144 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
does some good. Do you know what I am working on at this
moment? On a Government order. Here it is. . . .*
"He took a sheet from his desk and showed it me. It was a
translation into Yiddish of an official form, and the form was a
summons before the G.P.U."
There can be no more striking illustration of the real work
done by these institutes; which is to suppress every national
movement.
I have here dealt with the position of only some of the
peoples and nationalities settled in the Soviet Union. But the
conditions described exist also among many other peoples
and tribes which cannot here be treated in detail. I am there-
fore justified in asserting that the situation in these areas is
the scene not only of a terrible famine, but at the same time
of the now openly conducted national struggle.1
We are indebted to Postyschev for enlightenment on the
future policy of Moscow in the Ukraine, as well as with regard
to the various peoples and races settled in the various districts.
In a speech delivered late in 1933 he stated that any attempt
to harmonize proletarian internationalism with nationalism
must make it an instrument of the nationalist counter-revolu-
tion and must therefore be most vigorously combated in
future. He added that the reorganization of the form and
methods of Bolshevik leadership in building up Ukrainian
culture must consequently imply "a vigorous and consistent
struggle for the elimination of nationalist prejudices."
1 In the late summer of 1935 a decree was issued by the Soviet Government
(signed by Molotov and Stalin, which shows the importance attached to it),
ordering a "fundamental reform of the educational system in the Soviet
Union." It orders, inter alia> that curricula, school-books, time-tables, etc.,
must be standardized throughout the Soviet Union, and that from January i
a uniform—also identical throughout the Soviet Union—must be worn by
all schoolchildren. What is particularly characteristic is that this decree
takes the school administration out of tie hands of the autonomous Soviet
republics and places it under the control of the central authorities. Arthur
W. Just observes in an article on "Education in the Soviet Union" in the
Rigasche Rundschau of September 27,1935, that all pretence of the nationali-
ties possessing intellectual freedom is now abandoned.