«Золотые ворота» знаменитый мост в Сан-Франциско, или «Мост самоубийц», как его называют иначе, - с него часто бросаются те, кто разочаровался в американском «образе жизни».

Moskva (Moscow), Monthly, Official Publication of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR and of the Moscow Branch of the Union of Writers, published in Moscow. No. 8, 1959, page 195. Caption: "The 'Golden Gate(s)'-famous bridge in San Francisco, or the bridge of suicides' as it is otherwise calledoften those who are disappointed in the American 'way of life' jump from it."

Пентагон (пентагон - по-гречески пятиугольник) - здание, где находятся руководящие военные учреждения США. Кое-кто утверждает, что здание это чем-то напоминает зловещую паутину, которую плетут поборники «холодной» войны... Moskva (Moscow), Monthly, Official Publication of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR and of the Moscow Branch of the Union of Writers, published in Moscow. No. 8, 1950, page 186. Caption: "The Pentagon (in Greck, a figure with five corners) the building where are located the directing military institutions of the U.S.A. There are some who assert that this building reminds one in some way of a menacing web spun by the promoters of the 'cold' war."

Excerpts from "In America with the Berezka Company," appearing in the Monthly magazine Moskva in issues No. 7 and 8, 1959:

ONE DOLLAR IN HIS POCKET

*** Our salary was waiting for us in Washington, and, on the last day in Philadelphia several members of our group, myself included, were left literally with one dollar in our pocket. We walked about and remembered that some of the Americans we had met had assured us that an American unemployed always has a dollar in his pocket *** (p. 184, No. 8, 1959).

There is a lot of merchandise on Broadway and none of my Moscow friends will believe, perhaps, that the simplest and most needed article cannot always be found in New York. Carl Upiner, a student and resident of New York refused to believe me, for example, when I said in a conversation, among other things, that in his city, known for its abundance of merchandise, I am unable to find the most ordinary thick notebook to note down impressions of the trip. We had a bet with the student, as to whether such a notebook can be found in New York. And I won: an ordinary thick notebook cannot be found!

It appears that with one dollar in one's pocket, one immediately wants to buy things that cost over a dollar, usually the simplest things. Suddenly one is in dreadful need of a pair of more or less warm stockings because Philadelphia is cold in wintertime. And stockings, by no means of the best quality, are a dollar and twenty-five cents. Again, one notices that one's shoes need repair, and this costs no less than two dollars and fifty cents. One would like to eat away from the cafeteria where it usually seems one is chewing on dacron or nylon, in other words, some chemical substitute for which the United States is so notorious ***. One would like a better meal, and this costs no less than five dollars ***. The number of Americans with just one dollar in their pocket is not small! And it would, perhaps, be appropriate to give them a thought in Philadelphia *** Indeed, with a dollar in his pocket, an American cannot attend a concert of the Philadelphia orchestra, nor, of course, can he study music, art, or sculpture *** (p. 188, No. 7, 1959).

UNEMPLOYMENT

A paradox of the capitalist world: machinery, the purpose of which is to improve the life of man, becomes his enemy. The government appeals to industrialists to suspend any further installation of mechanization and automatism. This increases unemployment! A shorter workday is a misfortune. It increases unemployment. The abundance of products in itself is a misfortune, excess of supply over demand, overproduction. This leads to unemployment ***.

Today in the U.S.A., to rent out a parking lot is more profitable than to rent out apartments or rooms. Many house owners evict their tenants, tear down the houses, and turn the empty space into a parking lot. "Pursuit of happiness" in the capitalist world teaches man to be shifty, pitiless, and to profit from the misfortune of others.

And another everyday detail about the family: "Do you know what people eat here when they are not wealthy? Soup. We have now been eating soup for three days" (p. 189, No. 8, 1959).

THE BASKERS AND THE FBI

The Baskers' home in the city suburbs is like a small fairytale castle. Helda told us that not long ago Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had come to this "castle" by car, naturally, not on foot. Two of them. One about twentyfive, the other older. They parked their car opposite the little "castle" and waited. When Bob Basker got back from work, the gentlemen from the FBI stopped him on the threshold, showed him their badges (by turning back their coat lapel) and demanded to be invited into the house. Inside the small home the "visitors" went through all the books asking questions more or less of the following kind: "Do you get the Daily Worker?" (The Daily Worker, by the way, has long since ceased to exist. Alone remains the Sunday edition which the Baskers know only from hearsay). Neither Helda Basker nor her husband were Communists nor were they in any way connected with the activity of the U.S.A. communist party. Possibly, the FBI merely wanted to scare rank and file American toilers, stop them once and for all from engaging in political activity of any kind, and from

participating in the activity of the Committee of American-Soviet friendship (p. 183, No. 8, 1959).

QUAKERS

*** Philadelphia is the center of the Quaker movement. The Quaker organization is progressive, it stands for the prohibition of atomic armament and takes active part in cultural exchanges. ***The Quakers acted against American aggression in Lebanon. *** There is something very touching in this Quaker organization, particularly touching in their stubborn faith in goodness, in the simplicity and purity of life. This, possibly naive faith can be felt in everything***" (p. 183, No. 8, 1959).

THE AMERICAN FAMILY

At last I found time to visit Bob Condon. His workshop is not far from Broadway, on the corner of Second Avenue and 50th Street. I walked and as I moved away from Broadway, New York began to look less and less like the New York to which we had become accustomed while living in the very center of the city. I could not help but think that quite recently a description of the New York slums appeared in the newspaper The New York Times. Ira Henry Freeman, a newspaperman, described what happened to district attorney Edward S. Silver who wanted to take a look at the homes in his section. "Conditions here are so bad that it is difficult to imagine human beings living in such houses," said Mr. Silver. *** On November 24, mayor Wagner accompanied by the chief judge of the so-called county of Queens *** visited certain parts of New York." "The apartments they visited," wrote the press, "amazed them by their overcrowded conditions, by the indigence, the dilapidated furnishings, the dirt, absence of air, and absolute lack of sanitation" * * *. After the frank statements of the New York newspapers I was not surprised when I walked into Bob Condon's room, long, narrow, and without any windows ***" (p. 191, No. 7, 1959).

A SAN FRANCISCO FAMILY

In San Francisco we had met the family of Mrs. Conrad. Her husband is a pilot working on private planes. Betty Conrad has ten children, she is one the "heroic mothers" of America. Only, as she pointed out, no one here considers it of great merit to have such a large family ***The family lives very modestly. Max Conrad makes up to ten thousand dollars a year. "We have no car-only a bicycle for the whole family-we can't afford a car." True enough, in the modest Conrad home, as we noticed, many things were absent which, according to American publicity, should be found in the home of every self-respecting family. There was no automatic electric stove in the kitchen, no washing machine of the most recent make, no television. But there was something else in the home: the sense of happiness and of the poetic substance of life *** Mrs. Conrad gave us details of their everyday existence: "*** Molly is out delivering the cheesecake she baked. This is how she makes a little bit of money" (p. 181, No. 8, 1959).

3. "KUDA ZVONIT PO TELEFONU?"

A RUSSIAN POET SEES AMERICA

The article "Kuda Zvonit po Telefonu?" ("Where Should One Phone?") written by Yu. Gavrilov, appeared in the Moscow Literaturnaya Gazeta, official organ of the Board of the Union of Writers of the U.S.S.R., on April 2, 1960. It reports the impressions of Stepan Shchipachev, a Soviet poet, who visited the United States in February-March 1960, as the head of a writers' delegation. Shchipachev, as the chairman of the Moscow Writers' Union carries considerable weight in the Soviet Union. The article is relatively short. Excerpts

(1) A high standard of life is fine, the benefits of civilization in one's living conditions is also fine, rock-and-roll-well, with reservations, but then a man finds himself without a job (an everyday occurrence-several millions of Americans can confirm this to you), what then? "Where should one phone?"

(2) Wherever we were, we sensed everywhere that we are advancing along a road which has been cleared of the obstacles of unfriendliness and suspicion. Cleared with energy and resoluteness, as our Premier Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev knows how to do and as he did in the U.S.A. The Americans enraptured by his indefatigable striving for peace and mutual comprehension, seemed to have been awakened by him and now reveal an ever-growing interest in all that is Soviet ***.

(3) I cannot omit mentioning the Slavic department of the Library of Congress. It is an exemplary institution where any book may be found. I even saw there my early works, the existence of which, I may say, I hardly remembered.

(4) A lack of ideal, of dreams, of a desire and need to look into the day of tomorrow is, as we became convinced, a trait typical of American youth. We look ahead into centuries, and they * * *.

(5) Stepan Shchipachev described a visit to an Indian reservation, where about one-half of the population, notwithstanding the effort made to conceal this from the Soviet writers, proved to be indigents living in very modest huts on very modest means. One could see at the reservation a whole people becoming extinct and disappearing.

THREE WEEKS IN THE UNITED STATES ON A GOODWILL MISSION

The following excerpts are taken from an article appearing in the Moscow Pravda of March 27, 1960, by Dmitriy Polyansky, chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers and candidate member of the Central Committee Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a high-ranking official. His article is entitled "Three Weeks in the United States on a Goodwill Mission." It deals with the experiences of a delegation of Soviet leaders who recently visited the United States in response to a visit to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1959, of a group of American governors. We quote in part:

We wanted to see with our own eyes how American people live, what their strivings are, and at the same time to tell of the successes of our country and of the peace-loving foreign policy of the Soviet Union.

The importance of all this for strengthening friendly ties between our peoples is obvious.

INDUSTRIAL PLANTS

Members of the delegation and their advisers visited the Fairless steel plant in New Jersey, the Wisconsin steel company in Chicago, and the Geneva Steel plant in Utah; the Roebling cable factory in Trenton; the Sangamo electric company in Springfield; a rubber and technical parts plant in Denver; a sawmill in Idaho; an electric power station in Richfield; mines in West Virginia and Illinois, and the largest copper mine, in Utah. The comrades visited the New York iron and steel institute and the Union Carbide scientific center near Charleston.

Frankly, some of these enterprises represented nothing but America's yesterday. They used a considerable amount of outdated equipment with small productivity. At the same time we saw in the coal and metallurgical branches of industry a wide application of mechanization and automation, of new technological processes insuring a high labor productivity. It is sufficient to state that the 24-hour output of coal in the mines which were visited by our comrades was an average of 14-18 tons per worker.

True, growing mechanization of work under the conditions of the capitalist system causes poverty among the working people. We saw this in West Virginia, where tens of thousands of workers of the coal industry are unemployed. Their families are, according to the local press, forced to lead a poor existence and for a long time have been unable to find a way out of their difficult situation.

*

HOUSING

The delegation saw also how housing construction is carried out in the United States. As a rule, apartments are tasty and comfortable, but they are very expensive. Therefore many of them are empty. At the same time a considerable