CULTIVATING CULTURE

The recent "Trial of the Bishops" at Moscow is only one phase of the Soviet crusade against the Church in Russia. It is the noisy fall of the last ruins of the old culture that was reared upon the Church as a foundation. The old forms of art, literature, and education have long disappeared, and that super-structure replaced by a porous Soviet system.

The new edifice does not quite accord with the architect's specifications. Only half the children can be taught in the primary schools which remain, and they only half-taught, without pencils, paper, shoes or soup. The others, running about in bands of hoodlums, pick up their education and their food from the streets. There are but five universities in Russia; one is headed by an ex-convict, while in all of them underfed and ragged professors attend cold lecture-rooms bundled in overcoats and mittens.

But the Soviet government has another stimulus for the development of national culture: a card index system and forcing process on its men of letters. When the writer, educated in Soviet schools, appears before the public, he is placed in a category ranked according to the promise he seemed to give. There is no quibbling over the relative merits of authors once the government's stamp is upon them. The critic's function is denied. Nor can a writer rest upon a chance success, for he must turn out regularly the number of words called for by his category, or else lose his ranking.

Drawing upon the background received in their schooling and urged on by government efforts, Soviet writers may soon have ready a whole new literature. This new culture is being built even before the old is entirely destroyed, so that at least the memory of the old may be compared with the products of the new. Turgenieff and Tchekhov are to be superseded by new authors; and they, in aiming at first-group ranking, need only take as a model this line from a recent Russian poet: "I feel a great desire to spit at the moon through the window."