Russian Journal

In London's Savoy Hotel, John Steinbeck overheard a Chicago Tribune man snort: "Capa, you have absolutely no integrity!" That wartime remark, says Steinbeck, "intrigued me--I was fascinated that anybody could get so low that a Chicago Tribune man could say such a thing. I investigated Capa, and I found out it was perfectly true." Photographer Robert Capa and Author Steinbeck became great friends.

Last March, in a Manhattan bar, they met again. Over two drinks they decided to go to Russia to record, not the political news, but the private life of private Russians. Last week, in the New York Herald Tribune (which had jumped at the chance to pay their way) and in twoscore other U.S. and foreign papers, the first chapters of their Russian Journal appeared. According to plan, they had brought back no headlines but an unexcited (and sometimes unexciting) report that, like any proof that the Russians are people after all, would make the brazen voice of the Kremlin all the more disheartening.

Waifs from the West. The Soviets admitted them--with some misgivings about Capa (who, in any country, talks and looks like an enemy alien) and his cameras. "The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons," says Steinbeck, "and a man with a camera is suspected and watched." To a polite, but suspicious young man at VOKS, the cultural relations office in Moscow, they tried to explain their mission.

"Your own most recent work," the Russian told the hulking, hearty Steinbeck, "seems to us cynical." Steinbeck explained the job of a writer was to set down his time as he understood it. He tried to make clear the unofficial standing of writers in America : "They are considered just below acrobats and just above seals." Eventually, Capa & Steinbeck were given an interpreter and approval to go to the Ukraine, Stalingrad and Georgia, where the interpreter himself needed an interpreter. They went by air, always in U.S.-built C-47s, and never found a stewardess who did anything but carry pink soda water and beer to the pilots. In restaurants, of all places, they found red tape as endless as spaghetti.

Energy from Hope. Amid the ruins of Kiev, they found German prisoners helping clear up the rubble. "One of the few justices in the world," wrote Steinbeck. "And the Ukrainian people do not look at them. They turn away. . . ." At the museum there were crowds staring wistfully at plaster models of the future Kiev. "In Russia it is always the future that is thought of. It is the crops next year . . . the clothes that will be made very soon. If ever a people took energy from hope...." In the fields around shell-pocked Shevchenko, they found cheerful bands of women picking cucumbers. They were barefoot, "for shoes are still too precious to use in the fields." Everywhere, they found dogged, friendly people, willing to share their bread and cabbage, anxious to hear about America and full of misconceptions about it, instilled by the Russian press. Again & again they were asked: "Will the U.S. attack us?" Again & again they had to explain why the U.S. does not believe in controlling its press or regimenting its people.

Capa was refused permission to shoot the antlike activity at the Stalingrad tractor plant (and later had 100 of his 4,000 negatives confiscated). They came home convinced that the Soviets, who keep the permanent foreign correspondents cooped up in Moscow, have the world's worst sense of public relations. "The Embassy people and the [regular] correspondents feel alone, feel cut off, they are island people in the midst of Russia, and it is no wonder that they become lonely and bitter," Steinbeck wrote. "But if it had been part of our job to report news as they must, then ... we too could never have left Moscow."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.