A Lucid View of Russia
WOLFE, HENRY C.
A Lucid View of Russia Eastern Exposure. By Marvin L. Kalb. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy. 332 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Henry C. Wolfe Author, "The Imperial Soviets" "The German Octopus" MUSICIANS,...
...Kalb went to Moscow as an American press attache...
...There was Volodya, a 30-year-old graduate student at the History Institute in Moscow...
...it keeps the Russian people psychologically prepared for war and helps justify Soviet foreign policies and actions such as the massacre in Budapest...
...But when the American asked whether he might read some of Trotsky's speeches, Volodya evaded the query...
...Quite often, Russians thought that the author was one of themselves, a compliment to his linguistic ability...
...Reviewed by Henry C. Wolfe Author, "The Imperial Soviets" "The German Octopus" MUSICIANS, CLERGYMEN, skaters, businessmen and just plain tourists make quick visits to the Soviet Union and come back telling us that the Russian people want peace...
...He was working on his doctoral thesis at the Harvard Russian Research Center when he had an opportunity to sojourn in the USSR, not only to see that country at first hand but also to continue his studies in Moscow's Lenin Library...
...His experiences furnished him with a rich and unusual store of anecdotes and comments on customs, points of view, traditions and historical background...
...He asked permission from Moscow University to listen to some lectures on Russian history...
...Of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's oration opening the 20th Congress of the Communist party, Kalb wrote in his diary: "His speech indicates that Stalinism is dead only in name...
...adequate housing...
...They all want peace, to be sure...
...Conversant in their language, he encouraged them to "ex press themselves on any subject they liked...
...Visitors to the Soviet Union could read his Eastern Expo sure with profit before starting out on their journey...
...Then there was the English teacher, vacationing in Moscow from his post in the virgin lands beyond the Urals, who made the rather bad joke that "there were no virgins in the Virgin Lands...
...After the Budapest uprising, the Kremlin switched from its policy of "Thaw" to ugly hostility to ward the West...
...First, the Embassy would have to write a letter to the Ministry of Higher Education, which would then grant its permission to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which would then grant its permission to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which finally would grant its permission to the Assistant Rector of Moscow University, who would then contact me...
...But the men in the Kremlin have not changed...
...The author met an odd and interesting assortment of people during his stay in the USSR...
...He evidently was a fanatical Communist who never deviated from the party line...
...Some Russians passed me by as if they had never seen me before...
...The Russians, they explain, are desperately afraid that we Americans are going to attack them...
...Stalin's policies, now more insidious because they are cloaked in a smile, are being followed, but his name is rarely if ever mentioned...
...Finally, Kalb stepped up to an out door ice cream stand (yes, they were selling ice cream in 37-below weather), bought two cones and handed one to the man in black...
...He had the good judgment not to try to draw them out, or to make them feel they were being interrogated or spied on, and thus he was "never faced with any outright hostility...
...The masters of the Kremlin, on the other hand, are gambling with the lives of Soviet citizens for the prize of world domination...
...Quite naturally, he was delighted to talk about American corruption...
...These young people enjoy a craze for jazz and what they think is the American fashion in clothing...
...What these visitors to the USSR ought to remember, however, is that the Soviet public and the small oligarchy which rules them are separate entities...
...Here we have not only a man of good will representing the United States among foreigners, but also a keen observer whose lucid and penetrating insight into what might be called "the Russian mind" contributes significantly toward our under standing of the people inside the Soviet empire...
...To my amazement, he took it...
...Alongside a woman in mink," Kalb observes, "one sees a Russian woman in a threadbare shawl...
...There is apparently a great deal of dissatisfaction...
...For many of them, Communist ideology "has lost its revolutionary magnetism...
...Ivan's fear of "American war mongers" is a valuable instrument of Soviet policy...
...The general atmosphere got very chilly...
...He knew details of British history that might surprise Mr...
...What so many of these visitors do not appreciate is the fact that the Kremlin manipulates popular feeling toward people from "that other world, the world of capitalism and imperialism...
...Churchill...
...Ivan is interested in better clothes, more consumer goods...
...He has no ambition to conquer distant lands and enslave other peoples...
...On occasion they were also suspicious...
...Before the author had been in Russia very long, he came into con tact with Soviet bureaucracy...
...Instead of a "classless society," of course, the Soviet state has one of the most stratified social structures in the world...
...The Rector "out lined the necessary procedure for me...
...It was bitterly cold weather, 37 below, but the MVD agent kept right on the heels of the newly arrived foreigner...
...The latter was arrested for possessing the magazines and kept in jail for 24 hours...
...He went into some details of President Grant's Administration, which were more than mildly embarrassing...
...On his first day in the Russian capital, for instance, he was "tailed" by a man dressed all in black...
...In 1956, "the Year of the Thaw," Marvin L. Kalb found the Russians "always warm, gregarious, friendly and curious...
...It helps keep the populace subservient to the dictator ship and helps the Kremlin explain the shortages of goods and services...
...People with whom I had the warmest kind of friendship," says the author, "confided that they were afraid to talk with me in public...
...The author found a great deal of dissatisfaction among young people, in the form of cynicism and skepticism rather than of potential armed revolution...
...Mistaking him for a Russian, they often said things about the "system" that they would not ordinarily say to a foreigner...
...Then, in the city of Vladimir, Kalb gave two American news magazines to a Russian friend...
Vol. 42 • July 1959 • No. 28
