The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn 'USSR' vs. 'Amerika' For more than four years now the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in cultural exchange. Each month, as part of...
...Both the printing and the photography are first-class...
...When Congress made the appropriations to pay for the Amerika half of the project, it had in mind, I assume, the idea of sending a truthful message to the people behind the Iron Curtain...
...the answer is: "There are no conflicting interests in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
...Even in the Soviet Union, life can't be as funny as all that...
...Each group of editors is openly trying to show that their country has the best of everything and unquestionably lives on the highest level...
...By and large, I suspect that the editors of USSR take their product more seriously than we do...
...At the newsstand where I pick up my copies, I am given to believe that I am the only customer...
...I am told Amerika is snapped up at Russian newsstands the moment it hits the streets...
...In one respect, Amerika makes a better impression than does USSR...
...A few pages away there is a story on the life of a Latvian farmer that might well make an American farmer's mouth water...
...I also assume that for their part the Russians want to give us a picture of an almost perfect Soviet Union...
...The issues which happen to be on top of each pile reveal the way this international journalistic competition is being carried on...
...And as far as photographic reproduction and printed text can exhibit national achievement, each one makes out a good case...
...And, if Amerika prints a chapter from, say, a Saul Bellow novel, the Russians are sure to come back with a goodsize excerpt from Antonina Koptyaeva...
...In almost any group of singers, dancers, factory workers or athletes, Negroes are shown taking a conspicuous part...
...But I can stare at the pages of gorgeous photographs, and there is an illuminating index in English at the beginning of each issue...
...There is a magnificent spread on the achievements of Soviet women...
...Though not in the competitive journalistic market, the two governments are clearly putting their best foot forward...
...And each month we receive an equally scrumptious number called USSR...
...In the pages of USSR people are perpetually grinning their heads off...
...On first seeing either Amerika or USSR, one's natural reaction is: "Well, here is another Life or Look...
...In the pages of Amerika a distinct effort is made to recognize the role Negroes play in American life...
...Doing the best I can without being able to read Russian, I have noted the differences and similarities between the product the Russians send to us with the one we send to them...
...Owing to linguistic deficiencies—it seems I have poorly prepared myself for the world I now live in—I cannot read the Russian text of Amerika...
...And both magazines have a distinctly American look (I understand that the Russians have learned a lot from the Americans on this score...
...Each month, as part of the exchange, Russia receives 50,000 copies of a gorgeous show-piece magazine called Amerika...
...All the arts, sciences, industries and social progress one can think of are shown, and shown about as effectively as possible...
...One of the things that comes through is a rather crass nationalism on both sides...
...USSR, on sale here for 20 cents a copy, does not seem to equal the popularity of its American counterpart...
...Soviet democracy is represented by two pages of questions and answers about how the Supreme Soviet is elected...
...But neither the photography nor the printing are what interest me about these two magazines...
...I am sitting in my study with back copies of both magazines on either side of me...
...To the question, "Why does the ballot list only one candidate...
...Where business and industrial life are concerned, our countrymen give a better picture of conditions than do the Russians...
Vol. 45 • June 1962 • No. 12
