"There is no evidence of socialism or communism in Russian economic life since industry still deals with the payments of wages and would probably have no objection to profits on exported goods," said Arthur Garfield Hays, counsel for the Civil Liberties Union, speaking before the Harvard Student Liberal Club at luncheon yesterday. Mr. Hays has just returned from a summer's stay in Russia, investigating conditions.

"Communism is confined to the educational field," he went on, "for the communists hope that in two or three generations, they will be able to effect real communism through reaching people who have never lived under the old economic regime."

Soviet Interest Dominates

The speaker stated that the most startling feature of the new Russia is the way in which all civil and judicial functions are handled solely in the interest of the Soviet government. "The courts are frankly political," he said, "If any matter of politics or personal freedom is involved, the only question is: What is best for the soviet government? Schools, industries and public utilities are all operated to the same purpose."

Mr. Hays' investigation into the degree of personal liberty among the Russian people revealed the fact that there is much less than in the United States, he said. Members of the Communist party control all soviet-managed enterprises; and as for the mass of the people, Mr. Hays said: "The people are not free according to our notion of freedom; and they're rather cynical about it. The only free speech I heard from anyone was from Americans and American journalists. The Russians refuse to talk about political and economic matters. The soviet system is founded entirely on discipline, not at all on freedom."

Russians Don't Show Everything

Mr. Hays described several visits to government-operated industrial plants, which included recreation and hospital facilities for workers. "You feel all the time that they're only showing you what they want you to see," he said, "but that they want you to see the improvements they have effected in the workers conditions is significant of what they are trying to do."

Questioned as to the present religious situation in Russia, the speaker said that a person professing religion of any sort is ineligible for the Communst party. "However," he went on, "the churches hold well attended services and it was my impression that many Communists go to church on the quiet:" He remarked that the Lenin-cult may well be taking the place of a religion with many of the peasantry, describing the processions of peasants that file through the Lenin mausoleum at Moscow to look at the embalmed body of the Soviet leader.