Sultanesque Sergei

Many a lone tourist to Russia hopes that the female Intourist guide assigned him by the State will prove to have the easy morals he has heard about. Among these Soviet young women themselves, the Leningrad guides gossip incessantly about the Moscow guides and vice versa, each group claiming to be the more virtuous. Once iron Soviet discipline barred guides from accepting tips in any form but this order has now been relaxed, and for months the girls have been openly angling for tips. Last week came Intourist's first wide-open scandal, impossible to gloss over since it concerned not a nondescript tourist and his nondescript girl guide but potent Comrade Sergei Meshki, for years Chief of Intourist in Moscow and widely credited with being an official of the OGPU Spy Service.*

Recently Manager Meshki was dismissed and jailed while his affairs were searchingly probed. Last week he was charged with having lived a sultanesque life for some years, enjoying the favors of over 300 girl guides, and breaking the resistance of girls who repelled him by threatening to fire them from their jobs (softest in the Union) or to incriminate them with the OGPU on some trumped-up charge. Convicted after swift trial by a Red Court, Sultanesque Sergei got ten years at hard labor.

*Girl guides, asked by tourists, "Do you have to report on our movements to the OGPU?" glibly reply: "No, indeed. But of course our manager asks us a good many questions to make sure the tourists are satisfied."

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