Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/78

 more instructed part of the audience, and will probably learn in time to respect the music till the end. And anyhow, I have seen in London theatres exhibitions of bad manners from people who fussed with their hats and cloaks during the last moments of the play or concert, infinitely harder to endure than the premature enthusiasm of the new opera-goers in Petrograd.

Certain nights at the Opera and theatre are reserved for soldiers and sailors, certain others for Trade Unionists and other workers, and the remainder are for the general public. The public pay for their places, the workers go in free. The tickets are distributed to them in turn through their organisations. So great is the demand for tickets that many people are able to sell theirs at double the price, which they frequently do, preferring the extra money to the music; whilst cunning speculators buy up quantities of tickets and make a profitable deal with them.

But the outstanding fact remains: That Opera and the best music and plays are accessible to all, free to most, and that Art is tenderly nurtured under the Soviet administration.

Artists are able to command big salaries in roubles, which, however, are not really big salaries when compared with those offered by foreign syndicates. Chaliapine, we were told by a Commissar, is able to earn two hundred thousand