Eddy Gilmore and the Russians
ARCUS, M. K.
Eddy Gilmore and the Russians Me and My Russian Wife. By Eddy Gilmore. Doubleday. 313 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by M. K. Argus Author, "Moscow-on-the-Hudson,'' "A Rogue with Ease" That very fine...
...He fell in love with a Russian girl, but it took the interference of no less a personage than Wendell Willkie to get the dictator's sanction for their marriage...
...It is wise, candid, informative and exceedingly funny...
...Again impossible...
...We would like to see the graves," said Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune...
...One of the newsmen asked where the bodies were...
...He understands the Soviet Union very well, both the people whom he loves and the regime which he does not...
...Foreign correspondents were not allowed to drive their own cars...
...Buried, was the reply...
...He had accepted an invitation to spend a couple of hours with some foreign correspondents...
...Reviewed by M. K. Argus Author, "Moscow-on-the-Hudson,'' "A Rogue with Ease" That very fine reporter, Eddy Gilmore, has written a very fine book about Russia...
...Eddy Gilmore gives you a number of excellent thumb-nail characterizations of Soviet big shots...
...They can't write what they want...
...they had to hire a Soviet chauffeur who was actually a police agent, and pay him good money for the privilege of being spied on...
...There was also the meeting with another victim of the Stalin-Beria setup: former Ambassador to the U.S...
...Wherever the correspondents went, they were, of course, followed by the ubiquitous agents of the secret police...
...Over a hundred thousand German invaders were destroyed here," a Red Army spokesman informed the correspondents...
...I fear, though, that you will have to remain content with the imperialist Pulitzer Prize...
...Gilmore has done something for which we Russians should be eternally grateful: He has written a funny book about Russia without once poking fun at the Russians...
...It was at the front, in Mozhaisk...
...there was a heavy snow and all the graves were covered...
...There was the incident with General Yeremenko, a fine soldier and a good fellow...
...neither does he pontificate...
...it seemed there were no roads...
...The threat of the secret police is relentless and everpresent...
...Eddy disclaims being an expert on Russia...
...I loved what he said about Vishinsky, who "simply sings for supper, dinner and luncheon, and he works like hell doing it...
...Gilmore went to Russia during the war...
...Impossible...
...Everything in the Soviet Union, observes Mr...
...they can't go where they want...
...He was still comparatively green when he recognized the first Soviet Big Lie...
...A Russian expert," he says, "is someone who has been in the Soviet Union less than two weeks or more than twenty years...
...Molodets, Gospodin Gilmore...
...But, when one of Beria's chaps appeared on the scene, he quickly and shamefacedly turned the invitation down...
...You ought to be awarded the Stalin Prize for this contribution to the cause of mutual understanding between the American and Russian peoples...
...So why bother...
...they can't see whom they want...
...he stayed there, with a couple of brief interruptions, through the terrible years of the struggle against the Nazis and of the cold war which followed...
...I often wonder why we have correspondents in Moscow altogether...
...He does not preach...
...He merely tells his story, that of twelve years in the Soviet Union?and what a story it is...
...That is false modesty...
...Eddy Gilmore has given me the answer: It is worth it to have a reporter like him come back with a book like this...
...Gilmore observed a great deal during his twelve years in the Soviet Union...
...And it took the interference of several other exalted people to secure for Tamara the simple human right of following her husband to his native land...
...There are not many in the USSR who are not afraid of it...
...In that case, we'd like to see the snow-covered graves...
...Gilmore, is dear except human life...
...Troyanovsky, demoted to the role of an obscure hack-writer for a small provincial newspaper...
...Their dispatches all sound alike after passing through the rigid censorship...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 30
