We didn’t ask Utopia

a Quaker family in Soviet Russia

By Harry and Rebecca Timbres

1939

Foreword by Walter Duranty

IT IS NOT THE FIRST TIME I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO WRITE an introduction for a book about Russia, but I have never before done it so sadly and yet so gladly. Sadly because this is not merely a book about Russia like others which try to picture that strange and distant country for American readers. This book is more than that. It is a memorial to a man, Harry Timbres, who gave his life for Russia, not directly, as a soldier dies in battle, but in the simple course of his duty, to Russia and to science. This book, which tells more than most of them — perhaps because its basic material was not meant as a book at all nor written with that purpose — is the living words of a man who died. He was my friend. I knew him and admired him. I knew his work and difficulties and how he overcame them with a quiet persistence that refused to be checked by a thousand and one petty nuisances, stupidities, delays of red tape, and misunderstandings, which make life so hard for foreign laborers in the Soviet vineyard. For that reason, I say, it is sad for me to write this introduction.

On the other hand, I am not only glad but proud of the opportunity to pay a last tribute to Harry. I last saw him a few weeks before his death, when he came to Moscow to speed up the delivery of supplies and equipment vitally needed for his fight against malaria. With the restrained enthusiasm that was a striking phase of his character he told me what they were doing down there in the Mariiski Republic and how they did it, how it compared with work done elsewhere, in Russia and abroad. He had the subject at his fingertips, of course, because he ranked high amongst those «microbe hunters» whose careful, patient efforts are truly making the world safer for humanity. He was delayed in Moscow much longer than he expected, but he didn’t grumble. He understood that the delays were not due solely to red tape and inefficiency but arose because Soviet authorities faced so many and such gigantic problems, and because they were trying to «make bricks without straw» in so many varied fields and often with such weak and doubtful clay. That understanding on his part you will share as you read this book. And I hope too you will share his faith in what this country is doing and what it hopes to do.

At last, he left Moscow in high spirits. Work could go ahead now, he felt certain, on a more ample and useful scale. I received one letter full of facts and figures as he had promised, but with a clear undertone of eagerness and hope. Then, suddenly, typhus. And «the silver cord was loosed.» Men die but their work goes on and lives after them to help and encourage others. Harry Timbres would have said that himself, but he would have added, as I add, that is beside the point. What he would have liked — and what I hope — is that you who read this book will not do so for the sake of Harry Timbres or for Russia or for science, but to get from it what he would want to give you, kinder and deeper understanding of the USSR, apart from power and politics, in terms of human hope and work, in order to make tomorrow more happy, bright, and wholesome than today.

Introduction by Charles-Edward A. Winslow, M.D.

EARLY IN JULY, 1936, AT THE HOTEL NATIONAL IN MOSCOW, I met a young American doctor who was planning to bring his family to Russia and to live there for a time so that he and his wife could do their part in the struggle against preventable disease, which was one of the major problems of the Soviet Union. This book is the saga of the family adventure which followed; and I want to introduce Harry and Rebecca Timbres to its readers, as their history was told to me on that hot summer day under the shadow of the walls of the Kremlin.

Harry Garland Timbres was born in Missouri and brought up on a Canadian homestead in Alberta. He attended Leland Stanford University where he joined the Society of Friends, graduated from Haverford College in February, 1921, and sailed immediately to join the Friends’ unit then operating in Poland.

Rebecca Janney was the daughter of a Quaker physician in Baltimore. She had attended Goucher College, Teachers’ College (Columbia) and the Vassar Training Camp for Nurses (Philadelphia) in 1920. She, too, sailed for Poland early in 1921 to join the Friends’ unit, and met Harry Timbres in Warsaw. The two young pioneers were married on March 24, 1922, by civil ceremony in the free city of Danzig, followed by a Quaker wedding in Warsaw.

After their marriage, the Timbres made their first visit to Russia, to work for some months in famine relief under the American Friends Service Committee. They returned for a time to America, where Harry studied medicine with the ever-growing desire to apply his knowledge to the health problems of Russia. He took his medical degree at Johns Hopkins in 1928 and finished his interne service in Chicago in 1929. Meanwhile, two daughters were born, Eleanor («Nicky») in 1924 and Rebecca («Nadya») in 1928.

In 1929 the family migrated to India, where Harry Timbres had been asked to organize medical services in Santiniketan, Bengal, the educational settlement of Rabindranath Tagore, the great mystic and literary genius of India. Harry’s work consisted in inaugurating health co-operatives in the surrounding villages and in conducting a malaria survey of Bengal, which was one of the most complete of the similar studies of various districts published in the comprehensive Malaria Survey of India in 1935. Rebecca assisted in the local work, particularly among the Hindu and Mohammedan women in Purdah.

During the five years (1929-1934) when the Timbres family had their headquarters in India, Harry took a diploma at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (1930), studied the admirable health program of Yugo-Slavia as a Traveling Fellow of the Health Section of the League of Nations (1931), and received a diploma in Malaria Control from the Ross Field Experimental Station of India (1932).

On returning to the United States in 1934, he studied for one term at the School of Hygiene at Johns Hopkins. He left the school for eight months to serve as medical officer for a co-operative community administered by the United States government at Arthurdale, West Virginia, with entire charge of the medical, surgical, and obstetrical work in a community of 600 persons. In 1935 he returned to Baltimore to teach medical statistics and to complete his work for the degree of Doctor of Public Health, which he received in absentia in 1936.

This was the background of the two young people who were planning in July, 1936, to match the resources of their sound scientific training and their gallant spirit against the hazards of disease and the discomforts and uncertainties of life in a strange land in the throes of industrial and social revolution.

The practical difficulties experienced by Harry Timbres in obtaining the opportunity he sought and in arranging for the admission of his family to Russia are told by him in his letters, and the subsequent experiences of the family in a new settlement established to make paper for the Soviet Union in a remote forest region of the Volga are pictured in Rebecca Timbres’ diary. The tragic climax of the adventure came with the death of Harry from typhus in May, 1937.

The story of the twelve months between June, 1936, and June, 1937, as told in the pages of this book, seems to me of the first importance for two reasons.

In the first place, Harry and Rebecca Timbres have given us a picture of Russia in transition which is almost unique in its intimacy and vividness. We have had many books about Russia from diplomats, from journalists, from tourists; but this is something different. The authors never became party members; as Quakers, they could not be Communists. But they lived with the people and were accepted fully and completely in the brotherhood of a common task. Both Harry and Rebecca had unusual powers of vivid and intimate description. We see with them the sunrise in the forest, the spring breakup of ice on the Volga. We face the difficulties of housekeeping on a worker’s salary, we realize the problem of washing in a teacupful of water, we share the joy in the purchase of such rare luxuries as two jars of preserved cherries, a flat plate of iron to use as a frying pan, and a washboard, «slightly depressed in vital spots but still usable.» We attend meetings of the Medical Workers’ Union and take part in primitive masquerade parties at the Workers’ Club. We see the life of the tavern and the village street. We feel the old Russian shiftlessness and procrastination and the new Russian passion for achievement and efficiency in daily conflict. We catch the fervent idealism and the welling hope of the masses and we hear, too, even in a far-off village, menacing undertones of the war of the new regime against its interior and foreign foes. The book is a fundamental contribution to a real comprehension of the Russia of today and tomorrow.

In the second place, Harry and Rebecca Timbres have done something else in this book which was far from their own intent. In these intimate family letters and this personal diary, they have drawn for us a picture of themselves. This picture is of profound social significance, because it is the kind of people here made known to us who represent the hope of the world. They were not «enthusiasts» in the old and derogatory meaning of that term. They were students of science, well and soundly trained as technicians, critical, objective, rational. But they were the kind of people, who, by instinct and almost without conscious decision, seek out the difficult and the dangerous tasks, in the service of humanity. It is well to become intimate with a man and woman of this type.

In one of Harry Timbres’ early letters, he speaks of conversation with Dr. F. G. Boudreau and myself in Moscow, and says «I think both … are envious of the opportunity I may have here. I guess they wish they were young again.» With the end only ten months away, here is the authentic tragedy of gallant youth. Yet Harry Timbres’ life was not wasted. His rendezvous with death was in a cause that was significant and real. He fell on one battleground of the war against disease and shoulder to shoulder with those who were fighting for the upbuilding of a new social order against the ignorance and chaos which are the common enemies of all mankind.

To know Harry and Rebecca Timbres is to gain a new hope in these dark days. It is men and women of their sort whose quiet and unnoted service will yet create for us a better world, in which the posturing of dictators and the compromises of statesmen may be forgotten.

Part 1. HARRY’S LETTERS

The Family

Harry Garland Timbres
Sometimes called «Hal»

Rebecca Janney Timbres
Sometimes called «Bocca»

Eleanor Carter Timbres — aged twelve
Called «Nicky»

Rebecca Sinclair Timbres — aged eight
Called «Nadya»

EVER SINCE HARRY AND I HAD WORKED TOGETHER IN FAMINE RELIEF IN RUSSIA shortly after our marriage, we had hoped that someday we could return, preferably in medical service. With that end in view, Harry studied medicine and received his degree. But we were not able to carry out our plan until 1936, when we applied as «Intourists» and were granted our visas by the Soviet Government.

There were several reasons for our intense and undeviating feeling that we must return. We had learned to love and admire the Russian people themselves as individuals, and we wanted to work for them and among them. We had been interested in their economic system, and we wished to see what developments and changes had taken place in the fourteen years since we had last lived in Russia. We hoped our children might benefit by the educational opportunities in the Soviet Union and could acquire an international point of view. Socialized medicine was just commencing to stir into life in the United States, and we were keenly interested in making an intensive study of the system in Russia, where it had been in practice over a number of years; we wanted to draw our own conclusions as to where it had succeeded and where it had failed according to the original conception, and which aspects might be applied to countries like England and the United States. There was also a very fine opportunity for further research in the control and prevention of malaria, in which Harry was specializing, and we hoped he could work under the «Narkomzdrav» (Department of Health). And, finally, we were stimulated by books and lectures that we felt were heavily weighted for or against the Soviet Union, and we wanted to draw our own conclusions at first hand.

We had hoped to sail with the children in June, 1936, but were advised by Mr. Oumansky at the Soviet Embassy in Washington that it would be wiser for Harry to go alone, change his «Intourist» to a «Permanent» visa, secure a definite position, and then send for the children and me.

So he sailed alone. Very sadly we waved good-by and watched the water widen between us and the ship, Harry’s figure growing smaller and smaller until it was a mere dot outlined against the white deck.

* * *

HELSINKI JUNE 16, 1936

Dearest Girl,

Thy fourth letter reached me here. Thee¹ must keep a stiff upper lip— the distance between us doesn’t mean much and will soon be shortened.

It seems strange to be going in alone when we had hoped for so many years to be together when we entered Russia. The instant I get my Intourist visa changed to a Permanent one in Moscow, and am secure in a job, I’ll cable for the three of you to come.

Here at Helsinki for the first time I am really beginning to gasp in spirit, as the water gets deeper and deeper, and colder and colder. Tomorrow we get to Leningrad, and then I shall start swimming.

Thine, Harry

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NEW MOSCOW HOTEL, MOSCOW JUNE 21ST

Dearest Bocca,

June 16th— We entered Russia at Belo-Ostrov. The Customs were not difficult, but I had to register all the money I had, my camera, binoculars, microscope, and medical instruments, and get receipts for them. We arrived in Leningrad in the late afternoon. On the train, just before getting into the station, I engaged three children in conversation. Said one, «What country do you come from?»

«America.»

«Well, if you’re an American, why aren’t you riding first class instead of third?»

«I haven’t enough money to ride first class.»

«Whoever heard of an American not having money? What’s your coat made of? It has nice leather buttons. That’s a nice gold ring on your finger. Why do you have gold in your teeth?»

The train was slowing down by that time, and the little boys swung off the end of the coach, under the couplings like monkeys on a limb, and off the train on the other side.

Leningrad was shabby but showed evidences of repair work and new building. Crowds of people in the street made a marked contrast to Helsinki, where the streets seemed comparatively lonely. Hundreds of shops were open and all of them loaded with goods and crowded with buyers. There were dozens of little booths where confections and soft drinks and beer were being sold. Many persons, not foreigners, seemed quite well dressed. I sat in the park. A young woman sat beside me and watched her little boy play in the sand. (Every park has a large sand pile for the children.) She called him to her and put a blue wool overcoat on him, and then gave a few kopeks to an old bent beggar-lady who was making her rounds in the park.

I had a good supper in the hotel, and left Leningrad at 10:30 o’clock in the evening. A huge crowd milled around on the station platform. A woman was selling Eskimo Pie at 75 kopeks.² All sorts of people bought her wares. I was in a third class sleeping compartment with four berths. The other three were occupied by three men and a little girl. The child had a cold and kept coming to her father to have her nose blown on his handkerchief, which was shortly overworked. I gave her a clean one from my bag. That got us acquainted. Her father was an economist-engineer in charge of a scientific research institute in Moscow. One of the other men was a professor of pathology at the graduate medical institute in Leningrad, and the third was an ear-nose-and-throat surgeon at the medical school. We talked until nearly 2 A.M. They told me of some very interesting work in the treatment of malaria they had been doing, and about the medical organization of the country. Every doctor has an opportunity to come back to a graduate institute every three years for review and specialization.

June 17th — Moscow. Much of it is the same as when I saw it in 1930, but whole sections are completely changed. There are many new automobiles and trucks— most of them made in Russia. There is not a great variety of design, but they do get over the ground. I saw the magnificent new metro [subway] stations, but haven’t taken a ride yet. I did, however, get a glimpse of the new Moscow-Volga Canal (connecting the Moscow River and the Volga; that is, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea) on the way in. A lot of building was going on. It was «free day,» and crowds of people were in the streets. Free day comes every sixth day, instead of every seventh as with us.

I am stopping at the New Moscow Hotel, just across the river from the Kremlin. It is a comfortable hotel, and I have a room all to myself. The food is good, and is simple and clean, but the waiters are not so clean. I saw one of them spit on a knife in order to shine it up. Russia changes slowly. The service is quite prompt, however. From our dining room we look right over into the Kremlin.

I fared forth to find Alpatov³, whom I had liked so much when he was taking postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins some years ago, and whom I hoped to see while here in Moscow.

He had just stepped out when I called, but both his brothers were at home— fine young men. One is an art teacher, and the other a teacher and research scholar in Russian literature. They served me tea, with strawberry jam and confections. We talked about everything, mostly Russian literature and the poetry of Pushkin, in which the younger brother specializes. He is married to an Armenian and has the loveliest child. While we sat there, the death of Maxim Gorki was announced over the radio. Genuine gloom. «Our great Russian writer is dead!»

Alpatov finally returned. He seemed quite optimistic about my prospects, and promised to try to arrange some interviews for the next day. As I returned to the tramway, red flags with black borders were already hanging from the windows of the houses.

June 18th — At breakfast this morning at the hotel, I was seated with a doctor and two nurses, all just in from central Russia for the conference on maternity and child welfare, the program for which calls for the building of hundreds of new institutions, and the training of at least fifty thousand new medical workers, chiefly children’s nurses. This conference, the proposed new Constitution, Gorki’s death, and the proposed decree making abortions much more difficult to obtain are the main topics of conversation in Moscow.

Arthur Watts⁴ called after breakfast. He has been here nearly five years, working as an architectural engineer. He is very enthusiastic about the whole regime, and says even the prison labor on the Moscow-Volga Canal is a good socializing and reforming influence.

I went to see Hermann Habicht⁵, who told me that Sigerist⁶ had gone to Kazan and would not return for two days.

I found Alpatov in his laboratory. It is small and overcrowded, but well equipped. Most of the scientific instruments are made in Russia. One of his students has formulated a new theory of competition reactions of protoplasm that is considerably in advance of Lotka’s, which has held the field up to now. A new and greater Pavlov? Another of Alpatov’s students is a young man working on the effect of physical agents, such as low blood pressures and temperatures on parasitical infections of the blood. He has published a great deal.

As I walked home through the Red Square, the streets were crowded with processions of people queueing up to see the body of Gorki lying in state in the House of Trade Unions. There will be a grand funeral in the Red Square tomorrow at 5 P.M. Stalin and all the rest will be there. So will I!

I went to the Park of Culture and Rest this evening, where there were large classes in folk dancing in the open places in the park, gymnastics, swimming, boating, circus, theaters, and music— most of it free, or at a nominal charge. Thousands of people laughed, played, and ate— all seemed happy. I returned by river boat to the hotel. I can’t believe this is the gray Moscow I saw in 1922, or even in 1930. I am going to buy me a Russian shirt and a Tatar cap tomorrow and become a real Russian.

June 19th — My mistake— all the rest were there but I wasn’t. You couldn’t get within a mile of the Red Square and Gorki’s funeral. It was all chained off, and only members of trade unions and factories, and that ilk, were allowed in, and they crowded the Square to overflowing. But I saw many of the processions march in.

Then I looked up Annushka. She is the very same girl we knew in Sorochinskoye when we worked together in Famine Relief in 1922, only much fatter. She was so glad to see me she nearly fainted. She and her husband still live in the room they occupied in 1930, but their furniture is much better, and they have a piano and a gramophone. Their little girl died two years ago of pneumonia. Mischa is an architect, and so busy he has not taken a vacation for three years. Annushka is studying architecture, too. She has been at it one year and has three more years to go. One of her drawings on the wall of their room shows talent. Imagine, our peasant girl a budding architect! She takes an interest in art and has some books of very good reproductions, which she brought out and explained to me. She and her husband are as enthusiastic as ever about the regime, and point to the many improvements in life to show that their faith of six years ago— when there were bread lines, and little food, and practically no clothing— was justified. Mischa gets 2,000 rubles a month on his job, and Annushka a small stipend as a student. She loves to dance American dances, which are quite the rage now in Moscow— and got out the gramophone and American and Russian records and danced with me. She dances well.

Later, we had supper and went to a park, where we took a small boat and rowed around the lagoon, and then watched the people dance in the pavilion. It was crowded with couples doing the fox trot, rhumba, and Boston waltz. I had to smile when a Red Army officer, in high black boots, and with the star of the Order of Lenin on his chest, swung past in a lively rhumba. In fact, I really laughed out loud. Have we so completely conquered the world? O tempora, O mores!

As we returned through the park, Mischa remarked on the great number of loving couples on the park benches, disporting themselves in osculatory fashion quite a la Paris. He asked if people acted like that in America. Apparently neither he nor Annushka approved, and when I charged them with being conservative, Annushka laughed and said, «When Mischa courted me, I was a virtuous young girl.» Evidently, according to her, kissing in a public park is a sign of lack of virtue. The peasants are strict. Then I added that in America nearly every person has his own automobile, which is very convenient for persons desiring privacy in their courtship.

«We must have an automobile, too, Mischa,» she said, «and then we can kiss all we want to. And you’ll see, Garry⁷ Timbres, we will have an automobile within five years. Everybody in Russia will have one in five years.»

«And then they may kiss all they want?»

«Konyechno [certainly].»

It was all right so long as you did it in private!

June 21st— I saw some examples of modern Soviet art in the Tretyakov Gallery today. There was a special exhibition of the paintings of Repin (mostly Russian historical scenes). I could not find the «Pool, quiet and deep,» and was much disappointed, but there were other pictures in which the light effects were almost as good.

Thine, Hal

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MOSCOW JUNE 22ND

Dearest Bocca,

Sigerist has gone to a local medical conference of Tatar doctors and expected to return two days ago, but each day he announces postponement of his return by telegram. Alpatov tried to arrange for me to see Dr. Sergeev, chief of the Tropical Institute, but he was in conference for two days. Finally, Alpatov managed to get through to him, and I am to have an interview with him tomorrow at eleven.

Delegates of the League of Nations arrived today, Dr. Boudreau⁸ among them, and I saw him for a few moments in the hotel this morning. I am to see him again at six. I am told that Rakovsky (former Ambassador to France and himself a practicing physician in France before the war) is the man to see. Says I to Boudreau: «So you think I am quite crazy, do you?»

«I think you are obstinate.»

«Well, you don’t know a thing about me.»

«No, but I am learning. Come back at six and let me learn some more.»

I have not wanted to write until there was something definite to report; but knowing thee must be nearly wild for news by now, I shall send this off today. It is as I feared it might be— postponement and indefiniteness. It may be difficult to get the visa changed from Intourist to Permanent without leaving the country. On the other hand, there are persons who have recently succeeded in doing so. It depends on who recommends you, I suppose.

Third class tourist is as good as anyone could desire. The food and rooms are the same as tourist class. So far I have not discovered any difference, and there are many Americans at this hotel who are traveling third, and have been in all parts of the country. So far no bugs have met me.

Well, I’ll get this off air mail on the Normandie. I got thy letters of June 1st and June 5th. Thanks for both. It is very lonely here, and I miss thee so much, and thy counsel and support. But I know that I have thee all, even at this distance, and that is much comfort.

Thy own, Harry

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MOSCOW JUNE 28TH

Dearest Bocca,

The delegates from the League of Nations are at the National Hotel, not far from the Grand Hotel, which is just opposite the Historical Museum at one end of the Red Square. I happened over there on purpose around ten o’clock one morning as the delegates were assembling in the vestibule of the hotel preparatory to going on a short trip to an institution, and Dr. Boudreau introduced me to Dr. Bronner, one of Dr. Sergeev’s assistants. He is a stout man who looks something like King Boris of Bulgaria. He seemed pleased to see me and said he had received my letter— the one I had sent him the day previous, along with the letter from Oumansky⁹ — and asked me if I would like to join the delegates on their trip. They were going to the All-Russian Institute of Experimental Medicine, which is in the suburbs of Moscow.

«Sure I would.»

And so I hopped into a car along with the rest and away we went.

We were shown around a fine new Institute that is going to be one of the largest of its kind in the world when it is finished about three years from now. I met Rajchman, Head of the Health Section of the League of Nations, and several other men in the Section, including Dr. Madsen from Denmark (the President), and Dr. Parisot from France.

In the middle of the tour I had to return to the city to meet Dr. Gurevich, assistant to Kaminsky, the Commissar of Public Health. I had delivered a letter to him the day before, and he had telephoned me at the hotel to meet him at twelve. He is hard-jawed, cross-eyed, and efficient. I was with him not more than three minutes. He said he had talked with Bronner and Sergeev about me and knew what I wanted, and that they would be pleased to have a worker like myself with them. The next thing was to arrange about the proper visa, and that could not be done at once because of the presence of the delegates of the Health Section of the League, but he thought that after July 1st it could be put through fairly quickly. In the meantime, he would turn me over to Dr. Donskoy, who was in charge of foreign relations of the «Narkomzdrav» [Department of Health]. Dr. Donskoy came in immediately and he said he thought the matter could be arranged with the Foreign Office in about two days, after we got started on it, but before that, Dr. Sergeev would have to write some sort of an application for me.

I returned to the Institute. The delegates were all at dinner and I joined them— wine, cocktails, vodka, and champagne— I had to be careful. I was introduced to a professor of pathology, A. D. Speransky, who has recently published a notable volume containing a new theory of the pathology of the nervous system. It has been called mystical in some circles, and the equal of Claude Bernard and Virchow in others. He presented me with a copy of it, in English. There were many speeches, and Dr. McCollum¹⁰ got kissed on both cheeks by Speransky and Lena Stern. She is quite a character. Short, fat, good natured, and motherly, she is one of the most eminent physiologists in Europe. She used to work in Geneva, but about ten years ago told the Soviet Government they could have her if they wanted. So they gave her a laboratory. She fought them for more— she stood right up to them and told them what they must do, and eventually they did it. Now she is the head of two institutions, teaches physiology and certain branches of veterinary science, gets 5,000 rubles a month, has a car and chauffeur, and lives in two simple rooms. Well, she was there and kissed Daddy McCollum on both cheeks. When I was introduced to her she did not kiss me, but she invited me to come to tea and to be her guest at the meeting that night at the House of the Scientists.

Sigerist and I had tea with her about seven in the evening. Sigerist knows her very well. The meeting that night was interesting in many ways. I met many scientists, of course, and also Dr. Rakovsky, who is now head of one section of medical research. He presided at the meeting. The main topic was social medicine in Europe. Dr. Parisot talked in French all around the subject, but never came to the point that social medicine properly carried out meant a new social system. Dr. Rajchman followed with an account of the general work of the Health Section. Dr. Rakovsky ended up with a strong speech, laying stress on the fact that social medicine was possible only under Communism. He was cheered many times, but not by the League of Nations delegates. After the meeting there was a big supper waiting for us in a side room— plenty of wine and several nice ladies, wives of the scientists. I met Dr. Sergeev again. I should have said I had talked with him already at the Institute for Tropical Diseases two days before, and he had been very sympathetic.

On the way home I rode in a car with Dr. Rakovsky and another man whom I did not know. Sigerist was there too, and Lena Stern. I told Dr. Rakovsky how much I had enjoyed his speech. The unknown man joined in, and we had quite a talk on Communist theory. Later, in the hotel, Sigerist told me the man is the member of the Central Executive Committee who has charge of all health matters. Then I was glad I had been quite frank about my own plans in the conversation. He had been much interested. Bronner invited me to accompany the delegates the next day.

At ten A.M. we were all there— and I met the great Stampar¹¹. We rode in the same car with Rajchman, a reporter from Pravda¹² by the name of Vera Golubeva, and a Dr. Chang, woman doctor from Nanking on a League of Nations fellowship to study medical organizations in Europe. She has just come across Siberia, with Stampar. He has been studying social and medical problems in China, and says many people there wonder if the only solution may not be Communism. Rajchman maintained diplomatic silence. I did not. Stampar and I had much in common. He speaks fairly good English.

First, we went to the Kremlin and saw the big bell, and the big cannon and the churches. It took about an hour. Then out we sped into the country. Beautiful road, and beautiful country. We visited three day nurseries for workers’ children, and two district hospitals, just the kind I should like to work in. The equipment was simple but complete, even to sun lamps and X-ray. We were told the running expenses were about 3,500 rubles ($700) per bed per year. It took us all day, and about five o’clock at the point farthest from Moscow, about 95 miles, we had a scrumptious dinner, ending with ice cream better than I ever tasted at home. It was made out of real cream, and had real strawberries in it. So don’t tell me that only the Americans can make ice cream. When we left, the people loaded us down with bags of fresh strawberries and bunches of roses and chrysanthemums.

We came back just at sunset. Vera Golubeva sang most of the way back. Such a beautiful voice. During and after the famine she was a homeless waif. Now she is thirty-one, and is married to the editor of Trud. She has two children, eleven and two. One died in between. Her voice has never been trained, but she sings opera and folk songs and Russian jazz with equal facility. She says she sings when her daughter plays the piano. I got myself invited to her home, and will go just as soon as I can. She said she would teach me Russian dances. I didn’t say anything about knowing a few, so she will think I am an apt pupil. As I said, she is thirty-one, but she looks twenty-five. (Did I hear thee say, «Now, Harry, do be careful?»)

That evening I called on Hermann Habicht. He is married to a Russian professor at the Moscow University, and has one child. I did not meet his wife or baby, as they are in the country. But Louis Fischer, correspondent of The Nation, was there. Also Genevieve Taggart, poet and wife of Kenneth Durant, chief of the Russian news agency, Tass, in New York.

This morning I visited the Museum of Modern Western Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Lenin Museum. In the afternoon I called on Dr. Stampar again. We talked a long time. Just now he is returning to Yugo-Slavia to look after his five children, ranging from twelve to twenty years of age. His wife died of sarcoma three years ago. «She was a wonderful woman,» he said. He had me help him get some of his films together and then took me over with him to the House of Soviets (where you get in only by a pass unless you go with some big shot) where he was to show his films on China to the delegates of the League in a closed session. He took me along as his mechanic! We walked right in past two fixed bayonets, b’gosh, and up the elevator to the ninth floor. We were there early, and got everything ready. Fine films they were. He had taken scenes from the real life of the Chinese people (he was there three years as adviser from the League of Nations to the Nanking Government), showing the contrasts between princely wealth and abject poverty, and the primitiveness of their economy. The delegates were a little bored, I think. The Russians were intensely interested. After the second reel, the delegates decided it was time to hold the rest of the business session, and went into another room, but Kaminsky, the Commissar for Health, stayed to see two more reels. I met him afterwards. He is a fine-looking man, powerful, and with vision and great ideas. He looks you straight in the eye. Kaminsky says he wants to see some more of Stampar’s films when the delegates return from Leningrad on July 3rd, and Stampar says he will take me along as mechanic.

I delivered a letter from Stampar, came to the hotel, and here I sit and write and wonder what is going to happen. Taken at its face value, everything looks fine, couldn’t be better. But I’m not going to get too excited. There is still a heap to do.

I should have said that last Sunday I met Walter Duranty, the writer, too. He has a most unique personality, and is extremely fascinating.

And now, Darling, I am going to tell thee something else— I love thee, and miss thee like the very dickens. I think we would have been able to put it across if thee and the infants had come too; but you didn’t, and so we may as well make the best of it. Besides, things are not settled yet.

Annushka has just called on the phone and asked me out into the country day after tomorrow (free day)— swimming and dancing with friends. She is full of the devil. Mischa says she is very jealous of him. She teases him all the time about other women, and then puts her arms around him and tweaks him by the nose. She assures me that Russia is as bad as Spain when it comes to jealousy, and then adds that I must be careful. She wants to know if thee is jealous of me, and says she is going to write thee and tell thee I am going out with attractive little ladies (khoroshenkie malenkie devochki) and dancing with them in the park— will I please give her thy address? She is going to write thee how sly (khitri) I am. «You have to watch these men.» When I protest I am innocent of all such allegations, she counters with:

«I will believe every animal, and a badger,
But as for you, I’ll wait and see!»

which is the Russian equivalent of «Oh Yeah?»

When it comes to her man, she fears she is a bourgeoise— and then the next minute she says she is going to get herself another man unless he gives her a child. «The truth is, Garry, that Mischa doesn’t want a child, and that is why we haven’t had any more. He says I am not in good enough health, but look at me, how fat and strong I am.»

The law abolishing abortions except in case of absolute danger to health and inherited disease has been issued. Russia is now like most other countries in that respect. The discussion that preceded that law was very instructive. There is little doubt that the majority of people were in favor of it. The Russians are essentially puritanical.

I think this business is going to go through. But I may still have to telegraph for an extension of Intourist for another month— maybe even longer. In this case I’ll extend it only one month at a time. In the meantime I wish thee would write stating exactly what our resources are at the time of writing, and what it is costing thee to live, so I will know just how long we can hang on.

«And now to bed.»

Love, Harry

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