XVI

On the fourteenth of June, late in the afternoon, Garry met me, as agreed, in Lyons' office. I had drafted the letter to Stalin. We read it together. He did not suggest any changes. The letter was typed the next day, and was dated June the fifteenth. It follows.

Comrade Stalin:

I address this message to you because of the incidents described which have obstructed my work and partly nullified its possibilities for the improvement of construction in the U.S.S.R.

These incidents ... are typical of the general conditions under which foreign engineers must work in this country. They are responsible for the poor quality and the terrible waste of human energy, materials and time which characterize Soviet construction.

I make no personal complaint, nor do I request any action on my behalf, although my efforts have been rendered abortive and my life almost intolerable by the irresponsible, indifferent, bureaucratic managements of the trusts in which I have worked. I am accustomed to accomplishing my work without appeals for assistance.

It is to the general condition that I call your attention, to the broad problem of the fullest utilization of foreign engineers, whose abilities are now largely lost to the Soviet Union, under the crushing yoke of neglect, disorganization and evasion of responsibility by management, thus prolonging the deprivation of the Soviet masses.

The usual experience of the foreign engineer in his work in the Soviet Union is to be confronted from the first by chaos, incompetence and a low level of technique. His projects for improvement are distorted, delayed, neglected and lost. Unreasoning opposition and long-deferred decisions block action. The foreign engineer must seek authoritative aid to effect realization of his plans, or abandon the struggle and drift with the slow tide of inertia.

The Soviet press exhorts us to fight for our ideas and assures us of the sympathy of the Party leaders. It has repeatedly indicated the channels through which we may find support. These are the trade unions, the Party secretaries in the trusts, the administrators of the trusts, the B.R.I.Z., the R.K.I., and various organs of the press itself.

Extensive contacts with these institutions have brought foreign engineers to the bitter conclusion that, for this purpose, they are hopelessly indifferent and inactive, exhibiting the same weaknesses which they are supposed to exterminate.

My own experience is adduced only to illustrate this.... (Then followed a detailed description of many of the incidents already related. I mentioned my investigations with the R.K.I., and the appointments which were made with Ulianova, Lenin's sister, head of the R.K.I., and which never materialized. The investigations were never vigorously prosecuted and were finally abandoned without result in sheer neglect.) Had there been an organization to investigate the R.K.I., I would have resorted to it....

(I then outlined the great possibilities of the general rationalization program in construction, if applied to the work of the entire country, listing the reports I had made and filed with the Commissariat of Heavy Industry, and continued.)

Translation of my reports was long delayed. When completed they were not reviewed by the director of our department. Consequently, realization was blocked. I brought this to the attention of Comrade Nemetz (director of Soyuzstroi), pointing out that we were working without plan, without centralized responsibility, and therefore without results. (See Stalin's "Six-Point Speech.") Director Nemetz promised that action would be taken to expedite the work. Shortly thereafter, however, he was sent to Mariupol, on other work, and so I lost contact with this capable executive.

Having read the high-sounding speeches of Comrade Shvernik (Commissar of the Trade Unions) on the functions of the trade unions in assisting foreign engineers, I went to the trade union official in Soyuzstroi and discussed the delay of the work. Nothing came of this. For six months no meeting had been held by the administration of the trust to review the work accomplished or to plan for the future. The Party secretary personally pledged to me that effective action would be taken to remedy this. Still nothing happened.

On several occasions, I took up the situation with comrades Borodin and Zaidner (of Intourist); the latter being acquainted with my work in America. They deeply deplored the matter and urged me to write about it to the Press....

(I then told of the experience with the editors of Tekhnika .)

This describes my attempts to secure realization of my work. No agency known to me or pointed out by Soviet officials has been overlooked. Nevertheless, I have had to work silently and alone, without cooperation. Not a single step has been taken by any of these institutions to further the realization of the work. Such an experience destroys creative energy, initiative, and above all, socialist faith. The totality of these conditions, for the mass of foreign engineers in the U.S.S.R., results in grave losses to the Soviet Union.

Again I emphasize that this communication has no personal end. It

requests no action on my behalf. If it serves to spur the various organizations mentioned to properly perform their socialist duties and make better use of foreign engineering aid for the benefit of the Soviet Union, it will accomplish its object.

My view, after exhausting all these possibilities, is that my services, under these conditions, cannot be of significant value. Real accomplishment is not possible in this way. In justice to myself, I must shortly return to the United States.

In comradeship,
Zara Witkin

Garry took the letter and departed. The fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth of June passed in routine fashion, at my office. Then the "rest-day" came, the eighteenth. My first thought that morning was to get a copy of Izvestia . As soon as I obtained one, I eagerly searched it. What I sought was not hard to find. Half of the second page was occupied by an article, signed by Garry, headed "The Agony of Creation."

The article first told of my arrival in the U.S.S.R. and an incident I had witnessed in Sevastopol. A crew of workers there, raising a heavy timber swinging scaffold up the face of a hotel building which they were "repairing," had smashed windows, broken plaster and finally torn off the heavy sign of the hotel, sending it crashing to the sidewalk, nearly killing two people. My reaction to this painfully unintelligent work was described in the paper as follows:

Seated in the train en route to Moscow, the American engineer felt, with all his soul, what a tremendous task lay before him in the wonderful land of the Soviets. This American engineer was a specialist in the rationalization of construction. Rapturously, he mused on the colossal effect on Russian construction of applying American technique in conjunction with the enthusiasm of the Soviet workers. What happened to the blessed intentions of the American?

Before us lies a thick pile of papers and clippings. They represent a mass of material, consisting of descriptions of hundreds of inventions and rationalization proposals. For days and months consideration of these projects has been put off and the inventors have met with nothing but delays, even the most persistent ones who wore down the thresholds carrying their rolls of drawings and their models under their arms, in futile attempts to get a hearing to show the possibilities of their work. Finally, in this endless process, they came to resemble perpetual motion machines!

Their presentations grew old in this way. Soviet inventors no longer come with their drawings, because they do not possess enough hands and

arms to carry them. Now they are loaded down with great bundles of documents; not technical matter, but resolutions, decisions, acts, directives, circulars and newspaper clippings! A very powerful bureaucracy! One shudders at the total amount of effort; the hours of painful toil of busy people, multiplied by tens and hundreds, consumed in meetings, conferences and commissions to consider each proposal or invention, separately. This tremendous energy is finally lost in the agony of creation by which the inventor and the invention are sidetracked to still other committees. A thousand words of genius are written by the commission, but nothing is done! Today's slogan is "Recognize the work and complete it!" The nonexistent perpetual motion machine is at last found; it is made up of a continuous ring of commissions through which the unfortunate inventors revolve. It was created through inertia, technical backwardness, stubbornness, ignorance and fear by the destructive bureaucracy....

The American engineer, as we said, was an expert in rationalization of construction. Rationalization is close to invention. The American engineer came to Moscow. He threw himself into the work with all his energy and intelligence. He saw wonderful sights, great buildings, hundreds of thousands of shock-workers, and many special writings devoted to problems of construction, placards with slogans, endless plans for speeding up work. A great arena for technical creation. Here, creative energy was being used for the greatest possible task: for the transformation of society!

The American developed great technical plans to transform our construction industry along modern lines. In his plans no intricate new devices were given. They contained only the most effective methods which are well established in the advanced industrial countries, and the beginnings of which already exist in our country. But the American has been puzzled and discouraged by the way in which the bureaucracy has handled his projects. He flounders in an ocean of papers, resolutions, acts, circulars, reports. In this long fight to keep his head above these papers, his energy has been gradually exhausted. His projects for the general rationalization program and the construction industry of the Soviet Union have been "shelved" for eight months. In the endless chain of bureaucrats which he has encountered, he has found an impenetrable wall of stupid inertia, suspicion, neglect and ignorance.

The American engineer is assigned to the task of rationalizing the construction industry in our country. One of his projects was the standardization of hollow wall blocks. But, among those whom the Party and the administration arranged to consult with him to facilitate his plans, he met the fear of assuming responsibility for investigation and action. They took the American, together with his drawings, and sent him to the Bureau of Rationalization and Invention. Now, the American engineer had not asked for a patent. He had simply put before them existing American construction technique, already in use for thirty years. He was only performing his duty in the task assigned by the administration. But the bureaucracy of the B.R.I.Z. took his project and sent it to the Leningrad Experimental

Institute. In this way, the three bureaucratic organizations "shelved" his project. The American proposed to achieve an economy of approximately fifty million rubles in a few months by his proposals. Until now the exhausted foreign consultant has waited to get the report of the Leningrad Institute.

What did the report say? It said that walls of hollow blocks are not new! The American never for a moment suggested this, nor even that his method was new. He was simply sharing with his Soviet colleagues his accumulated experience of eighteen years of construction practice in America, which he had brought to the U.S.S.R.

To prove that his proposal was not new, these bureaucrats referred the American consultant to certain periodicals in some Moscow institution. The American searched through the library. He wanted to assure himself of the facts and to be certain that his proposals to his Soviet colleagues were truths long known to him. But, here an unexpected interference arose. The number of the periodical mentioned by the Leningrad Institute in its letter was not given! This curious document, with its remarkable conclusions, so greatly sought after by the B.R.I.Z. of Soyuzstroi, was signed by one Ivanov.

Dear Comrade Ivanov! In the many remarks which you sent to the foreign consultant, this American whom we invited to our land to help us surpass the best Western capitalistic technique, we detect the ears of an ass! We are not sure whether or not these are your ears, but an ass's ears are there! You should read papers which you sign; otherwise, our construction and the heroism of hundreds of thousands of workers, who trust your authority, will be brought to shame before the whole world.

The American envisaged for our land such grandiose plans as he had never conceived of, while en route to us from the United States. He is a man of means, this American, and he came to us because the gigantic prospects of our construction dazzled him.

Not very long ago I met this American again. He had been urged to write, through the Central Committee of our Party, to Comrade Stalin, but he did not wish to take that step. He said, "For me it is not proper to act in this way. I know very little of your Party, and very little of Stalin, but I do know that your Party and Stalin have always urged us to work and to fight. What will they think of me, if, instead of fighting the bureaucrats, I complain like a little boy to his teacher?"

Engineer Witkin is right. I hardly think Comrade Stalin should be troubled with the work of rationalizing the construction industry. Just now, Stalin himself has fully explained his view of bureaucracy, and this is what it is.... "Bureaucracy in our organizations does not exist only as laziness among office loafers. Bureaucracy is the inheritance from the bourgeoisie.

Do not be disturbed, Engineer Witkin. Our country is vast, a sixth part of the world, endlessly rich in natural resources, not less rich in the enthusiasm and the will of millions, who, despite all enemy attacks, are

building a socialist society. Again, Engineer Witkin, do not worry! The working class of the Soviet Union will develop good working methods. For you, and for thousands of our good friends, who are prevented by the bureaucrats from doing their work, the activity of the mass is the best protection against bureaucratic decay, together with the Party which works to make a classless society and which will root out the last vestiges of bureaucracy.

There was no precedent in the Soviet press for an article of such extent on the work of a foreign engineer.