At Leningrad we were met by buses and driven through streets that swarmed with imperturbable, peasant-like people. The upper parts of their Mongolian-shaped heads all looked exactly the same. I noticed how immaculate they were. Faces, necks, hands, were white as white and displayed a cleanliness simply marvelous when you took into consideration the difficulty of securing soap and water. Very few were old; many were children apparently between the ages of two to twelve. But in the expressions of all I glimpsed a sadness.
The former capital was depressing and down at heels, shabby and in need of painting. Yet it was beyond comparison in its spacious dignity; the architectural design of the houses could not be hidden. My high-ceilinged room at the Astoria was luxurious with alcove bed, bath room, and large marble tub, which, although cracked and spotted with rust, nevertheless evidenced the days of splendor when the hotel had been frequented by the aristocracy of the Old Regime.
From my window I could see the cobbled square. It was eight o’clock and the city was awakening. I watched the passing show: heavy wagons were drawn by a single and often most decrepit horse with what seemed a dark brown rainbow, arched and graceful, over his neck; queues formed in front of little stands that served rations of beer or bottled soda water; some women, the varying colors in their shawls making bright splotches, swept the car tracks with birch switches or pushed empty carts on their way to market, others carried hods of cement up the ladders to the masons on the new buildings being erected everywhere. Usually the men were doing the skilled work, and women, hardy and robust, with strong legs, bare feet, sunburned faces, were kept at the laborious, monotonous, physical labor until such time as they could qualify as expert artisans.
The Communists’ apartments were much better, lighter, airier, cleaner, more modern than those for non-party members. When we asked why, in an equalitarian state, one section should be thus privileged, we were answered, “It was they who made all this possible. Why should they not have the best? What you bourgeois give to your capitalists, we give to our Communists.”
We asked Tanya, our guide, if she were a Communist, and she replied, “Oh, no. That’s too hard.” Ordinary citizens might be excused for a mistake or even a crime, but party members could have no human frailties. They were exiled or perhaps shot for cheating, stealing, deceiving, exploiting, taking money under false pretenses, or many things which average people could do and be punished with fines alone.
Although the cost of the trip itself was relatively low, whatever we bought in Russia was excessively high owing to the peculiar situation of the ruble. In the first place, there was no ruble; it existed only in theory. Second, every foreigner was supposed to deal exclusively with the Torgsin stores through which the Government had cleverly contrived to come by a hoard of foreign currency by charging seventy-eight cents in our money for each ruble instead of its actual value of five cents. For example, the price of a stamp on a letter to the United States, which was two and a half rubles, amounted to two dollars.
Mrs. Clyde, who leaned sympathetically towards Communism, said to one of our young men, “Let me get you a little present.”
“Not here,” he said. “It’ll be too expensive.”
“Oh, yes,” she insisted. “What would you like?”
“Well—a bar of almond chocolate, then.”