Through Russia, From North To South

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31042, 23 April 1966, Page 4

Through Russia, From North To South

Travels of a Capitalist Lackey. By Fred Basnett. Allen and Unwin. 224 pp.

It requires a brave and adventurous spirit to take a vintage car to the Arctic Circle by way of Scandinavia and Finland, and then to traverse Russia from north to south in order to reach Iran and Turkey. This is what Fred Basnett and Paul Redfern set out to do in an ancient Alvis-tourist model.

Paul, to whom the car belonged, devoted most of his time and attention in keeping the protesting vehicle in running order, through every kind of climatic condition, and over some appalling roads, while Fred was the dedicated recorder of their adventures. Unattached to a trade-mission, or any other recognised medium of international co-operation, the two Englishmen did complete their odyssey safely, not withstanding discomforts, delays and dangers. In Norway and Finland the couple received friendly hospitality from chance acquaintances, and were much sought after by press reporters in the former country where 200 newspapers are published, some of them with circulations of only 5000. Even in these early stages of the journey the car showed severe signs of strain which were to be accentuated after it had crossed the Russian border, and the record of the travellers’ adventures in that country explain the rather ironical note of the title. Their passports and papers were in order, but this did not prevent a vigilant watch being kept by the police or militiamen on their movements, and the impounding of their credentials for several hours at a time at various points. At a small and squalid village where Basnett imprudently tried to take a photograph of a group of inhabitants, during one of the Alvis’s major mechanical breakdowns, they were pounced upon by the police and barely escaped being

flung into gaol. Released from this peril Fred and Paul were to see the kinder face of Mother Russia in the person of a friendly truck-driver who towed them, at breakneck speed, and with no suggestion of payment 100 miles to Kalinin where the Alvis was able to receive hospital treatment. Like most English tourists in Moscow the author has no very complimentary comment to make on its architecture, food or comforts moderne. He was, however able to sell two shirts to a “stilyagi” (Russian “mod”) for a handsome price. The passionate desire to strip decadent Westerners of everything they stood up in (for suitable payments) was to be a feature of their sojourn in Russia. So too were the constant delays in providing them with the necessary permission to carry out their journey as planned. The author comments on this. “The free world has absolutely nothing to teach Russia about bureaucratic evasion. As soon as you enter an office or a ministry with the simplest request you are jarred to a halt by a massive inertia, and slowly smothered in timelessness.” As against this dilatoriness the couple were treated to an exercise in “queue-jumping on a galactic scale” by an official guide, who rushed them ahead of some hundreds of Russians to view the embalmed remains of Lenin and Stalin.

The travellers’ final brush with officialdom took place on the Azerbaijan-Iranian border town of Djulfa, the social centre of which was the railway station. Here they waited a week for the car, which, like themselves had to be transported—for some incomprehensible reason—by train, and which, when it eventually arrived had been stripped of everything detachable, and its boot rifled for further treasures.

This final experience of life in the Soviet Union left Fred and Paul with warm expectations of the comparifive freedom of Iran, but here too they met with some unexpected difficulties. At night they grimly fought battalions of fleas. By day they were beset by a wholesome fear of vast shepherd dogs, whose obvious intention was to tear them to bits, coupled with the knowledge that if they had an accident they Were is a country where the motorist is never right. They had seen a wrecked bus in which two people had been killed, and the driver of which had been summarily, and officially, hanged the same day! In Iran, too, were more secret police whose selfimportance had to be demonstrated by keeping the travellers waiting for hours while their papers were examined over and over again, though it was obvious that nobody could read them.

Having experienced torrential rain at intervals during their travels, Paul and Fred were now enveloped in a dust which thickly overlaid their persons and the roads with generous impartiality, and their eventual arrival in Turkey was hailed by them with unfeigned relief. Here, except for warnings to stop on demand when passing through military zones, they were left free to pursue their blameless way. To English eyes much poverty was apparent, while Ataturk’s careful provision for feminine emancipation seemed to have gone by the board. The women, willingly enough apparently, had resumed their yashmaks, and were acting as beasts of burden, as had been the custom for centuries, to their superbly lazy menfolk. The food was little better than that procurable in Iran or Russia, but Ankara and Istanbul furnished some interesting sightseeing and the author at least was loth to leave the latter for the homeward voyage. The consistent charm of this brilliant travelogue cannot be overstressed. As a journey it must have taxed the strength of the travellers to almost breaking point with discomforts of almost unprecedented magnitude, but the author’s sense of the ridiculous, together with his patent hatred of police States, combine to make his book a reader’s delight, not a word of which should be skipped.