The New Freedom

Moscow kept its promise to the visiting press--and added a few unexpected trimmings. U.S. and British newsmen got preferred rooms in the Hotel Moskva, which normally houses the "classless society's" technical, artistic and political elite. The Soviet elite doubled up with friends around town so that Moscow could put on the dog for correspondents at the Conference of Foreign Ministers.

At the Moskva there was a dial telephone and hot water in every room (the hot water began on the same day as the conference), English-speaking employees on every floor. A special book of meal tickets entitled each visitor to excellent, inexpensive food (waiters in the Moskva's dining room were surprised to see how British newsmen, rationed at home, stuffed themselves). Everything was so good for the visiting newsmen that Moscow's seven U.S. regulars put in a bid for special restaurant privileges too--and got them in six hours, a bureaucratic record.

Unmolested and unescorted, the correspondents put on spectacular fur caps and roamed Moscow's streets, much like happy tourists in any country. A special ticket agency secured them the best seats at the ballet, opera and circus. Limousines were made available. When the Newark Evening News's Henry Suydam had eye trouble, two Russian women doctors attended him. Next morning came a phone call: "How is your feeling?"

Best of all, of course, was the vacation from censorship. On conference copy (as the Russians had promised) there was no censorship at all--and some of the stories sent out were fairly rude to the hosts. A special teleprinter was set up at the Moskva, and some stories cleared to the U.S. in only two hours, instead of the usual seven or eight. A New York Times correspondent tested the new freedom with a wisecrack: "Russian hospitality has seen to it that Moscow is cleaned up like a Dutch kitchen--or as some cynics say, like a Potemkin village."* The censor just waved the copy by. As an added coal of fire, the censor got off an enthusiastic note to the Gannett papers' Cecil Dickson, congratulating him on his fine story about Stalin at the opera.

* When Catherine II of Russia toured her empire in 1787, Prince Gregory Potemkin sent workers ahead of her route to put up false facades on buildings to give a deceptive air of prosperity.

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