Adventure in Aspidistraism

POSTMARKED Moscow (278 pp.)--Lydia Kirk--Scribner ($3).

There have been plenty of heavy books --long on thesis and short on anecdote--about the Soviet Union. Postmarked Moscow, by the wife of the recent (1949-51) U.S. Ambassador, Admiral Alan G. Kirk, reverses the recipe and thereby produces some pretty good summer reading. Lydia Kirk's book is based on letters she wrote from Moscow; they reflect about as much of ordinary Russian life as the chandeliers in the U.S. embassy, yet by the same token they often catch fascinating flashes of diplomatic ado and occasional deeper gleams of humor and of terror.

The Wriggle Method. Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador's residence in Moscow, is a piece of colossal froufrou of the "classic revival" sort. "In architecture," says Mrs. Kirk, "the Russians seem to lag a hundred years behind the rest of the world." Taste in furnishings, however, is right up to 1912, with a strong "aspidistra atmosphere." The ironic truth, says Mrs. Kirk, is that the destroyers of the middle class have at last themselves "risen to a petty-bourgeois level of taste and morality."

Managing the Spaso House establishment was a little more than a fulltime job. No sooner was a servant properly trained than the secret police might whisk him away. To Siberia? Or to serve in the house of a party bigshot? The embassy was never told. As a result, the service often had a certain flavor of Central Asia, as when one day a maid was discovered polishing the main dining table by lying full-length upon it and furiously wriggling her rump. Russian laundries proceed against Western garments with such violence that it was felt advisable to wash clothes on the premises. As for dry cleaning, it is virtually unknown in Russia; everything had to be sent to Finland.

An Internal Situation. Diplomatic triumphs were small and few while the Kirks were in Moscow, but the ambassador's wife recalls a social triumph or two: Mr. Vishinsky came to lunch, and laughed several times; Mr. Gromyko went so far as to discuss an internal situation with Mrs. Kirk--his wife's liver.

In fact, Admiral Kirk's relations with Gromyko were reasonably good. "You must warn me, Mr. Minister," said the ambassador one day when the toasts began to fly in Russian, "if I am drinking confusion to the United States." Gromyko grinned, and replied: "That would have to be in vodka, something very strong. This is only white wine!"

How do the Russian people like their government? Mrs. Kirk reached only a broad conclusion: "It would be wrong to imagine any general revolt building up. The people are too patient . . . They hope life will be better for their children." Just how? "It may not come in our time," an embassy chauffeur told Mrs. Kirk, "but it will be a fine thing ... No one will work more than two or three hours a day, and in the stores everything will be free."

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