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              Men Teir Of USSR
— Soviet Armenia
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FRESNO - Two Fresnans, Leon
Peters and Paul Paul toured the
Soviet Union late in April and took
in Erevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia.
Both men were visiting behind
the iron curtain as members of
groups sponsored by the U.S. gov-
Mamoulian Pens
Poem For Spring
"Ararat" Issue
NEW YORK - A poem by famed
film producer, RoubenMamoulian,
is featured in the Spring issue of
"Ararat" a quarterly published by
the Armenian General Benevolent
Union.
Kathryn Manoogian, a native of
Fresno and currently doing graduate work in San Francisco, is also
a contributor to the current issue
with her short story, "As A Good
Wife Should."
Mamoulian was prompted to
write the poem after, according to
"Ararat," reading "some lines of
Byron concerned with the point that
the Garden of Eden was located in
Armenia." His poem, entitled,
"Armenia," follows:
On  this  wide  earth there is one
spot of ground
All  men  should cherish as their
native land,
For it was there that Paradise was
found,
The Bible says,—by the Almighty's
hand.
And it was there that God created
man
In His own image—Adam, earthly
father
Of all of us:—white, black, or tan,
All born of Eve, our common primal mother.
In that same land did Noah's ark
alight
On Ararat, the mount that topped
the waters;
And  there the dove achieved her
fruitful flight,
And man survived in Noah's sons
daughters.
That blessed ground, those fateful
mountain slopes,
Where   God  once  walked,  where
mortal life began,
Where    Adam    cried,    and  Noah
worked his hopes,
Is called Armenia, native land of
man.
ernment's ' 'People to People" program. Peters, proprietor of Valley
Foundry and Machine Works, toured with a group of business and professional men and Paul, head of the
Fresno County Fair, went with a
group of managers of western fairs
and expositions.
While the two men both saw and
experienced similar conditions,
Peters reports that he was "surprised to find so much poverty
among the masses and such low
wages and extremely high prices."
Paul, however, reports that he
' 'went to Erevan to find a little village and found a nice city of 510,000
people." But he adds, "you cannot
compare their living standards-with
those prevailing in America. That
would be unfair. But when you compare them with Turkey, they're in
heaven.''
Peters concludes that the Soviet
Union has two economies side by
side, one for consumer goods, and
the other for military and defense.
The civilian or consumer good economy,  he says, is not  at  all  advanced. People must stand in long
lines to buy food and clothing and
must  pay extremely high prices.
"I saw one line of women waiting
for a store to open and counted 75
people."     He  also   reports  that
prices are very high. The average
worker  makes  the  equivalent  of
$110 per month and must pay fifteen cents for eggs in the Winter
(10 cents in Spring), five and six
cents for potatoes, and from fifteen dollars  to  57 dollars for a
pair of shoes. Other prices that he
noted at a free market (where peasants can sell their own produce
from private half-acre plots) were
50 cents for a single pomegranet,
$1.50 per lb. for apples, 50 cents
for a small bunch of radishes, and
$8  for  a  small dressed duck or
goose.
Both men report very poor housing facilities. "I visited one doctor," says Paul, "who was doing
very well, he had a television set
and a piano but only three small
rooms and a kitchen for his family
of four.
Peters says that even the new
apartments (which Paul reports are
going up rapidly) are very small
and poorly constructed according
to our standards. "In Erevan I was
surprised to see many people living in extremely sub - standard
homes. You find a wide range of
housing accomodations from mud
huts to first class apartments. But
(Continued on Page 5)
■:>
Armenia. . .
(Continued From Page 1)
[>
LEON S. PETERS
PAUL PAUL
even the best apartments are not
spacious. Anyone with a two or
three room apartment is living in
luxury. A family of five lives in two
rooms and many families of four
live in one room, sharing a kitchen
and bath with three to nine families."
According to Peters many apartment houses have no bathtubs.' 'The
people go to town and pay 30 kopeks
for a public bath.''
Both men found the people generally satisfied throughout the Soviet Union and saw little difference
in attitude toward the regime in Armenia as compared with the rest
of the USSR. "One fellow told me
that his father made a mistake when
he brought him there," says Paul,
who concluded that the ones who
seemed dissatisfied were those who
had gone to Armenia from Western
countries.
Peters says, "I talked to more
people  in Armenia who were not
pleased with the present regime
than in other parts, but that was
probably because I could speak the
language and get closer to the people. Wherever we went, the feeling
was that the regime under Stalin
was far more severe than under
Khrushchev. There's been a little
loosening up of civilian goods and of
people's fear of secret police. They
told   me   that under  Stalin they
wouldn't have been able to come to
the hotel where there were Americans."'
Both men found the city beautiful
and Paul talks of the view from his
hotel window of the snow-capped
Mt. Ararat.''It was really a sight.''
Paul emphasized the parks and
public squares which he had traveled to see. "They are quite beautiful,  and the people are out until
about 11 p.m. on the streets and in
the parks. This is probably because
of the lack of housing space."
Peters was more interested in
the workings of the economy in the
Soviet Union and found that the
machine tools and equipment used
in heavy industry were "in every
way just as good and as far advanced as anything we have here." But'
the consumer - goods plants often
used obsolete and inadequate equipment.
"I noticed a great deal of unbalanced production. At every airport
there would be large numbers of
airplanes not  in service. At the
Moscow airport I counted 61 two
and four engine jets not in service
covered with canvas.  The  same
thing was true at every other airport, with large numbers of helicopters covered with canvas. 1 concluded that apparently the factories
producing these things are producing them without need for them.
They can't  shut the factory down
because   those   things might be
needed later by the military."
The people were found to be very
friendly by both travellers. Paul
was given a private dining room at
his hotel in Erevan and his table
had a little American flag as a centerpiece . " I finally got into the main
•Aininor   room   where the  natives
lot of cognac ana"vFhft>',alldrinka
their  glasses and toast someone
before each drink. Finally I stood
up with my glass and told them that
I was toasting* everyone in the dining room. From then on they were
very congenial to me. They called
me 'hairig Jon' (dear little father)."
Peters found the people anxious
to talk wherever he went, with the
usual question being concerned with
wages, and the buying power of the
average U.S. citizen.
"Wherever we went in Russia,
Leningrad,   Moscow   or  Rostov,
everyone told us that Erevan was
the most beautiful spot, highly developed and the paradise of the
USSR." But Peters and his Fresno group were somewhat let down
when they finally  arrived there.
"We didn't notice much difference.
The farming and housing was just
as backward...." Peters did find
Kiev, the capital of the Ukranian
Republic, somewhat improved over
the other cities he visited.
The  conditions   of the farmer
were studied by Peters who visited
a collective farm in Armenia. It
was 4,020 acres in size and had 577
families on it.   "And the women
work alongside the men." Peters
estimates that there were 1,000 to
1,100 people working the farm or
one individual tilling between three
and a half and four acres. "In the
San Joaquin Valley the average is
one person to 160 acres."
Neither of the two men had any
trouble talking to the natives in Armenian, and Paul says that eventhe
Russians living in Soviet Armenia
speak Armenian. "When I asked
one man how come he spoke Armenian when he was Russian, he told
me, 'when I'm here I'm Armenian.' "
The two Fresnans were both interested to learn that the grape
vines in the Erevan district are
completely covered with dirt in
the winter. The predominant grape
varieties according to Paul are
Muscat, Thompson and Malaga.
And while machines push the dirt
up alongside the vines, they must
be covered on top by hand.
The  impressions of Paul Paul
and Leon Peters on their trip to
the USSR and Soviet Armenia were
in no way contradictory. Both men
found the  trip interesting— both
were objective in what they saw.
But  since Paul went there expecting the worst, he was somewhat impressed with what he saw.
Peters, however, had not been prepared to find a consumer economy
at such a backward level and was
surprised at the low standard of
living which still prevails.
A statement by Paul Paul perhaps best sums up both men's
feelings upon their return to the
United States.
"There just isn't any place in the
world that can compare with America "^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H