Show ya BEA re Z ra 0 V FRA R U 1 A N 1 01 1 it 1 4 1 1 1 q 0 0 0 0 0 6 a we le white installment FOUR russian newspapers and ne news w s reels carry only small amounts of news about the outside world and n never ever anything which might arouse internal discontent with the bartys rule or the soviet unions standard of 11 ving living now and ther thee of course there Is a slight miscalculation for instance e soviet newsreels news reels which specialize in strikes or disorders in the western countries ran many feet showing howing the detroit race riots including a vivid of a cop beating a young negro the effect on the sovi soviet et audience was electric tri c S some 0 me russians even stood up look they cried at that wonderful pair 0 ot f shoes the negro Is wea almost never neve do the authorities admit any bo book 0 k or movie which would give a straightforward picture of american life and the average american living standard it Is true that soviet intellectuals have read and appreciate the artistry of the grapes ot of wrath these curious insubordinate malcontents would arouse rodise little 07 A russians Kus welcomed news of meeting with roosevelt thy in the soviet union and the only possible happy ending would be to have one of the younger boys join the out in california loyally squeal on the whole disruptive 0 tribe whereupon the would give chase and after exciting sequences overtake and liquidate th them rn at the base of the statue stalin of stalin F few w american films are shown in moscow and those are picked pick edwith I 1 with the greatest care the american films best known are chaplins Cha plino goldruss gold Gol dRush rush and the dictator a sonja henle henie skating picture and deanna Dur darbins bins one hundred men and a girl after the russian subtitles were ivers written in to bring out a heavy class exploitation angle when I 1 was in moscow the most popular foreign pictures were jungle and thief of bagdad 11 both were heavily attended with the usual hollywood skill the scene of one Is a hindu village and the other Is in medieval bagdad ne neither ither portrayed normal life in the western world and so were safe I 1 did see however one excellent russian picture and did not need the language to understand and be moved by it the story concerned a green cadet very much on his good behavior who arrives with his kit bai bag to join a veteran fighter squadron he Js as at first genially hazed by the rest gradually gets experience shows mettle and Is slowly accepted it depicted some highly corned up and improbable shots ot of air fights but these flights of fancy were no more distorted than the ones dreamed up in hollywood swivel chairs all ali nations and to play up their own battle exploits and to neglect their allies and america Is in this respect a frequent offender but certainly red army advances are decently covered in stories maps and pictures both in american newspapers and newsreels news reels the soviet union by contrast almost never shows pictures of foreign battle fronts in its popular theaters anglo american landings to in normandy were shown to the intelligentsia and to high red army officers who might have a technical interest in how we handle landing operations but they were not released to the gene general ral public As a result the average russian firmly and logically believes that his go government v has until recently borne not mot most of the war burden but all of at it from time to time stalin makes statements which are both realistic and generous to his bis allies rather recently he predicted that soviet toil soll would soon be cleared of the invader and the armies could then proceed to follow the fascist beast and crush him in his bis lair adding that this would not be possible without the combined efforts of all the allies this was of course printed in pravda but the average reader saturated news of the red army overburdened with personal problems and ignorant of the extent of the tha anglo american tea bea air and land effort probably dismissed it as the kind ot of perfunctory gesture which all statesmen occasionally make today another thundering big dinner at to which eric joyce andi and I 1 are asked this time only as humble spectators for it is given by molotov and the guests of honorare honor are the british and american ambassadors to celebrate the anniversary of codr our ald aid agreement with england any artist could draw molotov with a ruler bulera a square body on short legs square head jaw nose and eyes and there hs he stands this square face Is as devoid of expression as an indian chiefs li dinov Is also present a keen facet binning sandy hilr intelli gent alert alerta a benign volcano the reporters say he Is the only accessible kremlin resident he will give any of the more serious one hour or so explaining soviet policy and problems provided of course they dont bother him too often the dinner Is like Miko even to the climatic suckling pig or rather his cousin similarly shaved and boiled I 1 am next to another foreign office boy russians apparently keep their wives and daughters away from ravening capitalist wolves they are tremendously formal people not because they are communists but because they aredus are russians when they th rowan official shebang eve everything grything must be just so from oyster forks to medals no wonder they were were offended when winston churchill visiting moscow during the raids turned up at dinner in his siren suit A czarist grand duke might be understood but not these earnest socialists As russians they must be spectacularly lavish as communists they must worry about the forks in the middle of the good will toasts molotov breaks a big piece of news tells us that today they are launching an offensive to ordinate coordinate co with our anglo american landing in normandy in the major drive which presently followed toward warsaw and east prussia no one can say they did not keep faith scraping their manpower barrel throwing war cripples semi invalids and boys into the line their sacrifices from the standpoint 0 of f manpower have been ghastly back of the front cousee you see no young men who arent either in uniform or limping with a wound except the few who are to in high administrative jobs and you see absolutely no men between sixteen and forty at the factory benches following the molotov dinner we told the correspondents of the announced attack since it had already been launched and of course they filed the story it was then stopped in censorship the censors pointed out it had not yet appeared in pravda it is a rule of russian censorship that nothing Is officially true which has not been printed in a russian sian paper pravda got around to printing the news of the offensive three days later tomorrow said kirillov cirilov Kir ilov we go tor for ride in private steamboat down to volga river and return he stops there will and here his large sleepy eyes seem to be doing their best to gleam be girls even our russian hosts realize that after our busy schedule we need a rest our idea of a program T tor for this would be a milk toast die diet t theirs of 0 course wins and differs slightly it Is a trip by boat down the famous canal connecting moscow with the volga river some correspondents are also invited we ate are driven to the landing place a huge and almost completely deserted station about the size of the kansas city or the cleveland union terminals its architecture is pretentious it is over ornamented and built with shoddy materials it towers dramatically above the canal which Is reached by a preposterously wide flight of steps I 1 would guess fifty of them which are dominated by a titanic statue of Stal stalin fri at the bottom is our boat boal a streamlined version of a mississippi river steamer to entertain us they have brought three of the plump operetta artistes artists arti stes they were better by candlelight now mow we seea see a few double chins china we had overlooked they arrive in very formal dresses but soon change its like date night at the old ladles ladies home yet everybody Is trying pathetically hard to show us a good time the paddles are churning through the new chite alte silk curtains I 1 see the bank moving so 1 I go 90 on deck on one of the long padded wicker divans johnston Is already stretched out shirtless tor for a sun bath two sailors under supervision come trundling out a radio phonograph griph ti trailing alling a cable this Is set up to in the middle of the deck now taya says Kir cirilov ilov we will have american music whereupon its loud speaker is aimed at eric and it begins to play oh johnny oh Johr johnny inyl now how you can lovet lovel an excited male voice begins to sing the words word breathlessly as though he had first been chased around the block the banks sliding by might be illustrations lust rations of a fairy tale there are tall birch forests anuff anu if it were night I 1 am sure a distant light would appear and walking toward it we would find the old witch and her house of stick candy now and then we pass a clearing and a village of logs with those beautifully carved doors and window frames characteristic of old russia occasionally naked girl swimmers duck down as we go by this canal probably quite as wide as the panama but two of these great steamers can pass about every fifteen or twenty miles there Is a loading station almost as big as the one where we came aboard i but no towns are in sight at each station a mammoth metal statue of either lenin or stalin commands the canal they hold the same poses here and throughout the soviet union stalin in his heavy overcoat and cap strides along swinging his arms lenin always gesticulates with ar arms ms ou outstretched how was the canal built I 1 ask by political prisoners working with picks and shovels and it took them only blittle a little overto over to two years we float tor for a while through soft birch forest and sure enough another statue looms ahead for us they disfigure the russian landscape but I 1 suppose suppo we are no more annoyed than russians would be at the biu bill boards which line our highways however the artists who paint our cigarette ads are more skillful than the monumental masons who designed these cigar store indians one of the british correspondents who lives up on the fifth floor of the invites me and half a dozen 0 ther other correspondents up tor for a party and I 1 otake take as a contribution my bolshevik factory cake the party starts about 10 with sandwiches and black coffee brewed over an electric stove and my cake the host has persuaded the maid an old lady of seventy named nina who has looked after him tor for several years to berve serve and wash dishes afterwards in hi his bathroom at about ten thirty a couple of russian girls arrive one Is touching with the usual sallow pimply moscow skin and shabby clothing the other Is about twenty four and the prettiest russian rusman girl I 1 have seen but the amazing thing is how in moscow she has found enough vitamins to clear her skin our host calls i for nina to bring cake plates and coffee cups for the girls nina eyes them with intense disapproval shoves the plates plate sInto into their hands and goes out banging the door our host laughs ashes adopted me when now and then a russian girl does spend the night nina puts the picture of my wife and kids where its the first thing ill see when I 1 wake up now tor for a note on sex in rus russia ia in the outside world russians Russian have shave an aai awe inspiring reputation forero mis culty it Is unfounded it grew up in the days when the bolshevik party denounced fidelity as a bourgeois fetish and proclaimed the new freedom in these matters along with legalized abort abortion loii and postcard post card divorce but even in those days the reputation was unfounded tor for although divorce could be had tor for the asking and some individuals got dozens the rate for russia as a whole was wa less than the american divorce rate the average russian seemed reasonably content with one wife now divorce Is difficult and abortion illegal in russia and promiscuity politically unfashionable yet life seems to go on at about the 1 aate I 1 taa ar aa roosevelt Boo sevelt tells stalin of normandy invasion same cadence thatis that it always did one gathers that these matters are governed by deep instinct and are little affected by the official preach ings of church or state and that this Is true not only of russia but for or the rest of the world as well having said this I 1 must add that the moscow foreign colony Is definitely underprivileged in ig this field in part this la is due to matters of taste tor for the legendary russian beauty turns out to be mythical mythic a I 1 in moscow at least she does not e exist in the absence of adequate amounts amount of fresh fruit and tomatoes TO BE BB CONTINUED |