Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

headquarters in Moskva, a large office building; I did not meet the General

Secretary. I assume that he lived at least as well as his stooge in Latvia.

How many levels are there between this minor boss in Riga and the members of

the Praesidium? How well does Khrushchev-excuse me; Brezhnev-live? I shan’t guess.

In the USSR it was not politic (risky) to ask the two key questions that I

always asked in other countries, and seeing slums was forbidden. Twice we saw slums

by accident, were hurried on past-primitive log cabins just outside Moskva, 1st

century mud huts in Alma Ata that were concealed by screening but from one elevation

we could see over the screening. . . until we were seen and cautioned not to stop

there and not to take pictures.

Since we couldn’t ask our standard comparison questions, Mrs. Heinlein

devised some “innocent” ones, and I concentrated on certain signs; both of us were

sizing up population. At that time the USSR claimed a population of 225,000,000 and

claimed a population for Moskva of 5,000,000 +. (Today, twenty years later, they

claim almost 300,000,000 and over 7,000,000.)

For many days we prowled Moskva-by car, by taxi when we did not want

Intourist with us, by subway, by bus, and on foot. In the meantime Mrs. Heinlein, in

her fluent Russian, got acquainted with many people-Intourist guides, drivers,

people who picked us up on the streets, chambermaids, anyone. The Russians are

delightful people, always happy to talk with visitors, in English if they know it

(and many do), in Russian if they do not.

Let me add that, if it suited her, Ginny could charm pictures off a wall.

She was able to ask personal questions (but ones people anywhere usually are

pleased to answer) by freely answering questions about us and showing warm interest

in that person-not faked; she is a warm person.

But, buried in chitchat, she always learned these things:

How old are you?

Are you married?

How many children do you have?

How many brothers and sisters do you have? What ages?

How many nieces and nephews do you have?

Put baldly, that sounds as offensive as a quiz by a Kinsey reporter. But it

was not put baldly-e.g., “Oh, how lucky you are! Gospodin Heinlein and I didn’t even

meet until the Great Patriotic War. . . and we have no children although we wanted

them. But we have lots of nieces and nephews.” Etc., etc. She often told more than

she got but she accumulated, painlessly, the data she wanted, often without asking

questions.

One day we were seated on a park bench, back of the Kremlin and facing the

Moskva river, with no one near us- a good spot to talk; a directional mike would

have to be clear across the river as long as we kept our backs to the Kremlin.

I said, “How big does that guide book say this city is?”

“Over five million.”

“Hmmph! Look at that river. Look at the traffic on it.” (One lonely scow-)

“Remember the Rhine?” We had taken a steamer up the Rhine three years earlier; the

traffic was so dense the river had traffic lights on it, just like the Panama Canal.

“Ginny, this dump isn’t anything like five million. More the size of Copenhagen, if

that. Pittsburgh. New Orleans. San Francisco, possibly.” (These are all cities I

know well, on foot and by every form of transportation. In 1960 all of them were in

the 600,000-800,000 range.) “Yet they are trying to tell us that this dump is bigger

than Philadelphia, bigger than Los Angeles, bigger than Chicago. Nonsense.”

(I have lived in all three cities. A big city feels big, be it Yokohama or

New York.) “Three quarters of a million, not five million.”

“I know,” she agreed.

“Huh?”

(I think I must mention that Mrs. Heinlein is a close student of Russian

history, history of the Russian Revolution, history of the Third International or

Comintern, and so skilled in Marxist dialectical materialism that she can argue

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theory with a Russian party member and get him so mixed up that he’s biting his own

tail.)

She answered, “They claim to have finished the War with about two hundred