Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

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.