ustxtxb_obs_1965_09_17_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

We’ll take care of you! IIFUTURA PRESS INC Hickory 2-8682 Hickory 2-2426 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS AVENUE P. 0. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS riptz Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 bustle, and seat snatching. You can get pushed around just as hard here as in New York. There is the same dogtrot, devil take the hindmost rush of seething humanity. The physical attributes of the Moscow Metro are all they are said to be. As we innocent Alices dropped to the bottom of the rabbit hole, we saw marble, luxurious chandeliers, and Soviet art. As you are elbowed along with the surging mass you get fleeting glimpses of ceiling frescoes, wall mosaics, and heroic figures in bronze not all in the same station mind you, but when you ride the tide of the crush it is difficult to separate station from station, and your memories are a whirl of dropping escalators, rising escalators, speeding trains, and art. The equipment and premises are kept spotlessly clean, as are the streets and all public premises. This is a source of great pride with the Soviets. You will see hardbitten women, mostly past middle age, sweeping the streets with stick brooms. As fast as a paper or other debris is dropped, it is swept up or into a manhole. This was also true in Leningrad. We were told that the Metro ceases operation at 1:00 a.m., and for five hours special crews with special equipment clean every single part of the system, stations, cars, and all. This must be so. After two station changes, and as many near nervous breakdowns, we made the journey from Mayakovskya station to the one near the Kremlin Square. Here we alighted and entered Gums \(pronounced partment stores. By now the sometimes latent claustrophobia Huldah and I have was throughly aroused, and we were wee timorous shivering creatures, in the mould of Bobbie Burns’ field mouse, but we entered and traversed an arcade or so of the establishment. It struck me as a gigantic market place, turned inward on itself with stalls giving off of glass covered arcades. We saw no dearth of consumer goods. Shoddy they may have been, but plentiful they were also. As always, we passed through the food and fish market, again plentifully supplied, and saw the booths for bottle supplies with Soviets and others gravely drinking Russian champagne from bottles with plastic caps. Apparently it was sold by the drink. Remembering that Angella was to take us to an American money bottle shop “some day,” we cour 14 The Texas Observer ageously passed them by, an action I yet regret. x Friday we dedicated to being brainwashed: we went to the agricultural and industrial exhibition. We chose to see the mechanical pavillion, that of education, and that of space conquest. The Soviets are entitled to a great pride in their industrial advance. Of course, it is absurd to measure it by that of the U.S.A. They are at least a hundred years late with their industrial revolution, and what has been accomplished here in one generation is breathtaking. From a czarist feudalism -they have advanced to the nation that first penetrated space. Their industrial complex may not function smoothly, but like the dog that walks on his hind legs, it is not that they do it well that is remarkable, but that they do it at all. After the exhibit we had lunch, and by the way our meals are a little more varied as we step out a little into the unknown. We get a very good breakfast of apple juice, two “fried” eggs which are really baked in a small metal pan, toast and butter and tea and coffee. They serve a tender beefsteak, plain, with an egg on top or with onions, all of which are good. There is a Chinese dish called roast sirloin with some kind of roots. It approaches beef chop suey and is very good. In the afternoon we visited the Tretyakov Gallery, where Russian art is displayed. Like almost everything here, the periods are dated as before and after 1917. All paintings and art of every nature created after the revolution had to carry a social message, the unhappiness of the and their beaming joie de vivre under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This motif is even read into the older works; Angella carefully . pointed out how “onhappy” the were. ere. There were works that I enjoyed, particularly those of a man who accompanied the Russian armies as an official military artist. His theme was the horrorof war, and he painted powerfully of it. He was killed in battle; Angella could not tell us the name of the war that was being fought, but from the date of his death, 1904, I surmised it was the Russo-Japanese. Yesterday morning we made our visit to the Lenin mausoleum. As we approached the entrance we could see the queue of visitors extending some three blocks. We were moved forward to where we only had to queue up at a point a little off the square. We slowly drew near to the shrine, and eventually entered it two abreast. It is an astonishing experience to march somberly past the reclining figure of Lenin. We were with non-Soviets, and there was not the worshipful and reverent air that is found among the Soviet citizen visitors. Nonetheless, one cannot traverse the course set out through the mausoleum without awe. I began to think of what Frank Scott or some of our funeral experts may have said, and it came out about like this : “They shore did lay him out nice.” If this is actually the body of Lenin and not a replica, some amazing process of preservation has been achieved. The features are not shrunken and there is no discoloration. He is just lying there as if in the first pallor of death. My thoughts on Lenin’s worship by the Soviets take me willy-nilly to the recollection of the philosophers in Gore Vidal’s Julian who decried Christianity as a sect that worships a dead Jew. If anyone doubts the spiritual side of Christianity he should go through the experience I have had, shrinking from the thought of worshipping a mortal corpse, and then going to a Baptist church service in Moscow the next day. We were determined to see the church. Angella would have none of it, so we went alone in a taxi. We were met and escorted into the church by a friendly young man, and from the little English he knew I learned the church had 5,000 members. His was the first serene face I have seen here, and his warm welcome the first that seemed to flow naturally toward us. The church building is an old converted three-story with a gallery formed on the second floor extending in the shape of a horseshoe above floor level. The pulpit is at the open end of the horseshoe. There are no stained windows or customary church decor; the interior is gaily painted in pink, blue, and yellow pastels. The church was crowded to capacity with people standing in the galleries. There were whiskered patriarchs, old hard used faces of ladies with headrags, and the important thing, a good sprinkling of middleaged and young people. All were devout; even to be there showed devotion. ” In the pulpit was a stocky bald -headed man preaching in Baptist Russian. I did not comprehend anything he said except his reference to Christ, but I could tell from his emphasis and exhortations that he was preaching pure Baptistese. On leaving the church I asked about a contribution and was permitted to go into SPLIT RAIL INN 217 South Lamar Austin Where Union Men Meet