IT'S THE BLUFF THAT BAFFLES A VISITOR TO RUSSIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M01009A001502620014-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 21, 2013
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: April 17, 1960
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

' tNL w1'1rD'1f'1+.Y T~CiM.. - - .
WAS Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/03/21 CIA-RDP80MO1009AO01502620014-9
AND 1itvt:ti.~
V 0 .0,
RgU Of
= _ -. - - " What's the shops like' over there
h
I
i
M
"
en
orr
a taxi driver asked me w
By James
s then?
The distiv,n?~;.ch.nrl British newspaper returned to. London from Moscow.
serge bottoms down the snowy banks his words in a -peculiarly Russian ~? yet build,a decent bloc, flats. ey
outside the Kremlin walls-when at sense, his clahn 't.. '.:t merely -mislead-, can compute the celestial orbits, butt
last you get to Russia, nothing is al?
~I ing;? It is positively ;;rotesque. they add up the grocery bill, not very
together unfamiliar, but even less is . ` We, scarcely expel' the Soviet nub-
-- I; quickly, on, an abacus.
- .L- !: ?- _ _L it,.. %R,- ,,nur rontrni ?
r:amuna n1w,u': y a uaw,ou v, .,. ..... - --- . ... .
for the Times of London. Later, on the r by - successive Russian s p u t n i k S. I skyscrapers which, standing balefully
staff of the Guardian, Afanchester, hevaguell; suppose that the Soviet Union above the river 'bridges, are strikingly
reported on the Middle East and the-', has more or, less caught us up; and half reminiscent of Col. 'McCo
Union of South Africa. He is the author . 4e
?The Hashe of. us were Inclined to believe Khru- une building. . the cities of Rus?
of "South African Winter," rmick's Trib-
are decades. b~iind their American
mite Kings" and "Sultan in Oman." shchev -when he told us that by 1965 sia
ONDON-When at last you stand,, the' Soviet standard of living would ~ equivalents, the rural 'lag" can almost
s i.
surpass the 'American. be measured in-centuries.
L after half a lifetime of speculation, This . hazy, notion will give the Nor is the legend. of Russian tecli
beside the garish bubble-domes of St.' 4 stranger his first, and most elemental, ~laique, so blandlj*accepted by the world
at large,. easily eonfir~tied by the cage
Basil's Cathedral, with the brooding E surprise about the Russia of 1960. Un-
expanse of Red Square before you and less Khrushchev has some quite dif? stranger. 'Y`11~ Rtissiatis. may be able to
two giggling girls sliding on their blue ferent' criteria.,from ours, or was using pl otograllh the. moon,' but they cannot
}
Long years of dim hearsay have p1e- supermarket in her station wagon, and ( Market are flown in from Baku by let.. +
pared you for this moment, and your w onl ire. the transformation
g fan y $d but the elects- i' i - of Rn_ * burn
mind; is fuzzed with a rambling accre? that, , ha3 evident: overcome Russia with dismal apatliy. The city telephone's
'lion of half-knowledge, vast -resonant since the Revglut' _h or even since the are dreadful, the notorious tech-
ve s
May Day parades; and little dogs in i fdi,ll't-r Moscow market, or everyday life. The West has long been
rockets, and peasants at railway sta- hasl!. pret4hd nt~to be interested the nylon era, but Mother $ussia
tions, and countless semi-digested pro- { in Vogue. till wears calico.
images from the immortal no
, 1 war. But since the - 'ttissians themselves niques of Russian bureaucracy . are
snatches, of dogma -and. ideological [ choose"to make 1~~riparisons with the demonstrated to you, the very moment
jargon, the Great Game and the purge liiglle5i Stanaarc+alol` the capitalist -you arrive, by the bumble-headed, car
trials and the Stalingrad sword and the `i,est, t' ftulli;~tz stranger must pre- bon-stained, butter-fingered officia at
-doctors' plot and the Aswan Dam and, par . a.,;tt f a:yhock. the customs desk.
the vii~in lands and David Oistrakh It'9E `u`"` insL-. ` `ne sputnik does not . Hundreds ' of thousands of scientist's
and the State Circus; caviar, too, and makk ;-( uL xe:. i.)iildd in theshand isl,pour out of the Russian universities
the Bolshoi, and Socialist Realism, andp Worth 4,4?Y6y .:. l in outer space-,,each year, but so far they have not
blurred dignitaries in bulky coats at I done much to sntooth the surface of
Ask {+~, lr =?ma~'Shequeues wearily
fundities from the feature pages of the
FOR ALL THIS backlog of precon? Urban housing Is..d
esperately short, at rarefied levels of distinction, that-
ceptions, however, the stranger, with people often living cheek-by-jowl j' supreme, efficiency is apparent. The
like a pile ? of old furiu use s. by the entrancing riooden toys with an attic. ,. would like to see," says a helpful
I whicih little Russlans'tire still enviably )would in an intourist phrase book,
? Bluff and Contradiction satisfied. Russia rema'iils terribly back-;F, a working model of a sludge dredger."
- ward in fundamentals It is only in sevar?ely limited fields,
%
t
table blast of his whistle; but a tangled r likable aspects oti?~mp~ern Russian life
mass of bric-a-brac clutters its interior is its surviving 6lteiplicit3 epitomized u t tillesies in br dgbs, in television, in text
tnffed in , in semantics, in hydrology?" "I
~
open, as the policeman waves you ac washing' cars or auto-
on the Kremlin pavement with. an irri are you ? a specialist in?" they ark,
matic cocktail shak&s; one of the most always asicir,q you. "A"re you a sPe
The door of your mind may still be '
T IS' NOT ?rbe;ely the absence of `'
f T IS A NATION of specialists. "What
1 i;ioves through contemporary Russia t four or five to 'a room. Food supplies Moscow underground is"the best in the
in a daze of baffled surprise, for never a
and the basic city diet I -1,1 hut the milk-run Moscow
ati
re err
c
was a country more heavily freighted l
Prices are very
h and starchy
i
.
ump
s
with bluff,' seciecy and contradiction.
, high, workmanship is depressingly low,
For most of us, the current image of, the general texture of life remains
Mother-Russia presents her as a warm-
threadbare and shoddy.
ing, budding, evolving kind of state, Moscow itself reminds me, time and
marshaled by' scientists and technicians again of an out-of-date Chicago, 'from+
,
, of great accomplishment, moving in the brawny roaring mechanisms that SV awfu1 as to be a national joke.
gigantic strides toward material su? clear away its sludge to the feudal
premacy and guided by a certain gruff, ---
reluctant liberalism-. -- -
flat are organized with astonishing
slapdash carelessness. The Lenin Li- j
brary subscribes to-the Kipling Journal
and the Journal of the. Gipsy, Lore So-
ciety in Edinburgh, but the service in
the best Rusian restaurants is
even
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other night was so excruciatingly inept place is thr;'ring.. ; . you' On the contrary, everybody will -
that I ran away and ate *red caviar in Ten' ye:..-, .a o. if you asked the instantly start talking about last'year's
my bath. Soviet Err' ,~ in London for 'a tourist British Bo('-'Exhibition and ask if you
Exquisite are the ballerinas of Rus? ' visa, they aluild not even bother to know ? Stephen Spender, Jack London
sia, but the Bolshoi decor often looks answer you .';?tt'er; Today they will ' or any er tliat rot.
like a setting for one of the sicklier give you ole; ~_'1 same afternoon, with Nevertl less,: it is still practically
Walt Disney fables. Lean as tigers were an affncive smile and a shower of imnossiblt ~ i-'btiv Western newsnaners
puppets are incomparably brilliant, but assure us, gradually being dispelled, to be British and proud of ,it, by
Violetta at the Leningrad opera the
i and the old?cold Stalinist.heart of the George nobody will shy away from
the young Russians who swept the
board at Squaw Valley, but if you walk'
upstairs In Moscow University, the
student beside you will probably be
out of breath long before you are;
There is no sense of steely direction to*'.
life in Russia today,. nor do affairs
.,,move with a click, a zin or a zoom.
Even in the space age, there is to the
flavor of this paradoxical state an en-
I dearing suggestion of the ramshackle.
Now as ever
n imperfection
um
dispersing, the edge M ine rinale may .at,a. aav~ w.,=v ?? _~?-~
? THERE IS ALSO, you will discovrr .be unraveled, but, to 'ttfe'; at ques- USSL.':N. LAW has. undoubtedly}{
to your pleasure, a powerful sense, Lions of contemnorarv Russia. we still 11 D +nVm., a ti~i-n + v,i fii fairer snri
.
of h
a
lithe Russians are an emotional, der
monstrative people. They live care-
David Ois'_takh is one of the stipre ne days and the Iron, C'.it_ia 9em.s a goodwill toward every idly except r
artists of our time, but the standard of little tarnished and rusted. r,te' xcn+ ? Adenauer; the Muscovites flock eagerly
amateur music-making in Moscow is, phobic suspicion that has veiled Russia around every fintailed, , salmon-pink
I am .told, gratingly low. Obraztsov's sinc'ar the Revolution is, so the experts Cadillac. and if you proclaim yourself
lessly and cheerfully, spending their
? money with reckless abandon, drink-
ing and eating too much, sleeping,
working and idling at erratic and
predictable hours, now staying up' all
night in hell-for-leather gaiety, now
lying in bed until tea time. They like
Ito sit around and chat.
When one of the Leningrad students'.
hostels recently announced compulsory
pamphlets. in Mosec, . - ekceijt the lackey broad-{
When you g g', to Moscow, all the sheets. Oti:y a, breath, only a whisper
same, you will discbver that Russia of. the fr.""" `West has yet seeped into
still keeps her secrets, tourists or no Moscow.. The big national exhibitions,
tourists; that though you are free to delegations, trade missions come and ?
wander where you will and tan pene- go, leavi '" behind them only a thin;
trate almost anywhere'if you are pre- black mar,oet sediment of rock 'n' toll
pared to put. your foot in the door and Life; and the tourists stream
and argue, nevertheless : the deeper through Iizp' wedding guests, sipping
enigmas of the Soviet anion remain the champagne curiously before `going
inviolate. ' r home., to,posip.
uV AL ~ uavw - ....-+w :..~: r,.......,., .tranxer;, aut you win not really alb- i
may pontificate, the 1.-: -r gandists cover, asp you pace the Moscow pave-
prate; but we still db?x`:?nnderstand ments, whither the days of terror have
tlf intentions of Rust' t?beicy, we gone for 'food.
do not really know iz..:, , suuble the Nobody hgar4 the sinister midnight
regime is, we cannot a certainty knock nowadays, and the dread Lu-
name the men of power in Moscow . bianka Prison 'is an insurance office.)
and we never know front. off', ;i"uay to Russia certainly does not feel like a
another what the Russo:" a.e going bullied, oppressed or frightened c'oun-
to do next. ' try, but , how soon the - winds could I
change, how subtle are -the. pressures
Curtain's Still There of orthodoxy and conformity, nobody
ALL THIS will 'strike 15 otr'forcibly knows. -
in Moscow even today, 'fo ,.in`side- Has communism really worked In
that strange capital the fir- `4'irrtain' Russia? Could the same progress have
is still gauntly erect. Dip],,, ,:s are been achieved by other, less, brutal
d f t f
t
'
physical training each morning,_on .thel,
first day everybody turned up; but
over the weeks attendance gradually;
declined, - enthusiasm waned, authority'
ni meet means- orergn rives mee
, or ex-
weakened, until in the end only two'.. still -rigidly circumscribe f a ?
only carefully approved lldssians; ample, ? or Lenin's mixed economy?
jerks half-naked in the snow. hardly ever go into a Russian home You can see for yourself that people
So the stranger adds another load of, and are still overheard by, buried are reasonably well-fed, restaurants
junk to his Russian attic. I do-not re-;,. boudoir microphones. Westerners are full, shops busy; but.you will hear in-
; port all. this in spite, contempt or fool still compelled to live In specified numerable tales of ghastly overcrowd-
ish dudgeon. I believe myself that I ghetto-like apartment blocks,. guarded Ing, peculation, nepotism, unfair ptivi-
communism is one effective way of by gendarmes; where they settle In. lege. You will sample the threadbare
hoisting a primitive people to a degree 1 bugger-mugger discontent one on top' quality of the goods In the department
of material welfare, and I am sure I of - another, surrounded by vast stocks . stores and Will observe (if of a nervous
that the more comfortable the Russians of tinned food and toilet paper im- disposition)' that the ceiling of your
live, the happier they `are; the shinier' ported from Denmark. host's drawing room, erected two or
their chromium plate and the smarter ?. It is true that the Russians no long- three years ago, seems to be sup-'
their cotton frocks, the better .it will be,
for all of ,11--i.
The sensible stranger will not be
piqued to find so many of his visions
'falsified. On the contrary, he will be
happily relieved to 'discover that Sput-
nik Russia is not just a test-tube state;
all done to formulae, but a 'jolly,
fallible, unpredictable place where 4C
--~ years of the new despotism haq failed
to even out the bumps.
er lam Western broadcasts, and I met ported by beams of green wood and
several citizens who like to listen to is apparently about to collapse.
the BBC. It is true that a slick;Ameri- . 'Compared, with . itself before the ?
can propaganda magazine is .-- sale, Revolution, Moscow is no doubt a,
and that a British equivalent Is'lilkc_'y-i thriving capital, its mansions vanished'
to appear shortly. Russians are no, but its working people snatched from
longer whisked away to detention worse degradation. But could ,it be
camps for talking to you in tl street, better, you will wonder; have the ends ?
nor will the small boy who pesters justified the means?,Is it a promise or
you for chewing gum be subjected to 'a disappointment, pace-maker or run-
any dreadful homework. ner-up? Nobody really knows, and
Everybody goes. to Russia 'nowa The papers are full of peace, and Russia certainly will not tell you.
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 And so we sat there in the bare e Another sign, thoilgh s c a r c e I y
catalytic yet, is a rebirth of commercial
'You must -take on trust the stag- room, wet and sniffly with sentiment,
gering Soviet ? claims of industrial the mouse shaking her ' head in consciousness. By .and large, Russia
expansion, rocketry, . atomic energy, motherly distress, the jerkin man Clear- seems to'be run on a sort of cost-plus
ricultural initiative and 'all the ing his throat gruffly, while outside basis, The value of money seems to
a
g
arrogant bragging that sometimes the, impatient ?litiganis, -brushing 'uP be more theoretical than real; and pro-
VnvarenmPs your intourist guide. Rus- their grievances, waited' their turn f6r . duction is boosted- mercilessly without +
much attention to expense..
Today,.-however, for the first ' time
some of the technical journals of Ads- f
,
y
even
is no way of confirming their truth.- UCH CHEIOVIAN moments -still sian industry discuss progress in terms
Wiser, men than I am accept them S aboundin Russia, and it Is a moat of practical economics. A- vocal body
as generally accurate , and vigorously paint how much of the national oddity of opinion, observing the still dismal
propagate .the vision of the new, kind- stems from the queerer tenets, of com- 1 state of agriculture, believes that a new
her, irresistible..Soviet Union that so munism and how much is' just plain infusion of plain private enterprise is
dominated my own thinking when I Russianness. The pall of' uniformity necessaryto vivify it.
first flew in to ,Moscow. To fools, may have descended upon the political . In Moscow, everyone talks 'about
though, is reserved the privilege of expression of the Russians,' making speculation in -dachas and the visitor
.1 i
rushing in, and after a couple of weeks them either numb or intolerable, but can scarcely evade the ?commercial. in-
in Russia. I will 'be bold 'and brash. in other affairs they 'remain stanchly stints of the touts, who buttonhole
I do not believe all the Russians say. individual still. you repeatedly with bids for your
I sniff at their statistics. There seems The. myth of the nameless, faceless,. -currency, your boots, your latest Perry
to me aometh4ig illusory, deceptive, mindless Russian multitude is as out= ComQ or your copy of~the New Yorker.
mislea4ifig in t4 e air of Russia, today, dated as the grim Stalinist thirties An Inherited Passion
something that niggles at my intustioils ",,hat engendered it. The Russians re-.: NDEED their passion for things
and sharpens my skepticism; main a quirky people, a volatile, 'gen- ,
Do .,,,you know that momentary, erous, touched-to-the-quick people-not' Western '-is itself a symptom of
stfril','hush that overcomes the dlri- glamorously romantic, like the. Poles, enbourgoisement. ' The old Russianner titble when some not very bright !or dogged like the Dutch, or compla- novels are. full of gentlemanly
meatier of the family Is having his cent like the Swedes,;liut plain, stocky, xenophiles talking French`in the house,,
leg pulled? Well, it feels to me a little heart-ruled,, touched. faintly with the' laying out their gardens in the English
likq t WL. brush' of the Orient?;),i.lce the weird, manner, addicts of German thorough-
.3.4 fretted skyscrapers, th&t stand sentinel tress or Pall Mall reticence. Today this
eutisnental Judge over their. capital' tendency Is Inherited by the classless
i T f A This survival of traditional traits, generation of young men that has been
vis
sian statistics are often based upon i release.'
different premises : from 'ours; but dk
there Plain -Riissilless
stem is, the same
if the s
0\E MORNING n Moscow,
e - created by the Revolution - not the
a divorce court and watched-, a this r e s i l i e n c e of Russianness, has. (first generation of Communist man,
hatchet-feed, bespectacled -woman dis- .helped to cherish the hope that Russia but the second, now in its roaring
peusuu .e aft justice, wearing a blue is developing into' a different kind of
: twenties.
dress wilb a white collar, like a school jorganism, something' less, doctrinaire Amon
intelli
ent youn
Russians as
g
g
g
, matron,--.$he was assisted by a mouse-rand rigid, more liberal, more' fiber- even the casual traveler will discover,
alike laliy on her right, and a diffident,, tarian, nearer the values and ideals'of there is an almost fanatical hunger for
man in a -jerkin on her left, and she r Western democracy. ' - ' the art, thought, literature and customs
fairly rattled through . the marriages, -' As living standards rise, ,so ;the of the West.. 'A young man in Kiev
Isending couple after couple in cheerful, argument runs, as education 4_~readsF told me-that he, had made\a:.three-day
dissolution into the -hall. ? t as the citizenry becomes 'less, tjater-' visit to Minsk solely because-a friend
11 When the court recessed, this fdr?f minedly proletarian, as the oad `,tlass?a of his there had acquired an Agatha
4midable jurist invited me into tixs` envies wither, as Russia ' grrWS Christie novel but would allow it to be
judges' room and asked me what ques, stronger, more coil ,6nt;'less raked read only within the four walls,of his
itions I had in mind about the prose., by complexes and' sn'picfbns, so 'the own house.
idure of, her court. I racked my brains; Soviet Union will become more ?' like And it is of course these new men, .
!to think of one-it had been, in fact, other nation's. The universal pro'fit ;these bright, personable, intelligent,
the most self-explanatory judicial proc-'.motive will wiggle its ?leaming head, im,nervio'as neonle. who offer the ex-
Her reaction 'Was instant and dis- menu. The. new resf3eetabillty of refs- i 'P he- New Calitstieism
concerting. She, burst into tears. Asked ',gion is one. "Only`t OTd- people go to l YOUNG Socialists in. England,
that particular question, she told me church, proclaims tie party line-- they. look back upon the 'fusty YYY
but as keen observth have noted, they ;enthusiasms of their elders - the
between snuffles, Sale aluiays burst into
tears, for her childhood as an orphan have, been old now" for nearly half a" 1iarades and the medal-ribbons, the
had hen harsh and sad and the very century. 1 ~lnd,,,a anal the
v
anxiously behind my shoulder- But. ce, w a on ut?t,hroaty accent, Lare an undeniably attractive lot-in-
failing ignominiously, I asked instead enbourgoisement. -
deed, they seem to be astonishingly
it the Comrade Judge would mind tell + . =
Need of the Mystic . like the classless generation that has
ing me the story' off her own life, this been created, by . total y different
being my first acquaintance with EVEN THE simple, stranger bean ' sl
?-female Russian -divorce_ court justices- detect some omens of this develop means, at home in England.
_ '^ti - -- ::per s LUC11- 1;111Ci UUFpe IM ii aL111L UL
ouse and the jerkin man waited , upon the process cal J4 the Foreign values in Communist Russia.\ They
Ser
i ith f d b
'memory was still a torment to her, - -,?~re you a Unristlan?" 1 once asked
my driver as we pushed our chauvinism, the party formalities- i
{ 'so many long years. ago, her beloved waj into with an air of fond dismissal. "I hate
dead, and she, just a-a packed church. "Not now I'm not;" all uniforms said an Aeroflot officer
?rr parents dead
,
, waif ... "Stop! Stopl" cried my inter- he answered seriously, "but maybe when I congratulated him upon the
Even
hastily burrowing into her hand-;will be when I'm older?" Even the. ~
t .make fora handkerchief. "Stop! You'l 'bizarre ; idolization of ,Lenin is a kind splendor of his greatcoat. "There's
.make me cry_, too'." lot return to normal, in that it recog? something 8-6--so middle-aged about
"- __ them!" ~J,
i
' n
zesthe need of ordinal f
.ry peopeor
some, element of the mystic in their.
, livaa
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 A
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In Russia, you can still hardly escape
the ambitious formalists-plump young
officials In prosperous suits, ? iiouting
the party line. ("But, Mr. Morris, what
a strange opinion to express. Don't
you realize that Mr. Mbiotov was in-
volved in the anti-Party plot?") But it
is even harder to miss the,invigorating
causticism of these blossoming fry e- i,
thinkers.
I hope it all. corime?' true. ' I hope
there is evolving a - te' ly benevolent
Russia, a mighty force for good in the
world, freed of its old complexes and
inhibitions., I hope ti pundits are
right, and with all f I wish the.
.Russians well.
But to be hones' *itl4 You, I have
'my doubts. I felt all tod"strongly the
haze of uncertainty. that hangs above
the Russian scene,-the sense of hidden
movelrients and unsuspected motives,
the fog and queerness of it all. I went
to Russia an ignorant, ill-read stranger,
and ignorant, bewildere$;' halt-con-
vinced, irrevoeaalyyialien I remain:
World Copyright ~II be er60. the Guardian,
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/03/21 : CIA-RDP80MO1009AO01502620014-9