Title | What has become of the Russian Revolution |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Contributor (Local) |
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Publisher | International Review |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1937 |
Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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Subject.Topical (Local) |
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Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 63 pages; 22 cm |
Original Item Location | HN523.Y8613 1937 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304536~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | In Copyright: This item is protected by copyright. Copyright to this resource is held by the creator or current rights holder, and the resource is provided here for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without permission of the copyright owner. Users assume full responsibility for any infringement of copyright or related rights. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 14 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_2209396_013.jpg |
Transcript | because of the high rent, the supplementary expense of transportation and the difficulties of provisioning and heating. Heating is a matter of paramount importance in Russia. Therefore, for year round housing, people take to the "dacha" only as a last resort. A system of lodging that has almost completely disappeared for the common mortal is the hotel. The Soviet citizen has no right to stay in one of them more than 15 days or a month, depending on the case. Furthermore, to stay in a hotel even for one night, he has to be an official on a mission. It is, therefore, practically impossible for a worker to get away farther than a day's journey from his place of work, unless he sleeps out in the open or in a friend's room. No matter what kind of habitation you choose, lodging is extremely difficult to obtain. Several formalities are indispensable. You must first present your passport. Even a Russian cannot move in the interior of Russia without a passport. This is the Tsarist system of the "interior passport", resurrected and perfected by the Soviet State after it had been suppressed by the revolution. When you submit your passport, you are inscribed by the house committee or the house "commandant" on the list of "candidate tenants", if they are authorized to do so by the higher organs of the body that continues to pass under the name of "soviet". It takes months, years, to pass from the rank of candidate-tenant to that of tenant. Everything depends on the extent of the "pull" you have at your disposal. In the meantime, you have to bear things in the barracks, or "infiltrate" yourself into the already overpopulated room of a friendly family. Once you have become a tenant, you acquire some repose. This is, however, relative. You must be careful not to be badly thought of at your place of work and in the house. In that case, you will be confronted with all kinds of complications, with a view to dispossess you of the roof you have acquired with so much difficulty. Especially must you not manifest your discontent with the regime. For the police might use its sovereign right to expel you from your home. Let us add, to be complete, that there is no legal expulsion in winter time. At 20 or 40 below zero this would amount to a death sentence. Rent The tendency to equalize wages was soon replaced, after the revolution, with the enormous differences in income that are the rule today. The system of differential rent was meant to lighten the lot of the semi-in- digents that are the base of Soviet society. Let us note that this principle is only one of the several little tricks by which the Russian workers were induced to let go of the substance they had in their hands and take instead the shadow by which they are now fooled. The Russian workers wanted equal wages. That was something concrete. They were given the very opposite. This was partly managed by playing up to their attention the offer of special aid given to the most unfortunate among them. It is clear that if this aid were sufficient to readjust the inequality of income, the system would have no meaning. According to the complicated laws and practice, a tenant's rent de- 12 |