1959-06-29 — Page 4

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