A Russian Journal (16 page)

We visited the mill where they grind the grain for their bread, and went to the office where the records of the farm are kept.

On the edge of the village they were building a brickworks, for it is their idea to have every house of brick, and every roof of tile, for the fire hazard of the thatch has impressed them very deeply. They are glad that they have peat and clay to make the bricks on the grounds. And when their village is rebuilt, they said, they would sell bricks to the neighboring farms. The brickworks will be done before the winter, and when they cannot work on the land they will make bricks. Piles of peat are under roof now for burning.

At noon we stopped in to see a family at lunch: mother, and father, and two children. They had a great bowl of vegetable and meat soup in the middle of the table, and each member of the family had a wooden spoon which he dipped into the central bowl. And they had a large bowl of sliced tomatoes, and a big flat loaf of bread, and a pitcher of milk. These people seemed to be eating very well, and we could tell what the process of good eating was by looking at the leather belts around the tunics of the men, for the lines of other years were on the belts, and now the belts were extended and the old lines were back two, three, and four inches, where the buckle had made its mark in the past.

Mamuchka must have cleared away the breakfast dishes and started immediately to cook again. By four-thirty in the afternoon she had prepared a banquet. This was her little state dinner. She was very proud of her ability, and the village was very proud of her, which is probably one of the reasons she was our hostess. At this dinner the leaders of the village were her guests. There were present at the table the president of the farm, the agricultural expert, called
agronome,
and his wife, a pretty woman, who was the teacher and dramatic coach, the manager of the farm, the male schoolteacher, the father and mother of course, and us. And if we had thought the other meals were huge, this one outdid them all. There was a great carafe of vodka on the table, and we were very tired of vodka, and our stomachs were very weak. We began with black bread, pickles, tomatoes, and vodka, and then there was Ukrainian borscht with sour cream, and a huge stew of meat, cooked in some way so that the spices had gone into the potatoes themselves. And there were little cakes, and honey, and milk. When a plate became only half empty, Mamuchka filled it up again. She nearly fed us to death.

Then the president of the farm made a little speech of welcome, and we made a little speech of thanks. And then they asked if we would mind answering a few questions, because we were the first Americans who had ever come to that farm, and they had a great curiosity about our country. They would like to know some

things about it. We told them that America was a huge country, and we knew only a little of it, and possibly many of the questions we wouldn't know the answers to, but we would try. Then the agricultural expert asked us about farming. What crops are grown, and where are they grown? And whether there are experiments with seeds, and do we have stations where experiments are carried on? And are there agricultural schools? He said that every collective farm in the Soviet Union has fields set aside for experiments with soils and seeds, and did we have things like that? And he asked whether the government helped farmers with money and with advice. This question had been asked before, and it was always a little surprising to them when we told of the work our government does with agriculture, not only our federal government, but our state governments. Then the farm manager asked how much land it took to support a family in America, and what its income was in relation to food, and medicine, and clothing; and what equipment there would be likely to be on an American farm, what machinery, and what stock. And he asked what care is being taken of our veterans.

Then the schoolteacher asked us about our government. He wanted to know about the Supreme Court, and how the President is elected, and how the Congress is elected. He asked whether the President has the power to lead the country into war, and what power has the State Department, and how close is the government to the people.

We answered that we did not think the President has very great power, but he may have an oblique power, we didn't know. And they wanted to know what kind of a man Truman is, and we didn't know that. And our host spoke of Roosevelt. He said he was greatly loved by the people of Russia, and trusted, and he said that his death was like the death of a father.

And he asked, "Did you know him? Did you ever meet him?"

And I said, "Yes."

And he said, "Tell about it, how did he speak, and what was his manner? Could you tell some little stories about him that we can understand?"

Then the
agronome
asked about atomic power, not as a bomb, but if anything constructive would be done with nuclear fission in America.

And we said, "We don't know. We think so. We think already many things are being done and many experiments are being made for the use of this power, and also for the use of by-products of fission for medical research. We know that this new thing could change the world if it were properly used, and also it could change the world if it were improperly used."

Then the people around the table spoke of the future of their farm. In a year or two it would be electrified and mechanized. They are very proud of this farm. Soon, they said, the new tractors would begin to come in, and before very long the people of the village would be well fed and well housed, and then the people would not have to work so dreadfully hard. "Come back in a year," they said, "and see how we have progressed. We will be starting to build brick houses, and our club will be of brick, and our roofs will be of tile, and life will not be so hard."

Our driver had been sleeping almost solidly ever since we had arrived. He was a wonderful man with sleep. Now we awakened him, and he got his car running on about four cylinders out of eight.

We said our good-bys. The manager of the farm and the
agronome
rode with us to the crossroads to see us off. The manager asked us to send some of the pictures we had taken of the farm, for they would like to put them up in the club, and this we will do.

On the way in to Kiev we went to sleep in the back of the car, from a combination of weariness and overeating. And we do not know how many times the driver stopped for water, or how many times his car broke down. We rolled out of the car and into bed in Kiev, and slept for about twelve hours.

The next morning we went to the river to see the barges bringing produce from the north and south for the markets at Kiev. There were barges of firewood, and little boats piled high with hay. Great loads of tomatoes, and cucumbers, and cabbages moved on the river and landed at the feet of the city. These were the products of the collective farms, brought in to be sold in the open market. We followed the produce up the cliff to the marketplace, where the sellers sat in long lines with their produce in front of them, old people and children, for the young people were working in the harvest fields.

From the market we went to a gigantic bakery, where the black bread is baked for the whole city. The manager put white coats on us before we could enter. Part of the bakery is in ruins and is being rebuilt and enlarged. The manager told us that while the city was under siege the bakery had continued to work, and even while bombs were falling on the buildings the ovens had turned out bread.

There were mountains of bread. It was a completely mechanized bakery, with mixers, kneaders, baking ovens all automatic. The great chains of black bread come through the oven and drop off and are piled on the carts to go out to the city. I The people were very proud of this bakery, and the manager asked us whether in America we had any such wonderful things. And here we found again something that we had found so often, that Russian people truly believe they invented these things. They love automatic machinery, and it is their dream to be completely mechanized in practically all their techniques. To them mechanization means

ease and comfort, and plenty of food, and a general richness. They love machines as much as Americans do, and a new automobile will draw a crowd to stand around and gaze at it almost with reverence.

In the afternoon I was interviewed for a Ukrainian literary magazine. It was a very long and painful experience. The editor, a sharp-faced alert little man, asked questions that were two paragraphs long. They were translated, and by the time I understood the last part I had forgotten the first part. I answered them as well as I could. This would be translated to the editor, and then the whole thing written down. The questions were highly complicated and highly literary. And when I answered a question, I wasn't at all sure that the translation was getting over. There were two problems. One was my complete difference of background from the inter-viewer, and the second was my English, probably quite colloquial, which did not register very clearly with the translator who had been trained in academic English. To make sure that I was not misquoted by accident, I asked to have the translation of the Russian back into English. I was right, the answers I was supposed to have given did not very closely approximate what I had said. This was not done on purpose; it was not even the difficulty of trying to communicate from one language to another. It was more than language. It was translation from one kind of thinking to another. They were very pleasant and honest people, but we just could not communicate closely. And this was my last interview; I never tried it again. And when in Moscow I was asked for an interview, I suggested that the questions be given to me in writing, that I be given a chance to think them over, to answer them in English, and to check on the translation. And since this was not done, I was not interviewed again.

Wherever we went, the questions asked us had a certain likeness, and we gradually discovered that the questions all grew from a single source. The intellectuals of the Ukraine based their questions, both political and literary, on articles they had read in
Pravda.
And after a while we began to anticipate the questions before they were asked, for we knew the articles on which they were based almost by heart.

There was one literary question which came up on all occasions. We even knew when to expect it, for our questioner's eyes sharpened, and he leaned forward in his chair and inspected us closely. We knew we were going to be asked how we liked Simonov's play
The Russian Qu
estion.

Simonov is probably the most popular writer in the Soviet Union at the present time. Recently he came to America for a while, and on his return to Russia he wrote this play. It is probably the most performed drama of the time. It opened simultaneously in over three hundred theaters in the Soviet Union. Mr. Simonov's play is about American journalism, and it is necessary to set down a short synopsis of it. It is cast partly in New York, and partly in a place that resembles Long Island. In New York its set is approximately Bleeck's restaurant, near the
Herald Tribune
building. And the play is roughly this:

An American correspondent who, years before, had been to Russia and had written a favorable book about Russia, is employed by a newspaper tycoon, a capitalist, a hard, crude, overpowering, overbearing newspaper baron, a man of no principles and no virtues. The tycoon, for purposes of winning an election, wants to prove through his newspapers that the Russians are going to fight the Americans. He employs the correspondent to go to Russia, and to come back and report that the Russians want to go to war with America. The tycoon offers him an immense amount of money, thirty thousand dollars to be exact, and complete security for the future if the correspondent will do this. Now this newspaperman, who is broke, wants to marry a certain girl and wants to have a little country place in Long Island. He undertakes the job. He goes to Russia, and he finds that the Russians do not want to go to war with the Americans. He comes back and secretly writes his book, and writes it exactly opposite from what the tycoon wants.

Meanwhile, on his advance of money, he has bought the house on Long Island in the country, he has married the girl, and some little security is on the way. When his book is turned in, the tycoon not only kills the book, but makes it impossible for the correspondent to publish it anyplace else. And such is the power of this newspaper baron that the correspondent cannot ever get a job again, and can't have his book or his future writing published. He loses his house in the country; his wife, who has wanted security, leaves him. At this time his best friend, for a reason which is not dramatically exposed, is killed in an altitude flight in a defective airplane. Our correspondent is left broke and unhappy, but with the sense that he has told the truth, and that that is the best thing to do.

This roughly is the play
The Russian Question
about which we were asked so often. And we usually answered in this way: 1) It is not a good play, in any language; 2) The actors do not talk like Americans, and within our knowledge do not act like Americans; 3) While there are some bad publishers in America, they have nowhere near the power that is indicated in this play; 4) No book publisher in America takes orders from anyone, the proof being that Mr. Simonov's own books are printed in America; and last, we wish a good play could be written about American journalism, but this is not it. This play, far from adding to Russian understanding of America and Americans, will probably have an opposite effect.

We were asked about the play so often that after a while we a synopsis of a play which we called "The American Question." We began reading it to our questioners. In our play, Mr. Simonov is commissioned by
Pravda
to come to America and to write a series of articles proving that America is a Western degenerate democracy. Mr. Simonov comes to America, and he finds that America is not only not degenerate, but is not