World: The Party Line

“The nightclubs of the bourgeois world have nothing in common with development of the intellect. They are, as a rule, steeped in sex, alcohol and gambling.”

It is a credo as old as the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. But last week Sovietskaya Kultura, the official publication of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, suddenly came out for a party line. Sadly lacking, says the paper, are nightclubs in the Black Sea resort area. As things are, the only pleasant memories a vacationer takes home are “the temperature of the water and how the magnolias were blooming in the park.” What the proletariat needs is “marvelous little places—nightclubs for lovers and quiet evening gathering places for family people.”