Going, Going . . .

Santiago's modern Hotel Carrera has 18 unwilling guests. For Dimitri Alexandrovitch Zhukov, first & only Soviet Ambassador to Chile, the Carrera is where he came in; he stayed there when he arrived in April 1946. Now that Chile has broken with the U.S.S.R., Zhukov and his staff are ready to go home (TIME, Nov. 3). Every day Embassy First Secretary Nicolai Voronin trots a block to the Foreign Office to get permission to leave. Chile's answer: "All arrangements for leaving Moscow by the entire Chilean group must first be completed."

"Entire-group" is diplomatic double-talk for attractive, 20-year-old Lidiya Leisina, U.S.S.R. citizen. Last year she married Alvaro Cruz, son of Chilean Ambassador Luiz Cruz Ocampo. Ten months ago, Ambassador Cruz told President Gonzalez Videla that he was resigning, but he stayed on, trying to get his daughter-in-law out of Russia. Holding to its standard position toward Soviet women married to foreigners (TIME, April 21), Russia refused to let her go. At week's end Russia was still saying no, Lidiya was still in Moscow, Hostage Zhukov still in Santiago.

In Santiago last week, the furnishings of the Soviet Embassy were sold at auction. Prices were disappointing. A living-room set was knocked down for 6,000 pesos ($120 at the free market rate) to the same furniture shop that sold it to the Russians when they moved in a little over a year ago. A samovar brought 500 pesos; newspapers noted that under the longer Spanish name (urna rusa para agua caliente) samovars could be bought anywhere in Santiago. A leftist politician with an ideological itch bought the furnishings of Zhukov's office (desk, chairs, lamps) for 9,500 pesos ($190). A still-shiny 1942 Studebaker brought only 100,000 pesos ($2,000), half the going black market price. One reason for low prices: in the auctioneer's showroom, the furnishings looked a bit shoddy.

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