a tour of Russian farms . Sir Geoffrey Haworth . many years ago I had heard that the Russians were breeding a very large cow which was giving a great deal of milk and also being used for beef . a Swedish friend led me to believe that this cow might be found at Karavayevo , some 200 miles north-east of Moscow . this farm turned out to be outside the scope of Intourist , but largely through the good offices of SCR we were able to arrange a visit last June . Kostroma , the nearest town , can only be reached by rail , and the only train leaves Moscow at the rather inconvenient hour of 1.20 a.m . as soon as we arrived any doubts about our welcome were quickly dispelled . we were met by a large delegation , and after my wife had been presented with three bouquets we proceeded to our hotel . here we were given an enormous breakfast ( we had already unwisely had one on the train ) , and after many toasts we set out for the farm . after examining some more-than-life-size busts of farm workers who had distinguished themselves ( several of whom were in our party ) , we went to see some of the Kostroma cows . I can say at once that they fully came up to our expectations . we asked if one or two could come out of the cowshed to be photographed , and later we found ourselves seated behind a table covered with a red velvet cloth while a full parade of bulls and cows was led past us by white-coated attendants of both sexes . about 50 years ago some Swiss cows were imported into the district and crossed with the native Yaroslav . in 1920 some of the best hybrids were brought to Karavayevo . a process of selection for milking and butter-fat qualities was continued for 20 years , and finally in 1944 the Kostroma breed was officially recognised and registered . in 1951 the herd average was 14,093 lb and in 1953 over 160 cows gave 14,200 lb or over . the highest individual yield comes from a cow called Grosa . in her fifth lactation she gave 36,304 lb of milk at 3.7 per cent butter fat ( 1,343 lb fat ) . another outstanding record came from Poslushnitza 2nd - 35,776 lb at 3.92 per cent ( 1,402 lb fat ) . although both herd and individual yields have now been surpassed by Friesian cows in this country , it would be hard to find so many cows of uniform excellence anywhere else . their weight is from 1,200 to 1,600 pounds and they have good beef qualities . we were accompanied round the farm by a very charming man called Steiman . now in his 70s , he was responsible for selecting much of the foundation stock for the herd . he also started the cold house method of calf rearing , which is still in use . calves are taken from their dams at birth and kept in an unheated house where the temperature from December to March is usually below freezing point . it is claimed that at these temperatures bacteria are rendered harmless and that hardy , healthy calves are produced . scours and pneumonia are unknown . in the summer young calves are housed in large airy kennels in the fields , where they are fed on milk , hay and concentrates . after a look at the older young stock , which live outside with an open shelter all the year round , we were taken to the office building and given another gigantic meal , accompanied by vodka , cognac and wine . farm hospitality on a colossal scale became quite an important item in our lives on the whole tour . ( we were assured that such meals were not the everyday farm practice ! ) it was essential to know that the vast spread of cold meats , salads , fish , eggs and cheese on the table was but an appetiser , and that soup , perhaps two hot dishes and sweet were to follow . it was also wise to decide on vodka or cognac at the beginning of the meal and to stick to one for the innumerable toasts that were drunk throughout . we usually started with Mir i druzhba ( peace and friendship ) and later , for variety , passed on to such things as better silage or higher butter fat . nearly always at one point in the proceedings came the question : and now tell us what you think of our farm . there followed complete silence , with all eyes and ears on me . I was able to give sincere praise for many things we saw , and luckily the criticisms I made were usually met with nodding of heads and murmurs of yes , we know . perhaps I should say here that , in addition to Karavayevo , we visited state and collective farms in Krasnodar , Piatigorsk and the Sigulda district of Latvia . the first thing that strikes one is the large scale of everything - acreages from 7,854 at Karavayevo , which is mainly a stock farm , to 40,000 at Krasnodar , which is mainly arable . at the latter the growing of wheat , barley , maize and sugar beet is highly mechanised . gone are the days when Cossacks galloped across the grassy steppe on superb horses . instead , we drove in jeeps round fields of 490 acres bordered with shelter belts of fruit trees . the average yield of wheat is 29 cwt per acre . all the farms we visited sold cream and butter and fed the skim to pigs . their aim , therefore , was to breed and feed for high butter fat . every farm aimed at being self-contained : they had their own machine stations , vets , zootechnicians ( we should perhaps say livestock specialists ) , crop specialists and accountants ; and often their own schools , hospitals , savings banks and cinemas . a very important development is the building of research stations on the farms instead of in neighbouring towns . we saw blocks of flats for farm workers and many more under construction , but we also went into two-roomed wooden houses of a very primitive nature , where cooking in summer was done in a home-made mud stove in the garden . both collective and state farm directors seem agreed that the pattern of the future is for even larger-scale organisation , with the housing of workers in large villages or even towns . already some collective farms have abandoned the annual shareout in favour of a guaranteed monthly cash wage . state farms emphasise that their well-being depends on the year &apos;s results . the state will keep them going however badly they do , but on their annual results depends the amount of money they may spend on amenities such as Palaces of culture , cinemas , sending workers free to the Black Sea resorts , and so on . thus each type of farm tries to adopt the better points of the others &apos; systems , and already there is a growing similarity between them . it is not easy to make comparisons between the farming systems of Russia and this country . we both have the same sort of technical problems to deal with and I did not find any new solutions on the farms we visited . moreover , their use of manpower per beast or per acre is very high . what is impressive is the enthusiasm and thoroughness with which they carry out their systems : grooming of cows , attention to their feet , feeding of calves , detailed keeping of farm records . but I should like to end by saying that what impressed us most was the warmth of our welcome . as far as we could learn , we were , in every case , the first English people to visit the farm . the director , with half a dozen experts , was always willing to give up a whole day to show us round and entertain us . each member of the staff had a formidable array of facts and figures at his or her finger-tips . I am afraid my inability to produce similar figures for this country or even for my own farm must have created a bad impression . I do wish there could be more exchange visits between the farmers of our two countries . we are far too ignorant of each other&apos;s lives . surveys and reviews . recent books on Tolstoy in English . J S Spink . it must be admitted that none of the books on Tolstoy , in English , which have appeared in the last decade is worthy of his greatness . most of them belong to a literary genre which is peculiarly Anglo-Saxon , namely the intimate life-story told for its own sake , and can not but tend , by their very nature , to belittle the object of their attentions , in essence the same as those lavished by the Sunday press on its victims . biography becomes trivial when its sole object is to introduce us , like prying tourists , into the intimacy of the great . one could call such intimate life-stories stately homes literature . their authors do not seek , as did Sainte-Beuve , the master of biographical criticism , to present a full-length psychological portrait of a man . they do not study the genesis and development of works of art . they are not critical studies at all . nor is there anything of the epic , the tragedy or the comedy in their technique ; they resemble the popular novel . Lady Cynthia Asquith &apos;s married to Tolstoy ( Hutchinson , 1960 ) is very U in tone , and sometimes the U language is that used in the women &apos;s magazines : fortunately the Czar , who was giving another audience , was unable to receive Sonya for a quarter of an hour , so it may be hoped that before she was summoned she had time to readjust her stay-laces and recover her breath ( p 149 ) . however , the book , which is drawn from the obvious sources , is not pretentious and can be accepted on its own terms . it begins with the words marriage to a genius can seldom be easy and may be read with a certain amount of pleasure on that level . M Hofmann and A Pierre &apos;s by deeds of truth : the life of Leo Tolstoy ( Hanison , 1959 ) is similar . it is a translation of a book published in French in 1934 and its reissue in English ( printed in the USA , bound in London ) was doubtless motivated commercially by the 50th anniversary of Tolstoy &apos;s death , though it must be noted that the story of Tolstoy &apos;s love affairs , courtship and marriage has been told every few years in books published in English , with apparently no other aim than the retailing of private lives to the public . Tikhon Polner &apos;s Tolstoy and his wife ( Jonathan Cape , 1946 ) , first published in French in 1928 , belongs to this category . one of the strangest items in the collection is the preface to the English translation of Tolstoy &apos;s daughter &apos;s my father ( Harpers , New York , 1953 ) . the Russian original was published by a semi-official US agency in 1953 . it is a rehash of the tragedy of Tolstoy ( 1933 ) , written in Moscow but published in the States , after its author &apos;s arrival there . the preface to the English translation of my father is written in a recriminatory style evidently intended to do its bit in the cold war : I could not spare all the time I wanted and had to work mainly during my so-called free days . this tone is absent from Alexandra Tolstoy &apos;s own Russian preface , which betrays , on the contrary , a real modesty , a disposition of mind which , alas , does not save her from the expression of class sentiments none the less repellent for being nai&quot;ve : though sometimes the house-servants were severely flogged in the stables , many of them became part of the family to the extent of forgetting they were serfs . this serves as background painting , the only kind of historical perspective attempted by writers of intimate biographies , and dating , as a literary technique , from the time of Walter Scott &apos;s historical novels . there is a similar avoidance of historical perspective in Professor E J Simmons &apos;s Leo Tolstoy ( 1946 ) , reprinted as a Vintage paper-back ( New York , 1960 ) , and this book , for all its wealth of factual information , is therefore merely another version of the Tolstoy story . there is this to be said for T Redpath &apos;s short study entitled Tolstoy ( Bowes and Bowes , 1960 ) : that its author does not seek to reduce Tolstoy &apos;s doctrines to the level of views , to be explained away by psychological biography . 