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PARTISAN REVIEW
The Warsaw business last year went almost unnoticed, And I don't see
why the Russian behavior towards Poland should suddenly begin exciting
indignation now.
It may be, however, that public opinion is beginning to alter for
other reasons. One thing which, in a small way, probably affects working–
class opinion is that latterly there has been more contact than before
between British and Russians. From what I can hear, the British prisoners
liberated by the Red Army in eastern Germany often bring back anti–
Russian reports, and there has been a trickle of similar reports from the
crews of the ships which go to Archangel and the air crews which were
for a while operating in the USSR. What is probably involved here is
the question of relative cultural levels, to which working-class people are
usually very sensitive. In Germany I was struck by the attitude of the
American G.l.s towards the hordes of Russian forced laborers, and of
the British and American prisoners in liberated camps towards their
Russian fellow-prisoners. It was not that there was hostility, merely that
the western industrial worker, confronted with a Slav peasant, im–
mediately feels him to be less civilized-which he is, according to the
western worker's standards. However, this kind of thing takes effect
on the big public very slowly, if at all. Meanwhile, so far as I can
judge, pro-Russian sentiment is still strong and will be an appreciable
factor in the general election. A lot of people remark that a real stand
against Russian aggression in Europe can only be made by a government
of the Left, just as, when Germany was to be opposed, it had to be under
Conservative leadership.
I was not in England for V-Day, but I am told it was very decorous
-huge crowds, but little enthusiasm and even less rowdiness-just as it
was in France. No doubt in both cases this was partly due to the shortage
of alcohol. The ending of the European part of the war has made extra–
ordinarily little difference to anybody. Even the blackout is almost as
- black as ever, since few of the street lights have been restored and most
people don't possess any curtains other than blackout curtains. The
basic petrol ration has been restored and there is a scramble for cars
which are being sold at fantastic prices, but as yet the streets are com–
paratively empty. Certain wartime amenities, such as British Restaurants
and the excellent day nurseries at which working mothers can leave
their children, are now to be scrapped, or at least there is talk of scrap–
ping them, and already people are signing petitions against this. In
general, people of leftwing views are in favour of continuing wartime
controls (there were even some murmurs against the discontinuance of
18 B), while the Right makes play with such slogans as "No more
bureaucracy." The ordinary people in the street seem to me not only to
h ave become entirely habituated to a planned, r egimented sort of life,
in which consumption goods of a ll kinds are scarce but are shared out
with reasonable fairness, but actually to prefer it to what they had be-
