Russian Year - The Notebook of an Amateur Diplomat

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RUSSIAN YEAR CONTEXTS 1. THE CITY OF ARCHANGELS 1 1 2. ABOVE RUSSIA 17 3. FIRST DAY IN MOSCOW 26 4. RETURNED TO LIFE 44 5. MUSCOVITE AUTUMN 53 6. WE LEFT MOSCOW 62 7. THE CITY OF KUIBYSHEV 74 8. IN THE STEPPES OF THE HEART OF RUSSIA SO 9. WHICH OF THE THREE HORSES 0g 10. GENERAL SIKORSKI IN RUSSIA 102 11. NIGHT AT THE KREMLIN 104 12. THE WINTER AND THE ARMY 124 13. FOUR RUSSIAN PORTRAITS 1S3 14. WHY THEY CANNOT WIN 160 15. THE STEPPES ON THE MARCH 169 16. TO STALINGRAD BY THE VOLGA 174 13 O RUSSIAN YEAR Introduction WOULD you like to go with me to Moscow 9 asked Professor Kot, formerly of Cracow University, a member of the Polish government in London and then the newly appointed Polish Ambassador to the U. S. S. R. I would love it, I replied, but I am no diplomat. The Professor smiled. Do you really think that professional diplomats are quite indispensable in a place where there are many things to be put right No, I dont. Neither do I, he said, and besides I am no more a professional diplomat than you are. I will remain a his torian and you a journalist. I will study Russia and so will you, in your own way. We may be able to do some work together. That is how it all started. 1 . The City of Archangels MANY writers open their books about Russia with de tailed accounts of their entry into that country. The readers of all the books about the U. S. S. R. published in the years 19201937 probably know by heart every corner of the frontier station of Niegoreloje, with its huge transparency appealing to the proletarians of all coun tries to unite, its bar with Russian vodka and the soldiers in dark, tall helmets with a red star. The small station on the Polish-Russian frontier was for twenty years the most popular doorway to the Unknown Country. Today it no longer exists. Both Polish and Russian frontier barriers were crushed by the German panzers. All those who re member Niegoreloje realise today how insignificant was that small town lost in the immense European plain stretching from the Rhine to the Urals. Niegoreloje was an accidental frontier station, like hundreds of others. Archangel is today something quite different, a real doorway to Russia. You dont need communist slogans, Red soldiers or vodka to help you to realise that you have entered an entirely different, peculiar country. A sea voyage is the right introduction for visiting a new country. An overland journey helps to blur the dividing line between countries and provides a more or less gradual transition from one country to the next. A sea-crossing 12 RUSSIAH YEAR enhances the difference and brings out the full force of contrast. Liverpool in August, 1941, was Englands fare well. An old, dark harbour. Docks, ships, shipyards. Smashed houses recalling two years of war. Then the sea. Three weeks at sea a good prelude for a visit to-Russia. The grey, monotonous North Sea, bleak and expression less. Heavy fog and low clouds. The fog and clouds grew thicker as we sailed northwards to Russia. It seemed as though the Arctic mist was helping to cloak that country of mystery in a fog which grew more opaque as we approached our destination. I have never seen a sea like it. Our convoy of forty ships, including thirteen war ships and two aircraft carriers, sailed through the fogs, like a fleet of caravels of the Middle Ages, carrying dis coverers in search of new sea lanes, truths or lands. ARCHANGEL , For a whole day before reaching Archangel we ploughed our way through milky f og s thick as cotton wooL The German reconnaissance aeroplane, which had spotted us on the previous day, could not hope to. find us again. We were as safe under the screen of fog as we would have been under the best air umbrella ever made iGtood Russian fog In the evening we noticed lights twinkling in the distance very dimly i and unsteadily. . It was , the abuDTty butbn the fallowing day we could not trace it again for the Russian coast was swathed onto more in, impene trable mist. J ...