U.S Corner in Russia

In Moscow's wooded Sokolniki Park, only 15 minutes from the Kremlin's walls, Russian workers hustled last week in bitter cold to prepare for an invasion by the U.S. It will be a peaceful one: the first major U.S. exhibition in the Soviet Union, scheduled to run for six weeks beginning July 4. Designed to give the Russians a look at how the U.S. lives, the exhibition is the result of a cultural exchange agreement under which the Soviet Union plans to set up its own exhibit in Manhattan's Coliseum for eight weeks beginning June 16. The Russians will pack their show with manufactured products, model classrooms, scientific instruments (including Sputnik models), giant topographical maps, displays of collective farms, literature and Soviet sports. Some 50 English-speaking young Russians will act as guides.

For the U.S. exhibit in Sokolniki Park, where the czars once sent their falcons aloft, land equal to two city blocks is being cleared. A restaurant and steam-heated offices have been set up for U.S. officials and engineers who are converging on the site. On its way from Texas to Russia this week is a huge, 200-ft. gold-anodized geodesic dome to crown the exhibition's central building, a 30,000-sq.ft hall that will accommodate 5,000 visitors an hour. Russian name for the U.S. exhibition: Ugolok Ameriki, or "A Corner of America."

Near the domed "Idea Building" will be a fan-shaped, multilevel exhibition hall, glassed in and covered with an accordion-pleated aluminum roof. Between the two buildings, the U.S. plastics industry will construct an all-plastic pavilion made of 70 interlocked plastic sections shaped like hexagonal umbrellas. Separate from both will be a display of 21 U.S. auto models, a pool for U.S.-made boats, and a Circarama similar to the 360DEG movie screen that proved a hit at the Brussels World's Fair.

The U.S. exhibit, bossed by Harold C. McClellan, president of Los Angeles' Old Colony Paint & Chemical Co., is sponsored by the Government at a cost of more than $3.6 million, is expected to attract 3 1/2 million visitors, who will pay a few rubles each for admission. Nearly 170 U.S. firms from 19 states have already contributed products, including musical instruments, 10,000 books, office equipment, a "miracle" kitchen, and a model U.S. house split down the middle so that Russians can walk between the halves. Two features particularly aimed at improving Russian knowledge of the U.S.: seven movie screens simultaneously showing different images on the same subject (e.g., seven views of supermarkets, highway cloverleafs), with a commentary in Russian; an IBM RAMAC brain that will give electronic answers--printed in Russian--to such questions about the U.S. as "How much butter was consumed last year?"

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