Foreigners Now Mix Freely With Russians

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28990, 3 September 1959, Page 22

Foreigners Now Mix Freely With Russians

IBV

VINCENT BUIST]

MOSCOW. Foreigners including Western journalists can travel more freely 'and mix with Russians more i easily now that at any time since the early days of the Soviet Revolution. They can take a jet aircraft to remote Siberian towns and share a four-bed dormitory with three Russians in a hotel. Or they can travel by long-distance train, jsharing sleeping berths with three | Russians—all without any attempt iby the authorities to isolate them :from their fellow travellers, or to | maintain an inhibiting 24-hour ‘watch over them. | On their home ground, Russians i prove to be one of the most garrulous and unself-conscious races in the world. On a long journey, their priorities for killing time seem to be talking, drinking, singing, sleeping, and playing cards. Politics do not come into it at all. They seem scarcely interested in that as a topic. This makes it relatively easy to establish direct and informal communication with a variety of Russians during a long train trip and get to know something about them. Dizzy Changes It has not always been easy to do this, especially for permanent foreign residents in Moscow who, in the main, are diplomats and journalists. If the recent relaxation signifies the beginning of a new policy towards foreigners living in the Soviet Union, this will prove to be another revolutionary change in a country which, under the electrifying influence of Mr Nitika Khrushchev, is already a little dizzy with change.

The new ease of travel in the Soviet Union does not, however, apply to Service Attaches working in Western Embassies in Moscow. They are regarded as licensed spies and accordingly watched everywhere they go. All Governments do this. Some diplomats in Moscow are equally well watched Some of the new freedom for journalists probably originates in the tourist traffic .’hich, in three years, has grown from a trickle to a flood. It is almost impossible this summer to go to airports at Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad or Tbilisi without encountering an American matron with her businessman husband trying hard to "figure-out” take-off time of the aircraft on which they are booked. In general, the complaint is not that they are over-mothered but that half the time they cannot find people who know a little English to help them on their way

If tourists can swarm all over cities in the Europeanised part of the Soviet Union, then it probably seems less vital to stand guard over a Western journalist who anyway cannot travel anywhere without express permission and ‘.he appropriat* stamp in his residence “passport.” Not so many years ago Western journalists were spoken of here in the same bneath as “economic” or “political espionage.” But this summer I have travelled to Leningrad. Kiev, Kharkov and Stalino in compartments with Russians, without any sign of official concern, All I needed was the stamp of these four towns in my Soviet residence permit. Human Qualities If official Russians now reason that they have nothing to lose and possibly something to gain by permitting a degree of "fraternisation” with foreigners living here, they are certainly right. In conversation, the average Russian immediately proves his immensely human qualities—especially if talk

centres on everyday things and shuns any mention of conflict between East and West. I remember with affection the 64-year-old Russian engineer, travelling south with some plans for a new bridge in a steel centre, who was overjoyed to meet an Englishman. He told me that he had studied English, French and German at his school in St Petersburg, before the Revolution made it Leningrad. In two years’ time, he said, he would be going on “pensia,” that is, retiring on a state pension. He then hoped to do two things which work had prevented him from doing ever since his Petersburg days. These were to learn English really well, and to take up writing. He had plenty of ideas for stories. Furthermore, he was determined, at the age of 65, to go back to school so that he could read new English books Women seem to run most trains in Russia—apart, that is, from the engine driver. Women are sleeping car attendants and waitresses : n the dining cars. They handle the linen, look after the samovar which is built into each coach, and go round with oranges and biscuits for sale. And their word is law—like a captain’s in a ship. I saw one woman, about five-foot | nothing, demolish four tough miners from Stalino who stayed up late playing cards. “Get to bed,” she told them. “It is late.” They went without a murmur. News and music is piped to each compartment on a train at intervals throughout the day. Russians like their music at full volume Mercifully, the music programme only lasts for about half an hour at any one time. On trains coming up from the Donbass mining regions, very little vodka is served. This is very different from the leave trains which run every day from Moscow to East Germany through Poland. Waitresses in leave train dining cars are noticeably more generous to the “boys in khaki” returning to East Germany after leave in the Soviet Union. Young Russian officers can handle a mixture of champagne, vodka, cognac and white wine with easy superiority. Carriages Kept Clean On Russian sleeping cars a cleaning woman comes along with a vacuum sweeper at night and in the corridor. She plugs the sweeper into a power supply in the corridor of the train. The idea is to prevent people getting unnecessarily dusty as they undress and dress. In trains, as everywhere else in Russia nowadays, the ordinary people are learning to complain freely and loudly abou‘ things they do not like. In Russian dining cars, for instance, whoever breaks a glass by accident has to pay for it on the spot. When this happened in my car, there were loud protests that the railways should pay for breakages themselves. Once, a workman in sooty overalls entered the dining car and there was an outcry from a young wife who said: “There should be a law' against people with dirty clothes eating in the dining car.” Actually, the guards on the train ate in the same car with the travelling public. During the day, many men in long distance trains don bright coloured pyjamas. Everyone leaps out on to the station platform at halts. At most stations, halts last for 15 or 20 minutes—long enough for passengers to buy eggs, berries and fried chicken from peasants who come to the station from their private plots to sell to people passing through on the trains. The peasant women even have special stalls on some platforms from which they run a private food sales business.