European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 11, 1967, Darmstadt, Hesse                                After 5o years of communism continued from Page 11 moment say it Means. The communist party runs the Coin try. One out of every 18 soviet citizens belongs. No other organization can Exi without its permission and control. To e party is run by about two dozen a Nat the top. They discuss things argue from time to time but reach decision that Are binding on every party Mem i r and on everybody else including to government. From time to time there Are Parl elections but no real contests. Fro Tat time to time there Are government elections but no real contests Kheife  elections Are used to give the word to the people and try to con Vince them they Are important in run Ning the country. Drab newspapers an Dull television spread the message that the soviet people Are blessed and whats happening at the moment is right never mind if different from  general Secretary of the communist party Leonid i. Brezhnev a Burl Hearty steel Engineer turned party bureaucrat is the most important Lead Erin the soviet Union. Premier Alexei n. Kosygin a shrewd Engineer turned economist and politician has a Large voice in party discussions. But his government does what the collective leadership de  leadership takes care of itself both in terms of very Good living behind curtain of absolute privacy and in terms of controlling any possibility of Challenge. The theory of communism from each according to his ability to each according to his need has yet to be tried in communism s first nation. In deed it recedes farther into the future. Instead a system of state capitalism was created. The state run by the communist party owns everything. It paid the worker As Little As possible for the value that he contributed to the eco Nomy and used the difference for expansion  the soviet Union labor unions do not fight for More for the  Are controlled by the party which wants More production at less  they exhort workers to work harder while stifling  government is financed by a complicated system of siphoning Money out of Industry at various Levels and using consumer prices As a control on con sumption rather than a reflection of costs. An extreme Case is Vodka. It i produced for a tiny fraction of its Sale up soviet schools have made literacy almost Universal Bur Choice of Reading matter is limited to party approved material. Moscow family called typical by soviet officials boasts television set but program Choice is limited. Up Price of $3.15 a pint the earnings of Al most six hours work for the average russian in order to tax drinkers. That does not however prevent alcoholism from being one of the most serious so Viet social problems. He City worker paid for industrialization by contributing far More labor than he got Back in rewards. His Standard of living not very High to begin with Sank one third to patched shoes threadbare clothes and cabbage soup meals before an expanding Economy headroom to give him More without slowing the investment  More than City workers the Farmers paid for soviet Progress. Stalin squeezed food out of them killing Mil Lions in the process and gave Back Al most nothing. It was their involuntary sacrifice that basically made industrialization possible. Compared with Western agriculture soviet farms Are pitifully backward inefficient and underdeveloped. Soviet leaders Are now making the most Seri Ous attempt yet to improve and modern ize agriculture. The latest available statistics suggest that each russian Farmer is paid about $200 a year less than the value of what he produces. Cutting Down this govern ment Rake off from rigged prices by pay ing fairer prices and assigning More in vestments to agriculture seems to Blunder Way but change comes slowly. If the stalinist approach to agriculture built up present problems the stalinist method of industrialization did even More so. It was crude. Production was measured in simple terms the number of trucks the tonnage of steel. Quality meant Little and was  economic reforms that now have been applied to a Quarter of Industrial production Are an attempt to bring sense into a system that lacking the Spur of Competition staggered along in nonsense. Unrealistic prices still Amajor problem Are being changed but remain a government tool rather thana free floating measuring device. Now production is being measured More by sales wholesale and retail than by vol ume. A product has to be wanted by someone instead of piling up in a Ware  key word is profits but the soviets explain that it does not mean the same thing and therefore is not a sign of capitalism. The government owns Industry the people Are the government so profits Benefit the people runs the argument. The reforms Are calculated to Force More rational use of manpower. This and automation Are changing labor Pat terns. But communist doctrine will not let officials admit an unemployment problem. Occasional items in the press indicate however that three million persons change jobs a year 1.2 million of the changing occupations and a High percentage Are out of work a month or More. The average soviet City worker earns $101 a month after visible taxes. Food takes almost half of this subsidized rent Only 3 per cent. Clothing is very expensive and family budgets Are in general very tight. Medical care is free although Quality is Low by Western standards. Education is free and rigidly oriented toward the technical subjects needed in Industry plus the overriding Job of creating Satis fied citizens of the communist system. Hese citizens Are aware that life has become easier the living better. There Are few signs that Many of themare not satisfied. But possibilities for dissatisfaction Are  the soviet cultural world is pressing against its communist part Bonds. The old pattern of intellectuals using Art to express opposition to thet Marist police state has re emerged now. A half hidden struggle swirls on the Cul Tural front Between stalinist and Liber als. It emerges occasionally in the trial of satirists Andrei d. Sinyavsky and Yuli m. Daniel or in a quickly Dis Persed demonstration by students. Despite the restrictions and the Short Ages there is a widespread feeling that life will continue to get better if Only there is peace in the world. The so Viet people suffered More than another in world War n some 20 Mil lion dead extensive devastation. No they Hope for peace with an emotional intensity difficult for most foreigners to understand. Yet the soviet Union is heavily militarized. Aware of the catastrophic effects of another world War the soviet Union is cautious but assertive on the International scene. This is largely a result of uneasy attempts to reconcile two conflicting attitudes. One recognizes the need for peace at Home. The other keeps alive the traditional communist Doc Trine s requirement of working to under mine Western systems abroad and spreading communism while feeling the West is out to destroy communism. The Kremlin four american heroes tourists wait to enter Lenin s Tomb in front of Kremlin Wall. By Thomas m. Brown up staff writer Ryphe soviet Union has had Fewel american heroes. But the ashes of four of them lie i niches in the red Brick Kremlin Wall the nearest thing to an official holy place in this country. John Reed romantic writer and dedicated revolutionary is the most famous american son of the russian revolution to lie in the burial place of honoured so Viet  him Are Charles Ruthenberg an Early member of the american communist movement and a party officer Wil Liam big Bill Haywood one of the founders of the Industrial workers of the world iwo and Elizabeth Gurle Flynn the grand old lady of Amer ican communism and the most recent american to be buried in the Wall. All except Ruthenberg died in the so Viet Union the alien land that for them seemed the Hope of the future. Reed the Harvard communist is est remembered for his Book ten Days that Shook the world eyewitness account of the bolshevik revolution. Reed was born in Portland ore., of wealthy parents and attended Harvard University where his prose became flu ent and his politics Radical. He once said his ambition was tomake a million dollars and to write my name in letters of fire against the  made his name As a reporter and acquired a taste for adventure by covering the 1913 uprising of Pancho Vil la in  roaming Europe during world War i he returned to the United states married and in August 1917 went to rus Harvard red Reed leftist Leader Ruthenberg Page 12 the stars and stripes grand old lady Flynn wednesday october 11, 1967 up 4 wobbly s big Bill Sia with his Bride to report the impending revolution. Reed was fully in sympathy with Len in s attempts to overthrow the provisional government of Alexander Keren sky. He addressed crowds in English or halting russian passed out bushels of revolutionary literature interviewed leaders of both sides and became acquainted with most of the top Bol she  when the revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg Reed was with them. He returned to the United states in1919 and wrote ten  it was blatantly pro bolshevik but Reed had admitted in his introduction that my sympathies were not  the rest of Reed s Story was Antic i Matic and tinged with tragedy. Caught Between warring factions in the infant american communist movement and in decline As a writer he returned to Russia to attend the communist International in  found the country ravaged by civil War poverty disease and waste. Disillusioned by the course of the revolution Reed insisted on living with the peasants and sharing their meager lot. His health broke. He caught typhus and on oct. 17, 1920, died. He was 32. The bolsheviks gave him a state Funer Al a resting place in the heroes grave and a Little Gold plaque on the Kremlin Wall. William Haywood who became big Bill to his labor movement friends and anathema to management was born into a family of miners in 1869 and began working at the age of 10.a natural Leader he Rose quickly in the fledgling labor movement and while still in his 20s led a major mining strike in Colorado Idaho and Montana. By 1901 he was Secretary treasurer of the Western miners federation. In 1910 he joined the socialist party and in 1905 became one of the founders of the iwo the wobbles who f9ughtfor better pay and working conditions with strikes and  following year Haywood was implicated in a plot to assassinate the governor of Idaho but the prosecution Case collapsed and Haywood was acquitted. Big Bill proclaimed world War Ian imperialist conflict and fought to keep the United states out of it. He hailed the bolshevik revolution and joined the american communist move ment when it was founded in 1919. In the postwar red scare Haywood was arrested and faced up to 20 years in  in ill health he jumped bail and fled to the soviet Union in 1921. He remained Active taking part in communist affairs and writing articles for the soviet press until his death in 1928 at the age of 59.part of big Bill s ashes was buried in the Kremlin Wall. The rest were re turned to Chicago and buried in the com Mon grave of those who died in the 1886hay Market riots. Charles Emil Ruthenberg born in 1882, was Active in the labor movement from his youth and in 1909joined the socialist party. He quickly established himself As the Leader of it left Wing. In 1912 Ruthenberg became editor of the Cleveland socialist and from 1913 until 1919 was Secretary of the socialist party for the Cleveland area. He opposed world War i and led a purge of the stars and stripes moderate elements in the socialist party. After a year in jail for anti War Agi tation he helped found the communist party of America and was elected Secretary. He also became a member of the executive committee of the communist International comintern. Ruthenberg was jailed again in 1920and the following year while still in a cell was elected Secretary of the United communist party that was formed after a merger of the communist party of America and the communist workers  continued agitating for Radical causes and was arrested again in 1926. He died in jail in 1927 at the age of 45. In accordance with his will Ruthenberg s ashes were transported to Moscow for burial. Miss Flynn born at Concord n.h.,in 1890, joined the socialist party at the age of 16 and became a wobbly. Though Long a major figure of the left miss Flynn did not join the american communist party until 1936 during its de pression heyday. By 1938, she was serv ing on the party s Central  became party chairman in 1961. In her last Public act miss Flynn is sued a statement in Moscow throwing the american communist party behind soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in his Duel with communist China for Leader ship of the communist world. Miss Flynn returned to Moscow nearly August of 1964. She complained to soviet officials that she Felt so very tired and was hospitalized. She fell into a coma and died sept. 5, 1964.after a state funeral she like the oth ers found a resting place near Lenin Tomb. Page 13