RUSSIA REVISITED A New Look at Russia and Her Satellites BY LOUIS FISCHER DOTJBLEDAY COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, N. Y., 1Q57 CONTENTS PART i Return to Russia 1. AT HOME IN MOSCOW 9 2. NEW LOOK, OLD FORM 21 3. MOSCOW AND MADISON AVENUE 2-8 4. REVOLT 40 5. THREE YOUNG COMMUNISTS 53 6. A CHAT WITH MIKOYAN 67 7. WHY DJS-STALINIZATION 74 8. OPIUM QO 9. POWER AND POVERTY 1O2 1O. RUSSIA AND THE WORLD 114 PART ii Trouble in the Satellites 11. HIGH EXPLOSIVE 125 12. THE FOUR LAGGARDS 141 13. THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE 156 14. POZNAN 163 15. SECRETS OF THE SECRET POLICE 176 16. THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN MOSCOW 189 3.7. THE BLOODLESS REVOLUTION 201 18. 1848, NOT ig 220 CONTENTS ig i A MACABRE DRAMA 239 20. HUNGARIAN OCTOBER 243 21. THE DIARY OF A REVOLUTION 249 22. THE TANKS THAT FAILED 264 23. RUSSIA IN RETREAT 269 INDEX 279 PART I RETURN TO RUSSIA A Personal Account CHAPTER 1 At Home in Moscow The saddest thing about journalism is that there is no substitute for being there absence compels the journal ist to be a historian. Twenty days in Moscow. Only twenty days, but they sufficed to breathe life into the dead body of material on the Soviet Union which I had gathered since I left the country in 1938, Post-Stalin Russia, in particular, be came a reality. My visa allowed me eight days. After my arrival I pleaded for an extension and received ten days more, then two days more. I decided to spend them all in Moscow, where I had resided from 1922 to 1938 with intervals for trips to America, Europe, and the Middle East and where, therefore, I hoped to meet old friends and make new contacts. I had promised myself, before returning to Russia, to go with an open mind and an open heart and not to seek support for previously expressed views. This was to be a new leaf, or a new book, and I would not care if what I learned upset or modified earlier ideas. I wanted information, not confirma tion, I wanted to look at Russia in the perspective of the thirty-four years since my first visit. My purpose, as I . planned the trip, was to study human beings and the Soviet system in terms of human beings. I in tended to devote little time to exhibits, excursions, factories, galleries, and so forth. In fact, I devoted none. But the number lo RETXTKN TO RUSSIA of Soviet citizens with whom I had frank, revealing conversa tions both in their homes and elsewhere far exceeded my most optimistic expectations. Personally the entire experience was heart-warming, professionally very rewarding. The nonstop Finnish airliner circled over Moscow two hours and twenty-five minutes after leaving Helsinki. The moon was full and the morning star rising rapidly. The city looked as the usual western city does from the air an area of electric brightness. Strings of prominent red lights outlined a tall building which, I learned later, was the new university. Once on the ground we encountered the traditional and comforting Russian disorder. As the plane lowered its steps foreigners and Soviet citizens were already waiting there to greet incoming passengers. No air hostess or airlines official led us into the air terminal. We straggled in individually. A large oil painting of Stalin hangs in the first room. It shows him, idealistically, in white jacket against a blue back ground, standing alone on a vast brown newly plowed collec tivized field, although, as Khrushchev said in his famous secret speech to the twentieth Communist party congress in Moscow on February 24, 1956, The last time Stalin visited a village was in January, 1928. . . ., before collectivization. The customs examination room kcked the usual long counters. Luggage was simply piled in a heap on the floor. With some difficulty I finally got an officials attention. He wanted to see the foreign currency I carried but did not count it and gave me a paper registering the total as I stated it. My three pieces of baggage were not opened...