Editors' Note:
There are, of course, some errors in Mr. Polevoy's story. Many are
due, as he notes, to the fact that parts of the conversation were
conducted through dramatic gesticulations and incoherent sounds. Bill
Seward, the youthful proprietor of Menemsha's post office and store,
for example, may not recognize himself as the ancient Mr. Zur, and the
author of Cassandra Bobble, a fictional caricature of society
columnists, will be surprised to see her creation re-emerge in Russian
as Xandra Babel the neighbor's girl reporter. More substantial, in the
editor's opinion, is his view that it was Mr. Gribatchov and not Mr.
Harrison who doubted the practicality of an exchange of articles. And
yet as many errors of detail and interpretation would no doubt be
found were we to describe an evening spent in Mr. Polevoy's villa
outside Moscow. As far as the general tone of Mr. Polevoy's account is
concerned we cannot complain.
Mr. Polevoy, after all, is describing an evening in the home of an
opponent of the political administration in power. Soviet readers learn
that it is a comfortable place, lived in by a family substantially
free from fear. The author refers in a mocking way to the shadow of
John Foster Dulles and mentions the reluctance of the boys to take his
$5 (the reason, lost in translation, was that they would not be
publishing their paper in 1956). But just as Mr. Polevoy seems about
to conclude with a political moral, he demolishes this traditional
ending in favor of the truth. For the discussion which Mr. Polevoy
describes ended with a whispered aside which the host found
startling. "We will put you on the subscriber's list to _The
Pioneer_!" Mr. Polevoy had roared to the boys; then he drew their
father aside: "That is, if it will not hurt you," he whispered. The
host laughed and explained that he and his sons were free citizens,
able to read whatever they pleased and happy to receive literature from
other lands. It seems gratifying to us that this small but memorable
incident has found its way into the Soviet press.