The Big Swap

Ever since the summit conference at Geneva in 1955 the U.S. and Russia have been trying to work out a cultural exchange agreement. Last week, after three months of negotiations, they signed one which, if carried out in good faith, might be an important "beginning of a beginning" (as Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson put it). Under its terms the two nations undertake, during 1958 and 1959, to swap:

P: Radio and television programs on science, industry, agriculture, education, public health, sports and carefully censored international political topics.

P: Recordings of folk, classical and "contemporary" music.

P: Three delegations of industrialists, eight of medical scientists and nine of agriculturists.

P: Up to six of each other's writers, six composers, four painters or sculptors, plus delegations of student editors and professional women.

P: An unspecified number of commercial films (current U.S. films have been scarce in Russia since 1948), plus twelve to 15 documentaries.

P: Singers Roberta Peters and Blanche The-bom and Conductor Leopold Stokowski, the Philadelphia Orchestra for Soviet Pianist Emil Gilels and Violinist Leonid Kogan (who are in the U.S. now), plus the Bolshoi Theater Ballet and other stellar attractions.

P: Four delegations each of college professors to study the other's educational system; up to 20 students from Moscow and Leningrad universities to attend U.S. universities for a year, and vice versa.

As far as it went, the U.S.-Russia cultural exchange agreement went a good way. But measured against the idea--or even the U.S. Government's original minimum conditions--it left much to be desired. It failed to 1) bind the Russians to stop jamming U.S. news broadcasts into Russia, 2) give the U.S. some minimum uncensored access to Russia's controlled press and radio and television to match the uncensored play Russia gets daily in the U.S., or 3) stop Russia from declaring much of its country off base to U.S. visitors, a ban that is reciprocated by the U.S. in regard to Russian visitors.

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