Although all are assured of food and clothing in the Soviet regime, its adopted measures also give rise to another grave fault in the system, i.e. intellectual progress will gradually die out. Because workers’ wages and salaries in this system are barely adequate to pay for food, shelter and clothing, leaving very little for foreign travel. This is a critical component of education that contributes to the development of scientific and technical knowledge and to the progress of civilisation. The Holy Quran has laid great emphasis upon sair-fil-ard, that is, travelling in various parts of the earth. When the Russian people had economic freedom, they saved a part of their income for travel to different countries. What they learned from foreign travels helped to enrich their country and contributed to national progress.

This is the path nature has established for promoting progress and many nations have benefitted by adopting it. The Holy Quran has also enjoined travel to different lands; for without it, one’s perspective remains constricted. But because of the Communist system, it is now impossible for Russians to freely travel abroad, and the same thing will happen wherever Communism spreads. Its inevitable consequence would be an intellectual decline. Since the Revolution, one does occasionally come across a Communist government representative, but it is extremely rare to meet an ordinary citizen from a communist country.

As the Imam of a large and far-flung religious Community, I have a wide network of contacts. I have not had the opportunity of meeting an independent Russian communist, though one does occasionally encounter representatives of the Soviet government. This is the consequence of the Soviet policy of not leaving any money in the hands of ordinary citizens beyond what they require to meet the expense of food, clothing and shelter.

It is sometimes said that the country can have access to foreign ideas and inventions through visits of government officials, but this is in fact not so. For one thing, a government official is confined to pursuing only matters related to the purpose of his travel. Secondly, a person travelling on his own volition, interest and freely interacting with other people is quite different from someone travelling on official duty. Finally, people-to-people interaction can be a source of intellectual growth and instrumental in promoting peace and understanding. The Soviet system precludes that possibility altogether.

Ordinary Russians that one comes across outside of Russia are usually emigrants who left their country during the Revolution, or are Russian agents engaged in propaganda for the Soviet State. The latter might claim to be independent citizens, unconnected to the government, but it is only a ruse to make their propaganda more effective. It only takes a little common sense to see that ordinary Russians cannot afford luxuries, such as foreign travel, because the State does not leave any spare money in their possession.

Some time back, during my travel from Karachi to Lahore, a friend informed me that a Russian — who was travelling in the air-conditioned compartment on the same train — was claiming to be a private tourist, but was speaking strongly in favour of Communism. I asked my friend to tell this gentleman that his claim was utterly false. In the Russian’s eyes, I would be considered as a big landowner but I could afford to travel only in second class. As there were no landowners left in Russia, the traveller must either be a farmer or an ordinary labourer, which would suggest that he was most certainly not a rich man himself. In that case, how would he explain his travel in such luxury? If a Russian worker or a farmer could travel in an air-conditioned railway coach, how could he protest against landowners who could barely afford to travel in second class? All the pious wrath of Russian Communists against Indian landowners or capitalists was therefore just hypocrisy.