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| 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 29 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_2209396_028.jpg |
| Transcript | 10% represented by the "loan," a tribute it has been placing on the workers' pay for years. The lower paid workers and clerks (who form the base of the system) suffer so much from this situation that it is often necessary to force them to take their vacations. The constant half-poverty that the worker who is the father of a family finds himself in, often brings him to implore his bosses for the permission to work during his vacation, so that he may double his pay at least during two weeks in the year. But the law is rigorous and such a favor is granted very rarely. Let not the reader play with the idea of the possibility of hoarding or personal economy by the worker, so common in France. The Russian detests the woolen sock; the constant devaluation of the rouble makes saving quite ineffectual. For 56 days before and 56 days after childbirth the working woman has a right to a paid rest if her occupation is not sedentary— this qualification applies whether she is a worker, engineer or actress. In the other cases, she is entitled to 42 days after and before childbirth. Everybody will appreciate the importance and necessity of such a rest in a situation where the man's wages are no longer sufficient to support the family, so that 40% of the workers are women. And these women workers must do their housework besides laboring in the factory. Putting aside the small indemnities3 allowed in cases of birth or death, we shall pass on to the topic of retirement pensions. In principle, the worker has a right to a pension as soon as he is no longer in the condition to work. In practice, the worker labors till his last ounce of strength, even to the age of seventy. A worker living in a great poverty on a wage of 100 roubles or so a month is evidently in no hurry to retire on a pension of 25 or 50 roubles—when rye bread costs 0.85 roubles a kilo and wheat bread 1.70 roubles a kilo. We know old fellows who have labored fifty years in the same factory in Moscow and now get 35 roubles as a retirement pension—the price of two kilos of butter. At the age of 75 the human animal needs little. Yet it is hard to buy yourself even your daily bread without having to sell some mushrooms, nuts or berries that you go out to pick in the woods outside the city. And you must have the strength to do that. Retired workers are no longer serviceable in the conquest of a superior technique or the establishment of industry on a grandiose scale. Retired workers are not vigorous enough to dare to protest their needs. Since the general lack of things has deadened the sentiment of humanity, the retired workers are perhaps the real pariahs in the Soviet regime. (Let us not forget the extremely low wages they got when they were working. Let us not forget that continuous inflation has not permitted them to put aside a single kopek for old age.) In such matters as pension and retirement the bureaucracy is most exacting and offers all sorts of complications. The timid worker in quest of retirement drags his weary feet from cage-window, earning his alms of a pension all over again. There is even a vast Institute for Scientific Research and Evaluation of Invalidity, the function of which it is to con- 3 A decree of June 27, 1936, instituted a relatively high subsidy to families, but this benefit begins with the seventh living child and is good only for five years. 27 |