Wanted: Coquetry

For years Soviet officials have driven to Moscow station in sweaters and caps, alighted at Warsaw for a cigaret in trim business suits and descended from their sleepers at Berlin attired in faultless cutaways. In a recent issue of Moscow's famed Izvestia, official organ of the Soviet State, appeared striking evidence that Communist austerity is now crumbling in Russia.

Reporting a mass meeting of Moscow's Communist Youth, Izvestia quoted the No. 1 speaker thus: "The time has come, I believe, when it must be obligatory for every girl to carry face powder and perfume! There are certain factors which, when present, cause any woman to lose the elements of coquetry which she should possess. Comrades, we must work to liquidate these factors!"

"I suppose you are going to advise the use of rouge next?" cried a member of the audience. "Rouge, hey, Comrade?"

"Why go to extremes?" retorted the Red speaker stoutly. "For the time being we can get along without rouge. But let us have face powder and coquetry!"

To that Old Bolshevik Mikhail Koltsov, member of Izvestia's Editorial Board, such talk was astounding news. "Not so long ago," he editorialized, "the Communist Party and all Communist organizations persecuted those among Soviet youths who wore clean shirts and neckties, used perfume or face powder, and attended musical shows. . . . Times have changed."

Changing with the times, as journalists do. Editor Koltsov hurled no rebuke at the bourgeois line Soviet youth is now taking. Paternally he advised: "Don't use handbills and circulars to popularize face powder, rouge and lipstick. . . . Comrades, you can't order a girl to be coquettish. . . . See that the quality of toilet articles is improved and the price lowered. ... If she considers it worth while the Soviet girl will develop her coquetry."

Editor Koltsov notwithstanding, most Russian women, except frumpy Red careerists, have remained coquettes, have scrambled for all the silk stockings, rouge and face powder they could afford.

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