1936 On the Continent

would not have been actually surprising. Wicksteed had been travelling in a Moscow tram, and had in ignorance committed some trifling breach of regulations—he had been smoking in the wrong part of the tram, or something of the sort. Instantly the conductor had pounced on him, and had tried to fine him a few roubles, as was in the conductor’s power to do. He had explained that he was an Englishman and had acted in ignorance. Instantly, he said, the whole crowded population of the tram had been up in arms against the conductor for daring to show discourtesy to the stranger within the gate! …
    I had occasion myself later to prove the essential truth of this story many times. Russians are not invariably courteous to one another—they can even be rude and aggressive—but never in five years’ experience have I knownthem to be anything but extraordinarily courteous and considerate to the stranger. Partly it is tradition. The language has always been difficult to learn, and they have had long training, beginning centuries before the Revolution, in helping the stranger who cannot make himself easily understood. It is partly a new attitude. Russians have some vague idea of what has been said about them outside their country in the last twenty years. And at least a large number of them are genuinely pleased and flattered that tourists and visitors from other countries have come some thousands of miles to see them and to learn some glimpse of the truth for themselves.
Exaggeration
    I would like to mention that I, also, was once arrested by a policeman in Leningrad. It was at a time when the streets were filthy and muddy. Wishing to board a tram, I had dropped my cigarette into the gutter. Instantly a whistle blew, a policeman’s hand descended on my shoulder, and a crowd collected miraculously from nowhere. I had disobeyed a regulation; I had thrown a cigarette into the street, and not into the ash-can provided. The policeman had it in his power to fine me, instantaneously, to the extent of a shilling or two. It was my first visit to Russia, I stammeringly explained that I was an Englishman—and here again the affair passed off at once with a smile and a caution.
    The books mentioned have been more or less general books. There are by this time many hundreds of others, and many hundreds of books by specialists on different aspects, in Russia, of their own subjects.
    There can be a general rule in reading them—and that is to take all their extremer statements, whether of the utmost enthusiasm or of the utmost condemnation, with caution.
    There are writers who go to Russia and come back to write books condemning the whole system, lock, stock and barrel. Much of what they say may be true, but it is obviously impossible that the whole of it can be true. A government cannot last nearly twenty years, during which the standard of education, comfort and living circumstances of the great majority of its population has clearly improved, and still be a wholly bad government.
    Similarly, there are writers who go to Russia and come back to write books whole-heartedly praising the system—and over-praising the system—in all its branches and manifestations. To listen to them, or to read their books uncritically, is to be led to believe that the Soviet Union is already an earthly Paradise. Which is, of course, utterly absurd—and is not for an instant claimed by the more intelligent Soviet authorities themselves.
Read Critically
    The thing stands to reason. At the time of the War and the Revolution, Russia was a more backward country than most other Europeans can well believe. Beneath an outward glitter and splendour, most of its arrangements were medieval. The French Ambassador to the last of the Tsars, M. Maurice Paléologue, keeps noting in his diaries of the 1914-17 period the following remark: “Russia to-day (1914) is not like France and England were twenty years ago, nor even a hundred years ago. It is like Europe before it had had the French Revolution, the Reformation and the Renaissance.” It was backward in many essential matters by long centuries. It is interesting that this remark was made, not by a wild revolutionary, but by a distinguished diplomat, a supporter of the old regime, and a personal friend of the Tsar. The point to be remembered is that not even a government of archangels could have transformed such conditions into an earthly paradise in the short twenty years they have had at their disposal.
    The