The moment it became known we were going to the Soviet Union we were bombarded with advice, with admonitions and with warnings, it must be said, mostly from people who had never been there.
An elderly woman told us in accents of dread, “Why, you’ll disappear, you’ll disappear as soon as you cross the border!”
And we replied, in the interest of accurate reporting, “Do you know anyone who has disappeared?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t personally know anyone, but plenty of people have disappeared.”
And we said, “That might very well be true, we don’t know, but can you give us the name of anyone who has disappeared? Do you know anyone who knows anyone who has disappeared?”
And she replied, “Thousands have disappeared.”
And a man with knowing eyebrows and a quizzical look, the same man, in fact, who two years before had given the total battle plans for the invasion of Normandy in the Stork Club, said to us, “Well you must stand in pretty good with the Kremlin or they wouldn’t let you in. They must have bought you.”
We said, “No, not as far as we know, they haven’t bought us. We just would like to do a job of reporting.”
He raised his eyes and squinted at us. And he believes what he believes, and the man who knew Eisenhower’s mind two years ago knows Stalin’s mind now.
An elderly gentleman nodded his head at us and said, “They’ll torture you, that’s what they’ll do; they’ll just take you into a black prison and they’ll torture you. They’ll twist your arms and they’ll starve you until you’re ready to say anything they want you to say.”
We asked, “Why? What for? What purpose could it serve?”
“They do that to everybody,” he said. “Why I was reading a book the other day—”
A businessman of considerable importance said to us, “Going to Moscow, huh? Take a few bombs and drop them on the Red sons-of-bitches.”
We were smothered in advice. We were told the food to take, otherwise we would starve; what lines of communications to leave open; secret methods of getting our stuff out. And the hardest thing in the world to explain was that all we wanted to do was to report what Russian people were like, and what they wore, and how they acted, what the farmers talked about, and what they were doing about rebuilding the destroyed parts of their country. This was the hardest thing in the world to explain. We found that thousands of people were suffering from acute Moscowitis—a state which permits the belief of any absurdity and the shoving away of any facts. Eventually, of course, we found that the Russians are suffering from Washingtonitis, the same disease. We discovered that just as we are growing horns and tails on the Russians, so the Russians are growing horns and tails on us.
A cab driver said, “Them Russians, they bathe together, men and women, without no clothes on.”
“Do they?”
“Sure they do,” he said. “That ain’t moral.”
It developed on questioning that he had read an account of a Finnish steam bath. But he was pretty upset at the Russians about it.
After listening to all this information we came to the conclusion that the world of Sir John Mandeville has by no means disappeared, that the world of two-headed men and flying serpents has not disappeared. And, indeed, while we were away the flying saucers appeared, which do nothing to overturn our thesis. And it seems to us now the most dangerous tendency in the world is the desire to believe a rumor rather than to pin down a fact.
We went to the Soviet Union with the finest equipment of rumors that has ever been assembled in one place. And in this piece we insist on one thing: if we set down a rumor, it will be called a rumor.
We had a final Suissesse with Willy at the Bedford bar. Willy had become a full-time partner in our project, and meanwhile his Suissesses got better and better. He gave us advice, some of the best advice we had from anyone. Willy would have liked to come with us. And it might have been a good thing if he had. He made us a super Suissesse, had one himself, and we were finally ready to go.
Willy said, “Behind the bar you learn to listen a lot and not talk very much.”
We thought about Willy and his Suissesses a lot during the next few months.
That was the way it started. Capa came back with about four thousand negatives, and I with several hundred pages of notes. We have wondered how to set this trip down and, after much discussion, have decided to write it as it happened, day by day, experience by experience, and sight by sight, without departmentalizing. We shall write what we saw and heard. I know that this is contrary to a large part of modern journalism, but for that very reason it might be a relief.
This is just what happened to us. It is not the Russian story, but simply a Russian story.
CHAPTER 2
FROM STOCKHOLM WE CABLED Joseph Newman, head of the Herald Tribune bureau in Moscow, our estimated time of arrival and settled back content that he would have a car to meet us and a hotel room to receive us. Our route was Stockholm to Helsinki, to Leningrad, to Moscow. We would have to pick up a Russian plane at Helsinki, since no foreign airline enters the Soviet Union. The Swedish airliner, polished, immaculate, and shining, took us across the Baltic and up the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki. And a very pretty Swedish stewardess gave us very nice little Swedish things to eat.
After a smooth and comfortable trip we landed in the new airport of Helsinki, the buildings recently completed and very grand. And there, in the restaurant, we sat down to wait for the arrival of the Russian plane. After about two hours the Russian plane came in, an old C-47, flying very low. Her brown war paint was still on. She hit the ground, her tail-wheel exploded, and she came leaping like a grasshopper up the runway on a flat tail-wheel. It was the only accident we saw during our trip, but, coming at this time, it did little to arouse our confidence. And her scarred and scratched brown paint, and her general appearance of unkemptness, did not contrast well with the brightly shining planes of the Finnish and Swedish airlines.
She bumped and bumbled up to the line, and out of her boiled a collection of American fur-buyers recently come from the auctions in Russia. A depressed and quiet group, who claimed the plane had flown not over a hundred meters high all the way from Moscow. One of the Russian crew climbed down, kicked the flat tail-wheel, and sauntered to the airport terminal. And very soon we were told that we would not take off that afternoon. We would have to go to Helsinki to spend the night.
Capa marshaled his ten pieces of luggage and clucked around them like a mother hen. He saw them into a locked room. He warned the airport officials again and again that they must mount guard over them. And he was never satisfied for a moment while he was away from them. Normally lighthearted and gay, Capa becomes a tyrant and a worrier where his cameras are concerned.
Helsinki seemed a sad, pleasureless city to us, not badly bombed, but considerably shot up. Its hotels mournful, its restaurants rather silent, and in its square a band playing not merry music. In the streets soldiers seemed like little boys, so young, and pale, and countrified. Our impression was of a bloodless place, and a place of little joy. It seemed as though, after two wars and six years of fighting and struggle, Helsinki just couldn’t get started again. Whether all of this is true economically we do not know, but that is the impression it gives.
Up in the town we found Atwood and Hill, the Herald Tribune team which was making a social and economic study of the countries behind the so-called iron curtain. They lived together in a hotel room surrounded by reports and pamphlets and surveys and photographs, and they had one lone bottle of Scotch whisky which they had been saving for some unimaginable celebration. It turned out we were it, and the whisky didn’t last very long. Capa played a little sad and unprofitable gin rummy, and we went to bed.
In the morning, at ten, we were at the airport again. The tail-wheel of the Russian plane had been changed, but some work was still being done on the number two engine.
During the next two months we flew a great deal in Russian transport planes, and
there are points of likeness in all of them, so that this plane may as well be described as representative of all of them. All were C-47’s, with brown war paint, remains of lend-lease stock. There are newer transport planes on the fields, a kind of Russian C-47 with a tricycle landing gear, but these we did not fly in. The C-47’s are a little run down insofar as upholstery and carpeting go, but their engines are kept up and their pilots seem to be very fine. They carry a larger crew than our planes do, but since we did not get up into the control room we don’t know what they do. When the door opened, there seemed to be six or seven people in there all the time, among them a stewardess. We don’t know what the stewardess does either. She seems to have no relation to the passengers. No food is carried by the plane for the passengers, but the passengers make up for this by carrying great quantities of food for themselves.
The air vents in the planes we traveled in were invariably out of order, so that no fresh breeze came in. And if the odor of food and occasional nausea filled the plane, there was nothing to do about it. We were told that these old American planes will be used until they can be replaced by the newer Russian planes.
There are customs which seem a little strange to Americans used to our airlines. There are no safety belts. Smoking is prohibited while in the air, but once the plane lands, people light up cigarettes. There is no night flying, and if your plane cannot make its port before sundown, it sits down and waits until the following morning. Except in times of storm, the planes fly much lower than ours. And this is comparatively safe because most of Russia is completely level. An airplane can find a forced landing field almost anywhere.
The loading of the Russian planes also seemed peculiar to us. After the passengers are seated, luggage is piled in the aisle.
I suppose what worried us most on this first day was the appearance of the plane. She was such a scratched and disreputable-looking old monster. But her engines were in beautiful condition and she was flown magnificently, so we had nothing really to worry about. And I suppose the shining metal of our planes does not really make them fly any better. I once knew a man whose wife claimed that the car ran better whenever it had been washed, and maybe we have that feeling about many things. The first principle of an airplane is that it stay in the air and get where it is going. And the Russians seem to be as good at this as anyone else.
There were not many passengers on the Moscow run. A nice Icelandic diplomat and his wife and child, a French Embassy courier with his pouch, and four silent, unidentified men who never spoke. We don’t know who they were.
Now Capa was out of his element, for Capa speaks all languages except Russian. He speaks each language with the accent of another. He talks Spanish with a Hungarian accent, French with a Spanish accent, German with a French accent, English with an accent that has never been identified. But Russian he does not speak. After a month he had picked up some words of Russian, with an accent which was generally considered to be Uzbek.
At eleven o’clock we took off and flew toward Leningrad. Once in the air, the scars of the long war were apparent on the ground—the trenches, the cut-up earth, the shell holes, now beginning to be overgrown with grass. And as we got nearer and nearer to Leningrad, the scars became deeper, the trenches more frequent. The burned farmhouses with black and standing walls littered the landscape. Some areas where strong fights had taken place were pitted and scabbed like the face of the moon. And close to Leningrad was the greatest destruction. Trenches and strong points and machine-gun nests were very visible.
On the way we were apprehensive about the customs we would have to go through at Leningrad. With our thirteen pieces of luggage, with our thousands of flash bulbs and hundreds of rolls of film, with the masses of cameras and the tangle of flashlight wires, we thought it might take several days to go through us. We thought also that we might be heavily assessed for all this new equipment.
At last we flew over Leningrad. The outskirts were shattered, but the inner part of the city seemed not very much hurt. The plane sat lightly down on the grass field of the airport and drew into the line. There were no airport buildings except maintenance buildings. Two young soldiers with big rifles and shining bayonets came and stood near our plane. Then the customs came aboard. The chief was a smiling, courteous little man with a glittering smile of steel teeth. He knew one word of English—“yes.” And we knew one word of Russian—“da.” So that when he said yes we countered with da, and we were right back where we started. Our passports and our money were checked, and then came the problem of our luggage. It had to be opened in the aisle of the plane. It could not be taken out. The customs man was very polite, and very kind, and extremely thorough. We opened every bag, and he went through everything. But, as he proceeded, it became clear to us that he was not looking for anything in particular, he was just interested. He turned over our shining equipment and fingered it lovingly. He lifted out every roll of film, but he did nothing about it and he questioned nothing. He just seemed to be interested in foreign things. And he also seemed to have almost unlimited time. At the end he thanked us, at least we think that’s what he did.
Now a new problem arose, the stamping of our papers. From the pocket of his tunic he took a little parcel wrapped in newspaper and from it extracted a rubber stamp. But this was all he had, he did not have an inking pad. Apparently, however, he had never had an inking pad, because his technique was carefully designed. From another pocket of his tunic he brought out a lead pencil; then, after licking the rubber stamp, he rubbed the lead pencil on the rubber and tried it on our papers. Absolutely nothing happened. He tried it again. And nothing happened. The rubber stamp did not make even the suggestion of an imprint. To help him, we took out our leaking fountain-pens and dipped our fingers in the ink and rubbed it on his rubber stamp. And finally he got a beautiful impress. He wrapped his stamp up in his newspaper and put it back in his pocket, shook hands warmly with us, and climbed off the plane. We repacked our luggage and piled it up on one of the seats.
Now a truck backed up to the open door of the plane, a truck loaded with a hundred and fifty new microscopes in their boxes. A girl stevedore came aboard—the strongest girl I have ever seen, lean and stringy, with a broad Baltic face. She carried heavy bundles up forward, into the pilot’s compartment. And when that was piled full, she stacked the microscopes in the aisle. She wore canvas sneakers and a blue coverall and a headcloth, and her arms were bunched with muscles. And she, like the customs man, had shining stainless steel teeth, which make the human mouth look so much like a piece of machinery.
I think we had expected unpleasantness; all customs are unpleasant anyway, a peculiar violation of privacy. And perhaps we had halfway believed our advisers who had never been here, and expected to be insulted or mistreated in some way. But it didn’t happen.
Eventually the baggage-laden plane got into the air again and started toward Moscow over the endless flat land, a land of forests and of cut-out farmlands, of little unpainted villages and bright yellow straw stacks. The plane flew quite low until a cloud came down and we had to rise above it. And the rain began to pour down on the windows of the plane.
Our stewardess was a big, blond, bosomy, motherly looking girl, whose sole duty seemed to be to carry bottles of pink soda water, over the piled-up microscopes, to the men in the pilot’s compartment. Once she took a loaf of black bread up to them.
We were beginning to starve, for we had had no breakfast, and there seemed to be no possibility of eating again. If we could have spoken we would have begged a slice of bread from her. We couldn’t even do that.
About four o’clock we came down through the rain cloud, and to the left of us saw the sprawling, gigantic city of Moscow, and the Moscow River running through it. The airport itself was very large. Some of it paved and some of it long grass runways. There were literally hundreds of planes standing about, old C-47’s and many of the new Russian planes with their tricycle landing gear and their bright aluminum finish.
As w
e rolled up to the new large and impressive airport building, we looked out of the window for some face which looked familiar to us, for someone who might be waiting for us. It was raining. We got out of the plane and assembled our baggage in the rain, and a great loneliness fell on us. There wasn’t one person there to meet us. There wasn’t a familiar face. We couldn’t ask a question. We didn’t have any Russian money. We didn’t know where to go.
From Helsinki we had cabled Joe Newman that we would be one day late. But there was no Joe Newman. There was nobody for us. Some very husky porters carried our luggage to the front of the airport and waited expectantly to be paid, and we couldn’t pay them. Busses went by, and we realized we couldn’t even read their destinations, and besides they were so crowded with people inside, and were so hung with people on the outside, that we and our thirteen pieces of luggage could not possibly have got in. And the porters, very husky porters, waited for their money. We were hungry, and wet, and frightened, and we felt completely deserted.
Just then the courier for the French Embassy came out with his pouch, and he loaned us money to pay the porters, and he put our baggage in the car which had come to meet him. He was a very nice man. We had been close to suicide and he saved us. And if he should ever see this, we want to thank him again. He drove us to the Hotel Metropole, where Joe Newman supposedly was staying.
I don’t know why airports are so far from the cities they supposedly service, but they are, and Moscow is no exception. The airport is miles and miles from the city, and the road goes through pine forests, through farms, and through endless potato and cabbage patches. There were rough roads and smooth roads. The French courier had anticipated everything. He had sent his driver out for a little lunch, so that on the way in to Moscow we ate piroschki, and little meat balls, and ham. And by the time we reached the Hotel Metropole we were feeling much better.