AN AMBASSADOR’S WIFE IN MOSCOW

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27368, 5 June 1954, Page 3

AN AMBASSADOR’S WIFE IN MOSCOW

tmarked Moscow. By Lydia Kirk. Gerald Duckworth. 240 pp.

Lydia Kirk, wife of-the United States Ambassador to Russia from 1949 to 1952, is well qualified to give a Westerner’s impressions of life in Moscow; she tells of her experiences in a vivid, astute style in a series of letters home. Allowing for a tinge of prejudice that is only to be expected from the pen of an American admiral’s wife who must submit to niggling inconveniences imposed by Soviet officials, Mrs Kirk gives an eye-opening picture of. what goes on behind the Iron Curtain—as far as foreign eyes are allowed to see. Mrs Kirk’s chief disappointment is that it was impossible for her to make personal contacts with the Russian people. She wanted to see how the women lived and to exchange ideas with them, but had to be content with making observations from the outer ring of a closed community. After two-and-a-half years of alert watchfulness the author comes to this conclusion: the Soviet’s claim that its country is the greatest in the world and that its people are the happiest and best cared for in the world is just so muqh hocus-pocus. “It’s the hypocrisy and cynicism of the whole business that revolts me,” she writes. The Muscovites she describes as a dun-coloured lot who look their best in the winter when they have a little red in their cheeks, whipped up by the bitter cold. The Russians are a consistently sallow race—their skin, their hair, and their eyes are all of a dull hue—which is the reason she gives for their craving for brilliance and gaudy show in their churches and theatres. With a mother’s interest in child welfare, Mrs Kirk tried to see all she could of the younger generation. Small children were affectionately cared for anu looked happy and unconcerned, judging from the way they played in the parks. But from the age of 12 or 13 the faces of both boys and girls become one with the-Russian pattern 6i sodden, accepted misery and a look of fear in their eyes when startled.

Russian women appeared to her to be little more than chattels. They cleaned the streets —for men could not be spared for this work. Wearing thin cotton skirts, wadded hip-length cotton coats and felt boots, women were out chipping ice off the streets from 5 a.m. with the thermometer at from 12 to 20 below zero. The job of collecting garbage and heaving it on to trucks was also done by women. Up to 1952, clothes were fabulously expensive in Moscow, and for the average the purchase of an overcoat was as serious an investment as the buying of a car for Americans of middle income groups. A pair of better-grade leather-bound felt boots, worn by men and women, cost what amounted to a month’s salary for a stenographer or clerk. Women’s clothes were consistently dateless and shapeless, Mrs Kirk says. Recent cable news suggests, however, that the Russian women are now making an allout effort to bring a bit of style and cut to their wardrobes. (This could mean the awakening of those in control to the tremendous boost that attractive clothes give to a woman’s morale.)

Though Mrs Kirk did not have the opportunity of seeing inside a Russian worker’s kitchen, she discovered that very few homes had ovens and that cooking was done on top of a stove. For this only two or three iron or tin pots were used; primitive, indeed, when compared with American laboursaving utensils. As flour was available only two or three times a year, bread was bought from government bakeries, she says. Meal could be had for making kasha or porridge, and this, along with bread ana soup, was the Russian worker’s staple diet The average worker was always given one meal a day on the job; but again this repast was bread and soup, quantities varying according to whether the work was manual or otherwise.

With a complete lack of understanding about upkeep and maintenance of houses, the Russians let things go until repairs assumed such proportions that it would seem cheaper to tear down buildings and start afresh, she observes. In a slapdash effort to improve the appearance of their homes they

throw a few shovels of gravel into holes, put on a little plaster here and there, then splatter some water paint on the walls, usually yellow ochre or deep blue, and t’xe job is done. A month later it looks as bad as-before, and only snow can hide the squalor of the courtyards. The essential religiousness of the Russian people impressed the author deeply. But it was Obvious that the Government had taken advantage of the spiritual side to the Russian character to channel it towards the cult of Lenin, the party, she remarks. Services were held several times a week in the big cathedral of Moscow. There was a tremendous show of. gold and glitter, ikons placed over ikons, immense chandeliers and huge candlesticks giving light everywhere. “Perhaps it is partly the warmth and the light that attract the people,” she says, “especially those who cannot pay for other glimpses of beauty.”

A complete levelling of art in all its forms prevailed in the Soviet regime. It was done by political dictum, which insisted that everything be within the comprehension of the masses. But it imposed on those masses vulgarity of taste and mediocrity of expression. “Not even honest vulgarity, but a tawdry cracker-box prettiness that smells as bad as their synthetic perfumes.” Of the ballet, which she confessed to enjoying, Mrs Kirk writes little beyond a cynical titbit about a leading ballerina and the fact that ballet was her chief entertainment. Here was her chance to show some enthusiasm. for something in Russia, but her restraint indicates a reluctance to really praise anything controlled by the Soviet. Ballet lovers throughout the world would have welcomed any detailed comment she had to make about contemporary Russian ballet, an art Western countries were sorry to lose. She does mention, however, the amazing spectacle of the Dean of Canterbury attending the ballet wearing the Red Star on his coat, along with his crucifix, and a Russian blonde on each arm. The Dean, it seems, was visiting Moscow as a British delegate to a peace conference in 1949.

A performance she saw of the Russian opera, “Boris Goudonov,” Mrs Kirk describes as magnificent, but even this laudatory remark seemed somewhat grudgingly given. Perhaps the depressing atmosphere of mistrust and hatred and the irksome business of being shadowed when out on the streets represses any tendency in a Westerner to give warm, spontaneous praise. Unforgettably grim and frustrating in all its aspects, the assignment to Moscow is one that-few ( foreign diplomats or their wives would want to repeal, it seems, least of all Lydia