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Show m w Russian Enigma Illustrated and explain why your government govern-ment " Before she could finish (he guessed what was coming) he held up his hand. "Please," he said with a disarming dis-arming smile that took the sting out of his words, "We are having such a pleasant time, but you force me to say this: I cannot explain what you wish because you people are just too stupid to understand Communism." Commu-nism." If that sentiment is a sincere and typical expression of how the men who run Russia feel, the road ahead is a rocky one. Kipling once put into verse the problem he felt the foreigner faced in trying to understand under-stand the American. What he said might be applied to Russia: "Inopportune, shrill accented, the acrid Asiatic mirth that leaves him, careless 'mid his dead, the scandal of the elder earth. How shall he clear himself, how reach your bar or weighed defense prefer a brother hedged with alien speech and lacking all interpreter?" Boris Krelov has gone home. He was a member of the staff of Tass (official Soviet news agency), stationed sta-tioned for some three years in Washington. So far as I have been able to learn, his American contacts, which were many, both official and personal, per-sonal, made not a single ideological impact upon him or his way of thinking. He upheld the Russian cause; he talked more freely than most Russians in a semi-official or official capacity do but (also so far as I can learn) he never offered the slightest compromise of viewpoint, view-point, never accepted any argument argu-ment or explanation of democratic (American style) methods of thought or action. And yet and here Is the thing that baffled most of us he was well-liked, he was good company, and if we could have found the tiniest peg on which to hang an idea, he would have inspired us to write about Russia Rus-sia "with a heart," as a Russian Rus-sian woman interpreter is reported re-ported to have begged of Sam Welles, Time's correspondent in Moscow. We wonder about Boris. We would have liked so much to sit down and talk frankly and freely with him about the common problems prob-lems and the still more common misunderstandings between our countries. Was he able to appear so genial and friendly and charming because he held such high rank at home that he wasn't afraid to consort, con-sort, as far as personal matters went, as a trusting friend? Was he so deeply indoctrinated in the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism that he was filled with pity rather than the typical suspicion which seems to permeate most Russian-American relations? One slight clue we have, though it may be a false one. Once, at a rather intimate gathering, Krelov's hostess finally grew a little impatient impa-tient and said something like this: "Listen here, Boris, we're friends. Surely you can be frank with us |