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UKRAINIAN WOMAN OUR ENGLISH COLUMN At What Price? Non-political reflection on the Soviet' satellite Sputnik flew out like Phenix from the ashes of Soviet life — suddenly, uП'Єxpectedly. The man of the West - big and small — has been seized with a kind of panic. The scale of val ues declined instantly, everything became valueless in the face of “Sputnik” . Why? Did it anni hilate everything-? What has ensphered this great scientific event in the Soviets? For there must have been created a colossal scientific technical ap paratus for such an operation. Some men and women have been forced to work for it, others worked willingly and with such zeal that they had forgotten the world around them, discharging the deadened dynamism of their “ego” inborn in a worthy human. Among them, in the obscurity stood a man, a creator, an inven tor who possessed the keys to all this exploit, a mathematic formu la, a complex drawing with thou sands of figures. Irrespective of the environment, or not, he had been creating since he felt a div ine spark dominating him, and was impelled to do so even while he was fully aware that not he but someone else is going to reap the laurels. For in USSR an au thor’s work is taken away from him in a dictatorial wa)*-, like a product of a machine, as a prop erty of the state, while a stamp of collective thinking is pressed on him. In the Western World a creator is exalted. But in USSR he is charged with excessive indi vidualism, followed by an accusa tion of idealism wihich usually ends in exile to Siberia. One may surmise that also in the case of the earth satellite there had been such horrid acts. However, there may be no- doubt as to the answer to the question: At what price this has been at tained ? Unquestionably, its production, no less than the manufacture of the far-reaching rockets, required huge sums of money. Yet, as wre know from recent observations of the travelers in USSR, the stan dard of living of all populace there, excepting merely the ruling party classes, is extremely low. While in all countries of the Free World the progress in all spheres of life is going on in harmony, in USSR everything is becoming grossly discordant. The life there — is a scale of contrasts : the lux ury of the pink of Soviet society and the poverty of the populace. It is being forced to hard work and to “voluntary’' contributions toward “Soviet motherland,” the obligations imposed on the people under the constraint of being ex iled or liquidated. It is vegetating in permanent want. But whenever the ‘collective dictatorship” wants to overtake the West in some field, it dares loot the poor popu lace further still, transforming the people into a mass of wretch ed paupers. And there is no one who may dare ask the people if it will be able to stand more and ever more taxes and “voluntary” obligations. No one has ever ask ed the villagers, the workingmen, or the teachers whether they sub scribe to the government plans to cut their wages, regardless of the fact that the pay they are re even for half-starved existence, even for hal-starved existence, for dwelling in mud-huts or in cellars of shattered houses. The Soviet man accepts all this silent ly, with clinched teeth, as a de cree by dictatorship which is spreading ruin and death for dis obedience. The funds “collected” in -this way are being spent for the pro duction of technical world mir acles, for dizzy achievements that beclouded for a moment the civi lization of the West. The criminal leadership of Kremlin is celebrat ing its triumphs, vastly augment ed by praises and . . panic of the Western World, while these things, against the background of reality, of the living- standard of the people, are essentially no thing more than hysterics which turned to. assume the shape of a cosmic storm . Has then really the scale of values changed? No, it has not changed. Because even in the most dreadful bond age the creative life does not die. The human being having pre served God’s image, is nurturing creative thoughts even when he is driven into a collect ive farm where he is pre vented from reaping the' fruits of his labor. Or he is sitting some where in a cold mud-fout dream ing of new inventions. This is the real spiritual elite in USSR. It does live and think of the ques tion if the Western World shall ever stop to think whether the cosmic attainments of Kremlin have been achieved at .the price of sufferings and of loss of human dignit}r of men and women in USSR and whether these attain ments are possible of accomplish ment solely under the system of terrorism and dictatorship of a totalitarian regime? Natalie P. Ischuk O U R LIFE Edited by Editorial Board Published by the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America» Inc- 909 N. Franklin St. Philadelphia 23, Pa. Phone MA 7-7945
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