HOW MY COMRADES LIVE
by JOSEPH NOVAK
A Communist reveals what the daily existence of the Soviet "people is really like.
BEGINNING ON THE FOLLOWING PAGE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"Joseph Novak" is the pen name of a satellite citizen, a career man behind the Iron Curtain who recently completed a two-year sojourn in the Soviet Union. He lived all that time with plain Russian people, speaking their language, sharing their lives and their thoughts in an intimacy denied to diplomats and foreign journalists. Novak's inside report on Soviet man-his hopes, his secret fears and his shocking prejudices- begins here in the first of three articles. All are adapted from his book, The Future Is Ours, Comrade, published this week by Doubleday and Company. -THE EDITORS
Among the young, the author notes this series; marriage is often "strategic" contracted to avoid assignments to remote, difficult posts.
This family of six is moving into a two-room apartment. By Russian standards they are lucky: The housing shortage is so critical that 20 people may live in three rooms.
Left: Strollers on Gorki Street, the Fifth Avenue of Moscow, with St. Basil's Cathedral in the background. Walking through the city's broad, handsome streets helps Muscovites forget the dreary atmosphere of their own homes.
In Russia-as in America-many of the poorest families own television sets. These TV aerials indicate the multiple-family occupancy of this tumble-down dwelling.
Young folk dancers in a city park. By encouraging such "group activity" from a child's earliest years, the Communists condition him in "mass living."
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| continued on page 76 |
Here two little students in one of the state-owned kindergartens admire a statue of an idealized schoolgirl.
HOW MY COMRADES LIVE
First of three parts
MOSCOW, CITY OF DISCONTENT
© 1960 by Doubleday and Company
We met as strangers, sharing a table in the crowded dining car of a train that was bound for Moscow.
When I introduced myself, speaking in Russian, the man opposite thawed, enough. to identify himself as a Soviet diplomat. I told him that I was a satellite citizen, paying my first visit to the Soviet Union.
"I plan a long stay, I said. "I want to study the U.S.S.R. seriously."
He beamed. "Young man," he said, "you are very lucky to be visiting a country that is altering contemporary history. Our today is tomorrow for your country, and the day after tomorrow for the whole world."
The train clicked rhythmically over the tracks. Outside the windows a never-ending landscape of fields, trees and spots of green moved slowly by. Small houses or cabins leaped into view suddenly, then disappeared.
"You must bear in mind," the diplomat continued, "that the U.S.S.R. is a huge country. If you try to see everything, you'll end up seeing nothing. I'd advise you to concentrate on some specific field. The greatest pride of Russia, the main Soviet contribution to the march of mankind', is the Soviet man, the citizen. of the first socialist country of the world. Fascinating scenery, heterogeneous cultures, and monumental architecture may be found all over the world. But the generations of new people, raised by us, can be found only in the U.S.S.R.
"Try to find in the daily life of the Soviet people the mechanism shaping the New Man, to whom the Soviet present belongs, and to whom will belong the future of the world-"
The train braked sharply. Hurriedly the diplomat finished his compote.
"Here we are, it's Moscow. Do you want me to give you a lift? I have a car waiting. No? Well, then, good luck, young man. Vsyevokharoshevo!,
My stay in the Soviet Union was quite unusual. As a minor bureaucrat from one of the satellite countries, enjoying the confidence of a number of highly situated U.S.S.R. officials, I had been invited to Russia for a prolonged visit and was allowed to do pretty much as I pleased.
Because I wanted to know what the daily life of the average Soviet man was like, I didn't ask for permanent quarters. Instead I made it a habit to ask people I met-and I met many-to let me stay with them for a night or two. So I lived in and visited homes of every description-apartments in the solid buildings of the czarist era, small wooden huts from the same era, apartments in houses built in "Soviet times" after 1917, in the 1930-39 period, and in entirely new housing projects of the 1945-57 period.
In the Soviet Union the basis for assigning people to an apartment is not the number of rooms in the apartment or the family bonds of the people in it, but the size of the living area-so many square feet, so many persons. This rule applies even if the apartment has only one room, and the persons are of different sexes and ages and total strangers to one another. The Residential Buildings Administration and the Housing Office make the decisions.
"Ours is the most difficult housing situation in Europe," a Russian newspaperman told me, "and there won't be any change for years to come." He was something of an expert, since he had to answer letters on this problem from readers of his paper.
"To our housing authorities," he told me, "the most important fact is that a man must live under a roof. Living in the streets, for example, would injure 'the honor of socialism.' But when twenty people live in a small three- room apartment, this honor is saved.
"The trouble is that industrialization of post-Revolutionary Russia brought hundreds of thousands of people from rural districts into the cities. Up to 1935 no mass renovation of housing was undertaken. Then came the war of 1941-45. It ruined entire cities and towns. Now it was the U.S.S.R. that needed mending, not the old houses, which continued to fall to pieces and are doing so to this very day.
"We, still are not ready for new construction. We still have more important goals. That's why, when we do build now, the buildings are constructed in a haphazard way. The more of them and the quicker, the better. Naturally they can't be any good. Still, there's no need to get hysterical over the problem. People go on living and being happy. Just look around and you'll see."
I soon saw that the housing shortage had created a new co-operative pattern of life. In each apartment unrelated tenants were closely bound together by the limited area and by the common use of certain facilities-corridor, kitchen and bathroom.
Families and individuals tried to separate themselves from the other tenants with all kinds of screens, cardboard or paper partitions, and cloth curtains. Sometimes a piece of furniture was used as a divider. But no one could have much privacy. The main features of this communal life are tolerance, a tendency to conformity and general resignation.
When I asked new-found friends if I could stay with them overnight, they would first consult the other tenants of the apartment or room. "If we invite you without asking permission of the others, then they would be able to invite anyone without asking us, and what sort of an existence would that be?"
When I turned up at an apartment with my temporary hosts, I was usually introduced to the other tenants. "This is Comrade N.," my hosts would say. "He has a pass to visit the U.S.S.R. and he knows highly situated people here in Moscow."
I had brought with me a few articles of everyday use, mostly objects hard to find in the U.S.S.R., intending to give them to people who befriended me. One day I handed my hosts of the moment a large, multicolored plastic tablecloth. Their reaction was utter embarrassment.
The wife held the gift and lovingly ran her hand over its smooth surface. "The most beautiful tablecloth I have ever seen," she said. "These colors, just like hand painting. But please don't be angry; we can't put it on our table. There's the other couple living in this room, Zenotchka and Volodia. It's as if you were their guest too. They let us invite you and even lent us a bed. Perhaps you have another tablecloth for them?"
A good friend of mine, a civil engineer, had found living space in a four-room apartment with three families. Besides himself, there were fourteen people in the apartment-five of them children. He made a portion of the kitchen into a tiny "room" for himself. His girl friend, a student in a technological institute, was a stunning blonde with rather free ways. She wasn't allowed in the apartment.
"What can I do? These three families unanimously decided that they didn't want her to come to the apartment. They told me this plainly. So instead of arguing with them, I see Vala outside."
Sharing an apartment with other families affects the relationship between Soviet parents and their, children. The parents are inclined to send their children away as early and often as possible-to the nursery day school, or to the youth, camps, even to harvesting groups.
"Mishka is almost ten," a worker told me, speaking of his only son. "I'll have to get him accepted for some camp for the whole summer. The boy is old enough to understand many things. Sometimes my wife and I are embarrassed."
Another man said, "Too bad you can't meet our children, but there are so many old, nervous people in this apartment that we decided to send the boy to a cadet's school and the girl to a boarding school, about three hours by train from here. Want to see their pictures? The boy is a little pale, isn't he? But the school will do him good. They give them good food and medical car."
Sometimes the tables are turned: Young people can't live their own life at home because they are always in somebody’s way. Their real interests are outside the home among large groups of children of the same age-in the youth organization, in a scientific circle, in a sports camp, at some dynamic meeting.
"I would like to remain in-some camp for good and never return home," said a thirteen-year-old boy who lived in exceptional comfort because his father held high office. "I'm bored at home. I'd rather sit in school after hours. At least there's something to do there."
After hearing such grumbling, I was surprised to find that young adults had no wish to live in private quarters. Having an apartment to oneself, they felt, would overstep natural needs and accepted custom.
A friend who worked in television said, "A little place like that for myself alone? A room and a kitchen? Maybe if I had an important position and had to give parties for officials, it would be all right. But I wouldn't want to live there all by myself. People would say that I led a bad life, or wanted to get away from people to drink, or do who-knows-what with girls. You can never tell where this gossip might end."
Olga, a twenty-five-year-old nurse in a Moscow hospital, had given some thought to this problem. She told me, "You can get accustomed to ignoring others. You won't be disturbed when trying to sleep just because a man studying in the same room has a light on and you'll feel free to play the radio while he is trying to sleep. But you'll also learn tact. Sometimes you will pretend you are asleep so as not to embarrass the people behind the partition. Isn't that the great socialist culture reflected in the co-operative existence of people?"
K., a white-collar worker and father of a family, saw it differently. "Housing is the least important problem," he said. "Today’s man is outside of his home all day. First, he must go to work. After work there's always a meeting Or some entertainment, then a stroll in the streets; and it's late, time for bed. After a full day you're exhausted; nothing can disturb your sleep."
By transferring the center of interest to work and to life outside the family, the Soviet system has altered attitudes toward marriage and motives for having children. At the same time family life is subordinated to the interest of the larger group of people with whom a man lives. One of the institutions which has been promoting this process in the U.S.S.R. is the house committee, which works under the City Housing Administration.
A house committee may be organized for one large building, or for a cluster of small buildings, covering thirty to fifty families. The committee manages the living area and sees to the maintenance of the buildings and apartments. It also oversees the tenants-keeping vital statistics, records of their movements, changes of address or employment. Members of the house committee are usually tenants nominated by the Housing Administration and voted upon by all the tenants.
Sometimes the committee receives a request for information on a tenant from the personnel section of his place of employment. What is his reputation among his cotenants? Is he disorderly or does he get drunk? Does he beat his wife? On the other hand, if a tenant's behavior is objectionable at home, the committee may report him to his employer or other authorities.
In one apartment, where I lived longer than in most, I was told about an incident which had taken place two months before my arrival. It concerned the B. family, which lived two flights below. B. worked in an office; his wife was a saleswoman in a store, and their eighteen-year-old son worked as a garage mechanic. The family occupied a tiny room in a five-room apartment. All the other tenants had to pass through this room to reach their own rooms.
One day B. had a violent quarrel with a colleague in his office. It was a private matter, nothing serious, but B.'s opponent complained to the trade-union activist. The case was referred to the personnel department, where B.'s standing was only fair. His record noted that he "avoided social work." Lacking a valid complaint, the chief of personnel wrote to the house committee asking for data on the "moral and political life of B. and his family."
The chairman of the house committee investigated, and this snooping made B. explode. He told one cotenant to stop hanging around, listening to B.'s conversations with his wife. A brawl ensued.
A few days later a meeting of the union adopted a resolution, based on the report of the house committee, asking the personnel department to discharge B. He was accused of "violation of the moral unity of Soviet society; an antagonistic attitude toward cocitizens, unworthy of a socialist citizen." B. and his wife were transferred to duty in a remote corner of the U.S.S.R. Their son remained in Moscow.
After I had been in the U.S.S.R. for some months I had a chance to compare notes with Andre, a Belgian journalist and photographer.
"Russians are a funny " people, he said. "Who would have thought that after forty years of socialism they'd grow to be such chauvinists? It's fantastic!" He slapped his forehead. "Do you know what continually happens to me here? When I try to photograph the exterior of an old building, or the facade of a rundown house that contrasts with the new architecture, I am forbidden to do so. By ordinary people, by passers-by! Can you beat that? I am automatically their enemy because only an enemy would want to take pictures of their old houses when, as they say, 'There are so many magnificent buildings and so much modern architecture!' The Russians are funny, aren't they?"
It took me some time to answer that one. It was only after I had become well acquainted with Soviet. citizens that I grasped the feeling of a typical Russian for his streets and public buildings. A Russian language teacher once showed me compositions written by students of two Moscow schools, ranging in age from nine to fourteen. They had been assigned the subject: What I Like Best in My Life.
"My life, like the lives of everyone in the Soviet Union, is very pleasant," wrote a nine-year-old boy. "What I like best in my life is to ride a bus all over my city, the most beautiful of all cities in the world-Moscow."
Fourteen-year-old Olenka composed her essay more philosophically: "Each man has his own likes. But there are certain things that are liked equally by everyone as well as by me. Those certain things are the things that must be liked, because we are always surrounded by them and they are inseparable from us: houses, streets, monuments and parks of our most beautiful city, the socialist Moscow."
The houses, parks, monuments and especially the streets came up for praise in 80 per cent of the compositions. The teacher, seeing my surprise, smiled at me.
"You are such a dreadful foreigner! What don't you understand? If I, an old maid of twenty-eight, were ordered to write a composition on this subject, I would write about the same things-the buildings, the parks and the streets. Why, my life after work is the street. On the street I have everything-stores, theaters, the crowd. Tell me, don't you like those things? Or are you really such a recluse?"
A few days after this talk I met my Belgian-photographer friend in a restaurant. He was still burdened by his equipment, but now he was more inclined to reflection.
"I am going to leave," he said. "I've never seen anything like this in my whole life! Will you believe me if I tell you that everywhere I have been, in all the towns and villages, the Russians are all the same? Many times they were on the point of using violence when I tried to photograph anything that was not 'new and beautiful'! And not individuals, but crowds of people-crowds, I tell you! And what anger! Right away they screamed that I was a scoundrel, that I wanted to ridicule them by exhibiting their few old and dilapidated houses once I got back home, that I would show them as typical.
"I said to them-I know enough Russian for that-'Folks, why don't you relax? I am a socialist myself-Belgian, it's true, but a socialist. I wish you all well. I take pictures of new buildings too, but I want the old ones also. The new 'ones I can buy at any post-card stand. I want to show the Belgians how you live, and for God's sake, you don't, only live in new houses!' But they only waved their fists at me and shouted: 'What kind of socialist are you? We know such socialists. You're an imperialistic dog, a spy!' "
I told my Russian friends of Andre's adventures.
"Why are you surprised?" a factory mechanic asked me. "You can see that for us, the Russians, our street is like our house, something we care for, embellish, are proud of. One invites guests to look at one's house and praise it, isn't that true?"
"That's exactly right," said his wife. "If your Belgian friend is invited inside a home in his own country, will he want to take pictures of the dark corridor, instead of the beautifully furnished living room? Well? Are such things the customs in Europe?"
We were all silent for a moment. The Russian couple seemed upset. After a while I timidly tried to explain that Andre had been a friend of the Soviet Union for many years, that he had very radical views, that his father was a longshoreman, that he was poor as a child and read Marx-
I was interrupted by the couple's sister, a woman in her forties. "I wouldn't believe this Belgian if I were you. He works for a capitalist paper, he belongs to the capitalist class, the class that exploits the workman. He can't be friendly to the Soviet Union. Even if he were personally honest, as a journalist he can only be dishonest. Anyway he's our enemy."
I met these people in a period of weeks devoted to a study of working conditions in Soviet factories. Foreign journalists who visit Soviet industrial plants are inclined to compare the working hours and pay rates of the Soviet worker with those of his West European or American counterpart. However, the essential difference does not lie there, but in the complicated relationships between the worker as an individual, and the collectivity of workers as an aggregate of political and labor organizations.
Anton, a worker in a technical-control department, tried to explain all this to me. "Well, look around. You see workers like me, right? We all do the same work and we make up one ladder, one hierarchy. A regular worker is subordinate to the senior worker, the senior worker to the foreman, the foreman to the chief of a subsection, the latter to the section chief, the section chief to the chief engineer, and so on. See that worker over there in gray overalls? In this hierarchy he is my direct superior, the senior worker.
"Now forget all that, look around again, see the workers from the political viewpoint. First, you must divide them into members and nonmembers of the party. The members, in turn, must be subdivided into categories-those who have been members for, let us say, thirty years, next twenty-five years, and so on down to candidate members. In addition, they must be divided according to their functions. One, for instance, is secretary of our party organization; another just a regular member. Another may have suffered a party reprimand. I, for example, am a party member, but the man I showed you, my superior in work, is partyless. In the political hierarchy I'm above him.
"See that tall, baldish man with eyeglasses? He's just a plain worker, but he is also a member of the executive board of the factory party organization. In the labor hierarchy we are equals, but in the political hierarchy he is way above me.
"But this isn't all. Don't forget that every factory, school or office has a labor union with a hierarchy of its own. As you know, the unions are considered 'the transmission belt from the party to the masses.' In certain situations a union leader may be more important than the secretary of the party's factory organization."
Still other criteria affect a worker's standing. One of them, Anton said, could be called a moral criterion.
"By this I mean, first of all, the relationship of the citizen to the 1917 Revolution, to Soviet authorities, to the party, to the war with the fascist invader in 1941 to 1945. For example, maybe you or some member of your family supported counterrevolution in 1917 or later. Or possibly a member of your family was a Trotskyite or had been expelled from the party for some crime against the party line. Or, to take other examples, a man may have had an improper attitude during the last war, collaboration with the occupation army, unsatisfactory conduct in the army. Of course, the same moral yardstick is applied also to positive records, such as heroism or some act of sacrifice.
"A man may not belong to the party or play a prominent part in the union, and still stand high if he is a hero of the Soviet Union from the last war. The blood he has shed for his country talks for him. Similarly, a man who will sacrifice a member of his immediate family who is an enemy of the party or of the government and turn him over to the authorities will have great moral standing."
Another yardstick, as Anton said, is social origin. Many positions are still reserved for people of peasant or working-class origin.
Leonid, who was a foreman, chimed in. "A man doesn't have a certain value, in any area, established once and for all time. You can't say about anyone, 'He's a good party member,' or 'Vasyli Ivanovich is a decent man,' or 'Nobody's proved anything wrong about Vasyli Ivanovich yet.' Each of us has a number of faces. With one he can smile and look contented, while with another he cries and is troubled. A man can never be all right from all angles at the same time."
Soon after these conversations I suffered an attack of flu and entered a large hospital in a Moscow suburb. The staff impressed me by its military attitude. Younger nurses reported to the senior ones standing at attention. Senior nurses did the same with their supervisors.
Astonished by the military rigmarole, I asked my doctor, a young woman, why this went on, when even in a factory relationships between subordinates and their superiors were easier.
"In a factory," she said, "a worker has no opportunity to work alongside the higher-ups. But this physical separation is lacking in a hospital. Doctors work together with nurses, nurses with aides. If it weren't for military discipline, the differences in rank would be wiped out.
"A factory hand may become secretary of the party organization, but in a hospital, higher positions in the party go with higher positions in management. It would be impossible for a nurse's aide to become secretary of a party cell in which senior doctors were plain members.
"If we step out of line, our superiors may make the serious accusation that we demoralize the patients by setting a bad example. Some of the patients are bound to be responsible functionaries, high officials, journalists and party members. They may file a complaint or write an article for the papers."
Indeed, the pale patient in the bed at my right was a journalist. After the doctor left he said, "She is partly wrong. The staff resorts to military discipline to keep the big-shot patients in line. I remember the case of a real party dignitary we had here-ask the senior ward nurse about it. She knows the story better than 1."
At first the senior ward nurse couldn't remember the case. "An unpleasant incident in my ward? Oh, you're talking about the comrade from the party city committee. He was an old member with many decorations, a man of great merit. He was here for heart trouble. Remained about two months, I would say.
"When he felt better he would hold lively discussions with the other patients. You could see he was a veteran speaker, a good agitator and party propagandist. And then some national holiday came along; I think it was the anniversary of the Revolution. Our patients asked him to make a speech in celebration at the hospital auditorium, attended by all patients well enough to walk. He refused. He said he was too sick to speak; but we knew better.
"So the patients asked me to intervene. Well, we all went to him together and pleaded with him, but he was stubborn. We finally got mad. 'So this is the way you play, comrade. It's all right to argue with the patients, but a speech is too much for you, eh? Well, brother, you've shown us your real face.'
"The celebration went off beautifully. There were addresses by other patriots. Loud-speakers in the wards carried them all. The next day we wrote a joint report to the party committee about that comrade and his antiparty attitude. We enclosed a certificate signed by the ward doctor testifying that the patient was almost entirely well and that there were no physical reasons to prevent his delivering a speech at the celebration. All the patients signed the report as witnesses to his antisocial behavior.
"A few days after our obstinate patient left the hospital we received a written notice from the party committee that his case had been studied by the executive board of the party. After hearing his self-criticism, they punished him with a reprimand, entered the incident into his personal record and transferred him to a more difficult sector of party work outside of Moscow.
"Yes, indeed," said the ward nurse, "besides caring for the patients' health, we also try to influence their moral attitude. Often if a patient's behavior is not
of a Soviet citizen, we report it to his place of employment."
A few days later I heard about the improper behavior of another patient, a man about forty years old. The nurse who told me the story said he was from Uzbekistan. He was suffering from some intestinal trouble that needed surgery. The preparations for the operation filled him with terror. With rear-stricken eyes he watched the instruments being laid out, the anesthetic mask, the gas tank, the doctors putting on their masks.
When the doctor approached him with the anesthetic mask, the patient suddenly refused to go through with the operation, declaring that he did not believe it would be useful and that he doubted if he would survive.
The staff pleaded with him, but to no avail. Finally the surgeon resorted to the ultimate argument. He knew that the patient held a high post in his local party organization, so he called the secretary of the hospital party organization to the operating room.
The secretary reminded the terrified patient that, according to party rules, while in the hospital he was subject to the hospital's party organization.
"Let's put it this way," he argued.
"You were delegated by your party organization to undergo an operation in Moscow. In the name of the party organization of this hospital I order you, as a party member, to consent immediately to the operation."
The patient, now rigid with fright, still refused to let himself be anesthetized. The furious secretary tried a stronger attack.
"So you refuse to obey a party order? If you refuse to undergo this operation, for which you were brought here at government expense, you'll have: to face the consequences not only as a party member but also as an employee who misled the management of his factory by using the excuse of an operation to get a trip to Moscow and evade work. I'm warning you-"
The patient yelled, "Don't try and scare me with your party! You and your party can kiss my foot."
Five minutes later the trembling patient was back in his bed. The next day he was slipped some tablets that dulled his powers of resistance. He was given an anesthetic and the operation was performed successfully.
After a few days of convalescence he was summoned before a meeting of the hospital's party organization. In a solemn, tense atmosphere the secretary read a review of his case, describing the patient's attitude as definitely hostile to everything that the Soviets stood for. What, he asked, must be the moral attitude of a man who, brought to Moscow for an operation, shows his ingratitude by hurling insults at the party and at the Soviet Government? The secretary ordered a vote, by which the accused was expelled from the party and his party card taken away from him.
After I left the hospital I told the story to some of my friends in Moscow. Through them I met a Mr. K., whose brother Ivan had just been sentenced to four years in a labor camp under truly fantastic circumstances.
Ivan was a minor clerk, a rather poor man. At the time our story begins he had at last become a party-member candidate and possessor of a party card. His wife worked as a maid in a large Moscow hotel, which catered primarily to foreigners.
One afternoon Ivan came home from work earlier than usual. He hurried through his dinner and then decided to pick up his wife at the hotel. Because it was a very hot day, he left his suit jacket at home.
The hotel was full of foreign tourists. On entering the lobby, Ivan had to show his credentials. He explained that he was coming to get his wife, and the doorman let him in. The lobby seethed with women in colorful dresses and spiked heels, and men in sport jackets. News photographers milled among the crowd. It was not the first time that Ivan had been in the hotel, but he had never before seen so many foreigners there at onetime.
He stopped to watch them. The sound of the clock striking reminded him of his wife. Instead of asking for her in the hotel's personnel: department, .. he went straight to the maids' dressing room. His wife wasn't there; so he took an elevator to the floor where he knew she worked.
There he was reminded by another maid that his wife, as she did no that day every week, was working in, another hotel hear the Agricultural Exhibit. I van realized that in his hurry he had forgotten to look at the calendar and so had made an unnecessary trip. Now he would have to cross the whole city by subway to meet his wife.
On his way out he stopped in the men's room, luxuriously equipped by Soviet standards. And that's where tragedy struck. Somehow, perhaps because Ivan was not used to modern Western-style plumbing, his personal papers fell into the toilet bowl.
The rapid stream of whirling water seized his passport, party card, his union card and his wife's card, and in a second the bowl was empty, Ivan found a piece of wire and tried to fish them out of the trap, but it was no use. The papers, softened by age and long use, were on their way to the city sewers.
Ivan stood for a while in the hotel corridor, not knowing what to do next. The floor maid testified later that Ivan stood by the window with a foreigner, and that they were smoking cigarettes. We don't know if this was before or after the episode of the men's room. Anyway, just as Ivan decided to leave the hotel he was intercepted in the lobby by a man who identified himself as an agent of the secret police. He took Ivan to a room and asked to see his papers. Undoubtedly Ivan had caught the agent's attention because his being in shirtsleeves made him conspicuous. The agent simply wanted to know who he was.
Ivan explained his mishap. Naturally enough the agent didn't believe a word of it. During the interrogation Ivan probably forgot that he had smoked with some stranger at the hotel window. When he did remember, he said that the man merely happened to be standing next to him. "We did not exchange a word."
The maid, however, testified that Ivan had talked with the foreigner. Ivan's statement that he had forgotten that his, wife did not work in the hotel on that day wasn't convincing. Other witnesses testified that Ivan always wore a jacket and never impressed anyone as being forgetful.
On the basis of this testimony Ivan was accused of giving his personal papers to a foreigner who needed them for espionage: Ivan's guilt was not entirely proved in court. There was no evidence that he gained anything by giving his papers to a foreigner. No one saw him negotiate any business or receive any money.
He did not plead guilty, but he did concede the prosecutor's point that a man who can lose his party card and other identification papers in a toilet bowl is just as liable to betray his country inadvertently. The sentence was four years in a labor camp.
Next week Mr. Novak tells about the curious status of love, sex and marriage in the Soviet today.-THE EDITORS
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