Trotsky - The Revolution Betrayed.pdf - Mehring Books

146 Family, Youth and Culture
the peasants and nomad shepherds with the elementary ideas
of human culture. Within the far-flung boundaries of the
tsar's empire, a native industry is arising. The old semiclan
culture is being destroyed by the tractor. Together with
literacy, scientific agriculture and medicine are coming into
existence. It would be difficult to overestimate the significance
of this work of raising up new human strata. Marx was
right when he said that revolution is the locomotive of history.
But the most powerful locomotive cannot perform miracles.
It cannot change the laws of space, and can only accelerate
movement. The very necessity of acquainting tens of millions
of grown-up people with the alphabet and the newspaper, or
with the simple laws of hygiene, shows what a long road
must be traveled before you can really pose the question of a
new socialist culture. The press informs us, for example, that
in western Siberia the Oirots, who formerly did not know
what a bath means, have now "in many villages baths to
which they sometimes travel thirty kilometers to wash
themselves." This extreme example, although taken at the
lowest level of culture, nevertheless truthfully suggests the
height of many other achievements, and that not only in the
backward regions. When the head of a government, in order
to illustrate the growth of culture, refers to the fact that in
the collective farms a demand has arisen for "iron bedsteads,
wall clocks, knit underwear, sweaters, bicycles, etc.," this
only means that the well-off upper circles of the Soviet
villages are beginning to use those articles of manufacture
which were long ago in common use among the peasant
masses of the West. From day to day, in speeches and in the
press, lessons are pronounced on the theme of "cultured
socialist trade." In essence, it is a question of giving a clean
attractive look to the government stores, supplying them with
the necessary technical implements and a sufficient assortment
of goods, not letting the apples rot, throwing in darning
cotton with stockings, and teaching the selling clerk to be
polite and attentive to the customer, in other words, acquiring
the commonplace methods of capitalist trade. We are still far
from solving this extremely important problem, in which,
however, there is not a grain of socialism.