The Reconstruction of Moscow

kitchens, mechanized bakeries, public buildings and office-buildings have been built. Two million square metres of roadways have been surfaced; the capacity of water mains has been increased by 100 per cent, the sewerage system has been extended hundreds of kilometres, street-car lines have been lengthened by Over 100 kilometres. City transportation facihties have been supplemented by к little over a thous : and new street-cars and hundreds of motorbuses, Moscow has acquired 25 kilometres of central heating mains, the first step in the vast program of heat-and-power develop- ment in the Soviet Union, The rate at which construction proceeded on the first subway in the U.S.S.R. and on the Volga-Moscow Canal is unparalleled in history. Parks,.of culture and rest, and verdure bearing areas within the city have been extended, and new ones have been laid out. All this is convincingly borne out by the words of Stalin at the Seventeenth Party Congress: "The very appearance of our large towns and in- dustrial centres has changed. The inevitable hall-mark of the big towns in bourgeois countries are the slums, the so-called working class districts on the outskirts of the town, which represent a heap of dark, damp, in the majority of cases, cellar dwellings, in a semi- ,, dilapidated- condition, wfiere usually the poor live in filth and curse their fate. The Revolution in the U.S.S.R. has swept away the slums in our country. Their place has been taken by well-built and bright workers' districts and in many cases the working class districts of our towns are better built than the central districts." * * Stalin, "Report of the CeHtral Committee of the C.P.S.U. (Seven- teenth Party Congress) ," in the symposium Socitrfism Victorious, p. 49.

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