She Was There

OVER AT UNCLE JOE'S (325 pp.)--Oriana Atkinson--Bobbs-Merrill ($3).

Oriana Atkinson denies being an expert on Russia, and sensible readers of Over at Uncle Joe's will not wish to dispute her. Neither can they disagree when she writes, "But after ten months in Moscow I do claim this: I know more about Russia than anybody who has never been there."

The wife of New York Times Correspondent Brooks Atkinson (whose last year's Russian dispatches won him this year's Pulitzer Prize), Oriana was never permitted to leave Moscow during her stay in Russia. But her restless curiosity and good-natured brashness got her into schools, museums, churches, ordinary homes and, with the help of interpreters, into occasional friendly arguments. Over at Uncle Joe's is haphazard reporting on the breezy, often pointless level of a women's-club lecture. But it does convey something of what daily living is like for both foreigners and Muscovites, and Moscow itself becomes a city instead of a featureless backdrop for the Kremlin.

Scarcity in a Show Place. Like most Americans in Moscow, the Atkinsons lived in the large, gloomy maze called the Metropole Hotel. Their one small room was kitchen, dining room, bedroom, study and part-time office. Meals were prepared on a one-plate electric stove and Mrs. Atkinson remembers in detail her daily forays for food in Moscow's rigidly controlled and scantily stocked stores and markets. Non-rationed food was available in a few restaurants--at $70 for a dinner for two. The vast majority of Russians in Moscow, the Soviet showpiece so far as creature comforts go, existed on meager official rations in cramped quarters that made the Metropole seem luxurious.

Oriana Atkinson liked the Russians enormously, admired their unfailing kindness as hosts, was touched by their uncomplaining acceptance of endless labor for pathetic rewards. In other ways, too, her reactions were typical of U.S. visitors to Moscow. She was annoyed by the sloppy workmanship everywhere, by the suffocating snarls of red tape, by one-party ballots which made elections a farce, by the fear of ordinary citizens to speak without looking over their shoulders. She saw prostitutes solicit openly (the Soviet Government proudly claims that it has ended prostitution in Russia), found beggars everywhere, watched black-marketeers operating in public markets.

Submission with Good Grace. Mrs. Atkinson found the Russians firmly behind their rulers: "I never met a Russian who really doubted the wisdom of the men at the head of their Government nor their purity of motive nor their ultimate success. I never met an American with any knowledge of Russian politics who thought that the headmen of the Russian Government were crooked." Of course, the Russians she met did not include the many (close to 10 to 15 million, her correspondent-husband estimates) in Government prisons and conscript labor camps.

Mrs. Atkinson vaguely hopes that the

U.N. will somehow dissolve U.S.-Soviet

differences, that perhaps the Soviet Government can be induced to raise the Iron

Curtain and even permit its own citizens

in large numbers to come and look at the

U.S. But her hopes are somewhat at

variance with the prospects she sets forth

for the Russian people: "If I were asked

to suggest a theme song for Soviet Russia,

I could not think of a better one than a

few lines from Old Man River: 'Bend your

knees an' bow yo' head, an' pull dat rope

until yo're dead.'* Most of the Russians

accept this state of affairs with very good

grace."

*Copyright 1927 by T. B. Harms Co., N.Y International Copyright Secured.

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