In the Land Without Soviets

...True, there is a running struggle within the Party—the "hards" vs...

...Were they going to keep us there...

...many Western concepts in the sciences and even social sciences may slowly be absorbed with lessening resistance...

...I will give you 20 rubles for your jacket...

...But outside the Party there is no "politics...

...The other Soviet republics will no doubt follow suit...

...A top stratum participates in the making of decisions and in a sounding of views—but this constitutes an insignificant fraction of the population...

...there is no feverish religious revival, no large-scale movement rallying to discover new ideals and old moral principles...

...And it is through contact with Soviet youth and students that one gains a glimpse of Russia's intellectual "underground," more as a hidden force than a visible presence...

...The Authority of a State...

...Upright and glooming, Above the stony barrier looming, The Image, with an arm flung wide, Sat on his brazen horse astride...

...No wonder that it creates the atmosphere of grimness one encounters in the Soviet Union...

...In my view, they reflect the struggle with the youth, the generational split...

...Then a mouth-to-ear conversation can begin...

...Utter astonishment...

...Any comparison with the state of the American economy or that of Western Europe can only be to Russia's disadvantage, and no serious Russian economist indulges in such comparisons except in a very few and limited areas...

...I was astounded by the number of simple Russians who expressed the opinion that the whole world benefits whenever American action in Vietnam weakens China...

...Yet it is done constantly...

...The last question is valid, since workers in the Soviet Union do not enter into or control the productive process any more than workers in the capitalist world—except through the kind of "production councils" which exist in Western Europe too...

...State of the Russian Economy As soon as one reaches Russian soil, one sees dilapidated streets and dull store fronts, shabbily dressed people, and unappetizing ready-toeat food sold in little shops...

...The future of personal and political freedom looks gloomy in the Soviet Union...

...I hit upon the idea of bringing into the country the latest copy of Playboy magazine...

...It is their way of saying, "We are watching you, so be a good guy and keep out of trouble...

...Russians on Foreign Policy The most frank discussions I heard in the Soviet Union were those dealing with foreign policy...

...The only alternative for the young intellectual is to choose an "underground existence" which means a most difficult life...

...both prisoners were released after 24 hours...

...To get there, one must carefully ask for directions—"impressio59 nisti...

...When the same thing happened in Russia, we were apprehensive and fearful...

...This reflects the official view...

...Except for the underground vanguard, Soviet Russia's culture is provincial and conformist...

...I had already been followed quite unabashedly in the streets by the police, and I did not want to create any further difficulties for this young Russian intellectual...

...Yet many young Jews, including Komsomol members, say openly, "I do not go to synagogue...

...But one can sense everywhere an intellectual "underground...

...What does it mean...

...The young have appropriate names for them...

...By the time I left Russia, I was convinced that such examples of defiance could be multiplied many times...

...In terms of earnings (100 rubles a month constituting a good salary), the prices listed in GUM and other popular stores are fantastically out of line...

...This last figure was given to me by a well-informed Russian as the one now officially accepted by Soviet authorities...

...It was a pathetic scene of disarray and defeat...

...No doubt the authorities intend such shadowing as a "friendly" warning...

...The professor reads monotonously from his notes, carefully ignoring what is happening around him...

...58 of sorts...

...One finds a general shoddiness of goods, the disrepair of all types of transportation— and a fantastic number of repair shops of all kinds...

...2) Lenin, in rosy illumination, in his tomb in Red Square— A Soviet professor admitted to me it is time to end this garish spectacle and to bury Lenin...

...He can only sense it and test it, to an extent...

...Do young people seek a career...

...let me illustrate...

...What more proof could one ask for than the fantastic story of 10,000 young Moscow Jews celebrating Simhat Thorah (Joy of the Torah—the last of the autumn holidays) by dancing in the streets that border the synagogue...

...I am the representative of the Black Market...

...But forces are at work in quest of personal and cultural renewal, particularly among the young...

...what do you have to sell...

...But when young Russians whom one has met—in the Moscow Metro in a shop or a youth cafe*—are arrested under one's very nose, held for 24 hours by the police, accused of being "hooligani" and of consorting with foreigners, the experience is disconcerting, frightening, and out* The Western press has commented at length on these youth cafes...

...We know how violently Lenin himself felt about such matters...

...The entirely genuine popular sympathy for the people of Vietnam was reflected in the declaration in favor of increased aid to Vietnam published by tht...

...The apparatus and "repressive organs" of the state are actively present everywhere...

...How does a people overcome such memories...

...The film demonstrates that despite all efforts the values and style of the "youth international"—the cool age, jazz, etc.—have reached Russia and found a welcome reception...

...So far, merchandising, marketing, distribution of goods and food, cost-accounting, etc...

...On the top floor of the great Hermitage Museum, in a remote part of the building overlooking the great square, there are a dozen galleries containing some fabulous impressionist and post-impressionist paintings...

...An American psychologist who had attended the International World Congress of Psychologists in Moscow remarked to me: In France, when the immigration authorities at the airport took away our passports for a while, we were annoyed and angry because of their bureaucratic bungling...

...But the pressures of a starved, peacetime consumers' economy continue to mount—let us be thankful for this—and they will not subside...

...Union now than at any time since the years before the Revolution.—Peter Reddaway, London School of Economics Research scholar at Moscow University...

...I will come tomorrow and buy anything you want to sell...

...And one of them was willing to risk meeting me again...

...A visitor traveling rapidly through the country can neither observe nor measure the degree of accepted authoritarianism that exists in the Soviet Union...

...Teacher and student understand one another...

...It was an illuminating experience...

...But within a day I did know...

...In introducing a Tchaikovsky symphony, which constituted the second part of the program, (she had already gone on at great length about the first part), a young Russian lady lectured for 133i minutes (by my watch...

...At the Moscow synagogue where I attended services seemed to be more American tourists present than Russians...

...the neo-Stalinists—which in the next decade may become even sharper...

...Political life is still rigidly circumscribed by Party ritual...

...But I decided not to...

...Russia mourns 20 million dead, soldiers and civilians, lost in the war with Nazi Germany...

...The two ugliest sights in Russia: (1) Volunteer citzien-police with red armbands—They patrol neighborhood side streets in groups of four after sundown...

...A satisfactory explanation...

...Third, once in a while everyone has to talk...

...The State of Personal Freedom The foreign visitor who participates in a probing or critical way in the routine discussions common to groups visiting the country is called to the attention of the authorities...

...The Peter and Paul fortress is lit up in the distance...

...Sorry...

...We know that the Museum has hundreds of other such canvasses hidden away...

...and over one million Russians died in the early years of the civil war...

...The political modesty characterizing the post-Khrushchev regime of faceless technicians and bureaucrats must appeal to the Russian people...

...Consequently, so-called economic reforms are underway everywhere: in cost-accounting and factoring...

...And yet, one also grasps the truth of the constantly-heard remark: "It is much, much better now than it was a few years back...

...After this had happened twice, to my knowledge, I abandoned the attempt to speak to young Russians, for the sake of all concerned...

...As one stands inside the walls of the Kremlin, thrown open now 55 to the public, it is hard to grasp that there, in that small, gray building, Stalin signed his endless death lists...

...a repulsive sight deep in Russia's only airconditioned public spot...

...In both cases, I was the "foreigner" in question...

...Armored doors and iron window bars have recently been installed at the U.S...

...Surely, it reflects the deeply rooted conflict between Russia's post-war youth and their parents...

...Which hotel are you staying at...

...All seems mummified now, all dead, frozen into ritual, without any living content...

...Embassy in Moscow where the staff expects any day an outburst of mass violence...

...they are aimed at youth groups and young intellectuals, especially those active in Leningrad and Moscow...

...57 War...

...The Bronze Horseman, by Alexander Pushkin...

...If we were subjected throughout our lives to a constant barrage of lecturing, moralizing, and didactic reading-material, we too might yearn to escape with the same fierce passion that, I believe, can be found in Russia's youth.* An African student familiar with some details of the Negro revolution and the American civil rights movement told me he felt that nowhere was the slogan, "Freedom Now," more appropriate than in the Soviet Union...

...Among the ordinary people in Russia, but particularly among the creative and technological intelligentsia, an attempt is being made to re-awaken certain principles of common decency, such as loyalty to one's friends and one's conscience...

...Oktyabryskaya...

...Is it because the Russians, following that ancient cliché of liberalism, have no history of or acquaintance with freedom...

...They illuminated certain dear-cut Russian views: a great eagerness to settle the Vietnam dispute and to avoid enlarging that conflict...

...I doubt that it reveals actual feelings...

...Scratch the surface veneer of Marxism-Leninism, and both populace and Party regard Vietnam as a nuisance that ought to be carefully removed in order to speed toward the end of the Cold War...

...Add to this the 20 million Russians who died during the Stalinist period (1927-1953)—victims of forced collectivization, starvation, prison camps, purges, and trials...

...3 per cent at the outside...

...The Soviet Union is a totalitarrian society, based upon bureaucratic collectivism, with a ruling classParty that has its roots in the state-owned economy...

...A Few Simple Conclusions It is hard not to come away from the Soviet Union, even after a brief visit, without a sense of depression and pessimism...

...The terror of the Stalin regime and the last paranoiac years of the V ozdthe Russians can scarcely believe they went through that nightmarish period...

...At the universities, at the numerous compul* In the resort town of Sochi I attended a concert of the Leningrad Symphony summer orchestra...

...A Russian visiting a foreigner in his hotel room immediately turns up the radio full-blast...

...in decentralization and "regionalization" of the great economic empires which hitherto have been competing with one another for scarce and costly materials...

...Then I bid you a friendly farewell in the name of the Black Market...

...In the city of . . . , I unveiled my copy of Playboy to a small group of young Soviet workers and students...

...On October 6, 1966—the government of the Russian Republic announced a new series of laws directed against "protest demonstrations, strikes, subversive writings, and slanders against the Soviet state...

...The Soviet economy may continue its present limited "liberalization" or, rather, non-practice of terror...

...One frequently hears chauvinistic attacks on the Chinese, with nationalistic and racist overtones, even to the point of the "yellow peril...

...Whatever structural opposition exists is limited to Party circles and probably confined to the upper Party hierarchy...

...their task is to keep a watchful eye on young people and drunkards and to call the "militia" if necessary...

...Many Russians I spoke to seemed to believe that Russia and the United States will ultimately "line-up" against the Chinese whom they consider far more of a threat than even those Americans obsessed with the Cold 0 In Russian hotels, radios cannot be turned off...

...I would assume this will go on indefinitely, with an aging Party leadership constantly working to turn over the reigns to a properly bureaucratized and conformist layer of middle-aged and fairly successful technicians, Party personnel, and executives...

...Three years in a work-correction camp," a Russian had proudly told me when I inquired about that problem...

...Both called me by telephone to explain...

...Since the Daniel-Sinyavsky trial, this "underground" is, for a foreign visitor, impossible to reach...

...I have come from a stroll on the Neva embankment and approach the center of the square, looking about, reflecting on the past of the city—Lenin, Trotsky, the Smolny Institute...

...Nothing remains but parchmentlike skin...

...But, basically, most Russians are resigned to their fate...

...in the introduction of computer planning, input-output programming, etc...

...We felt immensely relieved when our passports were returned to us...

...The partly suppressed film "At the Ilyitch Gate" (it has apparently not been shown abroad) deals with this problem and strikingly illustrates that the "older generation" has nothing to offer or say to the new generation...

...The Soviet authorities dearly have a tight grip on the people...

...There is little sense of a will to struggle even for a change of personal conditions...

...Beyond the meaningless "elections," Russians have no public institutions through which they can participate, take part on any level in decision-making...

...Both cases involved the unwarranted charge of "black marketeering"—evidently part of the pattern...

...They can be lowered to a whisper, but no further...

...A total of 41 million Russians have died violent deaths in the first half century since the October Revolution...

...And yet, it can be amusing and reassuring to be followed in the streets...

...One has only to see a Russian inspecting with envy the foreign visas in a visitor's passport, or to hear his endless questions as to what one "can do" or "can't do" back home, to know this is false...

...Visit the stores (especially the beryoshka shops where nice things can be purchased against valuta), see our museums, etc.—but behave...

...Are these young men and women, one wonders, members of Russia's "cultural underground," about whom so much has been written in recent years...

...Every word I heard in the Soviet Union on this subject verified the disheartening report by David Weiss published in DISSENT, July—August 1966...

...Yet eagerness for news of the West, of fresh ideas and concepts, also exists and cannot be stopped...

...Yet both, with anger and defiance in their voices, informed me of what had taken place...

...He must then expect to be watched and followed openly, as I was...

...7 for your shirt...

...Will not the Russian economy come to resemble that of West European countries, especially those with a nationalized sector—and perhaps even, in its basic motivation, the giant corporations in the United States...

...There is its intelligentsia, there are its writers, artists, poets, musicians—and some of them have become known to the West...

...could it imply that, with the cult of the individual on the wane, a greater degree of personal and political freedoms exists now in the Soviet Union...

...I was especially interested to see the apparent gap between official and unofficial views on Vietnam...

...There is only the vaguely discernible struggle between the generations over the issue of how one should live one's life...

...By and large, it is a dull country, profoundly conservative...

...A half month's pay, for example, will buy one of the shabby suits on display...

...Supreme Soviet...

...A long wrangle over who should take charge of the magazine after I left...

...in profit making and profit taking (ultimately, to be distributed as higher wages and bonuses...

...They certainly deserve a better fate than their present life...

...I have nothing to sell...

...guarantees that it would have a wide and ardent circulation, numbering perhaps in the tens of thousands...

...The Russian people—warm-hearted, friendly, spontaneous, and intelligent—still value that "sincerity" in personal relations Tolstoy has written about...

...I encountered no anger and not much concern over Vietnam—although people did express to me their sympathy toward the Vietnamese people, and a desire to stay out of the war...

...Conversation at a Leningrad streetcorner This past summer I spent a few weeks in the Soviet Union...

...Second, no one would believe anything you might say...

...But I am a Jew and want to be known as a Jew...

...The state authority manifests itself most clearly in the game of knowing and wanting to know at all times whom its citizens see, correspond with, contact in any way...

...There is a "politics" Racial prejudice among Russians might be surprising, but it exists...

...Notes on an "Underground" No political "underground" or opposition movement seems to exist in the Soviet Union...

...The pricing system and price structure are in a disastrous state...

...61 sory courses on "Marxism-Leninism" and "Diamat," the students in the crowded amphitheaters (where attendance is taken) carry on their conversations, sit openly reading newspapers, do homework, and walk about...

...Good evening...

...African students, for example, whose plight has been reported in the press, tell harrowing tales of being stopped in the streets by Russians—strangers—who curse and revile them as "monkeys" and savages, in choice Russian invective...

...This, however, also has its advantages...

...Partly, this is the universal phenomenon of young people fed up with parental moralizing...

...I did not see a single photograph of either Kosygin or Brezhnev except in the daily press...

...It is a severely controlled country, retaining its totalitarian framework despite the relaxations of the post-Stalin era...

...63 An Act of Subversion Before leaving for the Soviet Union, aware that most likely I would not find the atmosphere to my taste, I had meditated on what single, harmless act would most annoy the Soviet authorities...

...What do you know, you young whipper-snapper, about the Revolution—or Stalingrad—or the siege of Leningrad...

...It is not true that only the old people attend the few Orthodox churches permitted to perform services...

...The wife of a prominent, accepted Russian artist explained a common rule of thumb for foreigners before visiting Russians to whom they have been introduced, either in person or by letter...

...I visited Moscow, Leningrad, and Sochi, the Black Sea resort...

...I could only get such phrases as "bourgeois revolution" out of it, and wondered whether she mentioned his well-known homosexuality...

...I also met a young African scholarship student in , who openly defied the authorities when they demanded to see his papers, simply because he had spent a few hours with me at a Russian circus...

...Many Russians are sympathetic to Americans who want to become disengaged, with American prestige kept intact...

...I shall set down here my first impressions, with all their limitations and advantages...

...The few Russians passing through walk rapidly, often expressing puzzlement and displeasure...

...The Hotel of the October Revolution.] "What is your room number...

...What thoughts engrave his brow...

...I have nothing to sell...

...I had hasty visions of returning to the hotel, stripped and naked, but hands stuffed with rubles...

...But a basic political reality remains• the complete disenfranchisement of the Russian people...

...All this leads to interesting questions about the future of the Soviet economy...

...And how sad it is, upon reflection, that post-impressionist art should still be looked at with displeasure by the political and cultural authorities, when in other countries—as well as in pre-revolutionary Russia itself—painting has gone so much farther along the path of creative experiment...

...I would leave it behind, in this land of an outwardly rigid code of sexual behavior (often mistaken for puritanism), and its undernourished public sense of humor...

...I had the opportunity to ask Professor X, an eminent Soviet economist, some of these questions in a private conversation...

...Yet the overall atmosphere will remain dull and restrained—unless there will be more fundamental changes...

...the "softs," the de-Stalinizers vs...

...Yet these circles exist, help and protect one another, live on a high level of intense intellectual and creative consciousness...

...Song of the Black Market Dialogue at midnight, in Leningrad's great Palace Square that overlooks the Hermitage...

...If your host is visited by them the day after your visit, will he be able to give a satisfactory explanation for your visit...

...They are established with permission of the authorities, managed by Komsomol representatives (sharply-dressed smoothies...

...More careful study confirms these first impressions...

...and the Party keeps its full monopoly of power in all spheres of life...

...The reason for the arrests was intimidation only...

...Yet visitors still line up, for hours on end...

...There is no career outside the state, no road without the Party's approval...

...What of Soviet Jewry...

...Foreigners who had come with prayer books they intended to leave as gifts were continually approached by worshippers who would whisper, "Don't give it to him (the cantor, or some other member of the congregation)—he'll sell it on the black market...

...Yet there are usually a few people among the "impressionisti," studying a painting closely, spending long hours in these unfavored galleries...

...Little did I then realize how genial a notion this was...

...5 for your underwear...

...For example, both radio and television blasted away on the subject of Vietnam and "Amerikanski imperialisti" without let-up.* Or, to quote from Alexander Werth's report in the Nation, September 5, 1966: Despite the moderation of Kosygin's official speeches, anger against the United States is mounting rapidly...

...Structural economic reforms may be reinforced and will probably prove successful, and any "loosening up" of the system is bound to have favorable results (that is, living standards may pick up substantially...

...There are Uzannes, Picassos, Matisses, and other great paintings...

...A minimum of "ideology" and a maximum of Russian national interest lifted these talks out of the realm of the usual propaganda...

...One can spend hours there, virtually alone in an otherwise crowded museum...

...There is also a growth in religious observance...

...They close at 11 pint 62 rageous...

...and surveyed by the police...

...Given the nature of the regime and its unhesitating willingness to intimidate, threaten, clap into jail, and harrass its citizens—and the specter of the work correction camps which have replaced the Siberian slave labor camps—it takes extraordinary courage to defy the authorities...

...I will not give you my room number...

...Ideals New and Old—Youth...

...the search for new ideals is probably more widespread in the Soviet...

...The old joke that the Soviet Union has neither "soviets" nor "unions" retains its grim point...

...I found less interest in "politics" in Russia than in any country I have ever visited...

...These new laws codify previous laws directed against strikes, subversion, etc...

...The centralized, bureaucratic fixing of tens of thousands of prices—a system now under severe attack—is largely responsible...

...are still relatively primitive in the Soviet Union...

...I do not believe in Judaism as a religion...

...if there were the desire to create one—along Trotskyist or other lines—it would be destroyed at once...

...the intellectual "underground" may continue to grow...

...Apart from a ritualistic doffing of his cap to Marxism-Leninism, Professor X's answer was most revealing: he attacked the "outdated" 56 notion of workers' control in the factory and even the limited application of this concept in Yugoslavia...

...Their reaching-out toward modern art and culture, the literature of the West, has had an effect on the Soviet youth...

...Few other nations have experienced so appalling a fate...

...Others have filled in the details, 64 but the term remains accurate...

...They welcome contact with foreigners and Western culture, want a chance to feast upon modern art, films, magazines, books, and music...

...A superficial matter in itself...

...They would have lapsed into silence and A term used to cover any behavior or conduct out of the ordinary 60 avoided all contact with foreigners...

...What hidden Power and authority He claims...

...In view of the structural changes and shifts—structural, because the Stalin-built economy proved too rigid to adapt to modern economic needs—what will happen to Soviet ideological premises concerning the economy...

...Clearly, Russians today are most concerned with the lagging state of the country's industry and agriculture which is evident, first of all, in the poor quality of the food (four items, however, should be excepted as superb: caviar, champagne, ice cream, and bread...

...Had this occurred some years earlier, I would not have heard what had happened to my two young Russian friends or why they suddenly vanished without explanation...

...Some years back Max Shachtman coined the phrase "bureaucratic collectivism" to describe Soviet society...

...Somewhere today, inside the Soviet Union, Miss August, 1966, passes from hand to hand in all her glorious, folded-page nudity...

...I saw many young Russian boys and girls at such church services...

...Of course, one must exercise caution and a sense of perspective...

...But most significant and constructive is the eagerness for a richer and more rewarding life: young Russians want to travel abroad...

...2 per cent...

...Two young Russians, both under 25, found themselves under arrest and charged with "consorting with foreigners" and "hooliganism...

...Why, one they will accept...

...The musicians waited patiently along with the audience until she had finished...

...Both knew the risks of phoning a foreigner at an international hotel where the authorities can "bug" any room...

...A young Russian, dressed better than most, approaches...

...A highly intelligent man—in fact, the most intellectually sophisticated people I met in Russia were the professional economists—Professor X revealed the elitist bias which unites bureaucrats of all countries, One might conclude that even the most moderately liberal notions of "industrial relations" have yet to be accepted in the Soviet factory system...