Personality of the Month: Russia as I Knew It — With Mrs. Nabiha Abdullah al-Najjar

Mrs. Nabiha Najjar is the wife of our minister in Moscow, Mr. Abdullah al-Najjar. She is one of our accomplished ladies, a graduate of the American School for Girls and of the Institute of Household Management in Sydney, Australia.

Mrs. Najjar accompanied her husband as chargé d'affaires in Transjordan and as legation counselor in Argentina, and for the past four years she has been her husband's right hand at our legation in Moscow. Mrs. Najjar has her own contacts with her surroundings; in her travels she has learned Spanish and Russian in addition to French and English. She is fond of objets d'art, of the theater, and of the ballet, besides being a model housewife, accomplished in the arts of cooking and sewing.

The magazine The Woman's Voice seized the opportunity of Mrs. Nabiha Najjar's presence in Lebanon to present her to its readers in an engaging conversation about life in Russia:

Q — It would delight the readers of The Woman's Voice to know something about Russia, whose new system has been shrouded in much obscurity and in propaganda of various tendencies. Now that you have lived there four years, allow me to ask you about your impressions of life in Russia.

— It goes without saying that the civilization we know, in its various countries, is the civilization of the upper class, not of an entire people — or what the Communists call capitalist civilization. It differs from one country to another only in degree. This is the basic difference between the Communist countries and the West. The first phenomenon that confronted me in Russia was the homogeneity of the people, the disappearance of the dividing line between classes, and the equality of countryside with city — that is, the proletarianization of workers and peasants alike in material and intellectual opportunities and in the rest of the blessings of civilization.

Q — You mean there is no difference between one person and another — that they are all one class?

— No. I do not mean by that that there does not form a kind of upper class of those with artistic gifts — musicians, actors, painters — and intellectual ones — writers, poets, authors, scholars — as well as of rulers, leaders, and senior officials. Soviet civilization is distinguished not by material opulence, nor by the emergence of a special upper class, but by comprehensiveness. Comprehensiveness in the provision of opportunity and in the universal spread of learning and of health and civic benefits is the most striking thing to be seen in the Soviet Union — material and cultural comprehensiveness, whether in Russia or in the land of the Uzbeks, in Armenia or in Latvia.

Q — What has been the effect of this system on the life of woman?

— Everything in Russian — or rather Soviet — life bears the stamp of difference from the West; how much more, then, does it differ from us? It is subject to a swift, sweeping evolution — no wonder it has been described as permanent revolution. It seems to me that when Churchill coined the name "behind the Iron Curtain," he did not confine the term to the political difference; he meant by it also the difference in the very foundations of civilization between the old world and this world, in which the greatest social experiment in the history of mankind is being carried out.

In this world woman enjoys complete equality with man. Among the most striking features of Communism is the removal not only of class distinctions but of the distinctions of sex between man and woman, in rights and in duties, throughout the whole Soviet Union — in the Christian and the Muslim regions alike. And in the Soviet Union there are nearly forty million Muslims.

Woman there went through the last war side by side with man, and joined him in the movement of popular resistance. She now stands with man in the positions of responsibility. She has been freed from his traditional domination. It is a mistake to understand the word "Eastern" in the phrase "the Eastern camp" in its traditional sense — for in modern usage it signifies backwardness. We must therefore understand it in its geographical sense, not its civilizational one.

I have noticed that woman is more enthusiastic for Communist principles than man — woman, in all the ages of history, has ever been the nurse of creeds. (Among those principles is contempt for showiness, vainglory, luxury, and extravagance.) Yet by nature she does not differ in inclination from her Western sister, though the ordeals that have afflicted the Soviet Union from the great Revolution of 1917 down to the present have kept her from catching up with the Western woman in appearance and adornment.

Since 1950 — that is, since we have been in Moscow — the standard of living has been rising year after year. Every year prices come down by 10 to 30 percent — this year for the sixth time. In that first year the foreign woman in Moscow would draw every eye among the thousands of women, with her elegant hat, her frock, or her shoes; and few among the men wore a necktie, or shining shoes, or a pressed suit. Now, however, one cannot tell citizens from foreigners by their appearance.

And woman, though she is still marked by the spirit and the seriousness of the Revolution, is like her Western sister in her love of finery and adornment, whenever she can find a way to them. I say this because I notice that foreign goods are rare in the markets of the Soviet Union.

Q — How, then, does woman quench that thirst?

— They, my dear, center their economy on the interest of the country, not on the whims of its people — and would that it were in our power to follow their example.

We can learn many things from the Russian woman: in her patriotic feeling, in her social harmony, in the care of her children, in the love of work, in economy in adornment and amusement.

Q — As the minister's wife, do you feel any special pressure upon your social life?

— We do not mix with Russian society. They avoid forming social ties with members of the diplomatic corps, who do not stay long in their country — the term of service is usually two years. But I know that the Russian woman neither gambles nor fritters her time away; rather she takes part in every side of social life with the same energy as the man.

Q — How do you spend your leisure hours, and how do you face the weather?

— In the face of this deprivation of social mixing, we enjoy the closest of ties among ourselves — invitations and banquets. But the most delightful thing in Moscow is the ballet, which has no equal, above all on the frosty nights...

And likewise television, which scarcely any home is without. For art is a powerful element in Soviet life.

Q — How do they meet, in Russia, the problem of religion and of education?

— Education, as you know, is compulsory for both sexes. This year secondary education became compulsory. Illiteracy has been wiped out even among the tribes of the Cossack country.

As for religion, the constitution provides for the freedom to preach it — and to preach against it — within its limits. In Moscow you hear neither the pealing of bells nor the voices of the minarets. And whereas Moscow alone once had a thousand six hundred churches — so that it was called, in their tongue, the city of the "forty times forty" churches — its churches now number about a hundred. Freedom of worship is absolute.

We, as one writer has said, "carry our environment with us," and we form among ourselves a special international society of our own. Yet it must be said that wherever we come into contact with the Russian people — in their parks, their shops, or their streets — we find them a kindly people, rustic in the main, calm and very patient; no national fanaticism shows in them, and they cast no hostile glance at a stranger.