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By Root 986 0

hard up. I did not have the money for the fare—£250. The News Chronicle said they would send me, but they changed their minds. Meanwhile I had made arrangements to leave. But I was determined to go somehow. What to do? I had no idea. The way I saw it was one of the newspapers ought to send me, because I was equipped to write sense about Federation and Partnership, while the professional journalists were all writing such nonsense. They did not see it my way. With my departure date a month off, on an impulse, I got onto a bus to Fleet Street, walked into Tass and proposed to a charming but surprised young man behind a desk that Tass should pay for my fare home. Every civilized country in the world, said I, paid journalists to visit countries and report on what they found there, and why should not Russia do the same? This, of course, sounds very naïve. But I do not feel this is the place to discuss the usefulness of naïveté. Besides, a good many Communists at that time conceived it to be their duty to influence the Soviet Union towards modern ways. Journalism, then as now, in Russia was old-fashioned, and one of the thoughts in my mind was that I might be adding my mite towards dragging Russia kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

Tass was noncommittal, but he put me into his car and drove me to the Soviet Embassy, where we saw the cultural attaché, a very urbane man, to whom I put my proposition. I was not even asking for expenses, I said, I wanted my fare paid, in return for which I would write articles for any newspaper in the Soviet Union he cared to name. The point was, I said, hammering at it, the Russians were not to behave in their usual indolent fashion: it was not the slightest use the money for the fare arriving in six months’ or a year’s time: the Russian time sense was not to operate in my case, because I needed the money to board the plane. Would they let me know, inside a fortnight, if they would pay the fare and what newspaper I would write for? We parted on this basis. The weeks went by. Suddenly, just before departure date, rather less than the fare arrived from the Narodny Bank, but no word about what newspaper I was hired by. Later, after returning from the trip, I found out that the money represented payment for some short story of mine published in the Soviet Union, which I had not been told about. They seldom do tell you. What happens is that a friend who has been on a jaunt to Moscow rings up and says, ‘Did you know that your work X is on sale on the bookstall in Moscow?’ No, you hadn’t known. The Russians behave inexcusably, pirating what they fancy. They pay money into an account in Moscow and if you go there you can spend it. But one isn’t always able to go to Russia—hasn’t the time or the inclination. If you nag, are unpleasant, make a fuss, you can get money paid here. I once got a large sum after a long, nagging campaign for payment for some stories. But the point is, it is a favour, a kindness, not a right. This isn’t excusable. It is not excusable for a large, rich, modern country to behave in such a way. The Russians, like most countries, often behave out of emotions appropriate to a previous epoch. For decades they traded on: ‘We are a poor, struggling, Socialist country surrounded by capitalist enemies. You are a friend, therefore don’t criticize us.’ This was legitimate once, but isn’t now. And—I think unconsciously—they trade on their charm. Few people visit Russia without being slaves ever after to the Russians, if not to their regime. Their warmth of heart, their kindness, their sympathy, their generosity are impossible to forget.

But—the fare. I had it, or almost. When I came back I wrote a lot of articles and posted them off to Moscow. Now comes the really unforgivable naïveté. It never occurred to me, since the conditions I was describing were so black a case against ‘imperialism’ they could not be worse, that there was any need at all for them to gild their lily. But then I got a letter from a friend in Moscow saying why had I written this and that? But I hadn’t written