"Four Simple Soviet Lads"

Russian newspapers, whose pages of grey type and grey dogma are relieved only by static photographs of stodgy Politburocrats, last week broke out with a real human-interest story and gave it the works. The story they had to tell, already familiar to U.S. newspaper readers, was the saga of four young Russian navymen who had drifted for 49 days across the Pacific in a 60-ft. landing craft, until rescued 1,200 miles north of Wake Island by the U.S. aircraft carrier Kearsarge. In the Soviet telling, the U.S. came off well.

Boiled Bootstraps. Viewed in the terms of the survival manuals, the efforts of the four young Russian sailors were fairly crude. A storm on Jan. 17 had torn landing craft No. 36 from its moorings in the Russian-held Kurile Islands, north of Japan, and driven it out to sea. The four aboard had been unable to catch any fish, made no attempt to trap sea birds, failed to maintain a system of regular watches or to develop a distress signal to attract passing ships (three passed on the horizon without seeing them). Even worse, they had apparently made no attempt to ration their food and had eaten it all in the first 16 days. But the ultimate test of survival technique is to survive, and on that basis, the Russians made a perfect score. By the time they were finally spotted by a plane from the Kearsarge, the four young men had been reduced to boiling their bootstraps and chewing them for nourishment. They had lost 24 to 34 Ibs. per man and were weak and emaciated, yet still strong enough to climb into the slings lowered to their tossing boat by helicopters from the carrier.

In column after ecstatic column, the Russian press covered the rescue and the landing of the boys in San Francisco, where they got ceremonial plywood keys to the city from Mayor George Christopher (just back from a visit to Moscow), were outfitted in new clothes, filled with Cokes, and taken on a tour. (They proved grateful but reticent heroes, and a bit overwhelmed.) Khrushchev's cables to them were also printed ("We are proud and filled with admiration"), as well as his cable to President Eisenhower ("The gallant conduct of the American seamen is an expression of those friendly relations that are developing between our two countries").

Stygian Darkness. The Russian press had a proud explanation for the men's survival. Crowed Pravda: "In the exploit of the four Soviet men, like the sun in a drop of water, the features of the Soviet way of life are reflected." The youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda took lyric flight: "Through the stormy night, battling in Stygian darkness across the thundering ocean, four simple Soviet lads bore aloft the torch of bravery. Soviet people are a special alloy!" One Russian correspondent breathlessly reported that not once during their ordeal had any of the four said a harsh word to another. Pravda could not resist contrasting this with the despair, terror, "fears and sorrowful prayers" left behind in the diary of the missing World War II U.S. bomber crew whose bodies were recently found in the Libyan desert.

In fact, by week's end, the Russian dailies were berating the thrice-weekly Communist journals. Literary Gazette and Literature & Life, for their skimpy treatment of the "event which has thrilled millions of people." Songs are being written about the exploit, and teams of artists are at work designing posters and painting canvases. When they finally get home next week, the four sailormen will have the Moscow equivalent of a ticker-tape parade and a triumphal reception worthy of Madison Avenue.

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