24
PARTISAN REVIEW
Such considerations could not have made me withhold my praise;
no more will they silence my criticism. Yet I confess the extraordinary
favoritism (greater than in any other country in Europe) shown to
everybody who wields a pen, provided they write grammatically, did
more than a little to put me on my guard. Of all the workers and
craftsmen of the Soviet Union the writer is by far the most pampered.
Two of my traveling companions (each had a translated book on the
press) scoured the antique shops, the curiosity shops, the second-hand
stores, not knowing how to spend the advance of several million
roubles they had just received and which they knew they could not
take out of Russia. As for my own case, I could hardly make a dent
on an enormous bank-account, for everything there was given me free
of charge. Yes, everything, from the trip itself to packages of cigarettes.
And whenever I would take out my wallet to settle a restaurant or
hotel bill, to pay an account, to buy stamps or a newspaper, the ex·
quisite smile and imperious gesture of our guide would stop me:
"You're joking
!
You are our guest, you and your five companions
too."
Indeed I had nothing to complain of during the course of my
trip through the Soviet Union, and of all the malicious explanations
that were concocted to invalidate my criticisms, the one that tries to
pass them off as the expression of a personal dissatisfaction is by far
the most absurd. Never before have I traveled in such ostentatious
style. If by train in a private car, otherwise in the best automobiles,
always the best rooms in the best hotels, the most plentiful and select
table-fare. And what a reception I got! What pains were taken!
What attentions were paid me! Everywhere cheered, flattered,
pampered, feted. Nothing was considered too good, too exquisite for
me. I would have been graceless indeed to have repulsed these ad·
vances; I could not; and I retain a marvelous memory of them, and a
lively gratitude. But these very favors continually conjured up the
idea of privileges, of differences, where I thought to find equality.
When, having escaped with great difficulty from the supervised
world of officialdom, I had rubbed elbows with some piece-workers
whose earnings were no more than four or five roubles a day, how
was I expected to feel about the banquet given in my honor, which
I could not avoid attending? An almost daily banquet, where there
was such a quantity of hors d'oeuvres alone that one was three times
surfeited before starting on the meal proper, a six-course repast which
lasted over two hours and left one absolutely stunned. What an out·
lay! Since I was never allowed to see a bill, I cannot be specific about
the cost. But one of my fellow-travelers, well informed about prices,
estimates that each banquet must have come to more than 300 roubles
