The Reconstruction of Moscow

"keeps," doss-houses, slums and cellars, where the hired slaves of capital lived in inhuman conditions. This is the primary cause for the extremely low mobility of the urban population of pre-revolutionary Russia, The parasitic upper classes did nothing to develop the municipal transportation service, since they had private vehicles at their disposal. In the cities of the land of socialism the worker works only seven hours a day. Unemployment has been abol- ished. The adult working population has been drawn into- active productive, political and cultural activity. The working class women have also been drawn into produc- tion, lead an active public life and are not disfranchised domestic slaves, fettered to their kitchens. Science and art, theatres and clubs, cinemas and parks — all these are accessible to the broad masses/ After work, the worker and his family still have enough time to go ta the theatre, to the club, to a lecture, on an excursion, ta the park, to the stadium, or to pay visits to comrades. Of course, the so-called "constrained journeys" of the population are of some significance too. Of the 564 aver- age annual journeys per inhabitant of Moscow, 100 to 150^ might be necessitated by the poor distribution of the pop- ulation, the distance from the place of work, the insuf- ficiency of shops and cultural centres, etc., in the outlying districts. All efforts are being exerted to eliminate these defects. But it must not be forgotten that there is such a thing as. "constrained immobility" as well as "constrained mobil- ity," and the former is probably well in excess of the lat- ter. Every resident of a big city in the Soviet Union knows only too well that one may sometimes put off a visit to the cinema, to the club, and so on, because the municipal transportation service is still poor.

56