I’ve tried going to the police to find out if anyone has heard anything about a Chinese coat decorated with embroidered dragons, but it’s no use. The women in the offices are either too lazy to take on any extra work or don’t want anything do with me.
Without connections in high places, it’s impossible to fight your way through the red tape of Soviet bureaucracy, so I’ve decided to go to some high society functions in the hope of finding new friends.
These banquets are held in palaces confiscated from the Tsar and always attended by the same crowd: ambassadors and diplomats, senior officials, and People’s Commissars with their wives. By way of entertainment, they invite along certain pet poets, actors, and musicians. We foreign correspondents have taken the place of the aristocracy and are now the embodiment of “polite society.”
So far, things have not been going too well. I only have to mention the word “China” to be met by strange looks and vague mutterings: “I don’t know,” “I’ve never been there,” or “Sorry. I haven’t the time right now.” Nobody wants to be associated with the Soviets’ debacle in the Far East. Strange, as only a few months ago, every loyal Party member thought it his duty to support the Chinese revolution.
Duplicity is, in my opinion, the chief characteristic of the Soviet official. In public, the Party leaders try to look as much like workers as possible: they dress like workers, behave like workers, and even curse every time they open their mouths. But in private, in their own circle, they indulge in every extravagance imaginable.
Almost all the Soviet leaders have left their wives (old Bolshevik party members) and found themselves new girlfriends. Any respectable man these days, it seems, has to have a charming young lady on his arm.
If the masses only knew how their leaders amuse themselves! The functions I’ve been to have nothing in common with the workers’ leisure activities praised in Party leaflets. Glittering chandeliers, the delicate tinkle of china bearing the royal monogram, and imperious waiters, who once served in the household of the emperor, slipping between the tables. These old servants go about their duties with a fastidious sense of detachment as if to announce that their new clients are not fit to use plates previously owned by grand dukes.
A jazz band, the only one in the whole of the city, plays popular western tunes—all this is to make a good impression on foreigners. But once they have a drink inside them, all the foreign guests want to hear something more exotic: revolutionary songs and gypsy romances.
Often at these banquets, I am approached by beautiful ladies who come up and sit beside me. The interesting thing is that these women are all different—some are blondes, some brunettes, some slim, some voluptuous. The same thing happens to all the foreign correspondents. The OGPU is clearly trying to work out what our tastes are.
Seibert laughs at me. “Stop being so difficult,” he tells me. “The OGPU are at their wit’s end. If you keep being so stubborn, they’ll send you a handsome young boy one of these days.”
He’s quite happy to get acquainted with every last one of these women.
The cult of love has entirely vanished from the USSR. All the knights in shining armor have been killed or driven out of the country, and traditional patriarchal customs reign supreme. For those at the top, a woman is a symbol of success, rather like a medal or a ceremonial weapon, and among the workers, she is regarded as a “unit of labor”—and so has to be healthy, sturdy, and politically educated.
Sometimes, coming back from yet another of these Soviet society events, I feel so weary and sick at heart that I wonder what on earth I am doing here.
Galina always meets me at the door and gives me a full account of everything she has done for the household that day. Then she proudly shows me some decorated bottle or picture frame she has bought at auction and says, “Isn’t it beautiful?”
We stand there in the middle of the room. I wait for Galina to go, and she waits for me to ask her to stay.
Naturally, I am the first to lose patience: I tell her I need to do some work. Galina nods, sighs, and leaves, closing the door quietly behind her.
In my native land, it is now quite forbidden to write the truth. If I am caught in the criminal act of doing so, everybody will be held to account—Galina, Weinstein, the women at the telegraph office, and all the other kind people who help me every day.
The worst of it is that even if I did write the truth, it would not interest anybody outside Russia. Statistics indicate that Americans are showing less and less interest in foreign news. If, a few years ago, nine percent of newspaper columns were devoted to reports from abroad, now it is only two and a half percent. And that’s for all foreign countries, including Britain, Germany, Japan, and China—countries of far more interest to America than the USSR.
It’s a vicious circle. Readers have no interest in Russia because they know nothing about it, and meanwhile, I can’t tell them anything meaningful. What can foreign readers hope to find out from my censored reports? That far, far away in a snow-covered realm called the Soviet Union live strange people who like to torment themselves and others? “Well, why should we care as long as they stay away from us?” they might answer.
My reports lack a human face—they don’t reflect what life is like in the USSR. And it’s not only censorship that’s to blame. A telegram to London costs fifteen cents a word, and everything I put in my bulletin has to fit the budget. It’s useless to ask for more expenses: the only thing United Press is prepared to pay for without hesitation is an interview with Stalin.
When I asked to organize a meeting with Stalin, Weinstein looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“Why on earth would Comrade Stalin be interested in speaking to you?”
“It would be good to hear about his views and his future plans,” I said.
Weinstein began to lose his temper. “Can you imagine some correspondent from a Russian news agency going to Washington and, as soon as he gets there, asking for a meeting with President Coolidge?” he asked.
I told him that President Coolidge had press conferences with journalists twice a week, but it was no use.
“I expect the American president hasn’t got much to do, and that’s why he can chat to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes along,” he said. “But Comrade Stalin has got enough on his hands without having to think about you.”
I told Owen about our conversation, and he asked me to think of how I might be able to lure Stalin to an interview.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can offer that might interest Stalin. The man isn’t looking for fame: he keeps to himself, only appearing in public twice a year at the Revolution anniversaries and Worker’s Day parades. He’s rather like some phantom living in an ancient castle. All his portraits are carefully retouched. The only people who see him close up are the Kremlin domestic staff and a dozen or so close confidants.
I decided in any case that twice a month, I’ll send an official request for an interview. I figure if I keep knocking at the same door for long enough, maybe somebody will open it up—at least to have a look at the tiresome pest outside and find out what he wants.
Seibert tells me he’s been doing exactly the same for three years. The two of us now have a bet to see which of us will be the first to get an interview.
I’ve had a daring idea. If I do manage to get a meeting with Stalin, I’ll ask for his help in finding Nina. One word from him will be enough to set all the Moscow bureaucrats in action.
Sometimes, I think it’s my only hope.
8. A PROBLEM CHILD
As far as Galina knew, Klim had neither a wife nor a lover. He had no interest in prostitutes, but he clearly had an eye for female beauty; Galina would be driven to impotent fits of jealous rage when she saw him staring at some attractive girls from the Communist Youth organization. He never looked at her like that.