Russian Assignment

by VICE ADMIRAL LESLIE C. STEVENS, USN (Ret.)

16

IT WAS probably General Guillaume, the French military attaché, who was responsible for a surprising Soviet venture in large-scale farm and forestry management. He loved to hunt, and all the years he was in Moscow he made needling, insulting remarks on every possible occasion to all the Soviet officials whom he met, pointing out that in all civilized and uncivilized countries, except Russia, foreign diplomats had opportunity to engage in that healthful and ancient pastime.

It may be that the Soviets could not think of any convincing arguments to rebut Guillaume’s sharp tongue, and realized that they were vulnerable. At any rate, a large area of swampland along the Dubna River, a short tributary of the Volga, was turned over to Burobin, the office which deals with the housekeeping of foreign missions in Russia, and the announcement was made that foreigners could now shoot and fish in this region. The seasonal fees seemed exorbitant, but few knew that Burobin had been cannily required to make these lands at least break even financially. The twentyfive thousand hectares — over sixty thousand acres — of swamp and peat were dotted with occasional small villages for whose management Burobin became suddenly responsible, and fees from foreigners would be only a drop in the bucket in keeping out of trouble.

The foreigners reacted disappointingly. Very few of them knew enough about fishing and hunting to be willing to pay the stiff fees, and many of them were unable to do so. Two or three drove to take a look at the place, but were unable to get near it because there were no roads over which an ordinary automobile could possibly travel. The only ones who succeeded in penetrating the area were a couple of my enlisted men in a jeep, and they had had to abandon their jeep in the mud and walk for the last four or five kilometers. There was much cynical comment in the embassies to the effect that the Soviets had probably built a luxurious lodge with which to impress foreigners, and that any sucker who bit would be sure to be followed and kept as isolated from the real country as if he were in Moscow. The report of my enlisted men did not bear this out, so I borrowed some shotgun shells from Ambassador Smith, all of mine being still tied up in customs, and prepared to give it a try. The olive-drab, powerful weapons-carrier, because of its big balloon tires and its high road clearance, should be able to get through where even a jeep couldn’t travel.

After many delays, we started about noon, carrying two extra twenty-liter tanks of fuel. Especially for the departure, I put on an old but striking white-and-black Irish tweed jacket over a dark blue woolen Chief’s shirt, and my gay yellow tie, embroidered with trout flies. As Kidder, my redhaired, smooth, sharp-looking chief yeoman, said, I certainly looked sharp.

We stopped at Burobin to pick up the manager of its new estate, Aleksei Mikhailovich Ivlyev. He was a tall, rather dignified man in his late forties, with gray hair, a big nose, and deep but not unkindly lines around his mouth, with boots, knapsack, and double-barreled shotgun. On the way it developed that he was a Siberian and had shot and fished all through the taiga and Central Asia. He had done a hitch as a petty officer in the Baltic Fleet, and then, when the war broke out, he had gone in the Red Army as an artillery officer.

On the way through Moscow we saw, for a change, a woman holding a chisel while a man swung the sledge. It’s almost always the other way around. There was a strong, cold wind blowing out of the north, so I concealed my bright raiment beneath a heavy, fleece-lined khaki jacket and wrapped the rest of me in a windbreaker. On the edge of Moscow we were stopped by the police, but after the single word “diplomatic” from Valodya, my chauffeur, they waved us on.

“And why did they stop us?” I asked.

“They asked for our pass, but of course a diplomatic car doesn’t need a pass.”

“Why a pass?” Apparently the American touring cars in which we usually rode had been easily recognizable as diplomatic.

“Oh, everyone has to have a pass to get out of Moscow. That’s to keep anyone from going out into the country on private business of his own. It’s no trouble getting a pass, if you have legitimate reason, from the factory or office where you work. But if you don’t have a pass, the militiaman says, ‘Aha, I thought so!’ ”

“And then what happens?”

“A fine!”

“Yes,” added Aleksei, “a militiaman fined me five rubles just the other day for walking across the street after he had blown the whistle to change the traffic.”

“The militiaman fined you? Didn’t you have to go to court?”

“Oh, no. They fine you right on the spot. They are obliged to give you a receipt for your fine. I wouldn’t wait for my receipt, and started to walk off, but he called me back and was ready to fine me again for not taking my receipt.”

17

WHEN we were out in the country I took over the driving, having noticed that the driver was not only sheltered from the wind by a big spare wheel and tire, but was also on the sunny side of the road.

Once, along a long stretch of uninhabited country, we saw a crowd of people, plodding thick together along the road far ahead of us. I guessed what it was before the others, and sure enough, it was a funeral. We took off our hats as we passed. The coffin was wrapped in white, carried on an open horse-drawn cart and covered with a few bright paper flowers. A bearded priest, with his robes and staff, brought up the rear, with a sly, jolly face straight out of the Middle Ages.

“Russian people do not drink much at funerals,” said Valodya. “Only at weddings and on holidays, and other special occasions. Of course, there is always a special occasion, but funerals are not included. Maybe just a tumblerful or two of vodka, for when a Russian gets drunk he always wants to sing and dance, and of course that is not becoming at a funeral.”

When we got into the swamp country around the Volga, we turned off the highway along a road cobbled with round wooden blocks, in a disreputable state of repair. There were holes in it as big as our ear, and it was high-crowned, with deep ditches full of moss and watercress on each side. There was a long village strung out on this street for three or four kilometers, with a glass factory at one side, and the street was liberally strewn with broken glass. There were piles of glass from time to time beside the road as big as industrial coal dumps. Not only was it hard to hold the bumping, jolting, clattering weapons-carrier on the road, but every time I threw out the clutch for a big chuckhole the engine died. “The next time that happens,” I said to Valodya, “I’ll let you drive.” And soon he was driving, with the choke half out to keep the engine going.

Long since, we had noticed that Aleksei was blue with the cold in the back seat, so we had brought him up in front with us, but by now we had another Russian bumping and shivering in the back. Fyodr Petrovich, a yegor, or huntsman, had been waiting all day long for us where the side road turned off from the highway. He was a little, wizened, shrewdlooking fellow, snaggle-toothed and sunburned to the color of leather, born and raised in the village of Glini on the Dubna River where we were heading. As he told me later, he had been a soldier of the Tsar and had been badly shot up at Tannenberg, too badly ever to serve in the army again. But during the Great Fatherland War, they had sent him to work in the Ural mines, and that was much worse than any war. He didn’t complain, only the war in the mines was all hard work and no fun.

Finally we turned off our road, which had lost its wooden blocks and become a deeply rutted sea of black mud, reputed to be even worse ahead, into the open fields, and came out on a vast, grassy, abandoned airfield. How it was ever used, except in frozen or very dry weather, was a mystery. Wagon tracks and truck tracks laced across it, with frequent black wallows, filled with branches from trees, where cars or wagons had been bogged down earlier. We came up to two light trucks, half out of sight in the soft earth.

“How long have you been standing here?” asked Valodya.

“Four days.”

Valodya shook his head deprecatingly, but smiled. That couldn’t happen to our American reconnaissance car. And straightway we, too, were bogged. All four wheels just spun in the thick, sticky mud, and we couldn’t move forward or back. We scattered to gather brush out of the scars of similar past catastrophes. It began to be clear why shovels and axes were necessary car equipment, and why all the Russian drivers had urged me not to try to drive alone through the countryside. We dug out the mud ahead and astern, and literally built us a road with brushwood. At every step, the whole earth quaked and shook for several feet around. We pulled out of that hole, and then stopped on firmer ground. Ahead was a bright green ribbon of mossy stream bed which we must cross.

“It would be better if the rest of you walked, and left me to drive the car alone,” said Valodya. “Then I could gallop across some of these places without any fear of you flying out.”

We tramped on across the mossy, peaty field and, with considerable admiration, watched Valodya roaring, sliding, and jumping along, turning like a polo pony. Several times all four wheels were clear of the ground, and only once more on that field did we have to dig him out and build us a road.

“What a machine!" said one of the truck drivers who had been there for four days. Russian drivers don’t mind bogging down. Time means nothing to their half-Asiatic minds. They always have with them bread and a bit of sausage, and it is pleasant enough to curl up and sleep until things dry up.

18

ALL the rest of the way to the village of Glini we walked, scouting ahead, picking the most possible places, laying brush, and wondering if Valodya wasn’t getting too filled with pride when he would grin at our head-shakings in front of some broad ditch, say “Ni-i-ichevo!”, back off, and leap across it with the horizon showing beneath all four wheels at once. The sun had set when we tramped and clattered into Glini — eight o’clock, and we had left Moscow around noon — a drive of only some hundred and twenty-five kilometers.

Glini was a village of about twenty or twentyfive izbas, indistinguishable from all the other villages but for the wide, swift river that cut through it. Our izba was right on the riverbank. I took one look through the door, sat down, took off my muddy Marine shoes, and, against protests, went on in in my socks. Never have I seen such a clean, scrubbed house. The bare floors and the heavy logs that made the wails were worn and weathered with scrubbing. They were not only spotless, they fairly glowed and shone with a soft, white splendor. Pavel Dmitrovich, whose house it was, was far more untidy, with his scrubby beard, scrubby hair, and wide smile. Ephrosinya Vladimirovna, our hostess, was kerchiefed and booted with valyenki, and she had a smooth, unlined pink face, with shoebutton eyes. It was surprising to learn that she was fifty-eight years old. She attributed her young appearance to the fact that she was childless.

There were three cols in the main room of the house, which was turned over to Aleksei Mikhailovich, Valodya, and me. Burobin had sent down a half dozen thick, long-haired woolen Russian blankets, woven with two shades of green into a leafy pattern, two or three Bokhara rugs for the floor, and some straight-backed chairs. It was plain that they came from Burobin, for the price tags were still on the blankets — nine hundred rubles each, or $112.50 at even the diplomatic rate of exchange — and there were tags on the rugs. Otherwise, the house was like every Russian izba in the vicinity — bare and poor of furnishings. There was a throaty radio, probably also Burobin’s. The house was deliciously warm, for the inner partitions were formed by the famous Russian stoves, which are fired with charcoal. This gives a tremendous radiating surface, which is kept so that it is hot to the touch.

Ephrosinya busied herself with eggs for me, and soon we were sitting around the samovar in our room. Everyone broke out his own food, for food in Russia, beyond potatoes and shchi, or cabbage soup, is such a problem that everyone carries his own. Eggs, milk, meat, the sort of thing that one thinks of peasants as constantly enjoying, are mostly taken by the state. What is left beyond coarse vegetables is too expensive to eat, and is sold to the markets. Perhaps the kolkhozes, or collective farms, are different, but I doubt it. At least that is the way the people of this Volga swamp country live, where there is not sufficient agriculture to form a regular kolkhoz. I always paid for my eggs and my milk, except once, in another house and at another time, when they had some milk which they relished as though it were a great luxury. There was some gin in my bag, and one by one the host and hostess and Fyodr were invited in to join us. No Russian ever drinks anything but a large glass full of vodka, and that all in one draught. I warned them that this was dzhin and not vodka, but one round finished the bottle.

“It’s a good life in the country here,” I said. “I think that if I were a Russian, I would much rather live in the villages than in the city.”

“Not I,”said Ephrosinya. “My husband has been promising me every year for many years now that we would move to the city. It’s much more exciting and interesting in Moscow than here. I know, for I have been there.”

’Maybe so,” said Pavel, noncommittally. “And it isn’t always a good life in the villages. Suppose your cow or your goat falls ill and dies? Then you and your family may die too.”

The margin between life and death is always close in Russia. Pavel Dmitrovich was a cabinetmaker, who walked ten kilometers each way to his work in some small factory. Perhaps Ephrosinya Vladimirovna will yet get to Moscow.

A choice was offered me between getting up at half past three in the morning for ducks, or setting some lines yet that night for nalim, the big fish that live on the bottom of the river. Since it was already late, wo obviously couldn’t do both. I chose the fishing, and for an hour the two hunters, Aleksei and Fyodr, were busy rigging lines. They twist them along short rods and wind them around forked sticks like slingshots. I was too sleepy to try to become familiar with the elaborate rig, but rigged my own casting rod and went out on the riverbank with them while they set their lines.

The moon was veiled with clouds, but it was a full moon, and it was light enough for me to cast without too much difficulty. It was peaceful and lovely, with the slender birch trees ghostly in the soft light. From the bridge down the river came the sound of an accordion, and laughter, and the rhythmic stamp of the sort of dancing that the Russian people love. Some of the lads saw me casting, and drifted down to the river’s edge to watch me and to ask questions. They could not be seen distinctly in the moonlight, even when they were close, but their big furry caps and their long kaftanlike coats made them seem very outlandish. And their Russian speech was very soft.

19

THEY didn’t waken me in the morning to watch them bring in the lines, and when I finally rolled out of my green blankets the reason was plain. They shamefacedly showed me two tiny three-inch fish — the total catch.

I’ve wondered long how the people of the izbas manage, for there are never any privies to be seen in the villages, and now I learned. The barn or shed for the chickens, cow, or goat is always built integral with the house. It is floored with straw or hay, and is very convenient.

The day was raw and cold, with low clouds driven by the strong, bitter wind, which whipped the wide, swift river into foam. The water was brown, but a clear brown; so, accompanied by Aleksei, I fished downstream all morning. There were clumps of willows and copses of birch and pine along the banks, but everywhere bits of fat, greening meadow, close cropped by goats, came down to the water’s edge, and it was very easy to fish, although too wide to cast even to the middle. The river was deep, and there were many ideal places for fish, but never a strike. After four or five kilometers, followed by a stretch of real forest, we came to our objective, where once there had been some sort of mill and a dam, now washed out. The water thundered wide and tumultuous. It was too heavy to fish, but there were great, deep, brushlined backwaters and pools where one could fish all day, and in the middle was a great omut — a deep pit, where the river made a big whirlpool, and which was said to be full of fish. It was probably full of devils as well, for the Russians have a proverb, “Devils lurk in omuts,” which means that still waters run deep.

During the war, the Red Army had thrown a pontoon bridge across the old dam, but the bridge had carried away, loaded with troops and equipment. A great many of them had drowned, and to this day skeletons and machine guns are occasionally washed out of the omut by the whirlpool. In many of the pools and backwaters were lyulki — cradles — which are big flat dip nets suspended on one end of a long pole. The pole is pivoted in the middle, and on the other end is a counterweight. No bait is used, but the nets are kept in the water, and occasionally someone — whoever may be passing — bears down on the counterweight and raises the net to entangle whatever may be passing at the moment.

Sabin, my chief electrician’s mate — “Gospodin Elektrik” — who was here with the enlisted men of last week, said that he saw some enormous fish brought out by the lyulki, but now the weather and wind were too bad for fish. Yet I saw them raise one nice shchuka, about thirty inches long. The translation of shchuka in the dictionaries is “pike,” but, except for their teeth, they were quite unlike our pike, being spoon-billed and covered with big white spots. Nearly all Russian beasties are definitely different. The swine are big and coarse, with different ears and heads from ours, and the cats have enormous eyes, large heads, and much thicker, longer fur.

Before I had begun to cover the water, the base of my reel carried away. Perhaps it was just as well, for it was already lunch time. We cut through the mossy woods towards home, and on the way met a fine, clean-looking, clear-eyed lad in a black astrakhan cap and a black short overcoat lined and trimmed with white sheepskin. With him were two wild-looking Siberian dogs, which they use for hunting elk. From their description of their losi, which the dictionaries call elk, the losi must be very like moose, for they are about the size of a big horse, with palm-shaped antlers, great hooked noses, and beards. The lad was Vassily Fedorovich, the son of my yegor Fyodr Petrovich. Aleksei told me that he was indeed a fine boy — very respectful towards his father.

Vassily said that we would get no game or fish in this sort of weather, and that there was worse weather to come. The hares in the forest were still snow-white, showing that winter was not yet over, and the ducks, which too knew the seasons, were drifting in only in very small number. Jt is so far north here that it is the end of the journey for ducks. One would have thought that ihey would be plentiful in the breeding grounds, but by the time they get here the flocks have broken up and there are only singles and doubles to be had.

After lunch I lay on the bed and read while Valodya, who loves to tinker, did a neat job of lashing up my broken reel. When he had finished, Aleksei and I went through the woods again to the dam, leaving Valodya to his favorite pastime of sleeping. We were beaten by a fine, powdery hail, which lay white on the green moss. In a few minutes of casting, Valodya’s lash-up on the reel had carried away. This is the second reel that has gone bad on me in Russia with very little use. If they had been Russian reels, I would probably have had a harsh opinion of Russian ineptness in making such things, but these were American reels. Because of the war, no doubt. Instead of fishing, we warmed our hands at a fire that two or three bearded fishermen had built.

We went back home, and sat around and talked. Aleksei had had such a bad case of bronchial asthma when he was mustered out of the Baltic Fleet that the doctors had told him he must go somewhere to the mountains, where the climate was very dry. “But how was that possible for me? And then came the war, and where should I fall for service but the Caucasus! My asthma soon went away, and has never come back.” He told me much about the Caucasus, its wild scenery and its wilder tribesmen. More than Central Asia, the Caucasus is the land of romance to the Russian.

Fyodr joined us in the late afternoon, and the three of us tramped for miles across the fields and through the woods until we came to a suitable place for tyaga, which is the shooting of waldshnaip against the evening sky during their brief nightly flight from the sort of woods which they like during the day to their nests in the more open, brushy glades. We cut some pine boughs and sat on them until it should start to darken.

The sun had gone down, and we were in an open space surrounded by the forest. There was a silver splendor from the rising moon behind the barriers of dark cloud in the east. It was very peaceful and very cold, with the wind moaning through the trees. Things began to grow dim and formless, and the slim white birches shone like thin ghosis among the dark firs. Suddenly Aleksei jumped up. “There they come!" he whispered, and we all scattered. I stood alone in the dusk, shaking and shivering with cold, looking in till directions, but there was nothing to be seen. Suddenly, right over my head, so low I could almost touch it, was a big waldshnaip, skimming and skittering through the air like a black, silent ghost. By the time I could bring up my gun, it was gone.

I stopped shivering and kept my gun ready, my head turning round and round like an owl’s. Another one, and the roar of my gun echoed through the woods. Missed. Something had gone wrong with the magazine of my automatic. In the cold and half-darkness I could not see to remedy it and so could have only single shots. A long wait, and another chance. But it was at a very long range, so another miss. Afterward they told me that it would have been well to have thrown my cap up in the air to lure the bird closer, fur the waldshnaip hens rocket up from their nests to show the way home.

Then there was a shot in the distance, from Fyodr’s direction. Another wait, and two quick shots from the other direction. Against the pale sky, I saw Aleksei’s bird fall. Suddenly two more birds, braiding their ghostly flight, together, but so low that I could not get them against the sky. I shot, and then saw only one. I was still groping in the blackness for the possible bird when Fyodr came up. He had missed his one shot, and Aleksei was unable to find his in the dark.

On the way home, we debated the desirability of next time bringing leashed dogs to find the birds. Dogs in springtime are against the law, for they are apt to destroy the nests. As we tramped in the dim moonlight, we again and again passed square pits of water, shining pale in the blackness.

“Fyodr Petrovich, what are those pits?" I asked.

“During the war,”he answered, “the Germans came as far as the Moscow-Volga Canal. Those pits are where our guns were placed.”

When we got home, we drank the vodka that I had had Valodya buy at the village chainaya, and I fixed the magazine of my gun. Although Aleksei had once been the champion trapshooter of all the USSR, he was completely unfamiliar with automatics, Everyone remarked pleasedly when I remembered the full names of our host and hostess to drink to their health.

As I dropped off to sleep towards midnight, warm and tired, L heard young people singing softly as they passed the house on their way home.

On the trip hack to Moscow the sun came out between snow squalls, and although the surface of the mud was slippery it was frozen underneath. We were only stuck twice, and then not badly. We knew that we were very short of gas, but it lasted us until we were well back on the highroad, and there the car rolled to a stop. The first car that came along was a big truck, and the driver, induced bv a package of cigarettes and fifty rubles, doubtfully consented to let us have twenty liters of benzine, which would get us at least as far as Dmitrov. There we found the post office down a side street, from which Valodya telephoned to Spirodonovka House for the duty driver to come to meet us on the road with fifty liters more, for nowhere in Russia are there stations along the road when one can buy gas.

Since we had too much time on our hands, we hunted up a chainaya where we could leave our ear underneath a window so that we could keep an eye on it. I was not hungry, but still managed a big bowl of shchi, made from pickled cabbage. Valodya and Aleksei ate heartily, and the latter insisted that the only thing that would warm us up was the Russian equivalent of a boilermaker— vodka followed by a mug of beer. It being Sunday and a market day, the chainaya was crowded with people, all laughing and talking vivaciously. Many brought their own little packages of food and only ordered something to drink. Aleksei and Valodya disapproved of women who came to a chainaya unaccompanied, although the only such who were in evidence were wrinkled old peasant women. We amused ourselves by guessing at the origins and jobs of various people.

“See that old man with the little goat’s beard and long mustaches, with his fur cap pulled down over his eyes,”said Aleksei. “He must be a Tatar. He’s probably up to no good.”

“ You have to see his eyes to be sure he’s a Tatar,” answered Valodya. He got tip and walked around the bearded man’s table a couple of times, trying to peer under his cap, but when the old man suddenly looked sharply at him Valodya turned up his coat collar and hurried back to us. At last the old man pushed back his fur cap.

“Russian!" they both said at once.

“But still not up to any good,” added Aleksei.

20

THIS morning Ambassador Smith left in his plane, brought in for the occasion, for some leave. He is going fishing in Normandy. I would envy him if it were not that the Russians on my own fishing expeditions seem more interesting even than fish. The alarm was set, Natasha came early to get us some breakfast, and Nell and I drove in the chilly morning air to the airport. But this time it was not Vnukovo, but the Central Airport, well within the limits of Moscow, a great green field surrounded with houses and apartments. It was necessary the evening before to notify the Foreign Office of the license number of my car and the names of the driver and all the occupants, and we were well checked at the gates. Nobody knows why Vnukovo, which is far out of the city and most inconvenient, is normally used when there is such an ideal airport right in the city. Of course, the Central Airport is a military field, but there is an abundance of military fields around Moscow.

Two Russians, one a radio operator and the other a navigator, must accompany the Ambassador’s plane in and out of the country. When the American pilot brought the plane in a day or so ago, he did not know until he was near Moscow that he was to go to Central, so the people who were waiting for him at Vnukovo with transportation did not know it until after he had landed at Central. Perhaps the Soviets are really beginning to be nice to us, for a change. There were half a dozen propellered Yak fighters on the field, but the area was so vast that little could be seen boyond the fact that there were many buildings fading off in the distance, including a proper airport terminal building.

All of the senior people in the Embassy were there to see the Ambassador off, in spite of his frequent past protestations that that sort of thing was unnecessary. Exactly at the scheduled hour of seven thirty, a car with some Russian officers pulled up. They asked why the plane hadn’t left, and were told that General Smith hadn’t yet arrived. Just then his car came up. When he was safely aboard and the plane had finally taxied almost out of sight on the far corner of the field for the take-off, Marion, the Ambassador’s valet, made a gesture of despair.

“My God!" he said. “We forgot to put his fishing rods in the plane!”

He and Morris, the expediter, jumped in the big Lincoln with a leather ease full of rods, and took off across the grassy field at full speed. After a moment of hesitation, a Russian car shot off after them, full of MVD. Another few seconds, and another car started out at full speed, this time full of frontier guards. Alarion and Morris caught the plane in time, but they were nervous wrecks for the rest of the day.

“What did the general say?" we asked, evilly.

“We didn’t stay to find out,” one of them replied. “We just shoved the bag in the plane and got out of there as fast as we could.”

When I got back to the office, my Pravda was early for once. Spread out in it was an account of the Ambassador’s recent conversations with Molotov, giving the impression that the Americans were so thoroughly disturbed by the increasing dangers of the “cold war” that they were suggesting some bilateral conversations with the Soviet government. The Soviet reply pointed out that of course America was at fault, but that they themselves, as always, were a peace-loving people and also hoped that something could be done about it. It was obvious from the internal evidence of the Russian text that important omissions had been made from our statement.

I went up to the office and took a look at the entire correspondence. Any sixth-grade child who could have compared the actual text the Ambassador had given the Soviets with the version published in the Soviet press would see from the omissions how distorted the whole affair becomes, and could also get a fair idea of how the Soviet mind works. It is a perfect example of deliberate twisting of another’s words for propaganda purposes, and should convince anyone of the fundamental dishonesty — to our way of thinking — of the Soviet government’s statements and methods of approach.

21

NELL and I went to see what we could of the inside of Novodevichi Monastery by daylight. The grassy grounds within its Kremlin-like walls were dotted with tombs and gravestones, many of them in bad repair. Children played among them and climbed on top of them. Many people, mostly women and girls, lay around on the grass, resting or sleeping. Here and there from the towers and domes sprouted trees and bushes, and the great golden crosses above the bulbs leaned crazily in all directions. Many of the tombs were those of noblemen and princes. One, which was of black granite and well kept, was of that Davidov who led the partisans and guerrillas against Napoleon during the bitter retreat of the French in 1812. The houses and sheds against the mighty walls sagged and drooped picturesquely.

We went into the church and found a christening in process. The parents were very young, seeming to be still in their teens. There were two couples, the men obviously of the working class, mechanics of some sort, and the women wearing the very short skirts which are fashionable in Moscow today. The two babies were stripped to the buff and were seated, one behind the other, in the font, which was a portable basin.

A young priest in a soiled white cotton or linen robe, with long flowing beard and with long uncut hair hanging down his back, read rapidly in a singsong monotone from his Bible or book of services, with his back to his audience. From time to time he would turn, to dab holy water or oil, or something, with a sponge on the forehead, eyes, lips, hands, and feet of the red, squalling babies, who were hard to hold and who continually squirmed out of their wrappings. The priest cut some hair from each of their heads, and finally one of the young mothers took one of the babies and rocked it violently in her arms, her short, skirts swishing high in time with her rocking. Then the priest held up a cross for everyone, including the babies, to kiss, the parents dressed their young in newly consecrated clothes, and everyone went away, grinning happily.

We wandered around the inside of the church. Once Nell breathed too close to a candle in front of a shrine, and to her distress the candle winked out. We could only hope that it was permissible for laymen to light candles, and I tried to screen Nell while she relit this one. We left the church and walked around the grass. At last we found a big door ajar in an archway in the wall, and started to go through it. A woman stopped us and asked if we had any cameras. When I said no, she stood aside, and said “Pazhahuftta!“ — the Russian word of polite invitation.

We passed through the door into another enclosure which lay outside the grim wall. It was a tightpacked, well-kept cemetery, planted thick with trees and shrubs, and with clean-swept sandy paths. Many of the monuments had photographs embedded in them, and many of them were planted close with growing spring flowers. It was an interesting place, and I was struck by the large percentage of high-ranking army and navy officers who, having died during the Soviet regime, had found their last resting place in holy ground. The militant atheism of prewar days has been muted. Churchgoing, like so many things in Russia, is not directly forbidden, but it is continually made clear, in the press and otherwise, that it is inconsistent with Party membership. If one values his job or his position in life, he will not go. Even when one is dead, and beyond the reach of the long arm of the police, there remain the relatives who put up the monuments. Perhaps these relatives had little to lose.

I knew that Stalin’s wife was buried somewhere in Novodevichi, so I asked someone where we could find her grave, and was told the direction to take.

Alliluyeva’s grave was surrounded by a low rope. It was a plain, tall white shaft of stone, from the top of which was formed only a woman’s head and hand. The face was strong, pensive and peaceful, not particularly beautiful, but satisfying. Near by was a low stone which, from its dates and name, must have been that of Alliluyeva s father. It was strange to think of Stalin, ihc embodiment of power in his godless police state, coming to such a place alone in the evenings, as they say he has often done.

(To be concluded)