A Russian Journal

by John Steinbeck

  Sweet Lana took us out to the Lenin Hills, and we stood on that eminence that overlooks the whole city and saw Moscow stretching to the horizon, a huge city. There were black piled clouds in the sky, but the sun shone underneath and glittered on the golden domes of the Kremlin. It is a city of great new buildings, and little old wooden houses with wooden lace around the windows, a curious, moody city, full of character. There are no figures as to its population now, but it is said to have between six and seven millions.

  We drove slowly back into town. The ditches were full of growing cabbages, and the sides of the road were planted with potatoes. What we knew as victory gardens are continued now, and will continue. Everyone has his little plot of cabbages and potatoes, and the protection of these plots is ferocious. While we were in Moscow two women were sentenced to ten years of hard labor for stealing three pounds of potatoes from a private garden.

  As we drove back toward Moscow a great black cloud turned over, and the rain began to fall on the city.

  Probably the hardest thing in the world for a man is the simple observation and acceptance of what is. Always we warp our pictures with what we hoped, expected, or were afraid of. In Russia we saw many things that did not agree with what we had expected, and for this reason it is very good to have photographs, because a camera has no preconceptions, it simply sets down what it sees.

  We had to wait about Moscow for our permits to leave the city and to travel through the country.

  We went, on invitation, to see the temporary head of the press bureau. He was dressed in a gray uniform with the square shoulder boards of the Foreign Office. His eyes were bright blue, like turquoises.

  Capa spoke fervently about taking pictures. So far he had not been able to. The chief of the press bureau assured us that he would do his best to get the permits for photography as soon as possible. Our meeting was formal and very courteous.

  Later we went to visit the Lenin Museum. Room after room of the scraps of a man’s life. I suppose there is no more documented life in history. Lenin must have thrown nothing away. Rooms and cases are full of bits of his writings, bills, diaries, manifestoes, pamphlets; his pens and pencils, his scarves, his clothing, everything is there. And around the walls are huge paintings of every incident of his life, from his boyhood on. Every incident of the Revolution in which he took part is recorded in monster paintings around the wall. His books are sunk in white marble frames, about the walls also, and the titles are in bronze. There are statues of Lenin in every possible pose, and later, in the pictures of his life, Stalin enters. But in the whole museum there is not one picture of Trotsky. Trotsky, as far as Russian history is concerned, has ceased to exist, and in fact never did exist. This is a kind of historical approach which we cannot understand. This is history as we wish it might have been rather than as it was. For there is no doubt that Trotsky exerted a great historical effect on the Russian Revolution. There is also no doubt that his removal and his banishment were of great historical importance. But to the young Russians he never existed. To the children who go into the Lenin Museum and see the history of the Revolution there is no Trotsky, good or bad.

  The museum was crowded. There were groups of Soviet soldiers; there were children; there were tourists from the various republics, and each group had its lecturer, and each lecturer had a pointer, with which he or she indicated the various subjects under discussion.

  While we were there a long line of war orphans came in, little boys and girls from about six to thirteen, scrubbed and dressed in their best clothes. And they too went through the museum and gazed with wide eyes at this documented life of the dead Lenin. They looked in wonder at his fur cap, and his fur-collared overcoat, at his shoes, the tables he wrote on, the chairs he sat in. Everything about this man is here, everything except humor. There is no evidence that he ever, in his whole life, had a light or a humorous thought, a moment of whole-hearted laughter, or an evening of fun. There can be no doubt that these things existed, but perhaps historically he is not permitted to have them.

  In this museum one gets the idea that Lenin himself was aware of his place in history. Not only did he save every scrap of his thinking and his writing, but the photographs of him are there by the hundreds. He was photographed everywhere, in all conditions, and at every age, almost as though he had anticipated that there would someday be a museum called the Lenin Museum.

  There is a hush over the place. People speak in whispers, and the lecturers with their pointers talk in a curious melodic litany. For this man has ceased to be a man in the Russian mind. He is no longer of flesh, but of stone, and bronze, and marble. The bald head and the pointed mustache are everywhere in the Soviet Union. The intent, squinting eyes look out of canvas and peep out of plaster.

  In the evening we went to a party at the American club, a place where Embassy employees and soldiers and sailors from the Military and Naval Attachés offices go for recreation. There was a viperine punch, made of vodka and grapefruit juice, a fine reminder of prohibition days. A little swing band was led by Ed Gilmore, who is a swing aficionado. He once called his organization the Kremlin Krows, but since this name was slightly frowned on it was changed to the Moscow River Rats.

  After the solemnity of the afternoon in the Lenin Museum the slight violence and noise and laughter of this party were a pleasure to us.

  Among the girls at this party were a number of the now-famous wives of Americans and Britons who are not permitted to leave the Soviet Union. Pretty and rather sad girls. They cannot join their husbands in England or America, and so they are employed by their embassies until some final decision is reached.

  There are many things we cannot understand about the Soviet Union, and this is one of them. There are not more than fifty of these women. They are no good to the Soviet Union. They are suspected. Russians do not associate with them, and yet they are not permitted to leave. And on these fifty women, these fifty unimportant women, the Soviet Union has got itself more bad publicity than on any other single small item. Of course this situation cannot arise again, since by a new decree no Russian may marry a foreigner. But here they sit in Moscow, these sad women, no longer Russians, and they have not become British or American. And we cannot understand the reasoning which keeps them here. Perhaps it is just that the Russians do not intend to be told what to do about anything by anyone else. It might be as simple as that. When Clement Attlee personally requested that they be sent out of Russia, he was told, in effect, to mind his own business. It is just one more of the international stupidities which seem to be on the increase in the world. Sometimes it seems that the leaders of nations are little boys with chips on their shoulders, daring each other to knock them off.

  It was a good party at the American club, a good noisy party, and it made us feel a little homesick. All of the people there were homesick too, for Russia is not very kind to foreigners, particularly if they happen to be employees of foreign governments. And although we had not been long in the Soviet Union, the lipstick, the mascara, and the colored nails of the girls looked good to us.

  The following afternoon we went to the air show. While there were some civilian events, most of the show was given by the Soviet Air Force. Different branches of the Soviet armed forces have their days. There is Tank Day, Infantry Day, and Navy Day, and this was the Air Force Day. Since it was semi-military, we were told that no cameras would be permitted. This seemed a little ridiculous to us, because every military attaché, from every embassy, would be there, people who really know about airplanes. We didn’t know an airplane from a hole in the ground. It was very probable that every military attaché would be sketching and understanding what he saw, and we wouldn’t.

  A car came for us. We went out a long avenue lined with flags, miles of them, red flags and Air Force flags. The highway was bordered with large portraits of Stalin, and Marx, and Lenin. Hundreds of thousands of people moved toward the airfield on trains and on busses, and other hundreds of thousands went on foot.

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nbsp; Our places were in the grandstand, which was a mistake. We should have been on the great green field where literally millions of people stood to watch the show. It was a hot day, and there was no cover from the sun. On the flat green field were pavilions where soft drinks were sold, and little cakes. When we were seated, a low hum started, and it grew to a great roaring. It was all of the people standing there greeting Stalin, who had just arrived. We couldn’t see him, we couldn’t see his box, because we were on the wrong side of the grandstand. The response to his arrival was not a cheer but a buzz, like that of millions of bees.

  The show started almost at once. It began with civilian pilots, some from factories, some from flying clubs, some groups of women. They flew formations, intricate formations, and did it superbly. Long lines of planes played follow-the-leader, and made loops, and turns, and dives, one behind the other.

  Then the military ships came in, and flew tight formations, threes, and fives, and sevens, wing to wing, activated as one plane. It was really magnificent flying, but it wasn’t what the crowd had come to see. They had come to see the new models, the jets and rocket-boosted planes. And eventually these came. Some of them climbed almost perpendicularly into the sky, at great speed, with the rockets on their wing tips putting out a trail of white. And finally the jet ships came. And I don’t know whether it was to confuse the observers or not, but they flew only about three hundred feet above the earth, and by the time we heard them they were almost gone, they zipped past and were gone. There seemed to be three or four new models. We have no idea of how they compare with other jet planes, they seemed very fast to us. Of all the ships in the whole show there were only two large ones which might be considered bombers.

  Next there was a mock battle in the sky. Enemy ships came in, and defensive ships went up to meet them, while on the ground, far in the distance, batteries of anti-aircraft flashed and roared, and the whole field trembled with the reverberation. It was very theatrical, for here and there a ship would spout black smoke and flame and would go into a spin, and then from over the edge of the hills there would come a flash of calcium light, as though the plane had crashed and burned. It was a very effective piece of drama.

  The last item of the show was the most spectacular of all. A large group of transport planes came over the field and suddenly each one spat out parachutes. There were at least five hundred in the air at once, and the parachutes were red, and green, and blue. The sun made them look like flowers in the air. They floated down to the field, and just before they landed each parachute sprouted a second parachute, so that the men landed standing up, and they did not tumble or roll.

  The air show must have been practiced for many weeks, because its timing was perfect, there were no delays. One event followed directly on the heels of the other. When it was over, the hum of the crowd arose again, and a soft clapping from hundreds of thousands of people. It was Stalin going away, and we still didn’t see him.

  There are definite disadvantages to having the best seats in the grandstand, and we wished we had been out on the field, where the people sat on the grass, in comfort, and watched the show, and saw more than we did. We never made the mistake again of going any place V. I. P. It may be flattering to the ego, but you don’t see as much.

  The next morning our permits to photograph came through. Capa was at last to be turned loose with his cameras, and his fingers were itching. We wanted photographs of the rebuilding of Moscow, and of the frantic painting and repairing of buildings in preparation for the anniversary of the city’s founding. Sweet Lana was to go with us as guide and interpreter.

  Almost immediately we ran afoul of the general suspicion toward foreign photographers. We were photographing children playing in a pile of rubble. They were preoccupied with building, piling stones one on top of another, and moving dirt in little wagons, imitating what the adults were doing. Suddenly a policeman appeared. He was very polite. He wanted to see the permits to photograph. He read them but was not quite willing to go out on a limb for a little piece of paper. And so he took us to the nearest call box, where he called some kind of headquarters. Then we waited. We waited for half an hour until a car drove up, full of plain-clothes men. They read the letter of permission. Each one read it, and then they had a little conference; we don’t know what they said, but then they telephoned again, and finally they all came back smiling, and they all touched their caps, and we were free to photograph in that neighborhood.

  Then we moved to another part of the town, for we wanted photographs of the stores, the food shops, the clothing shops, the department stores. And again a very polite policeman approached, and read our permit, and he too went to a call box while we waited. And again a car with plain-clothes men came up, and they each read our permit, and they had a consultation, and they telephoned from the call box. It was the same thing. They came back smiling, and touched their caps, and we were free to photograph in that district.

  This practice seems to be general in the Soviet Union. I suppose it is general any place where bureaus of the government operate. No one is willing to go out on any limb. No one is willing to say yes or no to a proposition. He must always go to someone higher. In this way he protects himself from criticism. Anyone who has had dealings with armies, or with governments, will recognize this story. The reaction to our cameras was invariably courteous, but very careful, and the camera did not click until the policeman was quite sure that everything was in order.

  The food stores in Moscow are very large, and, as with the restaurants, there are two kinds: the ration stores, where food is very cheap if one has the ration tickets to get it; and the free stores, also operated by the government, where one can buy nearly anything in the way of food at very high prices. The canned goods are piled in mountains, the champagne and wine from Georgia are pyramided. We saw here some products which might have come from United States’ stocks. There were cans of crab with Japanese marks still on them. There were German goods. And there were the luxury products of the Soviet Union itself—large cans of caviar, piles of sausages from the Ukraine, cheeses, salt fish, and even game, wild duck and woodcock, bustard and rabbits and hares, small birds and a white bird that looks like a ptarmigan. There were smoked meats of all kind.

  But this food is all luxury food. To the average Russian the important thing is the price of bread and its quantity, and the price of cabbage and potatoes. In a good year, such as this one, the prices of bread, cabbage, and potatoes come down, and this is the index of the success or failure of the crops.

  The windows of the food stores, both ration and commercial, are filled with wax figures of the food sold inside. There are wax hams and bacons and sausages, wax quarters of beef, even wax cans of caviar.

  We went next to the department stores, where clothing, shoes and stockings, suits and dresses, are sold. The quality was not very good, and the tailoring was not very good either. It is the principle of the Soviet Union to make utility goods as long as they are necessary, and to make no luxuries until utility goods have taken up the slack of need. There were print dresses, some woolen suits, and the prices seemed very high to us. But here we come to the danger of making general statements, for even during the short time we were in the Soviet Union prices came down and quality seemed to be improving. It seems to us that a thing which is true one day is untrue the next.

  We went on to the commercial shops where secondhand goods are sold. These are specialty shops. One handles china and lamps, another deals in jewelry—antique jewelry since there is very little modern jewelry made—garnets and emeralds, earrings, rings, and bracelets. A third sells photographic supplies and cameras, mostly German cameras that have come back from the war. A fourth carries secondhand clothes and shoes. There are shops where the semi-precious stones from the Ural mountains are sold, the beryls, topazes, aquamarines.

  Outside of these shops there is another kind of trading. If you come out of a camera shop, two or three rather furtive men will approach you, and each one carries
a package, and in the package is a camera, a Contax, or Leica, or Rolleiflex. These men will give you a glimpse of the camera and tell you the price. The same thing happens outside jewelry shops. There is a man with a squib of newspaper. He opens it quickly, shows you a diamond ring, and mentions a price. What he is doing is probably illegal. The prices asked by these outside salesmen are, if anything, a little higher than the prices in the commercial shops.

  There is always a great crowd in these shops, people who are not there to buy, but to watch others buy. If you look at an article, you are immediately overwhelmed by people who want to see, and want to see whether you will buy. It is a kind of theater to them, we think.

  We went back to our green bedroom with its insane mural, and we were conscious of being depressed. We couldn’t figure out exactly why, and then it came to us: there is very little laughter in the streets, and rarely any smiles. People walk, or rather scuttle along, with their heads down, and they don’t smile. Perhaps it is that they work too hard, that they have to walk too far to get to the work they do. There seems to be a great seriousness in the streets, and perhaps this was always so, we don’t know.

  We had dinner with Sweet Joe Newman, and with John Walker of Time, and we asked them if they had noticed the lack of laughter. And they said they had. And they said that after a while the lack of laughter gets under your skin and you become serious yourself. They showed us a copy of the Soviet humorous magazine, called Krokodil, and translated some of the jokes. But they were not laughing jokes, they were sharp jokes, critical jokes. They were not for laughter, there was no gaiety in them. Sweet Joe said he had heard that outside of Moscow it was different, and this we subsequently discovered to be true. There is laughter in the country, in the Ukraine, and on the steppes, and in Georgia, but Moscow is a very serious city.