Soviet Woman, 31 Juli 1965: 'The Kazma Springs' dan 'The Sun in Our Windows'

=== [PDF page 1] === but soon there will be more. The second section of the Daugavpils Synthetic Fibre Factory is being built. Industry will receive excellent raw material that is so much in demand. Many existing chemi cal works are to be reconstructed and expanded. When I was a child I lived in the country. I remember the small plot of land we worked with the help of a scrawny nag. The land was owned by kulaks and landowners. Tens of thousands of peas ant families went to the towns in search of work, but there was nothing for them. From all parts of Latvia large groups of destitute people left for other lands “in search of happiness.” Latvian emigrants went everywhere. Now a great many have returned, but some are still in other lands. How the Latvian villages have changed in twentyfive years! Innumerable tractors, combines and other machines work the fields. After the war Anna Sakse wrote a novel, “To the Heights,” about the Latvian village of today. It is a very apt title for our Latvian agriculture, which really is climbing up “to the heights,” especially now when the gov ernment has given our republic, as well as Lithuania and Estonia, such solid advantages. The new mills and factories, the state and col lective farms need electric power. The Plavinas hydro-electric station,, one of the biggest in the Baltic republics, is being built on the banks of the Daugava. Turbines are arriving from Kharkov. Among the builders are people from all fifteen re publics of the USSR—people with experience in building hydro-electric stations along the Volga, t'he Dnieper and the Neman. Next year the station will be working at full capacity. The capital of the republic, Riga, is steadily being improved. In the past, urban improvement con cerned mainly the central streets. The workers districts had no drains, water supply or electricity. Again I can turn to literature—the outskirts of Riga in former times are well described in the “Green Earth,” by Latvian writer Andrejs Upits. One of the characters describes working class districts in these words: “Holes, sand and puddles—let the working people break their necks. In this neigh bourhood there is an alley which is known as ‘Pond Street.’ In spring and autumn you need a boat to get along it.” Now there are tram and trolley bus lines, and the banks of the Daugava are lined with granite. A fine monument to Lenin has been erect ed in the centre of the city. All year round there are flowers at its foot, a token of the Latvian people’s love for this great leader and teacher. Riga is a big cultural centre. Our theatres and musicians are known throughout the Soviet Union. Books by writers of all the fraternal republics are published in big editions, and at school concerts the children recite from Pushkin and Mayakovsky, Gamzatov and Sosyura, Kupala and Leonidze. Latvia has many general and technical schools and higher educational establishments. In bourgeois Latvia, workers’ and peasants’ children had no hope of an education, it cost far too much. But now it is very different. A short time ago two old friends of mine, Andrejs and Vilhelmine Varcena, celebrated their golden wedding. Their children came to the cele bration—two sons and two daughters, with their husbands and wives. And just think—all eight were engineers, they had trained under Soviet power, and three were doing research work. Another example is the fisherman, Lidaks. His son has the title of Hero of Socialist Labour, and his daughter is a Candidate of Science and heads a chair at the Latvian State University. These are some of the things I wanted to tell you about my republic, whose people found the Key of Happiness twenty-five years ago. Riga THE SUN IN OUR WINDOWS By I G O R G A S P E L Journalist A way of stressing a person’s poverty and mis ery is to say that even the sun does not shine on the windows of his house. Twenty-five years ago the sun shone as brightly as now, the same fresh breeze blew in from the sea, and the trees were just as green. And yet, it was not really so. The sun did not shine on the windows of the poor. That is why in July 1940 they came out into the streets of Tallinn and other Estonian cities and demon strated their determination to reinstate Soviet power, which had been suppressed in the bitter fighting of 1919 by the counter-revolutionary forces, supported by foreign interventionists. July 1940 marked the end of the Estonian peo ple's long struggle against bourgeois rule. As al ways, the Communists were in the front ranks. Recently I met Estonia’s first Komsomols in Pyarnu, a pleasant health resort. One of them was Edna Pihelgas, local station forewoman. A little over forty now, she began her first job in the unforgettable days of 1940. She and three other girls were the first in Pyarnu to join the Komso mol and always readily carried out any task their elder comrades, the Communists, entrusted to them. In 1940 there was a slump in both agriculture and industry in Estonia. The Kranholm Textile Mills, the largest in Europe, had closed down three of its five spinning mills, and only one of its two weaving mills was in operation. The equipment of the shipbuilding industry had been sold as scrap. Small merchants set up shop in the empty factory buildings. Thousands of Estonian workers were locked out. Hunger and want was the lot of every working-class family. The victory of the socialist revolution meant lib eration from capitalist oppression, from poverty and unemployment. Estonia became an equal in the family of Soviet Republics. But then war broke out and the black night of fascist occupation descended upon Estonia. Soldiers of the Estonian Guards’ Corps fought shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the Soviet people for the freedom and independence of their socialist Motherland. When the last salvoes of the Great Patriotic War died away, the Estonian people began reconstruct ing their war-torn economy. Today, looking back at the road traversed in the past twenty-five years, one can see how much has been accomplished in Soviet Estonia. From Tallinn to Narva, all along the coast of the Bay of Finland, are the richest imaginable de posits of shale. By 1959 Estonia was working twice as many shale mines and quarries as before the war. Figures speak for themselves. In 1940 a total of 1,800,000 tons of slate were mined; this year the figure will be 16,500,000 tons. Gas production is an important item in the re public’s economy. Shale gas is used for heating homes and in many industrial enterprises as well. It is a valuable raw material for the chemical industry. There was no chemical industry in bourgeois Estonia. Set up after the war, it is now one of the most promising branches of industry in Soviet Estonia. The Maardu Chemical Plant, which pro duces superphosphate, has been steadily increasing output. Along with the prospering heavy and chemical industries are the republic’s food industry and the light, paper and plywood industries. Estonia’s furniture factories have become known throughout the Soviet Union for the high quality of their goods. My story would be incomplete if I did not men tion the great progress in agriculture. I could, of course, quote figures to show the high yields ob tained by Estonian collective farmers from their stubborn, stoney soil, but I would rather speak of what Soviet power has meant to the Estonian peasant women. One of our collective farms is called “Kaardivaelane,” which means “The Guardsman.” It was founded by demobilized Guardsmen of the Estonian Rifle Corps after the war. There were two young milkmaids on the farm, slender Leida Vinkel, and Eedit Rani, who has huge eyes and a round face. They got more milk per cow than anyone else on the farm or in the region. Their country recognized their labour efforts and awarded them the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. There are many girls like Leida and Eedit on the collective farms of Soviet Estonia. Mechanization and electrification plus skill and persistence have guaranteed success to our agri culture. The workers, collective farmers and intellectuals of the republic greet the anniversary of their libera tion with new successes in their respective fields. After Estonia joined the friendly family of So viet peoples its national culture flourished as never before. The republic now has an Academy of Sciences, a University, an Agricultural Academy and polytechnical, pedagogical and art institutes. Estonian scientists and artistes are known through out the country and abroad. The Estonian people are justly proud of their writers, composers and artists. The flourishing of the economy and culture of the Estonian people is further proof of the wisdom of the Leninist national policy. Now the sun shines in our windows, the bright sun of a happy life. T a llinn 13 === [PDF page 2] === Harvesting time... P ho to g rap h s b y Y. KAVERIN he dawn was just breaking and all was quiet in the village of Kazminskoye, Rain during the night had washed the slate roofs of the thousand white houses and the chestnut trees growing along the lanes receding to the outskirts. Raindrops still fell from the wires, aerials and TV masts. The fragrance of wet grass wafted up from the gully that cut across the village while the melodious gurgle of numerous springs resounded from its depth. Their waters, trickling from the crevices, ran into a brook which, at the end of the village, grew to form the river Kazma. The Kazma flows serenely past orchards, vegetable gardens and the cattle sheds of the Kazminsky Col lective Farm, merging near Ovechka railway station with the Kuban River... I clambered up the side of the cool gully to the two-storey white building of the farm board. On my way from Stavropol, a fellow passenger in the bus, an ex-farmer now a pensioner, told me the chair man of the Kazminsky Collective Farm, Hero of So cialist Labour Grigori Zhilyaev, was an early riser. He liked to hear the cocks crowing and to say hello to the milkmaids setting off to do the morning milk ing. The pensioner, I discovered, had told me the truth. Stiff, broad-shouldered with greying hair at his temples, the chairman stood by the door of the board building at that early hour, writing something in his notebook. I introduced myself. Zhilyaev readily replied to my questions. He told me Kazminskoye village would celebrate its 100th anniversary this year, and said he would rather not recall the bleak life before the Revolution. The fight with the rich for land had been ferocious. After the October Socialist Revolu tion the men had fought in the Civil War for three or more years. Even after they had organized the collective farm, they did the ploughing with rifles slung over their back because of the kulaks. But the collective farm grew strong. The time seemed to have come for reaping the joys of life. Then the fas cists attacked. The six thousand adult Kazminskoye males joined the army. After victory the people rebuilt the village out of its ruins. The chairman said they had received great en couragement from the March Plenary Meeting of the CC CPSU and the people were full of initiative. The mechanics of the ten complex farm teams were The leaders of the collective farm, from left to right: Yegor Zhuravlev, secretary of the farm’s Party Committee; Hero of Socialist Labour Grigori Zhilyaev, chairman of the col lective farm, and Nikolai Kiriyanov, secretary of the Kom somol organization THE KAZMA By SE RGEI DANILIN S P R I N G S The agronomist of the sixth team Alexandra Shinkareva (second from left) brought good news to the team leaders: the collective farm board had announced that the beet growers of this team had won the socialist emulation competition === [PDF page 3] === IM It bent on converting all the threshing floors to electric power. The crop farmers have made up their minds to harvest 25 metric centners of grain per hectare, which is 7 more than the year before. And the sev enth team has pledged to harvest 30 metric cent ners of wheat and barley per hectare. Seeing a cart on the road, driven by a young woman with a sunburned, friendly face, the chairman interrupted his story. "Alexandra Danilovna!" he shouted. "Stop a min ute, please!" “ Is it anything urgent? I have to see the selected seed field before the heat." "There’s always something we have to do,” he re plied. "W e were just talking about the harvest. Tell him how easily your team got it in." "Anything but easily,” the woman laughed. "The elements seemed determined to torment us. The spring was cold. We had a blizzard in April, and the winter wheat shoots perished under a crust of ice on one thousand hectares. So we had to sow all over again. This was followed by black thunder storms from the Caspian steppes. When the sun came out again and warmed the soil, we began sowing sugar beet. But a terrible gale swept over the land. It was so strong that it uprooted trees.” "W hat about now?” "W e expect a good harvest. We looked after the young wheat and put on plenty of top dressing in good time." Alexandra Danilovna began to move off, but reined in the horse again when she saw the head book keeper come out of the office. "The team wants you to come to the field and talk to them," she said to him. "W hat about?" "They wanf to know how much profit w e'll get this year." "No time today. I am going to town to cash the cheque and pay the farmers,” he replied. "But I'll give you a few figures, and you can tell them," Alexandra Danilovna jumped down lightly from the cart and they went into the office. I followed. A few notes on farm finances were just what I needed. More than a million poods of grain is what the col lective farm plans to sell the state procurement agency. State prices have gone up, and the farm will get an additional 368,000 rubles for its w/heat, 108,000 rubles for the sunflowers, 108,648 rubles for milk, 87,500 for meat and 99,030 for sugar-beet. That makes a total additional income of 771,778 ru bles. "To make that more convincing," the bookkeeper said to Alexandra Danilovna, "you can remind them that formerly this was just about as much as the col lective farm's annuaf income. And if we consider what w e'll sell the state in excess of the plan, our additional income w ill top a million rubles." "How much goes to the collective farmers every month?" I asked. The answer was impressive: more than 160,000 rubles. And all the returns have not been calculated as yet. A motorcycle roared past the window. "That man loves speed," the bookkeeper ob served. "It's Nikolai Malikov, a machine operator, and During the busy days of harvesting senior pupils helped the combine operators of the grain-cleansing machines. Katya Gundoreva had a responsible job, she headed the youngsters' threshing-floor team During harvest time the children of the collective farm ers stay at a Young Pioneer summer camp in a forest === [PDF page 4] === On the initiative of the vet Ludmila Grishchenko a charm ing idea was introduced—the leading milkmaids are present ed with kerchiefs. Recently Ludmila received one herself. Here she is, snapped by a “ Soviet Woman” photographer wearing the kerchief out in the fields his daughters," he explained to me. "They're off for the fieldwork." When we came out into the street again quite a few motorcycles were raising dust on it. “ Do you have these races every day?" I asked Zhilyaev. "Every morning," the chairman said smiling. "Five hundred and fifty collective farmers have bought motorcycles, and twelve have cars. No longer do I have to tell people off for coming late to work. But come along to the fields with me," the chairman sug gested, heading for a landrover. There were two people in the landrover— Ludmila Grishchenko, the veterinary surgeon from the fifth team, and Sasha, a freckled and sociable schoolboy. He needed no prompting to tell me that his father, sheep-breeder Nikolai Prokop, had been awarded a certificate of merit for getting 8 kilograms of wool from each of the farm's 800 sheep, and that his mother, Raisa Prokop, a milkmaid, had a similar certificate for high milk yields. He also revealed his own "secret" ambition to become a Hero of Socialist The landrover negotiated the bridge over the Kazma, passed the village stadium, a school, the fifth team's clubhouse, and stopped at the cattle breeding farm. Ludmila Grishchenko insisted that we see it before going on to the fields. The important question facing the farm is how to raise the income from cattle farming. Specialization is a good way. One of the sections will breed p edi gree cattle only. Another will fatten cattle for meat. A calf-pen for 500 head is under construction, where selected young animals w ill be fattened. They w ill be sold to the state as yearlings. The sheds are like modern factories. The cow pens housing a thousand head have an electrically driven conveyor to keep the premises clean and electric cars to cart the feed. Twenty days before calving the cows are transferred to a special ward. The newborn calves are placed in a calf nurs ery. The sheep breeders, too, are going in for specialization. The second team, for example, w ill raise only pedigree Caucasian merinos. One of the new buildings is a pig farm of stand ard type. It accommodates 3,000 pigs, and will have a centralized panel to control all the jobs in volved in preparing and distributing the feed and has mechanical means of keeping the premises clean. Water for washing the floors is supplied by power ful pumps. The mechanized poultry farm is just as modern. Four people only are needed to look after the 12,000 hens and do the egg collecting. Zhilyaev could not resist the temptation to show me the farm's new features. He took me to the shop where they grew greenery for the poultry by a hydroponic double-quick method, and to the shop making grass meal, and to one where they produce artificial milk for 7,000 calves and pigs. This is the chemical section, supervised by a young specialist, Forty-two herds like this pasture in the vast Kazminsk valleys, In the distance stands Nikolai Prokop (with a tall staff in his hands), the collective farm’s best shepherd 16 Vifali Kuzminov, and his assistant, Raisa Konovalova, a recent secondary-school leaver. "W e want science to rule all branches of farming," the chairman confided. " It is high time we learned to process our own grapes, fruit and berries." The landrover rolled across country roads to a ravine that the local people call "Golden," where 50.000 sheep, over 7,000 cows and 4,000 pigs were grazing peacefully on a collective farm pasture. The view was truly magnificent. In the distance we heard the purr of farm ma chines. The farm has 35 combines in all. They were using 121 tractors to bring in the harvest. Every one of th e '3,000 collective farmers has an average of 5 hp. at his disposal. But the farmers think that is still not enough. They are right, too. The crop ripples like a golden sea all the way to the horizon. The farm has almost 22.000 hectares of rich black soil alone, with 700 hec tares of shelter-belt forest protecting them from storms and the scorching dry steppe winds. We visited ten of the field camps. The very con ception of a field camp has changed. No longer is it a makeshift summer encampment. It has hostels with libraries, reading-rooms, dining-rooms and bathhou ses. The clubrooms have television and radio sets. All through the harvesting, amateur stage performers come to entertain the farmers. Sport is popular, too, and dances in the evenings. Notices listed sanatoriums and holiday homes where the farmers could go for their paid leave, as well as tours to picturesque spots in the Soviet Union and abroad. One of the older notices remind ed parents they should apply in time for their chil dren to go to the summer Young Pioneer camp or the kindergarten. The collective farm had allotted some 700,000 ru bles this year for capital development. The shortage in qualified personnel is becoming less acute. The influx of people has noticeably increased. The farm admitted 37 new members in two months. Among them were 5 lorry drivers, 2 automobile mechanics, 4 men from the building trade and 1 gas welder. What is most important, specialists with higher and secondary technical education are coming home to