Fists Across the Sea

By the book, U.S. and Soviet student delegations making exchange visits arrive bearing bread-and-butter gifts of good will, depart carrying valises loaded with understanding. Last week a squad of aging Russian students who returned to Moscow after a month in the U.S. showed at a press conference that what they understand best is the cold war. They paid brief respects to the hospitality and friendliness of the Americans, then found fault with almost everything in the country they had visited except its mattresses. Some of their objections:

P: Youth Group Bureaucrat Yevgeni Bugrov, 35, the delegation's deputy chairman, reported that "a whole series of aspects of U.S. higher education did not make a favorable impression on our Soviet students. Payment for the privilege of studying seemed a very peculiar phenomenon to us." Tuition costs "of $150 to $450 a semester" make higher education hard to obtain for "children of workers and peasants."

P: Private hospitals are well-staffed and equipped, but they cost too much, according to a girl medical student. Free hospitals give poor service and have only mediocre equipment.

P: U.S. students use no Soviet sources when studying the Russian Revolution. Said one delegate: "In the City College of New York all we could find on the Soviet Union were two books--one by an American and one by a German. You can imagine the interpretation they gave." P: "Our Ph.D.s are better trained and have more knowledge." P: "We repeatedly asked to meet young workers, but nothing happened." P: Ninety-five percent of what Americans read about the Soviet Union is "distorted," although U.S. residents are clever enough to "read between the lines."

Prospect in spite of it all: more tours, more boors.

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