THE CHINA MAIL" MONDAY, JUNE 29, 1959.
Reporter Christopher Dobson on an 8,000-mile journey into the heart of a new empire
IN Mr K's 'WILD WEST
Log-hut towns
with TV sets
and jets
From CHRISTOPHER DOBSON: Inside Siberia.
THIS is Khrushchev's Wild West. This is the empire. the Frontior towns Russians are building and peopling. have streats paved with foot-long lengths of log hammered upright into the ground-yet are served by Tu104 jets.
Women at work on a collective form near Irkutsk.
car home and Nazimov Faradeyvich, over grinning conspiratorially, ducked
the out of the door,
and then
me around. We went by
on Horseback enormous Acticorosa," the maize which is
Towns like Irkutsk, a Birmingham in the. You can also go seal shooting. making, with a tremendous new hydroelectric and the Baikal seals and unique
They have bred for thousands station and smoke stacks streaming blackly over of years, cut off from the rest
of the seal world. the rough-hewn log houses,
And towns like Yakutsk, for which I am heading on a six-day, 8,000-mile tour.
I am covering this wide, immense land by Jet, a baltered old biplane, by car, lake steamer, horseback, and my own two feet. Beside me in the jet whistling nt 000 milca ant hour across Siberio WOR
gnarled old Deasant woman, brown, with slant eyes, her head shrouded in a while kerchief, with the lines. thot come from much toil and much grief wearing Into
A
TOMORROW Yakutsk, the
frontier town
.where the ПАУО- ments aro plank
-MIRED
her
face and her blunt and calloused hands gripping the arms of her
Rent.
WRYA.. .where the air of rough vitality recalls the gold-rush days American West.
of
the
is
She is a symbol of what happening in Siberia today with
the jet age being grafted on to the Siberia we all know about the Siberia of exiles, of wolves, of vast wasles of forests and snow and lee, and the bitter killing cold.
She was the first impact that Siberia made on me on this journey of exploration into places where few Englishmen have
been before,
It is with much pride, therefore, that I tell the story of the next old lady I met but here.
LADY ON THE LAKE
She is English, and has worked in the south of Siberia jurt 100 miles from the Mongolian border for the past 55 years.
When I saw her she was suffering the indignity of being scraped and painted, but still the maintained her pride.
She is the steamship Angara, built by the Armstrong Com- pany, of Newcastle, in 1904, and shipped overland in pieces 3,000 miles to Lake Baikal where she was reassembled and has been bustling around the lake in summer ever since.
She had a sister chip once. But Czechs burned her during the Revolution.
Jake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake in the world, nearly a mile deep. Neulithle man ved on its banks, The Ice is so thick in winter that trains eros IL.
COATS USED AS SAILS
But you may soon be secting Lake Baikal for yourself because
the Russians shy they are going to open it up as a tourist spot.
It is a natural. cup just see the posters: "Come to
Siberia. Some of the nest fahing in the world.”
Bunny
That is true. And you can go back to the local. at home and say offhandedly: "Had wonderful sport. Caught harlos and a fair-sized cmmel." These fish, abound in the lake, but are found nowhere else in the world,
Colds
Even tfle slightest cold.
Is to be feared
Do not let it spread
Defeat it from the start
by taking 2 CAFASPINS"
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ccols go whipping nerosa to
Then there is skating. The
lake in the winter holding their coats open to the wind as sails,
But theso plans of tourism ore still in the future like so many other things Incide Siberia, It is all frontier country, like the American West a hundred years ago, Life is rough,
And yet at a kolkhoz—a col- Jective farm outside the indus- trini elly of Irkutsk I was shown
felds
where
such an importarit crop; here, was just sprouting.
me
at
We watched the women
on the machines, and work Nizamov. .took
into their houses," "These
not the worst houses in the village,” he told me, "but neither are they the best!"
ALIO
But I was not going to be caught by that one. I told her 1 thought she had the best of all possible homes and raid farewell,
THEIR PAY
All the workers on the farm Outside they looked rather get a guaranteed wage ranglug drab with their
754 roublen to 15 wooden loge from weatherbeaten and dull, but roubles a day. But actually the inside everything was shining salaries are much higher. like the proverbial new pin.
In the summer the women an art gallery in the village Somehow they reminded me
who look after the plys muke clubhouse. Just plain straight of my grandmother's house bout 1,200 roubles a month. The forward art, but nevertheless when visitors were
arriving, lowest wage goes to the woman something I had never expected with portraits of ancestors, brass who runs the village post office. Lo see in the heartland of knobs, and antimacassars, cals, She gets 300 roubles a month, Siberis.
and babies everywhere.
[One rouble. will buy alb This collective · farm, called But granny never had a loaf. A pair of shoes costs any- Lenin over. the thing from 100 raubles upwards, "In the way of lylch" (Lenin), portrait of virgin ground carved out of I saw big rubber plants. is vast nearly 70,000 peres of stove. Instead of her ospidistra you can reckon about 28 roubles
And to the £1.. forest and scrub,
TV aerials look strange. waving over these log houses. One of the farm Leaders, Nizamov Faradeyvich, a square, One housewife asked me what capable looking man, showed she should do to improve her
The head of the farm is pald 2,500 roubles a month, but li all depends on the success or failure of the farm.
THREE hundred and sixty-one acres of -land in the heart of London, Generations of nannies have aired their charges in it. The meeting place of ́, young lovers, cranks and weary shoppers. This is Hyde Park-the park that Billy Graham (and Jayne Mansfield agroes) says "shocked me. Today the China Mail begins a four-part profile of one of London's most fascinating landmarks.
by TOM
POCOCK
After dark: the biggest
"No respect for the
Duke of Welling
ton, have they?"
The polico sergeant flashed
problem of
all
Furtive figures dodging, lurk 'em for wilful damage of plants, his torch on the bushes behind ing and hiding among the trees, walking across flowers beds, you
House. There Apsley
was sometimes allhouetted against know, scuffling in the undergrowth.
the sparkle of Knightsbridge or
"It's Ironical. A prostitute Take a walk!" Park Kane, sometimes lit by the he shouted. Sheepishly they dull red glare in the sky from can be fined only £2 for solicit- the lights of Mayfair and Plesna ing but she might have to pay Purged. Half a dozen wenice, dilly. The fiach of the sergeant's £20 for damaging my flowers, about a dozen men,
'Come on,
torch on startled faces, raddled
In A scene caught the edge of faces.
fantastic
"Billy Graham is quite right the parit." Then he chuckled, “Like a bedroom, he uld it was, I take that as a the park and make it quick." But I was prepared for con- compliment to the condition of
trasts. That afternoon, Mr. Tom "my meadow grasp,heta 199 Then, to me: "Those girls work Barbour, the cheerful Seotulah the Arpley House railings every superintendent of the Central Earlier I had discussed the night, I might have grabbed all Royal Parks, had been proudly same problem with the Tailiff of this little 181, Outraging puabile, showing me his four acres of the Royal Parks, Major Tan decency. Wilfully, Interfering Freenhouses; geraniums for Hobkirk (Eton, Seaforth High- with the comfort or convenience Whitehall window-boxes, garlanders and, after St Valery, of any person in the park; denidy for a Foreign Office Prison camp). His approach was
briskly military;
Each the sergeants.tongue. "Take a contrast to the mellow, sunlit about long walk, go on," "Don't let me park of early evening, see you again tonight." "Out of
Behaviour likely to cause dis- banquel,
order or a breach of the peace, Going on an enclosure. But it
wouldn't stop the prostitution in Hyde Park.
Very bad
:
He is supposed to make a pro- ́ ́ It is a Birmingham in the and there are hot water · and nt of 11,000,000 roubles this year, making It has a well estab- baths in the hotels though It he makes more then he gets shed mica industry, Enormous mine was 'na crowded thero bonus. If ho runs at a loss deposits of coal and natural gas were people sleeping in the then, hla salary. Is cul. It is a have been found,
corridor outalde my room. fine profit-making inducement.
Power to work the town's I only hit the real Sibèria, the There are two main problems industries is now coming from 'fronter land where' survival on the farm. Problems which a brand now hydroelectric, comes dirat, when I left 'Irkutsk bedevil all of Siberia. There station on the Angara River, for the 1,000-mile swing by bush are not enough people. And not enough houses for the people a bit grey and cars take tre Yakutsk.
The town itselt is a bit grim, rivers up to the northeast to pleno in and out and. 'nerous
that are there to live in.
mendous puin!shment on ta
4
The houses, s'bult in the rough and rocky roads which There, if you dig 2ft down traditional wood log fashion, are scarred by the winter's Ice, even in the summer, you hit the
Where is the usual housing permanently frozen.
perma frost-ground that is
are going up, but Nizamov Faradeyvich, who would like to have, 3,500 people on his farm, can only mustër 850.
THEIR HEAT
carried
thortage and water is from pumps, two buckets at a tune on a milkman's yoke..
Yet there is a theatre where I listened to a passable per formance of "Traviata" — "and
And if you blast down into the perma you are quite likely to find the body of a mammoth, just as if it had come out of the deep freeze,
was besieged by students from The people still show their
ancestry the Foreign Language Institute common
with
the
It is a hard life, with most of the work being crammed into the three short months of who were eager learn every American Indlus-high cheek- summer before the snow and thing they could about Britain 'bones, hooded eyes, and red- Ice clamp on to the land again." and other countries of the West, brown skin. Summer in Siberia, though
alurt, is O great deal holter THEIR FREEZE
than Brighton ever is.
From the farm I drove to
One girl recited "The House Irkutsk over a dirt road-with-That Jack Built to me and the dusts awirling up hot and asked "Please explain, what heavy between the pine and does that mean?" birch trees which march across Siberia' In their millions.
Irkutsk Is being opened to British Tourists' for the first time this summer,
But then, Iritulek is in the civilised part of Siberia.
Jet airliners como roaring down on to is modern airport
S
SIBERIA
with warmth and a great deal
Wherever I went I was greeted
of surprise for un “Anglecaki!” is a very rare bird indeed in the heartlands of Siberia
In this wild, and distant 'country · Russia has pinned her hopes for the future.
But my full report Yakutsk will keep, like mammoth in the Tee, unut id= morrow,
.
по
tho
London Express Service:
LETA R
YAKUTEK
SCANDINAVIA
R
Arctic Circle
Ural
Mini
MOSCOW
DOBSON'S 8000 MILE EXPLORATION OF SIBERIA
"RIBENSK
AKE BAIKAL
OUT
EUROPE
MIDDLE
EAST
This
The
CHINA
OLEG MIRSK ANDARA B
"I live in Hyde Parks," said regulars and on a due night It was midnight and the gates Major Hobkirk, who has 0 you'll get at least 100 working of Hyde Park were at last being charming Georgian houso near the park, in cars, along the closed, Apoliceman painted. the Serpentine. "I see this vice carriage ways, among the trees, scross a low fotice to Kensington all the time outside my own in the bushes. We charge about Gardens, front gate. The only solution is half a dozen a night.” o stricter low.
prasetit £2 has forThey close those gardens an "Do you know, when the soliciting seems ridiculous to all there's lots of trees and bushes hour after sunset," he said, Wolfenden Report was pub London policemen In Hyde Park in thero and not many fences. lished the prostitutes thought many bollove, the trouble could But you get no vice in Kensing
be instantly reduced
ton Gardans Quite a different prostitutes who can the Tenses atmosphere in there.
and most of them do were "On One night you could let
kids an status
„j; already was law and they vantled from the park of course they wore back In couple of days,"
Efficiency
At Hyde Park police station 1 found an air of frustrated effetency. Under their keen muw superintendent, George Burgoyne, who learned his job. in the thugh Harrow Road, 65
policemen (not
counting
* mounted ** police," and "polles- dwumin) try to maintain law and [^ærder in the 801 sores of King "We've tried "barbed wire, Helry: VIII's hunting park, (S We've swired, the perimelor oĥsi We've two pela of problems shrubberies and we've put down" here," "I was told:.."'Que lot b wire in the bushes. "But you, dạỷ, One lot at night. By day can't turpg" the ¿ public's play- we hayo"irale cúpitol, Parking around luto al barbed wire problems and koorlog rokdi of the prostitutes carry wire-, éplitical demonstrations and
utters
purađen. We have lost property. sergeant, pointing, to the trees.. "Let of trouble with prosti-
und lost kids. Plenty of work. || "Why didn't you being" Billy, tulex,” he said. "It's very bad Bome"-- strategie" ("tress. - he "At night we get the "lomk
Gradam with you tonight??, 20 down in the Bandstand Baruba "uglakad, had had "their trunks Dist'aɛwhot wa' call" pripadlbatrin
(76. was a nightmare, bona bery. Wo'sm having to put in nted with W zitätsing of krenee. They moved down, from: Malde [ihai I mw, repented she, or spiked, tenens Founa, the dower.
pován Lion between 11 and beda," kven then they may get effectiva-uni
Then, she discussed the The Borgeant and I walked inleat planting of summer briskly towards The Doll, where, flowers in the sunken jardan at
den waren Kongon Kensington Palace he started entanglement. In any case some clans for toys carts we live children watch the rabbits pier talking about proatliuilon":" "ilero... we go again," said “the
bed, boen „Vals arst Paddington when the
the inwonen@had, park railings camo, down during
on
always fined the maximum 26 penally for "going enclosure."
Meanwhile the night patron
co on.
• Play round that Peter. Pan
More Tomorrow
-Chandon Express Bereich).
Friell