolable principles of a progressive social policy.

    Such, as already mentioned, was the so far only tentatively realised introduction of the 7 hours' day, with the transfer from 2 shifts of 8 hours each to 3 shifts of 7 hours each. In the textile industry, where most of the employees are women, this transition is only possible on the condition that the insistent existing pro- hibitions of night labour for women is abolished.

    The Soviet Government has also taken no account of this difficulty. At the beginning of April the Director of the State Institute for Labour Protection, Kaplun, at a meeting in Moscow, gave an address on this subject-the report is to be found in Trud, 3 April, I928-in which he came to the conclusion that night work for women, with the exception of expectant or nursing mothers, should unconditionally be recognised as admissible. In the same way a little while ago, the well-known Communist Trade Union leader Tomsky, at a conference for labour protection (Trud, ii February, I928), protested against the " sentimentality " and the inadmissible " philanthropy " shown in this matter in the Soviet state, remarking, among other things, that no one has ever yet succeeded in giving sound reasons for the limitation of night work for women.

    While, however, in Moscow, the leaders are discussing these questions of the theory of labour protection, and still seem ready to maintain the prohibition of night work for expectant or nursing mothers, this question is already being settled practically at the different Soviet factories in the sense of " freedom."

    Thus in an account from the Comrade Abelman Factory in Kovrov, where they were just about to make the transition to the 7 hours' day, we read in Trud (24 February, I928): "What is done, then, with expectant or nursing mothers, though there is a law which forbids night work for them? . . . There has been a great deal of worry over this question, but without finding an

    AA

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  • 354 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

    answer to it. There was nothing left but to admit the night work of these women, and that with the approval of the central committee of the Trades Union."

    In accord with these observations of the Soviet press are communications which have latterly become more and more frequent, showing that the Communist " Red'" Directors simply disregard the regulations of the workers' contracts, especially as to the regular and punctual payment of wages (e.g., Trud, I4 and 29 April, I928).

    UNEMPLOYMENT AND SUPPORT OF THE UNEMPLOYED.

    We have sketched briefly the material position and the labour conditions of the Russian workers after ten years of Bolshevist rule. If in one respect-hours of work-as compared with pre- war times, the condition of the workers is in some cases perhaps improved, in another, that is wages, the ten years of Communism, after terrible sacrifices and some years of hunger and misery, have anyhow not been able to give more than the worker already possessed under the so-called regime of " capitalist exploitation." Apart from this, in some respects-especially housing conditions -the position of thev Russian worker has quite definitely changed for the worse.

    But all that has been said so far concerns only those workers who generally have employment. The worst plague of Russian labour under the Soviet regime is, however, the gigantic unem- ployment, which in the course of time has assumed an ever more and more chronic character.

    In pre-revolutionary times Russian industry, being in a stage of rapid upward development, easily absorbed both the natural increase of the town labour population and the overflow of the peasantry which was streaming to the towns. Under the condi- tions of that time, Russia never became acquainted with unem- ployment as a wholesale phenomenon. Marxism and other Socialistic theories regard unemployment or the presence of a " reserve army of the proletariat " as an inevitable feature of private ownership, as a result of the anarchical character of production under a capitalist regime. It was to be assumed that the possibility of directing the development of industry by plans which had been worked out for years in advance, and state owner- ship of all industrial means of production, as well as transport, banks, and all the apparatus of trade, would give the Govern- ment resources quite sufficient to guarantee the necessary control over the actual execution of its industrial plans, and thus also to

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  • LABOUR CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA. 355

    make unemplovment impossible. On the contrary, however, it has to be stated that Soviet Russia possesses a gigantic army of over two million unemployed.

    The data of Soviet statistics on unemployment frequently con- tradict each other. However, the following figures enable us to judge of the alarming proportions of this plague. From i October, i926, to i May, I927, the number of unemployed has increased from I,070,000 to I,428,000.1 According to the already men- tioned " counter-theses " of the Opposition, the number of the unemployed at the beginning of I927 had reached 2,275,000.2 If in the autumn of I927 the statistics showed a certain retreat of unemployment, this was partly the result " of a certain limit- ation in the registration of those who had been seeking work (who had lately come in in the spring of I927), which was meant to stem the tide of a new stream of unemployed."3

    If we consider that the total of workers employed in the state industry and transport in the industrial year I926-27, including seasonal workers, reaches 6-4 millions, and set against it the figure of altogether 2,200,000 unemployed at the beginning of I927, it results that the number of unemployed workers amounted to one-third of those employed. We can see that the Bolsheviks do not at all indulge in any illusions as to the possibility of a suc- cessful struggle against this plague in the next few years. Rykov expects a certain diminution (about 30 per cent.) of unemploy- ment at the end of the next five years, but only on condition of the introduction of the 7 hours' day, through which he thinks, in consequence of the possibility of then changing from one shift to two and from two to three, some hundred thousands of workers can again be employed in industry. On the other hand, it is stated in the contra-theses of the Opposition already mentioned, that " even to keep unemployment at its present level both in town and country, there would have to be a considerably quicker development of industry than is to be expected from all the present five-year industrial programmes.4

    Soviet industrial authorities give a diagnosis of this malady, which is in general quite correct. The main mass of unemployed is composed of unskilled workers who stream into the towns from the villages, where, in spite of the agrarian revolution, the increas-

    1 I. Gindin, " The condition of unemployment and the measures to combat it," Pravda, 7 June, I927.

    2Pravda, I7 November, I927. 3 I. Gindin, " The plan to combat unemployment in I927-28," Pravda,

    23 October, 1927. 4Pravda, 17 November, I927.

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  • 356 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

    ingly acuter proletarianisation of the poorer peasantry and also the general decline of agriculture, have resulted in continually increasing unemployment among the peasants. On the other hand, through lack of capital, the state industry cannot develop production quickly enough to utilise the masses of proletarianised peasants who are streaming to the towns.

    But if the Russian working class under the Soviet regime is suffering from exactly what Socialist fly-sheets are so fond of calling the claws of the capitalist crab, perhaps the Soviet state will look after its unemployed better than has been done since the war in capitalised countries. At the industrial conference which met in May, I927, at Geneva, the first delegate of the Union of Soviet Republics, Osinsky, in his eleven " programme points," the realisation of which would in his opinion be sure to soften the industrial world crisis, claimed from all capitalist countries an " effective support of the unemployed."

    Under these circumstances we ought to suppose that the care for the unemployed in the land of the proletarian dictatorship must be in excellent condition, that it really covers all the unem- ployed, and that their support will be realised on a scale which at least comes somewhere near their average wage, as the Russian delegate Osinsky demanded in Geneva from the capitalist states.

    As a matter of fact, however, the care of the unemployed in Soviet Russia, to judge from the official data, is far from realising the ideal described in Geneva. A minority of the unemployed received support. The number of unemployed who are sup- ported is, according to various sources of Soviet origin, to be reckoned at 400,000 to 6oo,ooo, or in other words, out of every four unemployed, only one receives support. Besides that, this small proportion of supported unemployed received so little that the help given them was not anywhere near their average wage. At the beginning of I927 the unemployed were divided into three categories; the first received 33 per cent. of the average wage, the second 25 per cent. and the third 20 per cent. In chervonets roubles the average of the support given to the first category amounts to i8 roubles a month; for the second category, I2 roubles. According to the data mentioned in an article of the Labour Commissary Schmidt,' the assistance given to an unem- ployed man amounted in I924-25 to 8 roubles, in I925-26 to ii roubles, and in I926-27 to I5 roubles. It especially deserves to be mentioned that the organ of the Trade Unions, Trud, very

    1 Schmidt on " The policy of the party in the labour question," Pravda, 26 November, I927.

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  • LABOUR CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA. 357

    recently (6 April, I928) itself made a comparison, according to which, to the unemployed in various countries the following proportion of the normal wage is given as relief. In USSR I3-45 per cent.; in Germany 46 per cent.; in England 2o-6o per cent. The Opposition in its well-known document characterises the position of unemployed relief in the Soviet Union as follows:

    " The provision of care for the unemployed through insurance banks is justly arousing their discontent. The average subsidy is about 5 pre-war roubles (io marks). This support is received by about 20 per cent. of the unemployed members of the Trade Unions."

    THE RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION AMONG SOVIET WORKERS.

    To obtain a full understanding of the sketch which has been made, it seems in place to deal also with the question, to what extent workers in Soviet Russia are able to defend their rights and interests through forming trade associations. As there has been an investigation by the International Labour Council in Geneva,' which has dealt admirably and exhaustively with this question, we may limit ourselves to a few general conclusions.

    The number of Soviet officials, workers and all other employees organised in professional Unions was in January, I926, over 9 millions. In the most important branches of industry the organ- ised proportion of all workers and employees was 90-96 per cent., a percentage higher than is to be found in any other country in the world. This high percentage is, however, not to be explained by any specially highly developed class-consciousness of the Soviet workers and employees, but rather must be regarded as a result of the fact that membership of Communist Trade Unions, though it is formally left to the choice of every individual, is in reality subject to iron compulsion.

    Firstly, the Soviet worker who wishes to join a professional Union has not the right to choose the organisation which in his opinion is capable of best defending his interests. In Soviet Russia outside the Communist Unions, which actually form a part of the whole Soviet system, no other organisations are allowed.

    Secondly, membership of a Trade Union is compulsory be- cause any unorganised worker must expect at any moment to lose his place, and then in any case he cannot be sure of a new post.

    1 Bureau International du Travail, Le mouvement syndical de la Russie des Soviets, Geneva, I927.

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  • 358 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

    However, the professional Unions in Soviet Russia are funda- mentally different in their character from the corresponding Unions in other countries. They are not, as in the rest of the world, organisations which conceive their task as representing the interests of workers against employers, which in the case of Russia mostly means the State, but by their whole character they are state administrative organs of a peculiar kind; and then the Communist Party has within these Unions just the same position of monopoly as in the state offices and organs of government.

    Accordingly the Trade Unions in cases of conflict always put themselves practically on the side of the controlled state industry, and what is not less important, the workers see in their Unions not organisations intended to defend their interests, but regard them as a peculiar kind of state institution. There is gradually growing up that detachment of the mass of workers from the Communist Trade Unions on which the Soviet press has written so much. This fact was shown quite clearly in a resolution of the State's official conference of professional Unions in December, I925, at which allusion was made to the " formation of an un- natural ' bloc ' out of the Trade Unions and the state organs of industry," " as a result of which the representatives of the Unions in every case and without criticism accept and defend the mea- sures and proposals coming from the industrial organs. In this way the professional Unions are becoming more and more a dependency or a political department of the industrial organs of administration, and show the tendency gradually to let fall into oblivion their original task of defending the interests of the workers."

    If one accepts the judgment of Tomsky in his report at the I5th conference of the Communist Party, October, I926, the posi- tion has altered but little in this respect. If the interests of the workers clash with those of the state industry, then the pro- fessional Unions, if they do not openly come out on the side of the latter, offer a passive resistance to the workers.

    In conclusion we may say that Russian Communism, neither in its first crude form during the early years of the Soviet regime, nor in its weakened variant since the proclamation of the " New Economic Policy," has given the Russian worker what it once promised him. Both as to his material position and as to the conditions of work and his legal position, the Russian worker can only look with envy at his European and American colleagues who are supposed to be oppressed and exploited by a greedy capitalism.

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  • LABOUR CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA. 359

    The discontent of the Russian workers with their working conditions in the Soviet factories is shown by a phenomenon which every year assumes greater dimensions. We should have assumed that with the removal of capitalist exploitation in Soviet Russia, the relation of the worker to the enterprise in which he works ought to have really become more stable, not only in com- parison with pre-war Russia, but also with the capitalist bourgeois states of to-day. In reality we can see the opposite. The changes of personnel in individual factories in Russia are more frequent than anything that is experienced in the industry of other coun- tries. The Russian worker of to-day literally flies from one factory to another in the vain hope of finding better conditions of work, and above all, more tolerable conditions of housing. The- mass dimensions reached by this calamity, this " liquidation," which makes the Russian worker more and more an industrial nomad, will be seen from the following communications from various districts of Russia. In some factories of the Donets basin in South Russia the working personnel has. been three times renewed in the course of a single year (Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, 26 August, I927). In some metal works the whole personnel has changed thrice in the course of five months (Torgovo-Promysh- lennaya Gazeta, 27 August, I927). This phenomenon, however, is not limited to certain districts, as we see from the following figures relating to the whole of Soviet Russia. In the course of the last six years, big industry has had an increase of I,300,000 new workers as compared with I92I-2, when industry was com- pletely crippled. In this last period I2,000,000 workers were admitted and I0,700,000 were discharged, but as the total number of workers in big industry is about 2 million, every worker has in this period on an average changed his place of work six times.

    The Soviet press offers a quite definite explanation for this phenomenon. The workers are seeking better conditions of work, but cannot find them. " As reasons for the frequent leav- ing of factories, the small wages and the hard housing conditions are responsible" (Trud, I5 January, I928). " The chief causes of the leaving of factories are discontent with the wages and working conditions and the housing crisis" (Trud, I9 January, I928).

    The figures which have been given above represent a peculiar kind of plebiscite of the mass of workers of Soviet Russia, politic- ally dumb and without rights, whose millions are only able in the way that has been described to express their discontent with the working conditions in the Communist paradise of the USSR.

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  • 360 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

    In estimating the present position of the working class in Soviet Russia, we must also take account of the following two important considerations. Firstly, even if we allow that after ten years of Communist rule, at the price of a partial sacrifice of Communism itself, a worker's wage has been realised in practice which corresponds to the former capitalist level, still, in view of the general impoverishment and the lowering of the level of the culture, the worker cannot take that advantage of his money which he had earlier and which the workers of other countries are able to take. Secondly, the position which the Soviet Govern- ment, after ten years of revolution, has given to the working class is still to be described as a privileged one, if one compares it with that of the other classes of the Russian people. This relatively privileged position of the town working class has only been made possible by a terrible industrial exploitation of the Russian peasantry, which, as is known, constitutes the overwhelm- ing majority of the whole people. The peasantry pays its heavy tribute to enable the Soviet Government to care for the town workers to the present more than 'modest extent. But in this exploitation of the peasantry in favour of the town industrial proletariat, the Soviet Government, as has been throughout made clear from many sides, has already gone much too far. It is to this that we must attribute the appearance of those serious indus- trial difficulties with which the Soviet Government saw itself face to face at the end of I927 and the beginning of I928. These difficulties insistently raise the question, whether it will be possible in future for the Government to maintain even the present minimum of care for the Russian working class, which it has attained only by straining every effort after ten years of Com- munist dictatorship.

    (Trans. B.P.) V. H6FFDING.

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    Article Contentsp. 349p. 350p. 351p. 352p. 353p. 354p. 355p. 356p. 357p. 358p. 359p. 360

    Issue Table of ContentsThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 7, No. 20 (Jan., 1929), pp. 241-512Front MatterErrata in No. 19: Poland and the Slavophil IdeaA Message from President Masaryk [pp. 241-244]Central Europe after Ten Years [pp. 245-260]Ten Years of Greater Roumania [pp. 261-267]A Representative Czech: Antonn vehla [pp. 268-271]Political and Social Aspects of Modern Bulgaria [pp. 272-287]Austria since 1928 [pp. 288-303]A Croat View of the Jugoslav Crisis [pp. 304-310]National Reconciliation in South-Eastern Europe [pp. 311-315]The Veteran of Russian Liberalism: Ivan Petrunkevich [pp. 316-326]Harold Williams [pp. 327-333]Russian History and the Revolution [pp. 334-337]New Material on the Revolt of Pugachev: II [pp. 338-348]Labour Conditions in Soviet Russia. II. The Living Conditions [pp. 349-360]The Centenary of a Great Home of Research in Poland. The Ossolineum, 1828-1928 [pp. 361-370]Organisation of Academic Work in White-Russia [pp. 371-373]President Masaryk's Message to Czechoslovakia on the Tenth Anniversary of Independence, 28 October, 1928 [pp. 374-389]PoemsSonnets from CrimeaI. The Akkerman Steppes [p. 390]IX. The Graves of the Harem [pp. 390-391]XVIII. Aiudah [p. 391]To the Niemen [p. 391]

    Poems from PushkinThree Springs [p. 392]Memory [p. 392]O Virgin-Rose [pp. 392-393]

    The Nightingale [p. 393]The Bridge [p. 393]The Enchanted Youth [pp. 394-396]

    The Death of the Poet [pp. 397-406]The Shrew. A Serbian Folk-Tale [pp. 407-409]ObituariesThe Empress Maria Feodorovna [pp. 410-414]Jane Ellen Harrison. (Died 15 April, 1928) [pp. 414-416]Leo Janek (1854-1928) [pp. 416-418]Antonn Sova [pp. 418-422]Michael Henry Dziewicki. (1851-1928) [pp. 422-423]Octavius Pelly Dick [pp. 423-424]

    Chronicle [pp. 425-438]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 439-443]Review: untitled [pp. 443-445]Review: untitled [pp. 446-449]Review: untitled [pp. 449-452]Review: New Light upon Comenius [pp. 453-457]Review: untitled [p. 457]Review: untitled [pp. 457-458]Review: untitled [pp. 458-459]Review: untitled [p. 459]Review: untitled [pp. 459-460]Review: Two Illustrated Manuscripts [pp. 460-461]Review: untitled [pp. 461-462]Review: untitled [pp. 462-463]Review: untitled [pp. 463-464]

    Tolstoy Centenary SupplementTolstoy's "Memoirs of a Madman" [pp. 465-472]The Miraculous in Tolstoy [pp. 473-474]Recollections of Tolstoy [pp. 475-481]Some Reflections on Tolstoy and Tolstoyism [pp. 482-491]Tolstoy's Novel "Family Happiness" [pp. 492-510]ReviewsReview: Tolstoy Centenary Edition [p. 511]

    Anglo-Russian Literary Society [p. 512]