THE HOME FRONT
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Home Front By WILLIAM E. BOHN Orchids for All THERE IS ALWAYS a frankly Utopian quality about our annual Flower Show. Out of doors, crocuses and snowdrops are braving the winds and...
...Koval agreed...
...After some hesitation I decided to call at tha All-Union Committee on Walters of Art I was «atl raeefwad and even qivsnislatiaijiiil n^rnmn"tat ma tall you about myself...
...There were more than twice as many in the Flower Show this year than ever before...
...First they asked me to leave Novocherkassk, but my theater officials interceded for me...
...This Garden of Eden knows no serpent...
...As a former inmate of the concentration camps, they did not entrust me with that job, and called a*man specially from Moscow...
...H . WANTED SPM...
...Prices will, fall, and we shall all have to buy orchids to'support the poor growers...
...Who is a pure - scientist or artist, who a traitor or a spy...
...He then returned home and cut his veins...
...Ho was incompetent and did a poor job—so much so that the secretary of tha local party call asked ma to take over instead...
...But I am very busy, let me go," Rozov cried...
...Only a minority, however, can resist or refuse...
...I finished my work, and tha commission arrived from Moscow (such performances are always previewed by a comission from Moscow...
...he'll bo sorry: wall chock his reports through other informants...
...They are taken ji o. . my notes on interviews with recent Soviet reiuuees...
...Of the fine gardens on the main floor only two wore the offerings from the estates of the wealthy...
...They have no "repressions" to fear any longer...
...He was saved when someone walked past his door and saw the blood on the floor...
...All the gardeners of the world are conscious of tho coming battles against the bugs and the weeds...
...Hut I am incapable of such work," Rostov protested...
...There is neither winter nor rough weather...
...Then he began listing names: "What do you know about them...
...my work was approved...
...I WONDER how much social significance attaches to the fact that orchids are growing common...
...A friend of mine, a physician, helped me gat a fever, for I was sure they'd come to check...
...I knew how dangerous tha job was for ma...
...This Flower Show will end before these paragraphs are printed...
...There were a few exhibits from England...
...You cannot refuse...
...Beneath the soil the larvae of man's multifarious enemies are preparing their assaults...
...Then a second investigator appeared...
...They can speak freely...
...You are tha son of a professor, nobody suspacti you of anything, everybody has e—fld—ca in you...
...Buryatov did not refuse, and that time they let him go, taking his word that he would tell no one about the offer...
...Within -a week please bring your first report...
...In 1942 he was called to the NKVD: "Henceforth you must regularly furnish us with inJortaatiori...
...The central as well as the local agencies of the political police— whatever their names — have made successful attempts to recruit men of great repute, knowledge, and prestige as secret informants...
...A former NKGB agent, Mikhail Gorokhov, told me: "Once we decide that a certain man must bo an informer or secret agent, ha can't gal out of it, for wo are much stronger than ha is, If ha wants to outsmart us or fool us...
...hall do his job, and do it wall...
...Who among them is just a victim, and who serves as an informant on his colleagues...
...Really, somebody came from the NKVD and let ma a)oae for a few days...
...For everyone of them the offer and the accompanying circumstances represent a big tragedy...
...But I cannot recall seeing any exhibit of the Holland bulb growers...
...On my way there, I stayed over in Moscow for ona day, without permission...
...As usual, New Jersey carried off the honors...
...What is their attitude...
...Richard Armour...
...With this dreadful dilemma We're curently faced: Shall our surplus of food Go to waste or to waist...
...Wait, you will have to inform us once a week of everything that wHl seem suspicious to you," was the reply...
...He was threatened with all sorts of consequences if he refused...
...He is the son of a scientist renowned in his field...
...They can tell the truth...
...Jn tha and...
...It just goes to show you...
...Here even tho rigors of the Forest of Arden have been banished...
...They liked my work...
...there are those who can tell us more about this subject: the scores of Soviet scientists and artists who do not cross the Atlantic in air liners, and who live not in luxurious hotels but in miserable DP camps...
...But the gardens in the Bronx and Brooklyn can be seen any day in the year...
...But among us the difficulties connected with growing them have given them a reputation for being aristocrats...
...But the NKVD man insisted: "You are a Soviet citizen, and you cannot refuse...
...A week later, Rozov was away...
...You give them the vote and the public school, and first thing you know they want to abolish the last dividing line between rich and poor...
...I was ralaaaad and tent to the south, to Novocherkassk...
...You give people an inch and they take in ell...
...No use to dim it...
...Their fragility and elegance—added to the ^prlcer-haw re* served them for special people and special occasions...
...A'etro item...
...In June, 1941, tha war broke out...
...To the south of us, in the West Indies and many parts of South America, these blooms run wild in any wood...
...Trans-Atlantic Facts By David J. Dallin Author of "The Real Soviet Russia" NOBODY CAM CHOW, of course, what kind of relationship has existed back home between members of the Soviet delegation to Dr...
...we'll expose-him and threaten severe punishment...
...If it was to prove unsatisfactory, I would surely be accused of counter revolutionary activities...
...No worm or insect has interfered with perfect growth...
...Your alias will be Orlov...
...Don't tell anybody who is calling you," a voice told him...
...Buryatov left Ms ring with his wife and went to the NKVD...
...hum '"M" • • • EUGENE BURVATOVr was a professor of hydraulics and member of several scientific institutions...
...He was given an alias, Sokolov...
...STAYING POWER The United States is "good foe 1000 years," declared President Truman...
...I suspect that the Garden of Eden was really located there, say somewhere near Pyramus or Madison, and it was the mosquitos , that drove out our pristine ancestors rather than an angel with a sword...
...In the above examples, exceptional circumstances permitted the man to get out of the job of informer and traitor, In many cases, there is no way out...
...The rest—and they were all magnificent—were from the fields and greenhouses of such concerns as Stump and Walter, Bobink and Atkins, and old Peter Henderson...
...In order to avoid a scandal, the NKVD left him alone...
...Here are the narratives of a number of Russian intellectuals...
...Or, rather, the poor orchidless masses will not even have to raise a cry or contest a barricade...
...Investigator Morosev, a little man with repulsive features, began to ask him about his acquaintances and especially about his father...
...Most of the beauty on exhibition had come from no farther away than Connecticut, New York and New Jersey...
...TAIMTER, Nikolai Wljfaaaw • "After four years flL4ha^ concepi tration cantos...
...A show of cymbidium orchids had been flown in from Bruges, Belgium...
...In May, 1941, I was summoned to the NKVD and offered a job there: 'Just listen to the conversations in the theater and let us know.' I was told...
...Report to the NKVD right away and ask far Jawtti gator Morotov...
...One December day before the war, the phone rang in his apartment...
...Along with the advancing importance of the commercial flower-growers, the visitor who has been seeing these annual shows down through the years notes the increasing importance of the participation of our two great municipal gardens...
...Who tells anti-Soviet jokes...
...Every rose, every tulip, even every violet, has grown beyond the model which one carries in his mind...
...FOOD FOR THOUGHT U.S...
...ALEXI ROZOV was a senior engineer in the Don Basin...
...Every year I draw attention to the fact that with the passage of time this Olympic meet of the flower-growers becomes less and less the affair of the aristocrats and more and more the affair of the commercial competitors...
...I don't think this was intended as a tribute to our southern neighbors...
...Every, color scheme is perfect...
...That little state, never specially celebrated in song or story, is really the flower state...
...No lack of fertility has set a limit to size or beauty...
...He told Buryatov: "You will be a useful collaborator of ours...
...I won soma fame, and finally I was admitted to tha theater...
...From then on the NKVD paid special attention to me...
...Actually I was chief scans painter and received a corresponding salary...
...Shapley's Conference and the Soviet secret police...
...i hope many thousands of New Yorkers have been thrilled by viewing beauty which has been produced by their servants in fields and greenhouses which belong to them...
...Every outline is exactly correct...
...But when they mount the steps into New York's Grand Central Palace, it is as though an unnaturally gaudy paradise were opening before them...
...The dealers will bag them to take the /towers which formerly went only to the rich in order to save this segment of the capitalist system...
...Ones it was decided to stage tha popular place, Tha Man With a Gun,' in which Lenin and Stalin appear...
...DESPITE THE FACT that this show had been advertised as featuring the flowers of the Americas, there seemed to me to be less representation of foreign lands than usual...
...Out of doors, crocuses and snowdrops are braving the winds and frosts of March...
...Why set a limit...
...I seem to be alone in singing its praises...
...In the late 1930's he was summoned to the NKVD and asked to become a secret agent...
...A thousand years...
...Wa know all about you.' "In Novocharkassfl I was refused a Job at tha theater and iherefora had to work in tha local workers' club...
...TJiere will be a pass for you at the-entrance...
...I asked for time to think it over...
...We have come n long way* in these matters—further than most of us realize...
...But they asniladi 'Don't toolbar...
...I left for Rostov and hid there for some lime...
...The New York Botanical Garden in Bronx Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden both have put on exhibitions which are strikingly beautiful and practically suggestive...
...Urged to Eat Its Surplus Food...
...Meivspaper headlines...
...we know that one of your acquaintances is X., who recently returned from the United States, and that your wife has ralalivas abroad...
...They are as fine as any in the world, and they are ours...
...Another scientist, Sergei Koval, had a more tragic fate...
...The cry of the future equalitarians will be, not bread, but orchids for all...
...If this keeps up, if new and hardier blooms are produced, if more and more growers go in for this sort of thing, we shall require a mass market for their product...
...A man of bourgeois origin, he had long been under suspicion...
...But no reports or documents listed mo on thai Job...
...But in the great array of these blossoms which I saw in Grand Central Palace, I thought I could feel the first tremors of a comng revolution among the flowers...
...If the prospect's good...
...then the war swept over the Don Basin, and the NKVD had to stop its activities there...
...Who comes to see him...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 14
