The old palaces of the Tsars and the nobility have now become museums and rest-houses and sanatoria for the people. Near Leningrad there is a small town which used to be called Tsarkoe Selo (meaning “The Tsar’s Village”), as it contained two imperial palaces and the Tsar used to live there in summer. The name has now been changed to Detskoe Selo (“The Children’s Village”), and I suppose the old palaces now serve the purposes of children and young people. Children and the young are the favoured persons in Soviet land today, and they get the best of everything, even though others might suffer lack. It is for them that the present generation labours, for it is they who will inherit the socialized and scientific State, if that finally comes into existence in their time. In Moscow there is a great “Central Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child”.
Women in Russia have perhaps more freedom than in any other country, and at the same time they have special protection from the State. They enter all professions, and quite large numbers of them are engineers. The first woman ambassador appointed by any government was the old Bolshevik Madame Kollontai. Lenin’s widow, Krupskaya, is the head of a branch of the Soviet education department.
The Soviet Union is an exciting land with all these changes taking place from day to day and hour to hour. But no part of it is so exciting and fascinating as the desert steppes of Siberia and the old-world valleys of Central Asia, both cut off for generations from the drift of human change and advance, and now bounding ahead at a tremendous pace. To give you some idea of these rapid changes, I shall tell you something about Tadjikistan, which was perhaps one of the most backward areas of the Soviet Union.
Tadjikistan lies in the valleys of the Pamir mountains, north of the River Oxus, bordering Afghanistan and Chinese Turkestan, and not far from the Indian frontier. It used to be under the Emirs of Bokhara, who were vassals of the Russian Tsars. In 1920 there was a local revolution in Bokhara and the Emir was overthrown and a Bokhara People’s Soviet Republic established. Civil war followed, and it was during these disorders that Enver Pasha, the once-popular leader of Turkey, met his death. The Bokhara Republic came to be called the Uzbek Socialist Soviet Republic, and it became one of the constituent sovereign republics of the U.S.S.R. In 1925 an autonomous Tadjik Republic was formed within the Uzbek area. In 1929 Tadjikistan became a sovereign republic and one of the seven member States of the Soviet federation—the U.S.S.R.
Tadjikistan had attained this dignity, but it was a small and backward area with a population of under 1,000,000, and hardly any proper communications, the only roads being camel-tracks. Under the new regime immediate steps were taken to improve roads, irrigation and agriculture, industries, education, and health services. Motor roads were built, cotton-growing begun and made highly successful owing to irrigation. By the middle of 1931 over 60 per cent, of the cotton plantations were collectivized, and a great part of the grain area was also organized under communal farms. An electric power-station was established and eight cotton-mills and three oil-mills grew up. A railway line was built connecting the country through Uzbekistan to the Soviet Union railway system, and an aeroplane service established, making connections with the principal air lines.
In 1929 there was only one dispensary in the country. In 1932 there were sixty-one hospitals and thirty-seven dental clinics, with 2125 beds and twenty doctors. The progress of education can be judged from the following figures:
In 1925, only six modern schools.
End of 1926, 113 schools with 2300 students.
In 1929, 500 schools.
In 1931, over 2000 educational institutions with over 120,000 students.
Of course the money spent on education has gone up with a jump. The school budget for 1929-30 was for 8,000,000 roubles (a rouble at par is about two shillings, but the actual value varies); for 1930-31 the budget was 28,000,000 rubles. Besides the ordinary schools, kindergartens, training-schools, libraries and reading-rooms were being opened. There was a tremendous hunger for knowledge among the people.
Under these conditions the seclusion of women behind the veil could hardly continue, and this was rapidly giving way.
All this sounds almost incredible. I have taken this information and figures from the report of a competent American observer who visited Tadjikistan early in 1932. Probably many additional changes have taken place since.
It appears that the Soviet Union helped the young Tadjik Republic with money for educational and other purposes, because it is the policy of the Union to pull up backward areas. The country, however, seems to be rich in mineral deposits. Gold, oil, and coal have been found, and it is even believed that the gold reserves are very big. In the old days, up to the time of Chengiz Khan, these gold mines were worked, but apparently they have not been exploited since.
In 1931 there was a counter-revolutionary rising in Tadjikistan, and many of the richer landowning classes who had run away from the country to Afghanistan invaded the country. The rising fizzled out because the peasants did not support it.
This letter is getting long and very mixed. But I must tell you something more about the Soviet Union’s activities in the international sphere. You know already that the Soviet signed the Kellogg Peace Pact which was supposed to “outlaw” war. There was also the Litvinov Pact of 1929 between the Soviet and its neighbours. In her desire to ensure peace, Russia went on making “non-aggression” pacts with various countries. Japan was the only one of the Soviet’s neighbours which refused to agree to such a pact. In November 1932 Russia and France concluded a non-aggression pact, and this was an important event in world politics, as it brought Russia into the orbit of Western European politics.
China, after a long period of silent hostility, and no diplomatic relations, recognized afresh the Soviet Government, when she was hard pressed by Japan in Manchuria. With Japan, Russia has had normal diplomatic contacts, but their relations with each other have been consistently bad. The Soviet stands as a check to Japanese ambitions on the mainland of Asia, and frequent border conflicts occur. The Japanese Government constantly provokes the Soviet, and there has often been talk of war between them, but Russia preferred to pocket even insults rather than go to war.
Anglo-Russian friction has been a permanent feature of international politics. The trial of the British engineers in April 1933 in Moscow led to reprisals and counter-reprisals, but the storm blew over and normal relations were re-established. But the Conservative Government of Britain dislikes the Soviet, and there is always tension between them. In the United States of America friendlier feelings are growing towards Russia, and President Roosevelt is establishing normal relations. The interests of America and Russia hardly come into conflict anywhere in the world.
The rise of the Nazi Government in Germany has, however, brought a new and aggressively violent enemy for Russia. Though unable to do much direct harm to Russia, it is a great future danger. In Europe fascist tendencies are on the increase.
Soviet Russia has been behaving internationally very much as a satisfied Power, avoiding all trouble, and trying to keep peace at all costs. This is the opposite of a revolutionary policy which would aim at fomenting revolution in other countries. It is a national policy of building up socialism in a single country and avoiding all complications outside. Necessarily this results in compromises with imperialist and capitalist Powers. But the essential socialist basis of Soviet economy continues, and the success of this is itself the most powerful argument in favour of socialism.
This was the position of Soviet Russia in July 1933. A World Economic Conference being held in London then, Russia took advantage of the presence of others to get another non-aggression pact between herself and her neighbours—Afghanistan, Estonia, Latvia, Persia, Poland, Rumania, Turkey, and Lithuania. Japan, as before, kept out of it.
182
Science Goes ahead
July 13, 1933
I have written to you at great length about political happenings, and a little about the economic changes that took pl
ace all over the world during the post-war years. In this letter I want to write about other matters, and especially about science and its effects.
But before I go on to science, I would remind you again of the very great change in woman’s position since the World War. This so-called “emancipation” of women from legal, social and customary bonds began in the nineteenth century with the coming of big industries which employed women workers. It made slow progress, and then war conditions hurried up the process, and the after-war years almost completed it. Today even Tadjikistan, about which I wrote to you in my last letter, has its women doctors and teachers and engineers, who only a few years back lived in seclusion. You and your generation will probably take all this for granted. And yet it is quite a novel thing not only in Asia, but in Europe also. Less than 100 years ago, in 1840, the first “World’s Anti-Slavery Convention” was held in London. Women came as delegates to it from America, where the existence of negro slavery was agitating many people. The Convention, however, refused to admit these “female delegates”, on the ground that for any woman to take part in a public meeting was improper and degrading to the sex!
And now let us go to science. In dealing with the Five Year Plan in Soviet Russia, I told you that it was the application of the spirit of science to social affairs. To some extent, though only partly, this spirit has been at the back of Western civilization for the past 150 years or so. As its influence has grown, the ideas based on unreason and magic and superstition have been pushed aside, and methods and processes alien to those of science have been opposed. This does not mean that the spirit of science has triumphed completely over unreason and magic and superstition. Far from it. But it has undoubtedly advanced a long way, and the nineteenth century saw many of its resounding victories.
I have written to you already of the stupendous changes brought about in the nineteenth century by the application of science to industry and life. The world, and especially western Europe and North America, were changed out of all recognition; far more than they had changed for thousands of years previously. A surprising enough fact is the enormous increase in the population of Europe during the nineteenth century. In 1800 the population was 180 millions for the whole of Europe. Slowly in the course of ages it had risen to that figure. And then it shoots ahead, and in 1914 it was 460 millions. During this period also millions of Europeans emigrated to other continents, particularly to America, and we may put their number at about 40 millions. Thus Europe’s population went up to about 500 millions from 180 millions, in the course of a little over 100 years. This increase was especially marked in the industrial countries of Europe. England, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had a population of 5 millions only, and was the poorest country in western Europe. It became the richest country in the world, with a population of 40 millions.
This growth and wealth resulted from greater control over, or rather understanding of, the processes of Nature which scientific knowledge made possible. There was great increase in knowledge, but do not imagine that this necessarily means an increase in wisdom. Men began to control and exploit the forces of Nature without having any clear ideas of what their aim in life was or should be. A powerful automobile is a useful and desirable thing, but one must know where to go in it. Unless properly guided, it may jump over a precipice. The President of the British Association of Science said recently: “The command of Nature has been put into man’s hands before he knows how to command himself.”
Most of us use the products of science—railways, aeroplanes, electricity, wireless, and thousands of others—without thinking of how they came into existence. We take them for granted, as if we were entitled to them as of right. And we are very proud of the fact that we live in an advanced age and are ourselves so very “advanced”. Now, there is no doubt that our age is a very different one from previous ages, and I think it is perfectly correct to say that it is far more advanced. But that is a different thing from saying that we as individuals or groups are more advanced. It would be the height of absurdity to say that because an engine-driver can run an engine and Plato or Socrates could not, therefore the engine-driver is more advanced than, or is superior to, Plato or Socrates. But it would be perfectly correct to say that the engine itself is a more advanced method of locomotion than Plato’s chariot was.
We read so many books nowadays, most of them, I am afraid, rather silly books. In the old days people read few books, but they were good books, and they knew them well. One of the greatest of European philosophers, a man full of learning and wisdom, was Spinoza. He lived in the seventeenth century in Amsterdam. It is said that his library consisted of less than sixty volumes.
It is well, therefore, for us to realize that the great increase in knowledge in the world does not necessarily make us better or wiser. We must know how to use that knowledge properly before we can fully profit by it. We must know whither to go before we rush ahead in our powerful car. We must, that is, have some idea of what the aim and object of life should be. Vast numbers of people today have no such notion, and never worry themselves about it. They live in an age of science, but the ideas that govern them and their actions belong to ages long past. It is natural that difficulties and conflicts should arise. A clever monkey may learn to drive a car, but he is hardly a safe chauffeur.
Modern knowledge is amazingly intricate and widespread. Tens of thousands of investigators work away continuously, each experimenting in his particular department, each burrowing away in his own patch, and adding tiny bit by bit to the mountain of knowledge. The field of knowledge is so vast that each worker has to be a specialist in his own line. Often he is unaware of other departments of knowledge, and thus, though he is very learned in some branches of knowledge, he is unlearned about many others. It becomes difficult for him to take a wise view of the whole field of human activity. He is not cultured in the old sense of the word.
There are, of course, individuals who have risen above this narrow specialization and, while being specialists themselves, can take a wider view. Undeterred by war and human troubles, these people have been carrying on scientific researches, and during the last fifteen years or so have made remarkable contributions to knowledge. The greatest scientist of the day is supposed to be Albert Einstein, a German Jew, who has been turned out of Germany by the Hitler Government because they do not approve of Jews.
Einstein discovered some new fundamental laws of physics, affecting the whole universe, through intricate calculations in mathematics, and thereby he varied some of Newton’s laws which had been accepted without question for 200 years. Einstein’s theory was confirmed in a most interesting way. According to this theory, light behaves in a particular way, and this could be tested during an eclipse of the sun. When such an eclipse occurred, it was found that light-rays did behave in that way, and so a conclusion reached by mathematical reasoning was confirmed by actual experiment.
I am not going to try to explain this theory to you, because it is very abstruse. It is called the Theory of Relativity. In dealing with the universe, Einstein found that the idea of time and the idea of space were, separately, not applicable. So he discarded both and put forward a new idea in which both were wedded together. This was the idea of space-time.
Einstein dealt with the universe. At the other end of the scale, scientists investigated the infinitely small. Take a pin’s point—about as small a thing as you can see with the unaided eye. This pin’s point, it was proved by scientific methods, is, in a way, like a universe in itself! It has molecules buzzing round each other; and each molecule consists of atoms which also go round and round without touching each other; and each atom consists of large numbers of electric particles or charges, or whatever they are, protons and electrons, which are also in constant and tremendously fast motion. Smaller still are positrons and neutrons and dentons; and the average life of a positron has been estimated to be about a thousand-millionth part of a second! All this is, on an infinitely small scale, like the planets and the s
tars going round and round in space. Remember that the molecule is far too small to be seen even by the most powerful microscope. As for the atoms and the protons and electrons, it is difficult even to imagine them. And yet so advanced is scientific technique that quite a lot of information has been collected about these protons and electrons, and recently the atom was split.
In considering the latest theories of science one’s head reels, and it is very difficult to appreciate them. I shall now tell you something even more amazing. We know that our earth, which seems so big to us, is but a minor planet of the Sun, which is itself a very insignificant little star. The whole solar system is but a drop in the ocean of space. Distances are so great in the universe that it takes thousands and millions of years for light to reach us from some parts of it. Thus when we see a star at night, what we see is not what it is now, but what it was when the ray of light, which now reaches us, left it on its long journey, which may have taken hundreds or thousands of years. This is all very confusing to one’s ideas of time and space, and that is why Einstein’s space-time is far more helpful in considering such matters. If we leave out space and consider only time, the past and present get mixed up. For the star we see is present for us, and yet it is the past that we see. For ought we know it may have ceased to exist long ago, after the light-ray started on its journey I have said that our Sun is an unimportant little star. There are about 100,000 other stars, and all these together form what is called a galaxy. Most of the stars that we see at night form this galaxy. But we only see very few of the stars with our unaided eyes. Powerful telescopes help us to see far more. It is calculated by the experts in this science that there are as many as 100,000 different galaxies of stars in the universe!
Glimpses of World History Page 128