Innocents Abroad

One morning last week, a group of Russian journalists checked out of Manhattan's Commodore Hotel and took off across town for the liner Queen Elizabeth and the start of their long voyage home. Behind them lay a 19-day guided tour of the U.S., past such assorted landmarks as Disneyland, Ben Blue's Santa Monica nightclub, a bank in Des Moines, more newspaper plants than they probably cared to inspect, and the President of the United States.

As such international junkets go, this one was distinguished more for pure rubbernecking than for the ritual clash of opposing ideologies. "Nobody tried to sell them a thing," said the tour leader, New York Times Reporter Harrison Salisbury. The tour was arranged by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Union of Soviet Journalists on an exchange basis (a U.S. press group will go to Russia this summer). The only role played by the U.S. Department of State was to permit the visit. And the travelers' only escort was Reporter Salisbury, who was nominated by the A.S.N.E. because he spent five years in Russia (1949-54) as the Times's Moscow correspondent and speaks Russian.

Gin & Ginger. From beginning to end, said their guide, the Russians behaved like "schoolboy tourists." There were minor difficulties, of course. Pavel Erofeev, administrative secretary of the Union of Soviet Journalists, and the delegation's pin-money treasurer, refused to convert his $3,000 expense-money draft into traveler's checks, demanded cash (he got it). Teetotaler Erofeev also had transcontinental trouble ordering the soft drink recommended by Teetotaler Salisbury; Erofeev kept asking for ginger ale, but his hosts, misinterpreting his basic English, kept bringing him gin rickeys and gin-and-tonic. "The Russians were charmed by Disneyland," said Salisbury "and they left San Francisco starry-eyed. On the bus back to the hotel, one of them hummed happily a song of his own composition: 'San Francisco, San Francisco, what a wonderful city it is ... But it isn't Russian.' "

In Chicago, the visitors were taken on a motor tour of the suburbs, passed a trailer court and asked how much rent the tenants paid and how they disposed of their sewage. Daniil Kraminov, editor of the weekly Za Rubezhom (Abroad), was interviewed by Sun-Times Columnist Irv Kupcinet, and noted, with some malice, an example of nepotism in the U.S. press: "Our delegation visited the New York Times, and we learned how you have to be a son-in-law to get promoted. Adolph Ochs made his son-in-law publisher and now [Arthur Hays] Sulzberger is making his son-in-law publisher." Said Kupcinet: "Isn't the editor of Izvestia, Aleksei Adzhubei, the son-in-law of Chairman Khrushchev?" Kraminov (after a pause): "But Adzhubei is a first-class journalist."

Sympathetic Relations. Inevitably, some of the Red newsmen succumbed to habit and unreeled a few meters of the Red line. After the race riots in Birmingham and Montgomery, Pravda's Viktor Maevsky discovered a parallel between the "fascists" of the John Birch Society and the "fascists" who beat up the Freedom Riders. Erofeev complained about the "irresponsibility of the American press." Said he: "We met American corespondents at length, and the next morning articles would appear, vindictive and hostile, destructive of sympathetic relations between our countries."

But in Iowa, at least, the newsmen got as much as they gave. On the unavoidable visit to the farm of Roswell Garst--who has played host to Premier Khrushchev (in 1959) and fancies himself a black-dirt diplomat--the visitors listened stonily to a lecture on what was wrong with Russia. The Soviets should build better farm-access roads, said Garst; they could improve their living standards by getting up an hour earlier in the morning. Then Garst broke out some vodka left over from the Khrushchev visit, but the newsmen insisted on U.S. whisky.

Intriguing Idea. In Washington, the Russian visitors watched the U.S. Senate convene, spent an hour talking to Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and 15 minutes with President Kennedy. But none of this impressed Pravda's Maevsky so much as a chat with Presidential Economic Adviser Walter Heller, who told him, said Maevsky, that the U.S., in the event of peace, could dismantle its defense industries without disrupting its economy. Maevsky found the idea intriguing.

Back in New York at tour's end, the journalists plundered Macy's, came away with a trove of women's blouses, skirts, dresses and lipstick. Kraminov bought lipstick in nine different shades ("We have lipstick in Russia, but only one color"), and at a final dinner in honor of the visitors, Viktor Cheprakov of Kommunist magazine proposed an old Russian toast: "To my wife, my girl friend, and the girl I have not yet met--who is the most important. I have bought gifts for all three."

Escort Salisbury is confident that the Russian journalists took something much more important than their souvenirs back to Moscow. "It's like a tire picking up bits of gravel in the tread," said he. "But in this case, the gravel is not going to work its way out. It's going to work in deeper and deeper. And that's going to remain a problem for these men all the rest of their lives."

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