Pulp or No Pulp!

Meatier reading than for several years is the Soviet Union's censored press today. Reason: more than 2,000,000 brand new elective jobs have been created by Russia's new Constitution (TIME, June 15, 1936 et seq.), and numberless Soviet problems, some acute, are cropping up in print as efforts are made to have these 2,000,000 jobs filled by nation-wide voting on December 12.

Each of the 100,000,000 Russians expected to go to the polls will vote for at least five persons, his representatives at the various levels of the new Constitution's hierarchy of Soviets. He will vote for his representative: 1) in the village, city or metropolitan borough Soviet; 2) in the Soviet of the region; 3) in the Soviet of the Province; 4) in the Soviet of the "area," such as Khakassk, or the "republic," such as Georgia, in which he lives; 5) in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

At the first stage it is possible for a candidate to be personally known to a majority of the electors. At higher stages the reputation of the candidate is increasingly if not entirely his press, radio and cinema reputation. In the Soviet Union the press, the radio and the cinema are 100% controlled by the Soviet State and the Communist Party. No other party is permitted to exist. There is no opposition press. The new Constitution for the first time makes the vote of a peasant equal the vote of a townsman. No one may be nominated except at a meeting, the minutes of which must be signed by all the presiding officers and who will put his name to a paper which the Secret Police, after the election, could construe as evidence of a plot to nominate a "wrecker"? Latest dispatches indicated that nominating procedure, although the election is to be by secret ballot, has generally thus far been at open sessions with Communists present, vigilant to see and report who moves to nominate whom and what reasons are given by each participant. Finally the Electoral Law sets up a descending scale of "electoral commissions," all appointed on approval from above and ultimately responsible to the Stalin State, each empowered to examine and validate or reject nominations.

Thus there seemed no reason to suppose last week that any candidate could be nominated, much less elected, unless he or she is openly and zealously for the Party and the State of Stalin, except in distant or rural communities where, from the point of view of Moscow, the whole political apparatus may have "got into the wrong hands"--say those of the pious.

Article 56. Now that 20 years have rolled over the Russian Revolution--a full generation during which the Soviet Union has been governed by leaders not one of whom openly believes in God or is a professing Christian--the problem of religion seemed until recently to Soviet editors to have all but vanished, has suddenly cropped up again because Article 56 of the new Election Law says:

"The right to nominate candidates to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union belongs to all public organizations and societies of those who work, in keeping with Article 141 of the Constitution--that is to say, to the organizations of the Communist Party, to occupational unions, co-operative societies, youth organizations, cultural societies and other legally registered societies."

Among legally registered societies, according to Pravda (Truth), official newspaper of the Communist Party, are the 30,000 religious communities in the U.S.S.R. which have obtained registration as containing more than the minimum required number of 20 parishioners each. To read in Pravda that there are thus, at the very least, 600,000 registered* and actively religious Soviet citizens was one of the first news shocks set off by the new Constitution. It brought with it the further shock that apparently the Constitution entitled these religious groups to nominate candidates for the Supreme Soviet.

Was this possible? According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, newsorgan of the Young Communists, thousands of Soviet officials have been asking themselves this question for the past three months. Knowing that Joseph Stalin in his youth was educated for the Orthodox priesthood, knowing that the Dictator has proclaimed the new Soviet Constitution to be. "The Most Democratic in the World" (TIME, Sept. 27 et ante), and having only the text of the Constitution itself to guide them, these thousands of Soviet officials have not known whether to believe their eyes.

Only 40 of the 413 churches which once served Moscow are functioning today, although the city's population has risen from 2,000,000 to 2,800,000 since the capital of Russia moved thither from Petrograd. According to Trud these 40 churches worked clear around the clock last Easter, holding services in three shifts attended by so many citizens of Moscow that not only the churches themselves but their courtyards were packjammed with Easter worshippers.

In Georgia, the republic from which the Dictator comes, the Orthodox clergy promptly pressed their advantage under the new Constitution by opening a public campaign demanding that divine service be resumed in all church structures in Georgia which have not yet actually been destroyed. The Orthodox bishops, priests and delegates of Orthodox believers from the vicinity of Tver, Yaroslavl and Ivanovo-Voznesensk dared and succeeded in holding without molestation from the Secret Police an assembly to decide the electoral policies of the Church. It became a question whether religious groups should attempt to nominate for election to the Supreme Soviet priests, bishops, or even His Holiness the Metropolitan Sergius who today still celebrates Orthodox rites with all pomp in one of the Moscow churches which have not been closed. Soviet reporters, while handling such news with mittens, have made clear in Pravda and in Izvestia (News), official organ of the Soviet Government, that the Russian priest of today is generally as much a "worker" as anyone else in the Soviet Union. Typically he is a factory hand, clerk or farm worker who preaches after hours. His sermons take for granted complete loyalty to the Stalin State and he glibly cites from the works of Marx and Lenin passages which suit his purposes. Indeed Soviet newsorgans have been complaining that often the village priest seems able to confound the village Communist leader by superior erudition in the works of Stalin himself, greater familiarity with the lengthy Party texts.

Membership in the anti-religious Soviet League of Militant Godless has declined, according to official Soviet statistics last week, from over 5,000,000 to under 2,000,000--this being doubtless due in part to a widespread impression that religion in Russia was just about dead, until the election eruption of religious news proved otherwise.

Other briefs in the Soviet press have warned that instances exist of Donets coal miners using timber, nails and bricks allotted them by the State to build homes, to build their village a church instead. Ten collective farms in the Dubovka region were reported to consist entirely of members of the Molokani sect. At Torzhok a majority of girls belonging to the Young Communists also belong to the Church. Most scandalous and alarming of all from the Communist point of view: the Soviet press has been reporting that in public baths Red Army soldiers are frequently seen with small Orthodox crosses hung by a string around their necks.

"Contributors to Success." Whatever may be Dictator Stalin's personal views on God and Orthodoxy--he buried his second wife in a onetime Orthodox convent (TIME, Nov. 21, 1932)--Soviet leaders who are with Lenin against God were vastly relieved last week at signs that the past three months of leniency and revelations concerning the persistence of religion in Russia do not actually mean that "The Most Democratic Constitution in the World" grants in fact what is granted in words by Article 56 of the Electoral Law.

Uprose in Moscow to settle this point famed Andrei Vishinsky, the Soviet prosecutor in countless "Propaganda Trials" (TIME, April 24, 1933 et seq.). Technically it is not Vishinsky, State Public Prosecutor, who interprets the Constitution or the laws, but years of Soviet press, radio and cinema propaganda have made his ominous features spell THE LAW to millions of Russians. "It is perfectly true," declared Vishinsky, that the religious communes are "legally registered societies" within the meaning of Article 56. Nevertheless and without explaining how he arrived at his conclusion, Prosecutor Vishinsky concluded by simply postulating that "only those registered societies which exist in the interests of the Soviet cause and which are contributors to the success of Socialism and to its further progress" are entitled by the Electoral Law to nominate candidates for the election December 12. This might be only Comrade Vishinsky's opinion, but last week all Russia accepted it as in fact closing a question which has been an open sore to Soviet bureaucrats and the police.

Paradoxically the Vishinsky ruling did not seem last week to cramp the electioneering style of the Russian clergy. It appeared from stories in the Soviet press that nearly all the registered religious groups have been smart enough not to attempt to nominate a priest or bishop but are working to advance the interests of persons, some even Communists, who for one reason or another are known to have a lenient attitude toward the Church. While none of Stalin's policies is ever criticized by Pravda or Izvestia, their unavoidable coverage of basic news had made it clear last week that the recent Communist Party "purge," in which 60% of all local Communist officials in Russia were either discharged or shifted to new posts (TIME, Sept. 20 et ante), is playing into the hands of the Church. In many districts the Communist boss who has just been shifted into a region where he is a total stranger has been fairly stumped to know whom the Party should favor as a candidate. Izvestia recently described district Communist organizers "perusing for two hours the list of 37 presidents of village Soviets of their district but absolutely unable to appraise the political standing of these presidents-- they are all unknown to them." In these circumstances, according to the Soviet press, it has been necessary for some local Communist officials to consult, even compromise with the village priest. "In order not to lose the votes of believers," reported Komsomolskaya Pravda with disapproval, "local Communists are often trying to please them, instead of struggling against their influence with the masses."

Paper and Pencils. Another curious major pre-election fact, evident from the Soviet press last week, was that the recent announcement that 145,000,000 ballots have already been printed must have been premature. They are to be printed with the names of nominated candidates and but a small percentage of the nominations have yet been made. Moreover 145,000,000 ballots have not been printed because there is a paper shortage resulting from a lumber shortage so acute that Stalin's official newsorgans were accusing officials of the Timber Commissariat last week of conspiracy to "sabotage the election" simply by a lack of pulp. Lacking too, According to irate Pravda and Izvestia, are pencils in anything like sufficient quantities to mark the 100,000,000 ballots expected to be cast. To have to buy shiploads of pencils from Capitalist countries in order to hold "The Most Democratic Election" was a dire expedient against which Soviet Leaders were still set as a matter of prestige. To help get enough pencils for the election, the State last week was having Soviet pupils and Soviet teachers in numerous schools do their writing and arithmetic entirely without lead pencils.

In holding the Election of December 12, the nation-wide census of the Soviet Union taken last year would have come in handy, except that the Soviet Government recently rejected this immense fruit of statistical labor in toto, announcing that it was "grossly unsatisfactory and based upon clearly unsound statistical practices.'' Nonetheless every Soviet editor was busy preparing to announce on December 13 that some 100,000,000 Russians have voted --census or no census, pencils or no pencils, pulp or no pulp.

*Regular Russian churchgoers, registered and unregistered, were believed in Moscow last week to number over 1,500,000--a figure arrived at by piecing together the carefully censored accounts in Pravda, Izvestia and Trud, the official newsorgan of the Trade Unions.

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