First Day in the Pit

At the pit named in honour of the 60th anniversary of Soviet Ukraine, 23-year-old Viktor Kosyak goes to his shift—as a full-fledged miner for the first time. His job is not an easy one. Together with other members of his team he is to install the pit-props with the help of jacks as the coal combine moves at a rate of five metres per minute.

A memorial complex Ukrainian Party and the Soviet Government,State Museum of History of the headed by Leonid Brezhnev,Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 General Secretary of the CPSU was opened in Kiev on May 9, Central Committee and Chairman 1981. Present at the ceremony of the USSR Supreme Soviet were leaders of the Soviet " Presidium Communist
Some time ago the section superintendent signed an order apprenticing Viktor to Aleksandr Timoshin, an experienced miner. As Viktor gets ready to go down the pit, he is not a bit excited though judging by his “armor”—a helmet, an anti-dust respirator, a first aid kit, and a lamp—the pit is one where extra safety measures are required. As soon as Viktor Kosyak puts on his work clothes and checks the safety devices, he joins the miners’ clan which is known the world over—whether in the Soviet Union, France or the United States of America.


Vladimir Shcherbitski, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine, and a member of the Politbureau of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR in session Vassili Remeslo, a well-known Ukrainian geneticist, is a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR
Viktor went through a hard school before acquiring the right to put a tag with his own personal number into the automatic counting machine. He had nine months’ practical training at the very pit where he now works. That was when he developed the efficient movements in putting on his work clothes and adjusting the safety equipment. During this period the miners of the team kept a tutorial eye on the young apprentice.

The period of practical training in the pit was in effect the last (though unofficial) and most important examination he had to pass before graduating from the vocational school of mining. Vocational schools are becoming the main centres for training skilled workers in the USSR. In addition to learning a trade at these schools the future workers receive a secondary (ten-year) education. Students at vocational schools get free board and uniform and an allowance.

Of the special subjects taught at the school Viktor liked electrical engineering most. The school's standards are high. Viktor says:

“We had the latest equipment in studying work methods and techniques. Courses on safety measures took up nearly a third of the total academic hours. The teachers made us work hard. I was a diligent student but I nearly failed one exam.”

The emphasis on safety measures is fully understandable here. There is more methane, an explosive gas,in the coal beds in the Donbas than anywhere else in the world. The engineers of Section Four where Viktor works have calculated that ten per cent of the mine’s operating cost goes towards meeting safety engineering and labour protection requirements. Measures for dust control and gas removal are “built in” in every coal extracting operation. All coal combines are outfitted with sprayers. Specially trained men who do not extract coal themselves regularly remove the gas from the coal beds, moisten them and drain off excess water.

The museum of national architecture and rural life in the southern suburbs of Kiev. Old-time rural buildings and household utensils typical of all of the Ukraine’s ethnographic regions have been collected and put on display here. There are several such museums in the Ukraine
Before signing an order on employing Viktor Kosyak, Aleksei Kovtun, manager of the pit, carefully read the report of the medical commission on Viktor’s physical condition. From now on Viktor, a healthy rosy-cheeked youth with dark eyebrows, will go through annual regular medical checkups. Viktor knows that the management overlooks no detail where the health and wellbeing of the miners are concerned. For example, after he had been issued free of charge his new work clothes, he was told to take them to the laundry in five days’ time, before his day off. There they will be washed and, if necessary, mended, also free of charge.

Viktor is proud of the fact that miners in his town are highly respected. He says:

“Miners’ Day is the biggest holiday in Donetsk, though we also have steel workers, chemists and building workers here, and they have their special holidays too. In the morning all the main streets are decorated with colourful posters. Photographs of the best miners are displayed everywhere. One of them is Nikolai Trofimov, our team leader. He has been awarded the Miner’s Glory Badge of all three classes. Bands play in the parks, streets and squares. The miners are awarded bonuses and presented with flowers. Sports events are held in the stadiums. In the evening we have fireworks display and mass outdoor fetes.”

The young miner has definite plans for the immediate future. He has learned that the pit has just purchased two mechanised complexes. Soon his team will receive a complex of this type too. Viktor says:

“The hydraulically powered complex eliminates all manual operations. Our hydraulic jacks and props will be replaced by an automatically operated moving ‘roof’. We will be switching over to push buttons and control levers. The complex consists of a number of elaborate mechanisms, and I look forward to working with electrical devices and appliances.”

Designers and Manufacturers of Steel “Supermen”

Kramatorsk is a big industrial city situated in the southeastern steppeland of the Ukraine. The products of the city’s engineering associations are known not only in the USSR but also in many other countries.

In 1932, four years after its construction began, the Novokramatorsk Works began to turn out rolling mills for all the country’s steel-making plants and excavators for its construction sites.

Today there are six 63,000-ton hydraulic forge presses in operation in Western Europe. Five of them were made in Kramatorsk. In 1976, a seventh, even larger press, a 65,000-ton giant, was made there. It is now housed in a special building 112 metres long and 40 metres high in Issoire, France.

Journalists call the press a “steel colossus,” pointing out that it weighs 12,000 tons or twice as much as the Eiffel Tower. Its cost is 100 million francs.

The engineers who designed the giant are not at all excited about its size. What they call attention to is the fact that the press has definite advantages compared to similar equipment made by industrialised capitalist countries.

Boris Karasyov, chief designer of forge presses and related equipment at Novokramatorsk,says that the 65,000-ton press sold to Interforge Co. of France is doing its job well and that investment in it is being quickly repayed. The super-pressure of 65,000 tons which it develops on an area of only four square metres makes it possible to produce nearly finished elements. This means a considerable saving in costly aluminium, titanium and steel alloys.

Andrei Nadtochenko, deputy chief engineer of the works, headed the operational management centre specially set up to coordinate the work of more than 20 scientific research and manufacturing associations engaged in building the press for France.

The Kreshchatik, Kiev’s main street One must be careful when crossing the street Donetsk, a miners’ city Opera and Ballet Theatre in Odessa
It is not easy to win a large contract from enterprises abroad. Andrei Nadtochenko points out that besides Soviet firms French, West German, British, and US firms submitted designs for the press. The Soviet design proved to be the best and Novokramatorsk was awarded the contract.

The designers of the press adopted a daring approach. They had factories make a number of elements even before the final design of the machine had been completed. No serious risk was involved here,however, since the team of workers engaged in the project was a highly experienced one. In this way the project was completed two years ahead of the time stipulated in the contract. For its work the team of designers and workers was awarded a State Prize of the USSR.

One member of the team was Viktor Voitenko, a leader of a group of workers. Viktor Voitenko has mastered the trades of assemblyman, slinger, electric welder and driller. At the assembly section where he works, which is outfitted with the latest in material handling equipment, he and his 22 co-workers assemble excavators, rolling mill stands and forge presses. Many of the machines assembled here have been exported to Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, Brazil, Cuba, India and Romania.

A street in Chernovtsy, a city in Western Ukraine Rosa Luxemburg Square in Kharkov The Lvov City Hall
Yuri Kalashnikov, chief designer of the section that makes electric drives, has also been awarded a State Prize.

Kalashnikov holds the degree of Candidate of Science and is the author of 13 inventions, he has published four books and 40 articles on technical subjects. In his books he sums up the experience of the machine builders of the Novokramatorsk Works over a period of many years. Maybe he will write another book about the development and manufacture of super-powerful hydraulic presses in the Soviet Union.

Yuri Kalashnikov points out that while working on the press for France the Kramatorsk team solved a whole range of technological problems in metallurgy, electric welding and machining of metals. Members of the team developed new grades of steel and made special electrodes and welding machines. All this facilitated technological progress of the whole enterprise where large sections were specially set up for welding, heat treatment and machining of unique machine parts weighing up to 250 tons. Many original designs, and technological solutions have been awarded authors’ certificates and patented in the USA, France and the FRG.

The works has seven divisions staffed with more than 1,000 designers. Every year they contribute from 50 to 60 inventions whose authors are issued authors’ certificates. Every division has a well-equipped laboratory. There are many young people among the designers.

A design team is currently working on a rolling mill, Mark 5000. When built, it will be one of the biggest in the USSR. The mill will turn out aluminium sheet having a width of 5,000 millimetres. To make this giant the works will have to set up new assembly departments and new sections for machining elements. This means that the Novokramatorsk Engineering Works is entering a new phase of growth and improvement.

Vatra Lamps

The Ukrainian word vatra means a campfire which is still glowing although its flames have subsided. The Gutsuls (Western Ukrainians) like to sit around the embers of a campfire. This poetic name has been given to a factory in Ternopol which makes powerful lamps.

Cottage industry prevailed in the western regions before they were reunited with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Of the 5,000 enterprises that existed at that time 1,700 employed four or even fewer workers. In what is now Ternopol Region there were altogether only 4,000 workers, or less than the number of workers employed at a large modern enterprise today.

Vatra is a large industrial association comprising three lamp factories and an All-Union design and technological institute of the lighting engineering industry. Industrial lamps, illumination devices, spotlights and floodlights are needed by 8,000 factories and other enterprises in the USSR. They are used for the illumination of oil and other derricks, airfield runways, pits and lathes. Vatra products have found a ready market in CMEA countries, the USA, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain.

There are always storks in a Ukrainian village

A fair in Velikiye Sorochintsy. People dressed up as characters of Nikolai Gogol’s story “Sorochinskaya Fair” You may also come across a house like this in a Ukrainian village ...
Before Vatra products are put into serial production and before they are sold they are subjected to rigorous tests. There are chambers in which the lamps are exposed to temperatures ranging from minus 60 degrees to plus 100 degrees Centigrade or to nearly 100 per cent humidity (for tropical models). For instance, a special lamp developed for the illumination of seabed oil derricks underwent tests for its water tightness and corrosion properties in salt water mist, rain, and dust storm chambers. More tests were conducted on a vibration bench and a bench simulating transport stresses. And finally it was tested for its resistance to percussion and tension.

The lamp factories are equipped with the most up-to-date machinery. An automatic conveyor system is now being installed. One of the conveyors is already in service which is part of a system that also includes five automatic operators—robots capable of executing all the assembly operations.

People like to work at Vatra. The association recruits its members mostly from a vocational school. Many of the workers are students of correspondence or evening departments of higher or specialised secondary educational establishments. There are whole families working at Vatra and there are plenty of job openings at-the association.

Farming

The village knew that Savva Zhizhiyan murdered his brother Mikhail so as to avoid splitting the plot they had inherited from their father. But the judges dismissed the case for lack of evidence.

On the basis of the case Olga Kobylyanskaya, a Ukrainian writer, wrote a story entitled Land in 1901, which is an indictment not only of human depravity, but also of the system of private property.

Savva emigrated to Canada and there he was soon joined by his son Ivan. Shortly after that Savva died. Having spent what money he had on his father’s funeral and on a ticket Ivan returned to Dymki, his native village.

After the establishment of Soviet power in the West Ukrainian regions the peasants began to set up collective farms. Ivan Zhizhian also became a collective farmer. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which embarked on the road of socialism two decades before, in 1917, had, in 1940, 94,600 tractors and 33,400 grain combine harvesters working on its collective farms. When collectivisation was carried out in the West Ukrainian regions, the state helped the newly-formed collective farms by sending skilled personnel and farm machines.

The collective farm in Dymki has been named after Olga Kobylyanskaya, author of the story Land. It now has 43 tractors, 33 combine harvesters and 38 lorries, and a total of 272 electric motors. Ivan Zhizhian and his wife Paraskeva have three sons: Georgi, Savva and Mikhail, who have also joined the collective farm. Georgi and Savva are builders and Mikhail—a tractor operator. One of Ivan’s many grandsons, Konstantin Zhizhian, is a combine harvester operator. Mikhail has eight sons. They are the future masters of the land. The collective farm has more than 2,000 hectares of land.

The village of Pobeda in Chernigov Region

New grain elevator in Huta, a settlement in Kharkov Region A Kiev bakery

In Dymki the collective farmers harvest an average of 38.2 metric centners of wheat per hectare. The annual income of the farm now exceeds two million roubles. The collective farmers themselves decide how the income is to be used. All expenditures are approved by the general meeting. As a rule, about half of the income is invested in development. Currently it is being spent on the construction of livestock raising sections and purchase of new farm equipment and mineral fertilisers. Part of the income is distributed among the collective farmers as individual earnings and the remainder spent on social needs. The size of earnings is determined in accordance with the quantity and quality of the work done. Mikhail Zhizhian and his wife Leonara, who is a dairy worker, earn about 500 roubles a month. Because they have a large family they receive a monthly state allowance of 120 roubles.

Collective fanners, unlike individual farmers, are guaranteed against ruin. Nor does the marketing of their produce present a problem. The state buys all that the farm sells at fixed prices. Increased efficiency has enabled the collective farm to introduce an eight-hour workday.

There are 320 households in Dymki. The collective farm has built for the children of its members a kindergarten, a school, a library and a Young Pioneer summer camp. Senior form pupils are taught the fundamentals of agronomy at the school which is provided with farm machines and equipment and a plot of land. In the last few years more than 400 boys and girls have graduated from the local secondary (ten-year) school. Over 40 people in the village have a higher education and 54—a secondary technical education.

To put a finishing touch to our story about Dymki, a “poor and unfriendly” village in the past, as described by Olga Kobylyanskaya, we should mention that 27 members of the collective farm have been awarded orders and medals by the Soviet government for outstanding achievements in labour and for active social work.


The Gutsuls live in the Carpathian region (southwestern part of the Ukraine). In this mountainous country with dense forests, turbulent rivers and green slopes, livestock breeding is well developed

In the Ukraine there are some 22,000 villages with about 7,000 collective farms and 2,000 state farms (collective farms being agricultural producer cooperatives and state farms—state-owned enterprises like factories and plants). They grow crops on 33.5 million hectares of land. Though the land is public property, the state has turned it over to the collective farms for free use in perpetuity. This means that the land can neither be bought nor sold.

The collective farms and state farms are the country’s main suppliers of farm products. All farmers, however, have plots of land for their personal use, on which they grow fruit and vegetables for their families.

Soviet agricultural policy in the last 15 years has called for large investments in the farming sector. During this period the state invested a total of

360,000 million roubles in agriculture, or nearly four times more than during the entire' period of Soviet power before that.

Nikolai Momotenko, chairman of the State Committee of the Ukrainian Council of Ministers for Technical Support of Farming, says:

“In the Ukraine, as throughout the USSR, the problem of raising power supply per farmer is now one of key importance. There are three reasons for this. First, the number of people employed in agriculture is decreasing with every year. Second, mechanisation and automation of farm processes makes the work of the farmers easier, and this is one of the objects of the Soviet social programme. Third,, the steadily increasing harvests of grain crops, sugar beet, potatoes and other vegetables make it more and more difficult to gather the crop within a short period of time without a high level of mechanisation.”

The basic solution to these problems consists in comprehensive mechanisation of farm processes. To this end it is intended to put into operation over 2,200 new types and models of machines and equipment. The speed of field cultivation will be increased to 9-15 kilometres per hour and the capacity of the harvesters by 50 to 100 per cent. Machines that can execute several operations during a single passage are being developed, and new types of machines for mechanisation of auxiliary jobs, especially material handling operations and transportation jobs, are being built.

Big coal mines and iron and steel and engineering works are concentrated in the eastern part of the Ukraine which is rich in coking coal and iron ore. One fifth of the population of the Ukraine live and work here
In Kharkov, the Ukraine’s second biggest industrial, research and cultural centre (after Kiev), many of these plans are being carried out. The popular DT-54 caterpillar-type tractor produced by the Kharkov Tractor Works in the 1950s ploughs a field at an operational speed of 3 to 4 kilometers per hour. Today the works makes the 165 h.p. T-150 model with an operational speed of 16 kilometers per hour. In international practice the technological level of a tractor is determined by metal input per horsepower. The metal input of a modern tractor is 75 to 80 kilogrammes per horsepower. The metal input of the T-150 model is only 45 kg. The Kirov Works in Leningrad has been manufacturing a 300 h.p. tractor which is used on farms throughout the country. It can do more than 30 farm jobs. The USSR has started the manufacture of tractors which can pull or carry 230 mounted or trailer farm machines and implements.

In the new tractor models the cabs are designed to provide greater comfort for the operators, such as lower vibration levels, optimal temperature and good heat insulation.

Soviet-made Niva and Kolos grain combine harvesters are widely used in the fields of the Ukraine. The capacity of the Kolos harvester is seven kilogrammes of mass per second, which is higher than that of harvesters made by many leading firms in other industrialised countries. The collective farms and state farms of the Ukraine have been provided with a number of highly efficient self-propelled beet loaders. In the near future they will receive four-row semimounted potato planters, the latest potato harvesters and various self-propelled farm machines. The new .machines will make it possible to introduce comprehensive mechanisation in the production of grain, maize, oil crops, sugar beet and potatoes.
On the whole, power supply per worker in the farming sector in the USSR has doubled in the last few decades, but this is still not enough. That is why the flow of modern machinery to the countryside will continue to increase.

To arrive at a correct assessment of the level and rate of development of Soviet agriculture one should bear in mind that the biological and climatic potential of its crop growing zone is only half of that of Western Europe and the USA. The drought that hit Europe in 1976 was considered a calamity by West European farmers, and the press even referred to it as the “disaster of the century.” For the USSR such droughts, unfortunately, are a common occurrence. The country gets three quarters of its grain from areas regularly hit by droughts.

In the Ukraine, too, there are fairly extensive zones where the climate is unfavourable for farming. In the northern zone—Polesye—the soil has an excess of moisture while in the southern steppeland there is a shortage of moisture. That is why in the Ukraine, as throughout the USSR, land improvement work is an important trend of the new agricultural policy.

In the Ukraine over 4.2 million hectares have been drained or irrigated. Three large irrigation systems have been put into operation. A large canal now supplies water from the Dnieper to the Crimea, the northern part of which is mostly arid steppeland. In the southern part of the Ukraine the Kakhovskaya irrigation system is being built. When completed it will be the largest in Europe, and it will supply enough water for the irrigation of one million hectares. Work on bringing water to the steppeland of the Black Sea coast has been launched.

The construction of the Dnieper-Danube irrigation system is under way. During the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period another 500,000 hectares of land will be irrigated and another 640-680 thousand hectares will be drained in the northern part of the Ukraine.

Collective farms and state farms in the USSR are
multisectoral enterprises. But even the biggest of them are unable to modernise all its sectors simultaneously. Therefore, another aspect of the new Soviet agricultural policy is concentration and specialisation of production based on inter-farm cooperation and agrarian-industrial integration. Thus, several collective farms and state farms have formed industrialised complexes and sections for the production of meat, milk, eggs and mixed fodder.


Sn nlomic reactor at the Institute of Nn, lour Research of the Ukrainian \i mlemy of Sciences . nung scientists of the Institute of the Ukrainian Academy  Sciences  colour TV sets made in Lvov  seaport of Ilyichovsk in Odessa
The Kalityanski State Farm in Kiev Region is one of the 1,739 inter-farm associations in the Ukraine. It breeds, grows and fattens 108,000 pigs a year. In late 1979, Alain Poher, President of the French Senate, visited the farm when he was on a tour of the Ukraine. He was shown the residential area of the livestock breeders, laboratories, administrative centre, palace of culture, school, polyclinic and hospital. Alain Poher said that large-scale livestock breeding complexes of this kind were a step into the future.

Soviet people believe this, too, though there are still many problems on the way to the set goal.

The iron and steel works at Dneprodzerzhinsk is being expanded  silk mill in Darnitsa, a district of Kiev At the assembly section of the Kharkov I Jeetrical Engineering Works
The new Soviet agricultural policy has displayed its viability. Today Ukrainian collective farms and state farms have nearly 400,000 tractors and 85,000 harvest combines. One Ukrainian farmer out of every four is a machine operator. In the last 15 years, overall farm output of the Ukraine has increased by 44 per cent and labour productivity on the farms has risen by 80 per cent. During this period the average yield of grain per hectare has gone up from 17 to 26.2 metric centners, of sugar beet—from 204 to 288 metric centners, and of vegetables—from 102 to 137 metric centners.

Though weather conditions during the Tenth Five-Year-Plan period, and especially in 1979-80, were unfavourable, average annual agricultural output rose by 11 per cent. The 26th CPSU Congress outlined a programme for the further intensive development of agriculture. In the Eleventh Five-Year-Plan period the Ukrainian agricultural sector will receive 275,000 tractors, 242,000 lorries and 68,000 grain harvesters. In 1985,20,300 thousand tons of mineral fertiliser will be used as against 16,000 thousand tons in 1980.



Bringing up children to be industrious, kind and happy

To achieve agrotechnical progress highly skilled specialists are needed. Working at the large livestock breeding complexes are not only dairy workers, pig breeders, and poultry workers, but also machine operators, i.e. farmers with technical training. The big collective farms and state farms have their own engineering, power supply and agrochemical services. At present they employ an army of 347,000 specialists. At the Ukraine’s 186 agricultural vocational schools skilled personnel are trained in more than 100 trades.

The farmer has changed and so has the village. All over the Ukraine it has become fashionable to organise outdoor ethnographic museums.

One of such museums, the Museum of the Ukrainian Republic, is near Kiev. There the visitor can see various types of houses and household articles of the old Ukrainian village from all the ethnographic regions of the Republic. The houses differ from one another not only in the building material used; they also show the class distinctions that existed then. Thus, there is a rich peasant’s house, and there is the miserable cottage of a poor peasant where the stove did not even have a chimney.

The setting up of ethnographic museums reflects a desire on the part of many people to preserve for posterity the old homes in which the cradles of their parents and grandparents used to be suspended from the ceiling. Today Ukrainian villages are being rapidly rebuilt. The Ukrainian Institute of Civil and Rural Construction takes a comprehensive approach to the problem. Its research and design staff have worked out general plans for the reconstruction of 20,000 villages. In the beginning every region built “experimental” villages the architectural and social aspects of which were discussed by the public. Then the best features were defined and still further improved and only after that mass-scale construction was started.


Seaplane designed by students of the Kharkov Aviation Institute Space research laboratory at Uzhgorod State University

Restoration studio at the Art Institute of Kiev
But, even now, as reconstruction of the village is under way, heated discussions continue. What should a new village be like? A “maxi-village?” Or a “minitown?” Some want to live in two-storey houses located not far from the administrative centre, but others are against such a scheme, saying that it will cause the farmer to lose his ties with his individual plot of land. Still others are critical of both approaches, insisting that no really interesting projects have yet been produced. Then there are those who call for preserving the old historical image of the Ukrainian village. For instance, Galina Kalinichenko, a young team leader of Rossia State Farm in Cherkassy Region, says that although she appreciates modern comfort and amenities such as gas supply, central heating, indoor water supply and electricity, she is resolutely opposed to turning villages into urban-type neighbourhoods that all look exactly alike. She wants to see the distinctive features of the Ukrainian villages with their white-walled houses “buried” in the verdure of orchards preserved.


Children from many countries spend their summer holidays at the Artek Young Pioneer camp in the Crimea The Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard) Young Pioneer camp near Odessa
A scene from “Gisele” at the Kiev Opera imd Ballet Theatre The popular Veryovka Folk Choir An organ class at the Kiev Conservatory
Naturally, all participants in the discussion want the villages to be improved. The new homes of the farmers are attractive. Most of them are brick houses, very often with a garret. In the Crimea and in some southern regions houses are built of white sea limestone (cockle-shell stone). In the Carpathian region there are two-storey log houses (from four to eight rooms) with beautiful verandahs.

In some districts the work of village reconstruction is nearing completion. In the Volnovakha district in Donetsk Region, for example, in accordance with a long-term plan of social development, the villages have built administrative-cultural centres, schools, palaces of culture and clubs, child-care establishments, shops, hospitals, polyclinics, medical stations,and everyday service centres. There is a regular bus and taxi service between the villages.

Yelizavetovka is one of the newly reconstructed villages. The farmers’ homes are two-storey houses with balconies. Every house has a lawn with flower beds in front of it. There are 125 families in the village. One family out of every seven works at the Oktyabr Collective Farm. Several more houses are being built with improved layout.

Sports fans are the same everywhere The Ukraina Palace of Culture in Kiev At the motordrome in Kiev
The Konoplyankos—Grigori, Vera and their daughter Lyudmila—live in a two-room flat (not counting the kitchen and bathroom) at 43 Sovetskaya Street. It is immaculately clean and handsomely furnished. Vera is a milking machine operator at the dairy section of the farm. Grigori is in charge of the village gas supply service.

Vera says that she spends no more time on housework than working women in town because the flat has all modern conveniences such as gas supply, water supply, central heating, bathroom, refrigerator, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, etc. The everyday service centre (laundry, dry cleaning, etc.) is not far from her home.

The everyday service centre in Yelizavetovka is located in the same square as the administrative building, the two-storey secondary (ten-year) school, the palace of culture with a gymnasium, the shopping centre with branches of state-owned shops that sell clothing, footwear, fabrics, household wares and cultural goods and a food shop.

The everyday service centre does all kinds of repair jobs—from repair of watches and electric shavers to colour TV sets and magnetic tape recorders.

What can members of a collective farm buy in the food shop?

Let us start with bread. The district bakery makes five different kinds of bread and seven kinds of buns, rolls and pastries. This relieves women of a time-consuming domestic chore. The Konoplyankos buy two to three litres of milk and other dairy products every day. In the food shop customers fill their bags with bottles of milk, kefir, ryazhenka (a type of curd) and sour cream.

Vera says that in Yelizavetovka the families living in newly-built blocks of flats now receive individual plots outside the residential area. Farm sheds for poultry, pigs and cows are being built nearby. The Konoplyankos think that this is correct because there will be little point in living in the countryside without such plots.

Vera and Grigori are satisfied with what they find at the food shop: sausages, butter, sugar, tinned foods, fish, groats, macaroni, mineral water, fruit and vegetable juices, compotes, pickles, fresh vegetables and fruit. In fact the food shop has everything they need. They spend from 30 to 40 per cent of their monthly earnings (280-300 roubles) on food. Their rent amounts to seven roubles a month, including gas, electricity, hot water supply, etc. They have some savings which they spend when the need arises.

Kiev, a Typical, Yet Unique City

Kiev is 1,500 years old. In the 10th century it was the biggest city in Eastern Europe. Today it is one of the world’s largest, with a population of 2,200,000. It is 42 kilometres from north to south and 43 kilometres from east to west. The city has many beautiful historical monuments which are carefully preserved. Eighteenth-century architectural structures exist side by side with cathedrals erected centuries earlier. They can be seen from afar, like the five modern bridges spanning the Dnieper.

A city funicular links the bank of the Dnieper with the top of a hill that stands 150 metres above the river. In olden times the heart of a city was usually located on top of a steep hill overlooking the bank of a river or seashore. Our ancestors who had to be on constant guard against enemy attacks were careful when choosing a site for their city. In the past Kiev consisted of three parts: Gora, Podol and Pechersk. The Gora was a fortress city with the prince’s palace, houses of the courtiers and cathedrals. The city also had a “front gate”—the Golden Gate, part of which has been preserved to this day. The Podol was where the working people lived—handicraftsmen, fishermen and peasants. And the Pechersk was dominated by the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra—the monastery. The 100-metre-high belfry, the golden domes of the cathedral and churches of the monastery and the steep slopes of green hills give Kiev a unique skyline.

Kiev knew both epochs of glory and tragic ruin in its long history. Its rulers, the grand princes or archdukes, headed the once mighty Kiev Rus. The trade routes from Asia to Europe and from Scandinavia to Byzantium intersected in Kiev.

Built in 1037 under Prince Yaroslav the Wise, the Cathedral of St. Sophia was decorated with beautiful frescoes and mosaics, including an impressive portrait of the Virgin Mary dpne in mosaic, which is 5.5 metres high. Cathedrals lavishly decorated with mosaics and frescoes were later built in the Great City of Novgorod (northwestern part of Russia) and in Chernigov (the Ukraine). This shows the uniformity of culture of Ancient Rus, from its borders in the north to its borders in the south.

In 1240, Kiev came under repeated assaults by Batu-Khan’s 140,000-strong Mongol-Tatar army. It was burnt, then rebuilt, and plundered and burnt again by the hordes of the Crimean Tatars, Turks and soldiers of Polish feudal lords. From 1648 to 1654 Kiev became the centre of the Ukrainian people’s war of liberation against Polish landowners. It was only after the Ukraine was reunified with Russia that its long-suffering people began to forget the smell of burning fires. In 1654, soldiers of Russian regiments took part in the initial stage of the work to restore the city.

Kiev went through yet another ordeal, this time in the 20th century. For 779 days it was under nazi occupation. The Hitlerites destroyed 42 per cent of the city’s buildings, deported to Germany as slaves

100,000 residents of Kiev and shot another 200,000. They plundered the Taras Shevchenko museum and looted the Cathedral of St. Sophia, removing from it artistic and cultural monuments including its 11-century frescoes. After the war all the Union Republics of the USSR helped rebuild Kiev. Moscow, Tbilisi, Yerevan and other cities sent machine tools, various factory equipment and materials to Kiev. The Soviet government allocated an initial sum of 500 million roubles for the city’s reconstruction. Solidarity is an intrinsic feature of the country and the people. Thus, for instance, two weeks after Tashkent was hit by an earthquake in 1966, teams of builders from Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad and all the Republics of the Soviet Union pitched camp at the walls of the Uzbek capital.

Today Kiev is not only the political and cultural, but also the industrial centre of the Ukraine. It builds inland waterway ships and craft, aircraft, fishing trawlers and excavators, and manufactures machine tools, a wide range of instruments, electronic computers, TV sets, cameras, tape recorders, equipment for the chemical industry, and medicines. It is also solving problems of urban planning.

Tourists visiting Kiev and residents of Kiev themselves like to stroll along the old, steep stone-paved streets which start at St. Andrew’s Church designed by Rastrelli and descend to the Podol. On their way they pass quiet yards with old chestnut trees, bushes of jasmines and lilacs. The streets are lined with small buildings of different styles: Baroque, Classical, Gothic and Moresque. Many have exquisite wrought iron gates and railings. The names of the streets reflect the city’s history: Kozhemyatskaya, Pechenezhskaya, Olegovskaya, Igorevskaya and Polovetskaya.

But town planners do not fully share the enthusiasm of tourists and the local population. They point out that the centre of the city is “congested,” the layout, is “chaotic” and that the residential districts are too close to factories and industrial plants. Many zones in this old city district have been designated historical preserves.

What is being done to preserve and restore the historical and architectural monuments of Kiev— “the mother of Russian cities,” as it was called in Ancient Rus?

Ninety-two architectural structures have been placed under state protection. Another 80 buildings may be put in the same category, subject to approval by the Council of Ministers of the Ukraine. All restoration work is carried out by the Ukrainian Scientific Restoration Centre and is financed by the state.

Protection of architectural monuments is a matter of constant public concern. Miletski, an architect and a winner of State Prize, has put forward a proposal of creating a museum park to be called “Ancient Kiev” on the hills on the right bank of the Dnieper, a proposal that has aroused keen interest among Kiev residents. The project is to emphasise the unique landscape of the old city and to set up a permanent exposition of historical monuments including dwelling houses of ancient Kiev—two-storey log houses with household utensils and other items.

Standing on one of the many observation sites over the Dnieper, one will see the general plan for the development of Kiev being realised. It is to be completed by the end of this century. The level of what used to be the floodlands has been raised, and the areas have been built up. The white stone housing blocks resemble giant sails blown by the wind. All buildings have modern conveniences, and efficient transport facilities link the neighbourhoods to the city center. The area, which is close to the river, has a special microclimate. There are over 300,000 residents in the new housing districts.

Kiev is a multinational city, with people belonging to many different nationalities living amicably together, not in separate “ethnic” communities. In the late 1950s Kiev’s population reached one million and fifteen years later, two million. Every 15 minutes a child is born in the city and every 15 minutes its_ population increases by one more resident who has" moved to the city from some other place. The city authorities see to it that the housing construction program keeps abreast of the population growth. Every 20 minutes a new flat for a family of three or four is completed and ready for tenancy. Every year 100,000 people of Kiev are rehoused. Housewarming parties are a regular feature of our city life.

Urban planning is the responsibility of the city Soviet, but people contribute to it by putting forward ideas and proposals on various projects. Within the city Soviet there are various elected commissions composed of deputies (of which there are 600 in all). Some of these commissions prepare reports summing up the proposal set forth by residents and submit the reports to the Executive Committee of the Soviet where the final decisions are made. That is how optimal decisions on the construction of children’s establishments, medical institutions, and shops and on the planting of trees and shrubs are arrived at.

Kiev is a very green city. Gardens and parks take up 41,000 hectares out of the city’s total of 78,000 hectares. There are 20 square metres of trees and shrubs per inhabitant. The emblem of Kiev includes a branch of flowering chestnut. In spring snowdrops bloom in the city gardens and parks. The oldest of these is the Goloseyevski park which was laid in the 17th century.

Though Kiev is considered ecologically sound, it is nevertheless faced with problems that confront other big cities. Sanitary inspectors say, for instance, that a tree lives and grows in a forest from 200 to 500 years but lives only 60 to 80 years in a modern city. And the main reasons for this is atmospheric pollution.

The motor car is enemy number one of clean air. The Kiev City Soviet is determined to control the car problem. It believes that a solution lies in the development of cheap, electrically powered public transport. On the insistence of the people buses are being gradually replaced by trolleybuses. The first high-speed tramline hats been put into service and the metro (underground railway) is being extended. Today 72 per cent of passengers in Kiev use electrically powered surface transport and the metro.

The heart of Kiev is the Kreshchatik, the city’s main street. It is also one of the shortest streets in the city. Any one of the five bridges across the Dnieper is longer than the Kreshchatik. In the past it was a glen, a favourite hunting ground of the nobility. Today it is lined with shop windows and trees casting dense shadows. The traffic is heavy and the sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians. Like any other capital city Kiev offers something for everyone. Young people are attracted to Kiev where there are 39 specialised secondary and 18 higher educational establishments with a total enrollment of more than 200,000. It has 16 museums and an Exhibition of Economic Achievements of the Ukraine. The Kiev Branch of the Central V. I. Lenin Museum is always well attended, and so are the museums of history of the Ukraine and the Great Patriotic War, and museums displaying masterpieces of Ukrainian fine art and folk and applied arts. The Taras Shevchenko Museum, the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the Kievo-Pechersky Historical and Cultural Museum are visited by tourists from all the Union Republics.
In the summer months the 13 beaches along the Dnieper are used by nearly half a million holidaymakers attracted by the golden sands, the clean waters of the Dnieper and excellent service facilities The achievements of present-day Ukraine are above all the fruit of labour of the people of the Ukraine. But at the same time they are also the result of the combined efforts of all Soviet peoples, for the advantages of a socialist federal state consist in that the achievements of any one Union Republic contribute to the growth of all the other Republics in the Union and the achievements of the Union as a whole contribute to the prosperity and well-being of each of the Union Republics.