NEW VIEW ON SOVIET RUSSIA
New View On Soviet Russia Second Series of of Letters from a Wisconsin Scientist to His Family. Propagandists Distort Truth About of Russian Life A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, for...
...At present I am in the Russian Revolution and don't need to read about it...
...I had (and have) good electric light but not enough heat for comfort...
...The clipping about the immigrants is very much to the point...
...I must have been very remiss in not telling you the things you asked about, but you must remember that there was very much to tell...
...Yesterday I saw a very long train of oil cars going north...
...This is very strange, because we are traveling through a country similar to Illinois or Iowa and apparently immensely fertile, judging from the growth and soil color...
...Take care of the plants, for without plants, no place can be healthful...
...Fortunately my German friend, who is a photographer, took them for me and for the American and his wife who are going with me...
...Moscow, May 25, 1921...
...It seems strange to be here, much more so than in Moscow...
...Strawberries (wild) are also inexpensive, but they looked too green...
...It contained the acknowledgment of my Petrograd letters 3 and 4. My statistics show that my letters to you take about a month, and yours to me about five or six weeks...
...At Livadia there are scarcely any...
...The girls dress a trifle better than in Moscow, many of them carry light canes, many have higher French heels—few wear stockings...
...I never suspected that you were putting them on until your "4 or 604" explained...
...No one left before the end...
...Consequently the government here has recently stopped immigration...
...I thought the censor was putting those on, and that he had recorded that many letters in the year, month or what not...
...Further south I am told there are forests...
...Day before yesterday three of us went to Nikitski Botanical Garden where I told you that thot I would stay...
...Three men were standing around with guns watching the orchard...
...dinner 4-6 soup (cabbage, grain or noodles) Rasha (cooked cereals), meat (horse, hog or cow), and tea...
...I am sure they would never grow so in America...
...There will be plenty of fruit and vegetables which I have not had for many months, and probably dairy products...
...However we brought back a basket of fruit and vegetables and had a ten pound loaf of bread baked by a neighbor with which to supplement our normal ration...
...Have taken some walks to Oreanda, a nearby place, and climbed a high cliff where I saw some immense old Junipers...
...You hardly realize how far north I am and have been...
...The fruit specialists at Nikeetski Sahd near Yalta, Find Simferopol and Sebastopol (both accented on the penult), and you will find Yalta south of the first and east of the second, on the Black Sea...
...This like Livadia was a tsar's estate...
...I shall be five miles east of Yalta on the sea...
...The train is ready and our party is ready...
...The letters home from this American, written in a straightforward family confidence give a clear and delightful picture of scenes in Russia that have too often been distorted and belied by propagandist letters...
...The plantings for the coming season seem to be first rate...
...Tartars are many of them occupying responsible government positions...
...I am going over soon to see if it is not the train which brought me to Petrograd...
...Most things are free here when you can get them at all...
...It looks so funny to see immense prairies with no fences and only occasional clumps of trees divided in little patches of an acre or so, when they might be farmed on large scale...
...If these people ever saw American orchards it would be a hard strain on their eyes...
...I forgot to ask if that was one incident in Ulysses journeyings...
...I think it must have been about a week since I wrote you, but who knows how long it will take my letter to go back the way I came...
...There are no forests here, so wood is scarce...
...Yesterday there was a sudden demand for some passport photos...
...Nikeetski Sahd (orchard or garden for trees) has a botanical garden, fruit experiment station, laboratories and orchards...
...I had quantities of plums to eat and some other fruit and we carried a basket with us...
...That road seems to be a one way road for nothing comes this way...
...The acting was excellent and the scenery and staging beyond anything I have ever seen in its richness, simplicity, artistic arrangement and appropriateness...
...I am afraid I can't match your higher numbers because in dull seasons I have'nt written every week but then some of my letters have been long...
...They shiver and look over at my window when it is so warm that one blanket is a plenty...
...There is an attractive park not far from where I am staying...
...I have held this letter some time waiting for the carrier going north...
...There will be an entire train devoted to this commission which is to organize Crimea...
...There were plums, peaches, pears, apples, quinces, cherries, apricots, almonds, persimmons and filberts...
...The reason given for growing cordons here is that there is so little land...
...Then there was a grove of cork oaks—funny looking things, and cypresses 100 feet tall and like needles...
...The Russians don't care about time— they would most of them sit up and talk until 2 a. m. if they had nothing else to do...
...Letters are sent through the government where they are censored and remailed in the Baltic states...
...I am quite comfortable...
...Funny, isn't it...
...I figured out the yield given in an Ohio experiment station bulletin on apples in poods per dessyatin and it came to 3,000 poods...
...Cherries by the way are 1000 to 2500 rubles a pound, the same as bread, and beautiful...
...I might add that I have not seen the country since snow was on the ground, and now it is nearly summer...
...My birthday letter and all about the packages...
...There was more to remind me of the old world that I am in...
...I am being well provided for and get all I can eat...
...Food is as high there as here because of Wrangel's occupation, but should soon be very much cheaper...
...Last night we went around to see them...
...Not I, when six months ago I read of Wrangel's defeat...
...Yesterday we each had a pound of bread, sugar, coffee (not really), some goose, and a large plate of Rasha with butter...
...The play, while excellent in detail, needed a little unifying and much condensing...
...A good yield I was told was 500 poods (a pood is 36 pounds) to the dessyatin...
...There were many pools and little streams which may have added to the beauty of the garden and to the growth of plants but it also added to the number of mosquitoes...
...It did not give any historical personages, but all the characters were of well known types...
...There are signs in the park which read: "Crimea is called the health resort of Russia...
...We were given a very nice room for the night where we met a man who had been a war prisoner in Germany for six years and consequently spoke German...
...I shall not know exactly how soon I shall be coming until I reach Moscow...
...They say the bathing beach is very good (I have my bathing suit along...
...As to the package, bless you, I have got along fairly well without the clothing and I shall have just a few things more to carry out with me or to give away here...
...Willie Martens is to go with the party and live with some relatives in Berlin for three months...
...The theaters were closed because of the Kronstadt trouble, and for the same reason persons were not allowed on the streets after 9. Our principal diversion was in listening to the cannon, which we did not enjoy...
...I also opened the can of grape fruit jam which I bought on the last day for 11 cents (I think...
...Yes I am thirty now and that is very, very old...
...Bread and sugar will be scarcest...
...If you could get Allard to give you a dozen copies of his publication on the affect of light on plant growth I should like to give them to scientists here...
...They have board sides coming up two or three feet, or perhaps they are mud, and roofs of straw several feet thick...
...Shall be here another week...
...The railroad here is in good condition and seems to be well kept in every detail...
...Every morning a rooster stands up on my window sill and crows to the annoyance of the others here...
...I roomed alone in a splendid room (at the hotel), (now I room with four, including a Russian physician and a Russian professor of physiology and hygiene, who insist on closing every window tight at night even in this warm weather...
...These periods are alternated with very light feeding here...
...One wonders how they managed to get up early enough in the morning to do this, but maybe they didn't do it in the morning, or stayed up all night...
...There are perhaps 10 acres of home orchard partly neglected...
...Many plants which will not grow in the old botanical garden grow quite well in the new acclimatization garden which is perhaps 100 feet lower and nearer to the sea and has an advantage of 2 degrees in temperature...
...June 25...
...I wish you could have seen a six acre tract in dwarfs mostly cordons...
...The Tartars were I think driven into Crimea by the Russians...
...The pomologist spoke German and in fact was one...
...The flashlight may serve to see my way out of Russia or rather my way after I get out...
...The only wild flower that I know here is the lily of the valley...
...It lasted from 8 to 1:30, just five and a half hours—think of it...
...The first of these is dated February 11...
...We enjoyed ourselves very much and were very hospitably treated...
...supper 9-11 Rasha, two slices bread and tea...
...The varieties of fruit were quite numerous...
...The Russians have no idea of the value of a man's time...
...Yalta...
...Here they are not prepared to receive them, and lack the organization and equipment to utilize their labor...
...Galloway...
...Am in a former hotel which is somewhat the worse for having had soldiers in it...
...There are many evergreens, and of the deciduous trees are many locusts and other trees of a more airy and cheerful appearance than one sees in Moscow...
...They are 4, 8, 10, 12, 18...
...In the old garden I saw a magnificent grove of cedars of Lebanon 106 years old...
...I have'nt heard any comment on Olgin's "Russian Revolution," and don't know any one who has it...
...There are four passenger cars belonging to our party and as many freight cars...
...Yalta, August 12...
...The weather has been splendid and a trifle cooler than in Moscow...
...Have a lot of interesting information on fruit growing here...
...I doubt not that he stays up until two or three every night discussing the materialistic conception of history with some other rooster...
...I heard that that train went south a few weeks ago to get some soldiers at Sebastopol...
...An immense olive tree I was told was a thousand years old and planted by the early Greek settlers...
...It brought the Social Democrat psychology out splendidly...
...The insects are merciful here or they would have nothing worth eating...
...August 20.—Going to Alushta seems quite slow...
...I think now that there is more important work to be done in America than here...
...The plant pathologist spoke both English and German and had some knowledge of American research...
...The peasants want to trade anything for grain and seem very much underfed...
...In Crimea the climate will be that of Georgia or parts of California I am told...
...We shall be rationed, but shall buy a few things in Ukraina, and there food is cheap...
...I must be the only native American in Crimea, and the first since some who left with Wrangel...
...June 2. This letter should have been sent long ago, but I have been intending to mail it when I make my start south, which is now being delayed day by day and not week by week...
...18 have not been received, showing how uncertain the means of communication is today in Russia...
...A letter can be dropped in the letter box, but there are ways which take less time...
...There are now no nights in Petrograd, only an hour or so of twilight, and here the nights are so short...
...There are six in this room, and I am first to bed at 12:30 or 1, and first to rise at 9:30 or 10...
...Simferopol is a very pleasing little place of some 60,000...
...clocks...
...The country became as level as a table and without a tree below K, and a little more irregular later...
...I will mail this when I go...
...As in Moscow they are busy with their flower beds and borders which now look very neat...
...The market here is large and clean, with large covered pavilions mostly used for lunch counters...
...There were also groves of olives and of figs...
...A resume was given me after each scene...
...We were very well fed at Massandra just a we were before at Nikitka and shall be in Al-ushta...
...August 17.—Since my last entry we have made a visit to Masandra Sad...
...There is no railroad to Yalta and it is said that flour is very scarce there...
...However he is a Russian and doesn't begin until an hour after daylight...
...The people gather around, sitting on benches as far as they go, between the selections strolling up and down along the drive...
...The pruning was fair though laboriously done—they don't know how to head peaches in or to grow them in general...
...I NUMBERED last 16 but remembered one in Simferapol that I did not record so I skipped a number...
...I am getting them trained a little, and only regret that my efforts may go for nothing due to my early departure...
...We came down from Kharkhov in fast time, only about 36 hours instead of the week that it took us to Kharkhov...
...I shall undoubtedly read it later if you recommend it...
...It contains about 1500 acres of vineyards...
...To get them by official means would have taken a week, and unofficially it would have cost more than I could afford...
...Will go today or tomorrow and leave this to go to Simferopol next chance...
...We had good meals and plenty of fruit...
...August 13.—A comrade came from Simferopol just now and brought me two of your letters, 16 and 17, postmarked May 13 and May 18...
...She then handed me one after another five letters from you...
...Moscow, May 18...
...Be sure I shall not starve with so many things to sell as I have...
...Yesterday was the day set for me to go to Crimea, but the trip was postponed another week—disgusting I think...
...It was entitled "The Counsellor and the Plumber," and was based on the German war and revolution...
...I am now introduced to the Tartar...
...Propagandists Distort Truth About of Russian Life A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, for several years a scientist in the United States Department of Agriculture, and for a time an instructor in Columbia University, is now in the Crimea under the Soviet Republic of Russia as a volunteer engaged in a horticultural survey of that region...
...I have been on the road for two nights and a day now, traveling with a freight train not overly fast...
...Houses are not scattered but clumped in villages...
...Now I shall make good my errors...
...From this point as headquarters I am to travel through the fruit growing sections and make a report...
...I also got a floral guide for southern Russia, and a guide book with maps of Krim for 7,000 rubles...
...The ground is uneven and hills show up in the distance...
...Our importance is much greater away from home...
...Only pears and apples were used for cordons and these were planted among standard apples and pears...
...Today I found a large book about Krim (Crimea) 3 inches thick and a foot long, with beautiful illustrations of the scenery and fruits...
...The botanical garden differs from anything I have seen before in that it is a tropical or semitropical garden...
...We expect to leave in about a week for Sebast-opol by rail, then by boat to...
...I shall be rather sorry if he is not there when I return...
...Perhaps I shall get a letter in July saying that you remembered it in Washington...
...This reminds me—I have had to struggle against a physician and a professor of hygiene to be permitted to have my window open at all in this warm weather...
...In northern Crimea and southern Ukraina the houses are some of them scattered out over the country and not all clustered in villages...
...But it is only a partial success...
...It gets dark about 12 and light about 6, according to our time saving...
...One surprise is the low price of food, especially bread, less than half the price in Moscow...
...The music, unlike our open air concerts, is good...
...We must not be too much frightened at the latter, because no doubt he feels very meek...
...Last night I went to a play written by Lun-acharsky, the commissar of education...
...June 5. Today I got my ticket and tomorrow I am to be on the train at 7 p. m., so things are really looking up...
...Someone writes, by the way, that a package is held for me in Moscow...
...Today I met a fellow who left Moscow before I but had heard that Martens had gone to the Urals where he was planning to go when I left...
...The orchard is spaded and cultivated entirely by hand and sprayed with one of those little knapsack sprayers bearing the name of Dr...
...The only-trees are right around the houses...
...He is evidently clean, is said to be a good worker and of notable honesty...
...Now I shall look and see what other numbers I have...
...Many fruits were bagged with cheese cloth...
...The flowers you enclosed in the last letter are still beautiful...
...Perhaps they will mail this...
...Moscow is in the trodden paths, but who would have thought I would find myself here...
...We can buy milk from peasants at every station at less than half the Moscow prices...
...I now have (letters) 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13...
...Red June was the only one I had ever heard of...
...This fare was better than anywhere else...
...The Russians need a little training in protecting public gardens, for everywhere they break off branches to decorate their houses...
...Several additional letters are published below...
...We are being well fed, much better than in Moscow...
...It was very interesting, and held my attention even though I did not understand the words...
...Simferopol, June 18, 1921...
...Note: Two letters preceding No...
...The first of this series of letters was published in the October issue of La Follette's and met with universal response from readers...
...Kursk, June 8. I am going to send you a little note from here if I can find an easy way of sending it north...
...We ate breakfast 10-12 two slices black bread, four shavings cheese and tea...
...The streets are straight, comfortably broad and lined with trees, many well pollarded, if so barbarous a practice can be done well...
...Here one sees mountains without forests...
...The doctor closed his window because of the Staub from the Strasse, and the professor piled books against his effectively...
...There was nothing to use money for, so it held out splendidly until some robber of an isvoschik got some of it...
...Not intended at all for publication, it may well be believed that they at least tell the truth.—Editor's Note...
...They are carrying a pot of Rasha to provide a spread...
...The letters sent from here to Russia were numbered serially from 600 on.—Ed...
...The courier found a letter from you in Reval by accident while looking for his own mail...
...A PARTY is going to Germany and I shall prepare this letter to go with them...
...It is quite funny about the numbers...
...Every evening from 7 to 9 there is an orchestra concert in this park...
...Your last letter went on its road...
...A young lady who works at the Nar-kom-tri-del (office of the commissar of foreign affairs) came in the other day and casually remarked that she had a letter for me...
...I called them something else last time but they are really and truly what grow around Greek temples...
...Yesterday I saw a man with a fur hat walking arm in arm with a man in a linen suit...
...My thirtieth birthday passed very quietly, and in fact no one seemed to notice that it was any more than any other day...
...The natural flora here is that of the temperate zone but next the sea with mountains on the north the weather is so modified that it is possible to grow palms and all kinds of tropical things...
...Americans would have left at the end of the third act, and the author would have been compelled to shorten the play...
...We paid nothing, tho I believe there was such a thing as the government paying itself a nominal amount for our keep...
...There is a sanitary train on the other side of the railroad yards...
...The clocks, you know, are now three hours ahead to correct the Russian habits...
...I was shown a row of American apples but looked in vain for any friends...
...He has a rich dark chocolate complexion and a fierce nose...
...I am in hopes I may receive a package from you before I go south and another letter...
...I came from Petrograd southeast for one day, and shall go south for three days to Yalta, and there if I am not mistaken I shall be in the latitude of Maine...
Vol. 13 • November 1921 • No. 11
