Such an Agreeable Russian

In U.N.'s short and stuffy life there had never been anything like the meetings of the Subcommission on Freedom of Information and of the Press, gathered at Lake Success last week to erect an agenda for a full-dress conference next year. The ten men around the wide table made no set formalized speeches, pillowed no punches in diplomatic niceties. They flubbed parliamentary procedure and generally had a fine time talking frank talk. With one exception, they were men who had worked long at journalism. The exception was tweedy, dry-humored Zechariah Chafee Jr., Harvard professor of law, and one of the foremost U.S. authorities on press freedom.

U.N. reporters had also never seen in action a Russian quite so engaging as Jacob M. Lomakin, ex-Tassman, now consul general in New York City. A near-facsimile of cinemanful James Cagney, ebullient Consul Lomakin had no battery of deadpan advisers; behind him at each session sat a pert and pretty Russian blonde. Unlike icily aloof Andrei Gromyko, Lomakin chatted easily with those near him. He called the other delegates "fellow experts," and he uttered such un-Soviet statements as "We don't need to be consulting Moscow all the time," and "I will go along with what the majority thinks."

But when the meetings got down to the brass tacks of Professor Chafee's draft of an agenda, Expert Lomakin did not go along. On the nub of press freedom--elimination of peacetime censorship--Consul Lomakin was adamant. He proposed that the coming conference (in a European city to be selected later) be specifically prevented from considering such a step. He argued that censorship was exercised normally only against newsmen who were not acting in good faith and whose reports were designed to create misunderstanding and friction between nations. "Naturally," said Lomakin, "no Government can stand for that."

Zechariah Chafee patiently countered: to omit censorship from its discussions would leave the conference "playing Hamlet without a Prince of Denmark." Lomakin smiled. Chafee conceded that some U.S. newspapers might slant the news or be guilty of inaccuracies and omissions, but Government selection of what is news "could be equally wrong." He smiled wryly at Lomakin as he quoted Russia's Leo Tolstoy: "The thought of censorship hangs over me like a cloud, and the years slip by with nothing done."

The subcommission promptly voted--nine against Lomakin--to put the censorship problem on the agenda. They seemed almost sorry to do it; he was such an agreeable Russian.

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