Russia Is No Riddle

RUSSIA IS NO RIDDLE CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION ix CHAPTER ONE TO MOSCOW WITH CHURCHILL i CHAPTER Tw6 RETURN TRIP 8 CHAPTER THREE A RUSSIAN IN ALGIERS 17 CHAPTER FOUR AMERICANS AND POLES IN PERSIA WILLKIE AND AFTER 26 CHAPTER FIVE THROUGH RUSSIAS SIDE DOOR 40 CHAPTER Six MOSCOW LIFE 58 CHAPTER SEVEN THE CROSS AND THE SICKLE AND HAMMER 74 CHAPTER EIGHT ROMANCE REVIVES 82 CHAPTER NINE THE VOLKOVS A STORY OF FAILURE AND SUCCESS 96 CHAPTER NAZI CKIM AND PUNISHMENT no CHAPTER ELEVEN DIALOGUE ON A TRAIN 130 CHAPTER TWELVE CHRISTMAS IN MOSCOW 143 CHAPTER THIRTEEN TEHERAN AND AFTERMATH 153 CHAPTER FOURTEEN DEAD MEN TELL A TALE 162 CHAPTER FIFTEEN SOVIET PARLIAMENT 172 CHAPTER SIXTEEN LENINGRAD 181 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MOLOTOV THROWS A PARTY 195 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE FINNS MISS THE BUS 202 CHAPTER NINETEEN THE WHITE EAGLE FLIES AGAIN 209 CHAPTER TWENTY ROMANIAN PREVIEW 225 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE RUSSIA WANTS GOOD NEIGHBORS 238 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO NAZISM DELENDA EST 245 Vll t PAGE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE ITALIANS STAGE A COMEBACK 253 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR WAR IN EASTERN ASIA 257 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE AMERICAN AIR BASES 263 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX BMI SCOOPS OWI 276 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN RUSSIA AND AMERICA 286 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT FRIENDSHIP OR ELSE 294 INTRODUCTION I j rst went to the Soviet Union early in 1934 to study first-hand what was commonly referred to in liberal-progressive circles in those days as the Russian Experiment. I had planned to remain for a year at the most, but force of circumstance in the form of marriage intervened and I stayed on for more than five years until June, 1939, when the Soviet Government granted exit visas to my wife and our son, who had arrived while we were waiting. In a plannedsociety our marriage had not been according to any plan either the Soviet Five-Year Plan, my personal plans, my wifes plans, or the plans of the trade union committee at the foreign language publishing house where both of us were working. The trade union committee had simply given my wife as her social assignment the task of cheering up a somewhat lost and aloof young American. For the purpose they had staked her to almost unlimited movie tickets and to occasional seats at the theater. Too late did the trade union committee call my wife in and tell her she was rather overdoing it. As the years passed, my preconceptions about the Soviet Union born in the slough of the great depression back home were revised in the light of experience. But together with a knowledge of the Russian language and Russian culture, I acquired through daily contact and observation, a lasting admiration and sympathy for the Russian people. This experience is not peculiar to myself. It has been that of practically every American who has lived for any length of time in Russia, regardless of his politics. Russians who come to the United States acquire much the same feeling toward Americans. It is indeed remarkable how readily average Americans and Russians find a common ground. The most striking evidence I saw of this was at the American airbases in the Ukraine, where G. I. ix x Introduction Joes and Russian Vanyas and Vasyas worked together servicing the heavy bombers. Even the combat crews who flew in from Italy and took over the neighboring town declared that they felt more at home here on Soviet soil that the people seemed more like home folks than anywhere else they had been. Again, if I may be permitted oncemore to cite my own family, I never cease to marvel at the swiftness of my own wifes Amer icanization. It is a far cry from the Cossack collective farm in the Urals, where she taught school, to the campus of Wellesley College where she is studying today. Yet she has taken the transition in stride, rearing two children and running a household at the same time. Had our military experts known my wife, or any of the mil lions of men and women like her, they would never have gone off the deep end by predicting the Nazis would capture Moscow in a few weeks...