Dear TIME-Reader: ABOARD the Polish ship Batory en route to Russia, Communist travelers gave Pierre Boulat, 31-year-old Paris photographer, a rough passage. "You are a dirty Fascist from TIME," the Communists jeered. "You are a corrupt photographer." But when the ship docked at Leningrad, the spirit of Geneva was still aglow. Soviet newsmen welcomed Boulat: "We know you are from TIME. How happy we are to see you!" And they whisked him about the city in a big black ZIS, stuffed him with food, and loaded him with gifts of caviar, jewelry and dolls.

During the next six days, Boulat took 2,000 pictures, rushing about Moscow as though he were "shooting a series of rooms whose doors were just about to swing shut." When he came to photograph interiors of the Kremlin, the spirit of Geneva blew a fuse: he got a flat refusal on the excuse that he had insufficient equipment -even though he had six cameras, electronic flashguns and enough lighting gear to illuminate the Kremlin's largest chambers. But the pictures he came back with added up to an exclusive color portfolio for this week's report on Moscow for the Tourist.

FROM The Hague, Israel Shenlker, TIME correspondent in the Benelux countries, reported early last summer that Russia's great violinist, David Oistrakh, might go on a Western tour, including the U.S. Asked to follow up the story, Shenker took a direct approach. "I picked up the phone," he said, "and asked the Dutch operator to get me Oistrakh, a violinist in Moscow."

The astonished operator was dubious but promised to try. Twenty minutes later, she had Oistrakh on the line. Philadelphia-born Correspondent Shenker tried the violinist in four languages, including his dimly remembered college (University of Pennsylvania '47) Russian. But he got nowhere until, on a hunch, he switched to Yiddish. That did it. Since then, Shenker has toured the Scandinavian countries with Oistrakh, and met him again in New York to report this week's story (see Music). FOR his first TIME cover, Vienna Born Artist Henry Koerner whose life and works are well known to TIME-readers, went to a Boston theater and painted Julie Harris in six sittings in her dressing room between rehearsals for The Lark. At first he was "very scared," Koerner said. "But when I saw her, I knew she would be a very good subject." His final picture de lighted him. "It's the only job I've done I can be really proud of," said. "I had complete freedom.

was a unique assignment." This cover is indeed uniquely Cordially yours,

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