Worker's Buckingham Palace

Ever alert to the wiles of the West, the Soviet news agency Tass last week stumbled onto what seemed to it one of the biggest U.S. propaganda bloopers of all time. Tass could hardly contain itself at thought of showing up the Americans, delightedly prepared a news item for Soviet newspapers exposing the whole fraud. Object of Tass's excitement: the typical U.S. home that thousands of Russians will see in Moscow this summer as part of the first major U.S. exhibition in Russia (TIME, March 16). The six-room house, dubbed a "splitnik" because it will be split through the middle to give Russians a better look, costs $13,000, contains $5,000 worth of furniture supplied by Manhattan's Macy's. Or so the Americans said.

Tass scornfully advised Soviet city dwellers, who often live three and four or more to a room, that nothing so luxurious could possibly be "typical" or, for that matter, be bought for a mere $13,000. Then Tass's editors showed what they really thought of the splitnik: "There is no more truth in showing this as the typical home of the American worker than, say, in showing the Taj Mahal as the typical home of a Bombay textile worker or Buckingham Palace as the typical home of the English miner." Furthermore, added Tass, with its mind on what such furniture might cost in Moscow's GUM--if it were ever available there--Macy's was guilty of "propaganda" in saying that all that luxurious furniture could be bought for $5,000.

Tass, as usual, was completely mixed up. The typical house, as Tass editors could have discovered if they had bothered to query their U.S. correspondents, is being built by All-State Properties, Inc. at Commack, N.Y., and will sell for $13,000, including a complete electric kitchen. Houses in the splitnik's category account for 27% of all new U.S. homes.

As for Macy's, it announced that it had kept strictly within the $5,000 retail limit for furniture set by the U.S. Information Agency. It offered to let one of the awestruck Tassmen come in and buy the same thing for $5,000--after first comparing prices at Gimbels, of course.

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