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UKRAINIAN WOMAN OUR ENGLISH COLUMN Women Without 'Feminine Qualities' W e have been reading- the above delineation m ore and more often whenever the Soviet wo men have been characterized. Most of tho travelers stress these peculiarities as their distinguish ing- marks. I t seems th at these traits appear to be evident enough to be noted by strangers. Even the' young girls seem to be devoid of flirtation. “Barely do you see the little gay accents women have used everywhere — ribbons, scarfs, colored handkerchiefs” — w rites Mrs. Gould, editor of L a dies’ Home Journal. “W e have never seen a group of young peo ple with a little gaiety and joy,” she adds. Professor N utter, of Virginia University, hastens to explain this in these words: “No w ork is considered too strenuous or odi ous for women. I saw them laying railroad rails, digging’ ditches, carrying heavy stones and clean ing sewers. This leaves its inevi table m ark on the physical struc ture and appearance of Soviet womanhood. The long- hours of work leave those not handicaped b}^ heavy jobs little tim e for groom ing th eir feminine quali ties.” This is a pointed rem ark. P ro fessor N utter refers to party dir ections for Soviet women appar ently received from official 'cir cles. lie avers: “A woman, the argum ent runs, m ust be free to develop her own personality and to make her maximum contribu tion to progress of Communist community. She must, therefore be independent of the man who, for m utual convenience, happens to be her husband. To be depen- dent on her husband is to become his slave, tied down to a dreary and fruitless life of keeping house and rearing children.” H e has his doubts wThether the Soviet women are really guided by such a rule. Still neither he nor other travelers ever stop to consider the real causes which had forced the Soviet women to hard work, surely not m eant for w o men, that reflected on their outer appearance. For not all things may be explained by poverty of a country. There are very poor countries in the wide world, un developed, with industry in defi cient stage, and still there are no such sights there as women w ork ing at the construction of build ings and roads, or cleaning the streets of the cities. To grasp this, one has to re alize all transitions of Soviet ec onomy. Ever since the five years’ plans started, the economy of the USSR has been under stern state control which has become its sole employer. This reconstruction has not been carried out through slow reforms. O'n the contrary, it has been attained under winged catch words and noisy slogans which have been serving to disguise the means of coercion. The most stri king instance of this compulsion was the well-known government- perpetrated famine of 1932-33 when the Soviet government starved to death seven million people of Ukraine, in order to force the rural populace into the kolkhozes. To carry out this das tardly decision of Kremlin, the bolshevik authorities first seized all food articles from the villages leaving the peasants without any means whatsoever to survive. W henever the Soviet govern ment felt that its economy need ed more production, it forced working masses in various fields, making- use of special slogan's; like “Fatherland calls” or MW e shall give our country more coal,” etc. The reconstruction of economy always requires new manpower. In normal circum stances it' rftay be gained through em igration, eventually through seasonal' in flux of strangers. However,, the bolsheviki made use of the ni'eans of ancient authoritarian, regimes — utilizing forced slave ІаЬбґ. The hardest work in USSR, th e mining and tim ber cutting in the virgin forests of northern- Russia and Siberia has been done by the hands of slave labor, for the most part by the political prisoners. And the womanpower of USSR has been likewise forced to per: form the hardest task working- in cold woods as well as in the mines of northern Russia and Siberia. Outwardly, it may appear that this work has 110 m arks of slave labor for the wOmen seemingly have chosen this kind of work. And it may be so outside the slave labor camps. The bolsheviki even boast in their statistical reports that “the percentage of w orking women, m etal drillers, turret lathe operators, grinders, milling machine operators, and locomo tive and m otor drivers is increas ing.” But, in fact, the way .in wThich the Soviet women entered the economy of USSR, was one of inevitability, of unavoidable ne cessity, or coercion. The Soviet women have been forced to go to work at construction o.f buildings, paving the streets, and as lumberr jacks in the forests. For there have been no other jobs for them to choose from. The conditions in USSR had worsened so much that all adult members of the family have been compelled to be gainfully employ ed. In "January, 1957, the minimum monthly wages w ere set at 300
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