Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

them enjoy the immunity and complete freedom of travel afforded by U.N. passports.

If a Red spy wants aerial color photographs at low altitude of our Air Defense

installation just south of Kansas City-in America’s heartland-until recently he

could hire a pilot and a plane at the Kansas City airport for about $25 an hour and

snap pictures to his heart’s content without taking any of the risks of being hanged

or shot down that Francis Powers took for us. If Mr. Eisenhower had failed to obtain

by any possible means the military intelligence that the U.S.S.R. gets so easily and

cheaply about us, he would have been derelict in his duty.

So, if you hear anyone whining about how “shameful” the U-2 flights were,

take his lollipop away and spank him with it.

PRAVDA: It took the fat boy with the bad manners five days to decide

just what sort of “pravda” to feed his people. The situation must have been acutely

embarrassing for him, much more so than it was to us, because for four years he had

been totally unable to stop the flights, despite his boasts and missile brandishing,

despite the fact that every flight was certainly observed in Soviet radar screens.

K. could keep quiet, in which case there was little chance that the Free

World news services would ever learn about it, and no chance that the Russian people

would ever find out. Our Central Intelligence Agency would know that a

reconnaissance plane was missing, but it would not have advertised a top secret.

K. could refurbish the incident, give it a new paint job and peddle it

as propaganda.

Or K. could tell the simple truth. This alternative is

mentioned simply to keep the record technically complete, as the simple truth is a

tactic not contemplated under Marxism-Leninism doctrines. Here we have the essential

distinction between truth and pravda.

Truth, to the West, consists of all the facts without distortion.

Pravda is that which serves the World Communist Revolution. Pravda can be a

mixture of fact and falsehood, or a flat-footed, brassbound, outright lie. In rare

cases and by sheer coincidence, pravda may happen to match the facts. I do not

actually know of such a case but it seems statistically likely that such matching

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must have taken place a few times in the past 43 years.

This comparison is not mere cynicism. I appeal to the authority of V. I.

Lenin himself, in his tactics of revolution. By the doctrines of dialectical

materialism, simple truth as we know it is abolished as a concept. It can have no

existence of its own separate from the needs and purposes of the Communist Party and

the World Revolution. Our ingrained habit of believing that the other fellow must be

telling the truth at least most of the time is perhaps our greatest weakness in

dealing with the Kremlin.

Apparently K. and his cohorts encountered much trouble in deciding just what

the pravda should be about the U-2. They spent almost a week making up their minds.

I was in Moscow at the time and there was no indication of any sort that anything

unusual had happened on May 1. Russians continued to treat us American visitors with

their customary almost saccharine politeness and the daily paper (I hesitate to call

it a newspaper) known as Pravda hinted not of U2’s. This situation continued for

several days thereafter. I was not dependent on an Intourist guide-interpreter in

reaching this impression as my wife reads, writes, understands and fluently speaks

Russian. She’s not of Russian descent. She learned it at a University of Colorado

Extension night school, plus a private tutor and a lot of hard work.

After May Day, we went on out to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan, north of India and

a very short distance from the Red China border, about 2,000 miles beyond Moscow.

Be-Kind-To-Americans Week continued. Three Americans, the only travelers in that

remote part of Asia, received the undivided attention of the Alma Ata Director of

Intourist, two school teachers (pulled off their teaching jobs to act as guides),

two chauffeurs, and most of the attention of the hotel staff. We had but to express