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From Our Archives Fifty years ago, a two-part article was published in Our Life about a meeting between former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and representatives of the Ukrainian community. Held at Mrs. Roosevelt’s home in New York, the meeting was a UNWLA initiative and was attended by (then) UNWLA Vice President Stefania Pushkar, several other UNWLA members, and two academicians specializing on the topic to be discussed: life in the USSR. Below is a summary of the topics discussed. Accompanying the article was a brief report describing the meeting, which noted that Mrs. Roosevelt served tea and was “very interested” in the dis cussion and in the related materials presented to her by the UNWLA representatives. The author mentioned that the former First Lady spoke about her experiences while traveling in the USSR; the article, unfortun ately, included no specific information about Mrs. Roosevelt’s impressions or how they compared with the realities of Soviet-era life discussed at the meeting. Housing. For the past forty years [that is, since 1918], it is typical for several families to share an apartment and to cook in one communal kitchen, a situation that frequently creates unsanitary and unhygienic conditions as well as the psychological stress of living in conditions where privacy is nearly impossible. A 1956 report published in Radianska Ukraina noted that housing regulations accorded “a minimum of 9 square meters per person.” In practice, the per person allotment is closer to 5 square meters. Food Shopping and Restaurants. Purchasing food at government operated stores is extremely difficult, especially for people who do not live in Kyiv, Moscow, Leningrad, or other large cities where such stores are fairly well-stocked. In most other cities and towns and villages, there are frequent shortages. When supplies arrive, stores first cater to the needs of [communist] party officials and dignitaries, sometimes delivering purchased goods to their homes. Ordinary people wait in long lines to shop for food with no guarantees that what they need will be there once they reach the front of the line. As with food shopping, the best restaurants are reserved for party bosses. Cheaper restaurants, patronized by ordinary people, are overcrowded and characterized by slow service. Electricity and Fuel. Soviet newspapers urge everyone to save electricity, whether at home or at work. Workers, for example, are told to push movable machines by hand to save electrical energy. Severe fuel shortages in Ukrainian villages have been reported by Radianska Ukraina (October 1956). Clothing. Shortages of common items are universal, and the income of the average Soviet worker makes it difficult to purchase good quality items even when they are available. In comparison with the United States, where an average person works 30 hours to earn enough to buy a suit, an average Soviet worker must work 239 hours to buy a similar suit. Earning enough to purchase a pair of shoes in the United States takes (on average) approximately 4 hours; in the USSR, a similar pair of shoes (if available at all) requires approximately 61 hours of work. Domestic Responsibilities and Child Care. Wives of party officials often have servants at their disposal (all woefully underpaid) and few work outside the home. Other women, most of whom must work outside the home, cannot afford this luxury and thus do all household chores alone. Children of working mothers are often left at home alone or with elderly people as there are not enough kindergartens, even in cities with large populations. Education. Education for older children [and even for university students] is a continuing problem characterized by the lack of skilled teachers. In 1958, the Moscow-based Teacher’s Gazette re ported that only 2,998 of 5,000 teachers reported for work to the schools to which they were assigned. In many schools, subjects such as physics, biology, and mathematics have been dropped from the curriculum because there is no one to teach them. Another issue of the Teacher’s Gazette reported problems with inadequate or insufficient school buildings; a concurrent report in Radianska Ukraina reported that only 165 or 2,100 trade schools in Ukraine had their own facilities, a situation that required students to attend classes in shifts. Professional Potential. Young people in the USSR cannot freely choose their professional activities or Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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