1936 On the Continent

theatres, museums, modern buildings, sports grounds and fashion establishments (yes, the Soviet Union has fashion establishments, manicure parlours, and permanent-wave institutions).
    It is a city that, in its ancient splendours, is the nearest thing I have seen in Europe to Constantinople; and the nearest thing, in its modern improvements, that I can imagine to New York.
    Let us leave it at that. This essay is written mainly for the people who propose either sooner or later to go and see for themselves. Those who know Moscow already will not need it described. Those who do not know it yet will know a great deal more about it when they have been there a couple of days than I could ever tell them.
    The sports to be had in Moscow vary with the seasons. In the winter there is everything connected with ice and snow—skating, ice-hockey, ski-ing and tobogganing. In the summer one sees every sort of sport being practised—swimming in the open-air baths by the Moscow River, rowing on the Moscow River, and tennis, gymnastics, dancing, and riding.
The Volga
    If one’s trip can extend to more than a fortnight or so actually within the Soviet borders, it is a pleasant plan to cover a larger area of country and to see the Volga.
    One leaves from Moscow and goes an overnight journey by train to Nijni-Novgorod (now rechristened Gorki). From there one gets on to a large river-steamer, and, if one’s time is short, goes up stream for a day or so, and then returns to Moscow, or, if one’s time is longer, goes a charming four-day voyage down the great river, passing Samara and Kazan and Saratov to Stalingrad. Thence one can make a round trip of it by going across country by train to the charming southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don, staying there as long as one likes or has time for; and going thence by train to Kiev, and from Kiev either back to Leningrad and so by boat home to England, or from Kiev direct across the Polish border and so home through Warsaw and Berlin.
    One can by this means cover an immense amount of Russian country hundreds of miles away from its two main cities. It is a trip very well worth taking, and is still covered by the usual inclusive rate of payment. Rostov is a town that particularly appealed to me. It has a “southern” air about it—cactus growing in its publicgardens and so forth—that is pleasing. Like all Russian towns it is being continually developed. It has recently been presented with a colossal theatre—or, rather, group of theatres. In the vast building there is a theatre capable of holding 2,500 people, a smaller theatre, and a couple of concert halls. I saw the beginnings of this grandiose scheme a few years ago. It was recently opened in triumph.
Kiev
    Kiev deserves a word to itself. It is a marvellous town, both historically and pictorially. It was the capital of medieval Russia long before the ruling house moved up to Moscow. Its monastery, the Lavra, is the most celebrated in Russia.
    It is also a town of quite wonderful natural beauty, built on sheer hills looking down over the wide river Dneiper. It has lovely public gardens and wide boulevards lined with trees. It has a vast sports ground (and another one specially set aside for children) on which every conceivable sport seems to be practised both winter and summer.
    A few years ago, when I first got to know Kiev, there was a cloud hanging over it. The harvests in the Ukraine had been bad, and the conditions of life were reflected even in the shop-windows. The town remained lovely, but its poverty was pathetic.
    Visiting it a couple of years later the change was almost miraculous. Harvests had been good, the conditions in the Ukraine had become settled. The town, still with all its natural beauty, was bursting with life and energy. New buildings were going up everywhere. The cobble stones in the streets were being taken up and asphalt pavement substituted. The shops were full of goods—and not only “goods of necessity” such as clothes and food, but goods of frivolity, musical instruments, sporting paraphernalia, cameras and lip-stick. Bathing in the Dneiper, football (played in Russia as a summer sport), tennis, handball, volley-ball, and every other sort of game that can be played with a ball seemed to be pursued endlessly. The same was happening, only more so, when I returned again a year later.
    N OTE .—It is often claimed—by people who never gothere—that it is impossible to see anything of Russia in a series