– I thank you, morning fine, and I prefer to walk on foot – I answered. Nick willingly volunteered to accompany me.
We passed by the taxi stand and went deep into the park.
I would like to give you my first impression of the city perhaps more stoutly. In it there was some originality which at once I could not understand. It is remembered, similar I tested something when I with a working excursion arrived to Venice. Venice – the special city.
The train with a usual roar and noise is rolled in the covered station. You leave directly to the channel – and you are covered by silence, extraordinary for the city. In all Venice there is no car and any horse, except for those that stand on St. Mark’s Basilica, but they are bronze! And when you go on narrow Venetian ulichka and on Mark Square, you are pursued by strange feeling – as if it is not the city, and… the house without roof. Similar I tested something when I left hotel and went to wander about the city of Yuzhkhim. Here everything was differently, not as in our noisy, confused, mad cities of the West and America. Others were also people here. Neither slackness, nor sluggishness! All whom I met were vigorous, cheerful and mobile, but without the excess fussiness and nervousness characterizing the residents of the big capitalist city who are eternally hurrying, worrying, stepping each other on legs.
Parks and Yuzhkhima Street seemed to me, perhaps, even too poorly populated for the city accomodating sixty thousand people. “Why it?” – I thought and immediately answered myself: “It is the city of workers, and workers are at work now”. This explanation was correct, but not absolutely exact as subsequently I was convinced. Besides that the fifth part of all workers were “days off”, workers worked in three changes, and actually, so at the plant there was no more than a third. The relative malolyudstvo was explained by many reasons. In Yuzhkhim there was no division of the city into the boring uncomfortable suburbs and the elegant center which is pulling together almost all population to the show-windows and fires of cinema. By Dezurbanization it was shown not only that people refused construction of the unhealthy huge cities octopuses with the multimillion population here, but also that within the city all public places are decentralized, except, of course, city Soviet institutions of city value (the City Council with all its departments is located on Revolution Square). Theaters, cinema, the museums, clubs, libraries and other cultural institutions evenly of a raskinuta on all city, and cinema of the suburb differs in nothing from cinema in the downtown.
Walking are also scattered on all city evenly, all city – the continuous park; a part of the population was chosen to the country by boats, on foot and in cars. Besides, in Yuzhkhim there is no most mobile and fussy street passerby – the buyer and in particular customers. I will not tell that they are absent at all. But dump from the account only the housewives and women of fashion who are absent here and flooding our shops, and you will see as far as will become silence! I Feel that you represent a little what I write about. New words or long descriptions are necessary. Here, for example, I told “traffic”, you, of course, represent sidewalks, quite narrow, near gray bulks of buildings. And on these sidewalks the continuous moving mass of people, dense, as a school of the going herring. And in the middle of the street “ice drift” of cars. But it is far from what I see. There is no “street” in sense of this word usual, habitual to us even. There is no solid wall of the houses pressed to each other closely. You even not always see houses. You go on the beautiful park. Trains of the suspended railroad almost silently blow over tops of trees in hours of the beginning and completion of works at the plants. You go on a beautiful twisting path to shadows of chestnuts, lindens, elms, oaks, hornbeams, maples. Continually – benches with convenient backs, beds of flowers.
Flowers, flowers! Your Marta has to forgive for these flowers a lot of things that would not be pleasant to her in this original city. But I am sure that if Marta lived though month here, she would not want to return to the pathetic flowerpots on a balcony. It seems, so do not love flowers anywhere as here. And the chief flower growers-gardeners are children. They go from a bed to a bed and bring order. But strange thing: the walking children in parks are not enough, and there are no nurses with babies on hands at all. Only adults wander about parks and the flock of children only occasionally will flutter out and will disappear or there will pass mother with children.
At my first acquaintance with the socialist city this absence of children I charged to shortcomings. It is bad when children rustle, disturb and bother seniors, but it is boring also without children… Subsequently I was convinced that children take the much bigger place in city life, than I assumed and that they take in city life the most live part almost in all areas of life and especially in improvement maintenance. Obviously, just there was such hour when children were at school or in the country.
Near a path for pedestrians the bicycle path stood at attention. Easy hissing of tires is continuously heard – it athletes and sportswomen rush, having cheerfully something in common. Behind a bicycle path – again the site of the park, and further – the bus, well asphalted road. There are no trams here, they are replaced with buses long ago. Behind the road one more park layer, behind it a house wall, but you can not see it as houses are scattered at considerable distance from each other here. They stand as the locks surrounded with parks.
In parks beautiful booths – book, snack, confectionery, with mineral waters, fruit are seen here and there. But, Fritz, take heart, my friend, I will strike you the most terrible news: not only in the city, but also in all city there is no tobacco booth, any tobacco shop, any cigar, a cigarette, a tube! Isn’t that so, “it is awful”? !
– Would you like to pass here here, to the right – Nick offered.
We turned to the shady chestnut avenue. It brought us to quite wide round platform with the fountain in the middle. The platform was surrounded by skillfully made statues of leaders of the world proletariat and several groups. In realistic and at the same time simple and clear symbols they represented the main stages of fight of the proletariat and creation of socialism. About this platform of a sculpture it would be possible to write the whole book… yes it, apparently, and it is written. I was surprised and delighted.
– Who creator of these magnificent statues? – I asked the conductor.
– Workers of our plants – he answered simply – among them is many excellent musicians, sculptors, painters, poets.
– But the school is necessary here, and the school demands time, persistent work for overcoming the equipment.
– Well, and that? – Nick asked. And he explained that all this result of reasonable use of leisure of which the socialist worker has more, than at the worker of the bourgeois countries.
– We work only several hours, and we assume to work even less. At the correct organization of work, production and distribution what exist at us it is quite enough to provide us to all necessary, but do not think that we use the leisure only for an entertainment and rest. If it was so, we would go not forward, and back and socialism would create only stagnation of stupid content. No, our leisure is filled with very “energetic” contents. As the old zealous owner owner did not cease to care for the plot of land, for the small economy, and we, without reckoning with time, we care for our socialist economy. We do not cease to care also for those which still groan under a capital yoke. On all this a lot of time, perhaps, not less than two thirds of free time leaves. Then physical culture, then occupations favourite arts and, at last, entertainments.
By the way, whether you know that we already created a new narcomat – culture and life which deals with issues of the most reasonable use of working leisure and the organization of new life? Thanks to reasonable use of leisure at us almost each worker has several specialties. One went to science, others – to art. We have firemen-chemists and plumbers-journalists, the turner-astronomers, milling-machine operators-sculptors. Does not disturb one another at all. Exclusive talents – musicians, poets, writers – were granted