1936 On the Continent

facts instead ofwild gossip could be collected, mysteriously to be growing rather stronger than rather weaker.
    Russia remained, in fact, a country of mystery. And many of the more enquiring people among us must have felt that it would be rather original and rather exciting, instead of going to Southend or Le Touquet or Broadstairs or Aix, to give up
one
year’s holiday of pure pleasure, and have
one
year’s holiday of pure interest instead—in other words, to slip across to the strange country named Russia and use their own eyes upon the subject.
“Nation in Chains”
    It is true, of course, that even the most inexperienced novice did not flatter himself that he could see in a fortnight “all that was happening in Russia.” But men of greater experience, of other lands and other capitals, knew that by walking about the streets of Moscow even for a couple of weeks, they would know more about the country than if they had sat at home reading newspaper articles in their own arm-chairs. The rumours of its failure, and also sometimes of its success, had been equally fantastic. Was Russia really a “nation in chains”?—a nation where “no one had smiled since the Revolution”? Both these things had been said by newspapers and by rumour. Or was there really some gleam of hope and interest in the New Experiment? Even the shortest visit would help to dispel some of the illusions, and the risk was worth taking.
    Why was it that up to a few years ago almost nobody of moderate means had the chance to go and see Russian life—life as it was being lived by a hundred and sixty million or so Russian people?
    The reasons were many.
    In the first place, there was the question of the
visa
, a common formality in use in many countries of Europe to-day.
    The Soviet Government of those days had no particular time and no particular desire to grant visas to outside enquires. The motive is understandable. Russia was desperately busy, throughout the length and breadth of the land, in setting its own house in order after three years of what is now called the “Imperialist” war, and afteranother four years of foreign invasion. Everything had to be done, from building up village houses to building up chains of great industries. No factory with a contract to fulfil against time, no stokehold of a liner with a head of steam to raise in a hurry, likes to stand aside and explain its mechanism to enquirers, however amiable are the intentions of the enquirer.
    In the second place, if the Government had granted
visas
indiscriminately, and thus got quantities of visitors to Russia, it would not have known what to do with them.
    They would have had no particular place to live, no particular places to eat at, no particular prices fixed for the exchange of their pounds or francs or marks or dollars, and, most importantly, as but few of them could have spoken the language, no service of guides and travel-bureaux to take them to the places that they most wanted to see.
Fairy Tales
    First things must come first. Good hotels, good restaurants, good interpreters and systems of motors available for hire are important amenities to a country that has time on its hands, and wants to give the best time possible to the stranger within the gate. But they are amenities and not essentials. Russia, after three years of desperate European war, and another four years of even more desperate foreign invasion, may be pardoned if it thought that a few million roofs on a few million village cottages, and a few thousand factories that should turn Russia into a modern country, were more important, for the moment, than inviting and extending hospitality to onlookers. There was little time or room for visitors, and that is the truth.
    Thirdly, there was the attitude that had been worked up in the rest of Europe about the conditions of modern Russia. The large majority of people in other countries had come to believe, through repeated reiteration, that Russia had fallen back into barbarism. It may seem incredible to recall it now, but before I personally took my first trip there in 1930 I was warned repeatedly by intelligent people (
a
) that I would be shot as soon as I landed, (
b
) that I would be arrested and sent to Siberia assoon as I landed, (
c
) that I would get no food, and so starve, (
d
) that I would get plenty of food, but that one meal in every three would be poisoned. I say it seems incredible now to hear these tales repeated. But they were all told