Foreign News: Traveler's Tale

The few Americans in Soviet Russia are not permitted to travel about much. One who took a long trip recently wrote to his friends in the U.S. a tale indicating that the people there are still more Russian than Soviet. Excerpts:

Comrades of the Cucumber. The best and the worst of the famous Russian soul seems to come out on trains. The camaraderie is overwhelming; the crudity unbelievable. At every stop someone got off to fill my canteen with vodka, which was then redistributed to all hands. We collected an accordionist, a Hero of the Soviet Union, a discharged sailor and enough other people to make movement in our compartment almost impossible.

We shared our food and our languages and our songs. The Hero of the Soviet Union staggered down a succession of station platforms demanding cucumbers for his American comrade, and he eventually got them too, heaven only knows how. The railroad man sang the bass part to the entire Easter Mass in church Slavonic, and was half way through it a second time before he fell blissfully asleep. And then there was the offensive individual from the other end of the car, who apparently felt that he was not getting his just share of attention and fired two shots from a pistol through the door of the compartment into the corridor. He was removed at the next stop.

No one was killed, but the hangovers next morning were sickening.

Archangel was having a flood and the train had to stop at a nearby village, where we transferred to a river steamer. There was a mile and a half of deep mud between the station and the dock, with no transportation. There were porters at the station, but they knew their own value and the prices they were asking were outrageous. To show brotherhood, my baggage was distributed by the discharged sailor, who took the heaviest piece himself along with all his own; and the trek began. It was cold and muddy and miserable, but the psychological atmosphere was warm and stimulating.

Nothing of the sort, I am sure, has ever happened to a Russian in America. But neither have the circumstances which would have made it necessary.

Archangel itself is a good old-fashioned Western-frontier town in spite of its 300 years. You have only to look down the nearest side street to see a first-class fight at any hour of the day or night. Men, women & children are likely to relieve themselves on any street—except the main street. The streets and roads are so bad that when anyone travels any distance in and around Archangel in a car, it is news and is reported as such. Pravda Severa, published in Archangel, carried an item about a doughty citizen who drove for six versts (four miles) with his entire family to attend a local celebration. He has my deepest respect.