RUSSIA: Stalin’s Solicitude

Even in Hitler’s Germany the infatuation for medals, titles and uniforms never reached the peak it has in the proletariat’s promised land. On the kolkhozy (collective farms), a visitor is apt to meet a Znatnaya Doyarka (Distinguished Cow Milking Woman). One of the latest additions to the new Soviet aristocracy is Honorable Coal Miner E. P. Baryshnikov, whose picture (see cut) was published in a recent issue of Ogonek (Small Flame).

Baryshnikov wears his new badge on the right of his miner’s dress uniform, opposite his “Order of Lenin” (for outstanding production achievements), his “Medal for Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War,” and two other medals. He knows the miner’s medal was not given to him without a purpose. Recently, a Pravda editorial warned, “Stalin’s solicitude for the miner must be responded to in deed.”