A Russian Journal

by John Steinbeck

  In the afternoon we walked through the beautiful park which edges the cliff above the Dnieper. There were huge trees here, and already the music shells burned by the Germans had been replaced and a new stadium put up. And among the trees were the graves of the defenders of the city, green mounds with red flowers planted on the tops of them. There were little theaters, and many benches to sit on.

  Far below, the river winds beside the cliff, and across the river is a sandy beach, where people lie in the sun and swim in the river. Far off there is the flat land with the ruins of the town which was completely destroyed in the fighting for the city, wreckage and blackness, and bits of standing wall. Here is the place where the Red Army came back to the city and relieved it from its German occupation.

  There was an orchestra playing in the park, and many children sat on the benches and listened. There were sailboats on the river, and little steamboats, and people were swimming.

  We walked over a footbridge that goes over a road, and below there was a bus stop. And in front of a bus was the finest woman fight we have seen in a long time. The Russian rules for queueing are inexorable. Everyone must stand in line to get into a streetcar or a bus. There are exceptions to this rule: pregnant women, women with children, the very old, and the crippled do not have to stand in line. They go in first. But everyone else must queue up. It seems that below us a man had gone ahead in the queue, and an angry woman was tearing at him to get him back where he belonged. With a certain obstinacy he stayed in his place and got into the bus, whereupon she dived in after him, pulled him out, and forced him back to his place in the queue. She was furious, and the other members of the queue cheered her as she pulled the man out and stood him back in his place. It was one of the few examples of violence we saw during our whole trip. Mostly the people have incredible patience with one another.

  We were very tired at dinner that night for we had had very little sleep, and our passion for vodka had been waning until it disappeared entirely.

  Our hosts had many questions they wanted to ask us. They wanted to know about America, about its size, about its crops, about its politics. And we began to realize that America is a very difficult country to explain. There are many things about it we don’t understand ourselves. We explained our theory of government, where every part has another part to check it. We tried to explain our fear of dictatorship, our fear of leaders with too much power, so that our government is designed to keep anyone from getting too much power or, having got it, from keeping it. We agreed that this makes our country function more slowly, but that it certainly makes it function more surely.

  They asked about wages, and standards of living, and the kind of life a workingman lives, and did the average man have an automobile, and what kind of house does he live in, and did his children go to school, and what kind of school.

  And then they spoke of the atom bomb, and they said they were not afraid of it. Stalin has said that it would never be used in warfare, and they trust that statement implicitly. One man said that even if it were used it could only destroy towns. “Our towns are destroyed already,” he said. “What more can it do? And if we were invaded we would defend ourselves, just as we did with the Germans. We will defend ourselves in the snow, and in the forests, and in the fields.”

  They spoke anxiously about war, they have had so much of it. They asked, “Will the United States attack us? Will we have to defend our country again in one lifetime?”

  We said, “No, we do not think the United States will attack. We don’t know, no one tells us these things, but we do not think that our people want to attack anyone.” And we asked them where they got the idea that we might attack Russia.

  Well, they said, they get it from our newspapers. Certain of our newspapers speak constantly of attacking Russia. And some of them speak of what they call preventive war. And, they said, that as far as they are concerned, preventive war is just like any other war. We told them that we do not believe that those newspapers they mention, and those columnists who speak only of war, are true representatives of the American people. We do not believe the American people want to go to war with anyone.

  The old, old thing came up, that always comes up: “Then why does your government not control these newspapers and these men who talk war?” And we had to explain again, as we had many times before, that we do not believe in controlling our press, that we think the truth usually wins, and that control simply drives bad things underground. In our country we prefer that these people talk themselves to death in public, and write themselves to death, rather than bottle them up to slip their poison secretly through the dark.

  They have a great deal of misinformation about America, for they have their yellow journalists too. They have their correspondents who write with little knowledge, and they have their fiery typewriter soldiers.

  Our eyes were heavy and we were dying on the vine, and at last we had to excuse ourselves and go to bed. I had been walking a great deal, and my recently broken knee was giving me hell. The muscles at the back were as tight as ropes. I could barely stand on it. As much as I hated to, I had to lie down for a while.

  We talked for a while before we went to sleep. If a war should break out between Russia and the United States, these people would believe that we are the villains. Whether it is through propaganda, or fear, or for whatever reason, they would blame us if there is a war. They speak only in terms of invasion of their country, and they are afraid of it, because they have had it. Again and again they ask, “Will the United States invade us? Will you send your bombers to destroy us more?” And never do they say, “We will send our bombers,” or “We will invade.”

  I awakened early and got up to complete my notes. My leg was so stiff that I could barely walk on it at all. I sat down at our desk, which overlooked the street, and watched the people going by. And there was a girl policeman directing traffic in the street, and she wore boots, and a blue skirt and a white tunic with a military belt, and a cocky little beret on her head. Her nightstick was painted black and white, and she directed traffic with a military snap. She was very pretty.

  I watched the women walking in the street, and they moved like dancers. They are light on their feet and they have a beautiful carriage. And many of them are very handsome. Much of the destruction that has been brought on this people is because their land is rich and productive and many conquerors have coveted it. If the United States were completely destroyed from New York to Kansas, we would have about the area of destruction the Ukraine has. If six million people were killed, not counting soldiers, fifteen per cent of the population, you would have an idea of the casualties of the Ukraine. Counting soldiers, there would be many more, but six million out of forty-five million civilians have been killed. There are mines which will never be opened because the Germans threw thousands of bodies down into the shafts. Every piece of machinery in the Ukraine has been destroyed or removed, so that now, until more can be made, everything must be done by hand. Every stone and brick of the ruined city must be lifted and carried with the hands, for there are no bulldozers. And while they are rebuilding, the Ukrainians must produce food, for theirs is the great granary of the nation.

  They say that in harvest time there are no holidays, and now it is harvest time. On the farms there are no Sundays, there are no days off.

  The work ahead of them is overwhelming. The buildings to be replaced must be torn down first. An amount of labor that the bulldozer could do in a few days takes weeks by hand, but they have no bulldozers yet. Everything must be replaced. And it must be done quickly.

  We went through the blasted and destroyed center of the city, past the corner where the German sadists were hanged after the war. At the museum were the plans of the new city. More and more we were realizing how much the Russian people live on hope, hope that tomorrow will be better than today. Here in white plaster was a model of the new city. A grandiose, a fabulous city to be built of white marble, the lines classical, the buildings huge, columns, and
domes, and arches, and giant memorials, all in white marble. The plaster model of the city-to-be covered a large section of one room. And the director of the museum pointed out the various buildings. This was to be the Palace of the Soviets, this the museum—always the museum.

  Capa says that the museum is the church of the Russians. They seem to want great buildings and ornate structures. They like lavishness. In Moscow, where there is no reason for skyscrapers because the space is almost unlimited and the land level, they are nevertheless planning skyscrapers, almost in the New York manner, without the New York need. With a slow, antlike energy, they will build these cities. But now the people come through the wreckage, through the destroyed and tumbled buildings, people, men, women, and even children, they come to the museum to look at the plaster cities of the future. In Russia it is always the future that is thought of. It is the crops next year, it is the comfort that will come in ten years, it is the clothes that will be made very soon. If ever a people took its energy from hope, it is the Russian people.

  We went from this little plaster city, so new that it has not even been built yet, to the ancient monastery on the cliff. Once it had been the center of the Russian Church, and one of the oldest religious structures in Russia. It had been magnificent, its buildings and its paintings dating from the twelfth century. But then the Germans came, and this monastery had been the repository of many of the treasures of the world. And when the Germans had stolen most of the treasures, they destroyed the buildings with shell fire to conceal their theft when they left the city. And now it is a great pile of fallen stones and tumbled domes, with little bits of wall paintings showing through. And it will not be rebuilt, it couldn’t be. It took centuries to build, and now it is gone. The weeds that follow destruction have sprung up in the courtyards. In a half-ruined chapel, in front of the destroyed altar, we saw a ragged figure of a woman lying prostrate on the ground. And through an open gate, where once only the czar or his family could pass, a wild-eyed, half-crazed woman walked, crossing herself monotonously and mumbling.

  One part of the monastery still stands, a chapel where for centuries only the czar and the nobles were permitted to worship. It is heavily painted, a dark and gloomy place. And each worshiper had his little carven stall, for this was the place of a very select religion, and it was easy to see in one’s mind the old nobility, sitting in gloomy concentration on a noble future and on a noble heaven, a heaven which was probably as gloomy as this church, with its incense-blackened ceiling and its glimmering gold leaf. And Capa said, “All good churches are gloomy. That’s what makes them good.”

  There is an older church in Kiev, one of the oldest in the world, that was built by Jaroslav the Wise in 1034, and it is still standing, probably because there was nothing of value to steal in it, and so the Germans let it alone. But it, again, is a high, gloomy place.

  In a little side chapel, in a small houselike sarcophagus of marble, is the body of Jaroslav the Wise. It is the tradition that Jaroslav had an accident in battle and broke his leg. And his body lay for over a thousand years in the little houselike sarcophagus, and recently the casket was opened, and it was found that the skeleton in the casket had indeed had a broken leg, and everyone was happy, for this was really Jaroslav the Wise. The gloom of the churches threw a gloom upon us.

  At luncheon Mr. Poltarazki spoke of the acts of the Germans in the war, of the thousands of people killed. War is no new thing to Kiev. Starting with the raids of the savages from Tartary, it has been a place of war for thousands of years. But no savage tribe, no invader, ever was responsible for the stupid, calculated cruelties of the Germans. They raged through the country like frantic, cruel children. And now the lines of prisoners in their German army uniforms march through the streets, to work at cleaning up the destruction they caused. And the Ukrainian people do not look at them. They turn away when the columns march through the streets. They look through these prisoners and over them and do not see them. And perhaps this is the worst punishment that could possibly be inflicted on them.

  In the evening we went to the theater to see the play Storm, a nineteenth-century drama enacted in the nineteenth-century manner. The scenery was quaint and old-fashioned, and the acting was old-fashioned too. It is odd that it should be played, but it is a Ukrainian play, and they love their own. The leading lady was very beautiful. She looked a little like Katharine Cornell, and she had great authority on the stage. The story was of a young wife, under the thumb of a powerful Russian mother-in-law, who fell in love with a poet. She went into the garden to meet him while she was still married to another man. All we could see that she did in the garden was to talk a great deal, and once to let the poet kiss the tips of her fingers, but it was crime enough, so that finally she confessed her sin in a church and threw herself into the Volga and was drowned. It seemed to us almost too much punishment for having the tips of her fingers kissed. The play had its secondary plot too. The chambermaid comically paralleled her mistress’s tragedy. Her lover, instead of being a poet, was a country bumpkin. It was a traditional play all right, and the audience loved it. It took half an hour to change the sets, so that it was well after midnight when the leading lady finally dropped herself into the river. It seemed odd to us that the people in the audience, who had known real tragedy, tragedy of invasion, and death, and desolation, could be so moved over the fate of the lady who got her fingers kissed in the garden.

  The next morning it rained, and Capa feels that rain is a persecution of himself by the sky, for when it rains he cannot take pictures. He denounced the weather in dialect and in four or five languages. Capa is a worrier about films. There is not enough light, or there is too much light. The developing is wrong, the printing is wrong, the cameras are broken. He worries all the time. But when it rains, that is a personal insult addressed to him by the deity. He paced the room until I wanted to kill him, and finally went to have his hair cut, a real Ukrainian pot haircut.

  That evening we went to the circus. Every Russian town of any size has its permanent circus in a permanent building. But, of course, the Germans had burned the Kiev circus, so that so far it is under canvas, but still it is one of the most popular places in the city. We had good seats, and Capa had permission to photograph, so he was comparatively happy. It was not unlike our circuses, a single ring and tiers of seats.

  It started with acrobats. We noticed that when the acrobats worked on high trapezes there was a hook and line in their belts, so that if they fell they would not be killed or injured, for, as our Russian host said, it would be ridiculous to hurt a man just to give the audience a thrill.

  The pretty ladies and the gallant men did their spins and turns on the high wires and on the trapezes. Then there were dog acts and tumblers, and trained tigers, panthers, and leopards performed in a steel cage that was let down over the ring. The audience loved it, and all the while a circus band played away at the universal circus music which does not change.

  Best of all were the clowns. When they first came in, we noticed that the audience was looking at us, and we soon found out why. Their clowns are invariably Americans now. One is a rich Chicago woman, and the Russian idea of what a rich Chicago woman looks like is wonderful. The audience was waiting to see whether we would be annoyed at this satire, but it was really very funny. And just as some of our clowns wear long black beards, and carry bombs, and are labeled Russians, so the Russian clowns labeled themselves Americans. The audience laughed with delight. The rich woman from Chicago wore red silk stockings and high-heeled shoes covered with rhinestones, a ridiculous turban-like hat, and an evening dress covered with bangles, which looked like a long, misshapen nightgown, and she teetered across the ring, her artificial stomach wobbling, while her husband postured and danced about, for he was a rich Chicago millionaire. The jokes must have been very funny, although we couldn’t understand them, for the audience howled with laughter. And they seemed to be greatly relieved that we did not resent the clowns. The clowns finished off rich Chic
ago Americans and then went into a violent and very funny version of the death of Desdemona, where Desdemona was not strangled, but was almost beaten to death with a rubber knife.

  It was a good circus. The children, sitting in the front seats, were lost in circus dreams the way children are. The company is permanent, it does not move about, and the circus goes on all year long, with the exception of a little while in the summer.

  The rain had stopped, so after the circus we went to a Kiev night club, called the Riviera. It is on the cliff above the river, with an open-air dance floor surrounded by tables, and the whole overlooking the river, which flows away across the plain. The food was excellent. Good shashlik, and the inevitable caviar, and wines from Georgia. And to our great relief the orchestra played Russian, and Ukrainian, and Georgian music rather than bad American jazz. And they played very well.

  At our table we were joined by Alexander Korneichuk, the ranking Ukrainian playwright, a man of great charm and humor. He and Poltarazki began to tell old Ukrainian sayings, and the Ukrainians are famous for them. Almost our favorite is “The best bird is the sausage.” And then Korneichuk told a saying which I had always believed was native to California. It is the description by a heavy eater concerning the nature of the turkey, in which he says, “The turkey is a very unsatisfactory bird, it is a little too much for one, and not quite enough for two.” Apparently the Ukrainians have been saying it for hundreds of years, and I thought it was invented in my home town.