Eastern Aeneid

Peter and John Stevens were born in Pennsylvania. Their father came from Poland (his name was Stefanick), worked a while in Pennsylvania's coal mines, moved on to Detroit, finally bought a quarter-section farm in Canada. The boys were strapping and alert. They were trained as mechanics.

In Detroit a Ukrainian friend of John's told them about Soviet Russia. The more they heard about the Workers' State, the more they wanted to go there. Times were hard in the U. S., but under Communism nobody went hungry, every man had work. One day five years ago they set out for the Pacific. Peter was 24, his brother two years younger.

From Seattle they took a steamer to Nome. There they bought prospectors' packs and hiked ten days across the tundra to Cape Prince of Wales, westernmost tip of North America. For $20 an Eskimo boatman in a 30-ft. skin boat with an outboard motor took them across the 20-mile strip of water to Little Diomede Island, last outpost of the U. S. in Bering Strait. For $5 another boatman set them down on Russia's Big Diomede Island, two miles away.

The boys had no passports, no papers. ("In the U. S.," said Peter, "a man can get around without papers.") They waited a month on Big Diomede, until the Russian Border Patrol boat came around. An official asked them what they were doing in Russia. Said Peter: "We came to help build the Socialist State." That sounded reasonable to the official, so he took the boys over to the mainland.

At Deryeshnev they were arrested and sent on to Khabarovsk, where they were told the GPU would determine their status. At Khabarovsk another official asked them: "Who is your father?" Said Peter: "He is a farmer. He owns 160 acres, 38 hogs, some farm machinery, four horses, and 15 head of cattle." "Ah, ha!" said the prosecutor. "Your father is a kulak." So Peter and John Stevens were thrown into a nice, new Soviet prison, six stories tall, and tried for espionage.

There was no evidence against them, so the GPU sent them on to Actubinsk, in Kazakstan, some 3,000 miles away by rail. They made the trip in a steel prison coach ,,,with 60 other prisoners, lying six in a bunk. At Actubinsk they were released.

An official gave them 40 rubles, entered it on his books as a payment for old-age pensions. They were given papers bearing a GPU stamp, so no machine shop dared to hire them. Instead, they got work shoveling earth on a railway grade.

One month of Actubinsk was enough for Peter and John Stevens. They saved a few rubles, sold their U. S. camera and bought a couple of tickets to Alma Ata. From there they started off on foot, across 200 miles of Central Asian mountain peaks and desert, toward China. Ten days later they staggered across the Chinese border, were fed by Chinese officers and sent on to Kuldja, in Sinkiang Province. There they celebrated the first anniversary of their escape from capitalist America.

In Kuldja they got jobs--John as a bus driver, Peter as a mechanic in a Chinese garage. Things went well for a while; then they began to worry about the Soviet troops they saw in Sinkiang Province. Their employer was arrested. Next spring the brothers decided China was getting too hot, so they set out for India--again on foot, without papers. It took them twelve days to get across the mountains to the Sinkiang town of Aksu. In Aksu they were arrested, questioned by a GPU agent and thrown into jail. Two months later they were loaded on a truck and sent to Tihwa. There, without trial, they were locked up in prison.

They spent two years in Tihwa's prison, held incommunicado in separate cells. When Peter protested, he was kept in shackles for 15 days, left in solitary confinement for three months. Once he heard there was another American in the prison. He hoped it was his brother.

One day last year word trickled down to U. S. authorities in India that two U. S. citizens were imprisoned in Sinkiang. They passed the news on to the U. S. Embassy at Chungking. In Tihwa a truck rolled up to the prison gate one morning, and Peter and John Stevens were loaded on it. They were taken to Anhsichow. There, for five months, they ate and sunned themselves at the Chinese Government's expense, while telegrams went back & forth between Anhsichow and Chungking to establish their identity.

Last week, fast becoming a legend in Central Asia, Peter and John Stevens were in Chungking, waiting for passports so they could return to the U. S. In a hotel room littered with sleeping bags and tattered magazines, while Chinese waiters drifted in & out, they told their story. It was a good story, if true. Asked Peter: "Do they still let people publish Communist books in America?" He was told they do. "That's not so good," said Peter. "People who write those books, they only know Russia from the outside. We knew it from underneath."

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