myself into a Soviet slave labor camp.
I began to listen for that knock on the door, the one you read about in
Darkness at Noon, the knock that means your next address may be Vorkuta or
Karaganda. The address doesn’t matter. You are never, never going to receive mail.
My fears were not groundless. I’d read Philip Wylie’s The Innocent
Ambassadors and I knew what had happened to his brother. I vividly recalled
Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom.
The knock never came because the political climate engendered by the new
pravda was “more-in-sorrowthan-in-anger.” The next morning, May 6, we were again
ordered to report to the Director’s office. We had decided to brazen it out. We
refused to go. Presently, we were allowed to catch a plane for Tashkent.
Pravda lasted 12 days, until K. shattered the Summit and revealed a new
pravda.
We arrived in Leningrad just as the news reached there that the Summit had
failed and that President Eisenhower had cancelled his proposed trip to the USSR and
that Khrushchev was returning to Moscow via East Berlin.
The climate suddenly turned very chilly.
A month earlier, in Moscow, we had been picked up by two Russians the very
first time we went out on the street. One was a technical translator; the other, a
lady, was a museum curator. They were very friendly and stayed with us almost three
hours, asking ques
tions about the U.S. and inviting questions about the Soviet Union. This happened to
us daily thereafter; we were always making casual acquaintance with Soviet citizens,
on the Street, in parks, in restaurants, during intermissions at the theatre,
everywhere. They were always curious about America, very friendly and extremely
polite. This attitude on the part of individual Soviet citizens toward individual
Americans continued throughout the first pravda, ending May 6. It lessened slightly
during the “more-in-sorrow” second pravda.
K’s Paris news conference set up a new pravda. From the time we reached
Leningrad until we left for Helsinki, Finland, not one Soviet citizen other than
Intourist employees-who had to deal with us professionally-spoke to us under any
circumstances. Not one.
In dealing with Intourist it is always difficult to tell whether one’s
frustrations arise from horrendous red tape or from intentional obstructionism. In
Leningrad it at once became clear that Intourist now just did not want to give
service. Even the porter who took up our bags made trouble.
Our first afternoon we were scheduled to visit the Hermitage, one of the
world’s great art museums. The tour had been set with Intourist for that particular
afternoon before we left the States.
At the appointed time our guide (you have to have one) had not arranged for
a car. After awhile it whisked up and the guide said, “Now we will visit the
stadium.”
We said that we wanted to visit the Hermitage, as scheduled. The guide told
us that the Hermitage was closed. We asked to be taken to another museum (Leningrad
has many). We explained that we were not interested in seeing another stadium.
We visited the stadium.
That is all Intourist permitted us to see that afternoon.
When we got back to the hotel we found someone in our room, as always in
Leningrad. Since maid service in Intourist hotels varies from non-existent to very
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ubiquitous we did not at once conclude that we were being intentionally
inconvenienced. But one afternoon we found six men in our room, busy tearing out all
the pipes and the question of intent became academic. A hotel room with its plumbing
torn up and its floor littered with pipes and bits of wood and plaster is only
slightly better than no hotel room at all.
We went to the ballet once in Leningrad. Intermissions are very long in
Soviet theatres, about half an hour, and on earlier occasions these had been our
most fruitful opportunity for meeting Russians.
Not now, not after K’s Paris pravda. No one spoke to us. No Russian would
even meet our eyes as we strolled past. The only personal attention we received that
evening at the ballet was an unmistakably intentional elbow jab in the ribs from a
Russian major in uniform. Be-Kind-To-Americans Week had adjourned, sine die.