ABSTRACT
IF his view of Leningrad and Moscow is confined to thewindows of an automobile or even to the stately dis-comfort of a droshky, the foreign visitor probably misses an essential quality of the new Russian life. This quality he will hardly meet on the polished floors of the Europe or the Savoy or the Bolshaia Moscovskaia. When he visits the conservatoire, the opera, or the Art Theatre, or when he shops on Kusnetsky Most or the Nevsky, he may notice little different from the old world. Few starched shirt-fronts or smart ladies will be evident. The ensemble may seem a little drab and toneless and less sparkling, like most cities east of the Rhine in the immediate post-war years. Beyond that there will be little to arouse surprise or to be seriously praised or deplored. But should he leave the automobile or the droshky for the rough and tumble of a tramcar, and jostle the crowd which throngs the entrance to a suburban cinema; should he chew dried salt herring and sip beer while he listens to the fiddler playing wild gypsy songs of the steppes in a small peevnaya ; still more if he peep into a factory or workers' club, he can hardly fail to sense that here there is something important and new. At first this novel quality may be hard to define; and when defined it may arouse either a romantic affection or dislike and a secret fear. In a sense intangible and unmeasurable, its effect on the stimmung of social life seems as powerful as a new chemical element applied to a chemical composition. The foreigner will notice the absence of cap-touching among workers to " superiors." He will remark a certain confident bearing amongthe working men and women who walk the Nevsky or the Moscow boulevards after sunset, and how intercourse between managers and men in a factory, or officers and men in a ship or a
374 R us S I AN E CON 0 M leD EVE LOP MEN T S barrack room has a distinctly novel freedom and lack of restraint. It will seem surprising to find that State officials and persons in authority take pains to be ordinary rather than distinctive in their dress, and a little shocking that a bourgeois bearing and appearance, which in other countries assure a deference so customary as to pass unnoticed, here command no deference, but rather a measure of contempt.
