To the average American, the name Soviet Russia brings a confused impression of endless steppes, brutish peasants, close-massed regiments marching by the tomb of Lenin, and occasional academic debates on the five-year plan. In-"Out of Chaos," Ilya Ehrenbourg has added to this impression, brought in to clearer focus, and produced an interesting tabloid view of both the human and production side of the Russia of the present.

The U.S.S.R. today is a bizzarre mosaic of the primitive and the new, done in starting colors. It is a land of the living and dying-those whom the revolution benefits or cannot kill and those whom it has deemed by exile or loss of privileges to slow death. There are the new workers on expansion projects who enjoy undreamed of prosperity, living in cabins, enjoying double food rations or even riding in automobiles and there are the ironically named "settler specialists" whose homes and property have been taken from them and who "specialize" in digging holes to live in. Despite the idealism which decrees brilliant funerals for workers killed by their own stupidity we get a hint that the changes have not yet penetrated for "a huge poster over the piggery, but such fifth inside that been the pigs have died." Certain classes pursue the communist ideal with a fansticism and introspection almost identical to the religious mania of the Inquisition, using the same terms-apostasy, heresy, faith. Others, at the same time, are committing acts of repulsive brutality in vegeance against the Soviets--in truth a revolt of sheep. In their new Messianism, the Russians have taken many characteristic from the United States, slogans, heroes, "high pressure" psychology. The children play at national planning. Production is as much of a god to the communist zealots as over-production is a spectre to the American capitalist. The extremes and contrasts that are always a part of Russia extend even more sharply as the country seeks rebirth and who find workers whose absorbing life interest is simply to exceed the production quota, who write down their thoughts in note-books and yet who cat "cabbage soup from rusty cans."

"Out of Chaos", while centering on four or five leading characters, is a series of random shots, quotations, glimpses of the life conditions of the different classes, and brief accounts of various difficulties of the new program. While often disjointed and confusing it gives a wealth of intimate detail and ancedetal background. The story is not propaganda although it employs the pattern of a five-year plan epic and tires unsuccessfully to show how the new motivations of communism will replace the material motives of capitalism. The story is neither novel or text-book but has its value in its, wide scene and pictorial power.