BURYATIA

MY PEOPLE are of Mongolian descent and have lived for centuries in the eastern part of Siberia, near Lake Baikal, a country rich in natural resources but harsh in climate. In pre-Soviet times Buryatia served as a place of exile, and the lot of the native population was wretched. The Buryats were oppressed by the czar's officials and mercilessly exploited by a handful of rich landowners. Only seven per cent of the population could read and write. When the nineteenth century Russian poet Nikolai Nekrasov visited our land, his comment was short but spoke volumes. "Trans-Baikal is an appalling backwoods," he wrote.

The Socialist Revolution saved the Buryats from extinction. For the first time in our long history we acquired statehood. In 1923 the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed within the Russian Federation. Our more than half million people have since then been masters of their own destiny, and every sphere of our economy and culture has forged ahead.

The territory of our republic covers an area eight times as large as Denmark—135,000 square miles. Three quarters is taiga country—a timber storehouse that is practically inexhaustible. Game of all kinds is plentiful—this is where the famous Barguzin sable, king of the fur market, comes from. The rivers and lakes hold all varieties of fish, among them the celebrated Baikal omul, a type of salmon. Our pride is Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, and many think the most beautiful. One of its wonders is the Baikal seal, a marine animal of the walrus family which lives on the shores of this fresh-water lake.

Nature has been very generous to us with mineral deposits. We mine

coal, gold, tungsten, molybdenum and precious and semiprecious stones. During the Soviet period some 300 large industrial plants have been built. The Dahida tungsten mill and the railroad car manufacturing plant at Ulan-Ude, the republic's capital, are among the largest enterprises in the eastern part of the Soviet Union. Buryatia also produces various machinery and river boats and has timber, woodworking, textile, fishing and fur industries.

Fur has long been one of the mainstays of Buryatia. We have wealthy hunting cooperatives and animal nurseries that breed silver fox, blue fox, American mink, Barguzin sable and muskrat. Our people are also hereditary herdsman, and we are very proud of our fine-fleeced sheep. There are collective farms where the average number of sheep per family runs as high as 500. In spite of the rigorous climate our farmers grow practically everything, including sugar beet and watermelon.

There are two meetings I like to cite that show how speedily Buryatia has developed its economy and culture.

One dates back to the summer of 1944 when Henry Wallace, then Vice President of the United States, visited our republic on his tour of the Soviet Union. Accompanied by advisers and correspondents, he looked into many aspects of our life—agriculture, industry, education.

The American guest was struck by the large number of schools in our republic and the fact that they functioned uninterruptedly in spite of war difficulties. On a collective farm in the distant valley of the Selenga River he saw a model, kept as a memento, of one of the squalid, soot-covered felt tents that the Buryat herdsmen used to live in before the Revolution. In the farm's visitors' book he wrote that he was astonished at the way our economy had developed compared with 1913.

The second meeting is more recent. One evening I happened to be on the shore of Lake Baikal with a good friend of mine, the Russian writer Vsevolod Ivanov. It was that wonderful time of day when the sun was about to set, and all the colors of the rainbow were shimmering on the water's surface. We stood on the cliff looking toward the horizon. And then from behind the cliff, like Hiawatha in a canoe, came a Buryat fisherman rowing a small boat.

My friend wanted to talk with him. I had to work hard to keep translating Vsevolod Ivanov's eager questions and the detailed, unhurried answers of our new acquaintance—his name was Mikhail Zhigahitov. The conversation centered on the way Buryat life had changed. It began to get dark, and the fisherman invited us to come home with him.

When we got to his village, there was no one home. "They must all be at the club, watching the new picture," he apologized. We had a fine supper, including fried Baikal salmon—that is always part of the meal. Then our host pulled a thick manuscript out of his desk. So we discovered that Mikhail Zhigzhitov, who makes his living hunting and fishing, spends his leisure hours writing fiction.

The story by this unexpected writer about Buryat life has already aroused considerable literary interest. It has been accepted for publication by the Writers Union of the Buryat Republic, and will appear in one of the forthcoming issues of its journal. People like Mikhail Zhigzhitov are not as rare as you might imagine. Here is another example. Bazhei Zhatukhayev, a mechanic at the railroad car plant in Ulan-Ude, collects the poetic folk epics that have been handed down from generation to generation.

Our people have long since forgotten that before the Revolution this was a region of almost total illiteracy. Now seven years of schooling is compulsory, and the republic has moved ahead to make secondary school education universal. Keep in mind that before the Revolution the

Buryats did not even have a written language of their own. Now we have not only educated people in every field of endeavor, but even our own branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The names of Baldama Dorzhiyeva, shepherd girl, and Gombo Tsydekov, collective farm chairman, are familiar to people throughout the republic. They have been honored with the title Hero of Socialist Labor, the highest civic award in the Soviet Union. Prima ballerina Larissa Sakhyanova, who dances at the capital's theater, and eminent Buryat singer Akhasaran Likhovoln have won the acclaim of audiences all over the Soviet Union and in many Asian and African countries they visited on their recent, very successful tour.

Our people, once deprived of all political rights, now have their own sovereign government. The highest legislative body in Buryatia is our Supreme Soviet elected by popular vote as provided for in the republic's Constitution. The President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet is Dorzhi Tsyrempilon, a former teacher. The Buryat Economic Council, which administers the republic's industry, is headed by engineer Nikolai Pivovarov. Both these high officials are Buryats born and bred.

Buryatia, once a backward borderland of the czarist empire, has every reason to be proud of its achievements. Like all the other peoples of the multinational Soviet Union, we look confidently toward the future.

EX-SERGEANT Anatoli Chernyavsky expected his native village to look smaller when he got home—any place seems smaller when you have been away for a considerable time. But when he walked down the street, he had to stop every once in a while to orient himself—the village looked so much bigger. New houses stretched for a long way into the steppe, with new gardens and orchards around them. The collective farm had new hothouses and barns. Even the cornfields seemed bigger and extended as far off as the smoke from the factory chimneys of Novosibirsk on the distant horizon.

There were a good many more people around than when he'd left, and all of them were busy. Truth to tell, he was a little disappointed that there wasn't more of a fuss made about him—when he was a young boy, the arrival of a demobilized soldier was an event for the whole village. Now, too, people seemed glad to see him, shook his hand, asked what it felt like being home again, offered their help if he needed it—but then went on to talk about what the collective farm had been doing and its big plans for the future.

Well, Anatoli told himself, it's not big news anymore, considering that there are thousands of young men coming back home now in army tunics with shoulder straps off. Even in his village he was not the only one to return home from service last year.

But he wasn't given too much time to bother himself about that. While he had been in the army, the Sibir Collective Farm had grown in all directions—bigger areas under cultivation, more livestock, better machinery. An ex-sergeant of the Armored Corps who knew how to service motor vehicles and handle radio equipment was a valuable adjunct to this fast-growing farm community.

The collective farm board had found out by experience that ex-servicemen were knowledgeable and reliant people. Anatoli was put in charge of a team of machine operators. Before long he had won the reputation of being a good foreman—and a good instructor, too. The knowledge of machines he had acquired in service was more than helpful on the farm.

Anatoli's new life "on the home front," as he put it, was also shaping up well. He married a childhood friend, Raissa, now a teacher in the village school. Not long ago their son, Sergei, was born.

The collective farm board allotted Anatoli a plot of land to build a house, a long-term loan and building materials. The house is already finished and an orchard planted around it. Now Anatoli is building a porch and asphalting the orchard lanes. He and Raissa are saving for new furniture, a television set and a car, in that order. With their present income of 200 rubles a month, plus frequent cash bonuses, this should be no problem.

It has been a busy time for this ex-sergeant since he was demobilized—a new job, a new home, a new family, and a new and promising future.