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We have quite a few guests with us today I will not go the rounds of introducing all of us but I would like to clear who is the editor of Clarine in Buenos Iris to rise to be seen by us. We're just. We were having a two way conversation in Italian and Spanish a little while ago that more or less made out. Of Us vaguely look through a frosted glass and saw the other side but it certainly was a meeting of two newspaper men and it was a very pleasant exchange because of that it's a great very great pleasure for us today to have Israel Shanker with us and. All of us who are in the news business look to the Moscow bureaus as one of the classic challenges facing American journalism at this time I personally had a three month that taste of it. And the others who were there at the time told me that that was just about right and three months you can really get the the full experience and then it's kind of nice to go away the the pressure of the. Of I found one of the worst pressures was having my secretary who was a very devoted member the Communist Party read me the problem and his vest year in Soviet sky. Each day and droning monotone and telling me the most awful things about my country in a very matter of fact and rather sympathetic way sympathetic for those who had written that not for the for the person who was listening to it and. The added anguish for me was that I. No that I had hired my secretary from the government as a loyal supporter of the government I had never any way of knowing whether there were really interesting and good things being skipped over as that but paper was read to me that coupled with the fact that the seeing eye as the is everywhere. Proved to be quite a nervous strain for some of the correspondents this one friend of mine got it an imaginary attack of cancer and wouldn't believe that he was perfectly well until he took a trip out to Sweden and an anon Russian doctor told him that he was well the. The experience is certainly strained us and challenging and if there is any hope or ever having the understanding in one world a large part of that hope rests on the shoulders of the fifteen or sixteen American news men who are there day in and day out covering must go for us in New Israel shank his own case not only was he invited to leave abruptly but his girl was invited to be closed at the same time. That was. An unhappy element in this long story of the Soviet American journalistic relations and it's a real pleasure to have Israel's back here to tell us just what happened and what his comments are on that happening. You just heard what will probably be the only talk this week the complete steers completely free of Republican or Democratic politics. And I hope to give a second. First of all to explain to those of you who. Are fortunate enough not to read our magazine how and why I was expelled from the Soviet Union last February we did an article devoted to the Soviet economy and on the cover of that magazine was Gratian event Soviet president and now to be no longer Soviet president be replaced by me going on. And on that occasion I was called to the foreign ministry and given a printed warning which said The Star magazine had slandered the Soviet Union and slandered Soviet people was fanning the Cold War and was poisoning the atmosphere between our two countries. These charges we have course denied subsequently on that occasion I said nothing and reply to these charges because I felt that it didn't really pay to try to argue under those circumstances. I. Was then called back to the foreign ministry in May. And this was concerning an article we did which was the boat at half past the life I. Should say the love of Lenin and half to a split in the communist campus but between the Chinese and the Russians on that occasion I was told that we had been given a first warning that if time slandered Soviet people we would be thrown out of the country we had now committed that crime of slandering the Soviet people in our article on Lenin and therefore the bureau was closed and I was a believe a country within a few days. A couple of nights subsequently Just before we left the country I was called by a car on the German magazine Der Spiegel. Who was calling me from his magazines headquarters in Germany and he said where did the interview with the foreign ministry official take place and I got the foreign minister said yes but what floor and I said well it was the eighth floor and he said Well I ask you because of four years ago I was thrown out of the Soviet Union and it was eight four then two he said did he keep you standing and I said No no I was allowed to sit down it is well things have improved after all. For the approximately sixteen American cars on than to have been allowed to remain in the Soviet Union life is one series of restrictions and a permanent state that borders on depression. The first obvious restriction is that concerning travel to travel more than twenty five miles outside of Moscow you need permission of the Foreign Ministry Normally you are not granted this permission when you are granted permission it is in most cases to go to cities such as Leningrad Kiev and. Which visiting tourists are permitted to visit also but you are not permitted to travel to the great bulk of the Soviet Union. You are required to live once you are given an apartment and you are given an apartment you may not go out and look for ones were acquired to live in one of a number of apartment houses which are reserved for diplomats and correspondents. Perhaps the greatest problem of living in Moscow is the problem of reporting from there access to news R.S.S. is not at all what we would like to have it. To interview any russian your still required to get government permission there is a certain agency whose job it is to be available to you so that if you want to interview anyone and this means not only an official but anyone in an unofficial capacity as well you must call and ask permission what happens normally is that you hear nothing from this official you hear nothing for weeks unless you call back and then you are told that of course it doesn't only depend on him at the Pentagon the person you want to see but in the majority of cases you are not granted permission to interview the person you would like to interview eventually if you are given permission to interview one of the minority of people whom you refer to permission to interview you often discover that you have forgotten what it was you wanted to ask him or the story is no longer current for one reason or another the story is no longer usable. A great problem that assailed especially television people in Moscow is the order forbidding the shipment of undeveloped film the sales the car bonnet with such a degree that one or two of them are getting close to the border line. I don't know what as much as a sanity or insanity on one occasion when I drive the ship some film of a picture of a criminal who had been apprehended and was going to be charged with murdering something like six people throughout the Soviet Union I didn't have the exact feeling of his name yet so I wrote as identification for this criminal coming K O M I N G which many newspapers magazines use to indicate a word that is going to come later and when the film was inspected at the airport and when the military inspector saw that the man with identified is coming he exclaimed but this isn't coming this is so and so and then confiscated the film because I had obviously been trying to get something for. A correspondent in Moscow live under the constant threat of expulsion. There are certain to booze which can get a person expelled one would be reporting too closely on the personal life of the Soviet leaders but this is not a boo that is very. Easy to violate and as much as we basically know very little about the personal life of the Soviet leaders. There is a taboo also that extends to stories that are too speculative if you're not sure of your facts and you usually become sure of your facts by seeing them printed and probably are the best you we should be very careful about reporting things. We had a feeling in Moscow that everything that we send via the government cable office and there is no other way to send cables was being read. Most of us used to try to improvise system to get things passed the careful eyes of the foreign ministry not that they would keep things from going out but they would see that we got out if we got things into the cables that they didn't approve of and one of my colleagues on one occasion was reporting that the Parcher of the Soviet army Marshall rockets off key from Poland. And in order to get the point across about what kind of man this was he wrote in his story the Marshall ruckus of the was every bit as popular in Poland the General Sherman had been in Georgia and the point was not lost on American readers but it certainly seemed to have been lost on the Russian readers. On one occasion when I felt terribly oppressed by all the frustrations of reporting and living in the Soviet Union. I drew up a list of the difficulties I'd been having just that one week and it made it quite impressive list and I thought what I should be careful about reporting all of these things on a cable that this cable might not be very welcome when people in the foreign ministry read it so at the beginning of the cable I said that I have reported so often on the pleasures of working in the Soviet Union that I want there are people in New York we counting these pleasures again but if anybody is interested they can see Peter Matthews who keeps a dose of these cables reporting on the. Pleasures and everybody on time knows Peter Matthews is a fictional editor whom we dreamed up to be a kind of straw man for complaints if anyone calls up and says we didn't like the way you ran our ad in time last week who's responsible the answer is always Peter Matthews and when anybody tried to get Peter Matthews on the phone of course in the stream a difficult job and not perhaps there were some things that the Soviet authorities didn't read we often felt that what they didn't read they certainly overheard I remember one occasion when Governor Harriman was in Moscow last summer on the occasion of the signing of the nuclear test treaty we threw a dinner for him that was attended by all of the American cars on the Moscow. One here and then got up he began by saying Ladies and gentlemen and then he looked at the ceiling and said and Mr crucial of you were listening I went on from there I want to get agent on which a colleague of ours named Hank Walker who used to work for life and now works for the Saturday Evening Post visited Moscow had an old friend a nerving Levine who was with N.B.C. went to see Irving living at his apartment and it wasn't much of an apartment and Hank was shocked by what he saw and he's that Irving How can you possibly live in a place like this this isn't just for you you can't be satisfied with a place like this or Irving was very nervous about someone who might be overhearing that so he kept. The and when Hank Walker went on with his Irving finally explains That's Hank Walker of Life Magazine talking this is Irving Levine I love it here and the other. I don't know. How many people are inclined to wonder if expulsion accomplishes anything from the Soviet point of view. Well I'm not quite sure about the Soviet point of view but occasionally accomplishes something from the correspondence point of view accomplish something from our point of view it got us out of Moscow. And I might be tempted to say that anything that got about can be all bad. The constant concern of guard bonds living and reporting in Moscow is when can I get out get out how something of the same connotation of significance that it has in the Army has a slight difference you know that eventually will be possible for you to get out you may not know this in the Army. But I noticed in travelling through America a constant concern in many cities is for example in Los Angeles the problem of traffic how to get on the freeways and how to get off the freeways well in Moscow if you saw the car on and about the only subject which they will talk at great length is when I was unhealthy last year when I was in Sweden last year when I'm going to get help thinking again I went I'm going to get to London again. But from the Soviet point of view there is one purpose accomplished and that is that an expulsion intimidates those correspondents who remain in Moscow as is the fact whether you are determined to let it have this effect or not when Peter Johnson the bureau chief for Reuters was expelled about three or four months ago we all felt that we had to be slightly more careful about what we report it didn't mean that we were going to keep from reporting things we had but we would try to find some more dodges that would get us past the inquisitive eyes of those who were reading or the inquisitive ears of those who were listening. The question then arises what should be done about the expulsion of American cars condoms or other cars bonnets in the Soviet Union and I have one suggestion. As a suggestion in the form of a question really. For every American part on the next dollars in the Soviet Union should not one Soviet correspondent be expelled from the United States there are many who feel that we shouldn't play the Russian game my own feeling is inclined to be that we should in this instance as much as we get nothing from not playing it. Seems to me that the Russians will think twice rather than once if they know that every time an American cars abandoned that expels in the Soviet Union a Russian correspondent is going to be expelled. From Washington or from New York. Now if any of you have any questions. I would give you one word of warning and that is that serious questions and a difficult questions are very easy. I had an exchange and soon after I came back when I was talking to a group of advertisers if I can use that word. And luckily it was just before I got up to speak to the whole group and one man said to me. Tell me I hear the ice cream is good in Moscow is that right I think yes and he said How come I didn't have the vaguest idea why the ice cream was good in Moscow. And then about two minutes later he said How's the bread and I said well the black bread is fine but the white bread is very good lately and he said why the black bread black so I'm sure there are people here who know the answers I know the answers to both questions but I absolutely knew nothing about them so both of us are so if you have any serious questions do I have many difficult questions about Sino Soviet this dude who's going to replace from a shop you know the thing that nobody knows the answer to I'm your man but he wanted me a simple question I'm not the person who should be addressed. Is there anyone with a serious question. Here are. The Russians we all knew her from the article about whether or not they realize maybe you are I don't think I think they understood her until I asked John to handle the questions because it would be repeated in the margins John Wilhelm legally parked cars because. I was asking this article about what the Russians complained did they feel that Israel had written it in Moscow or did they realize a part of it may have been written over in New York. I think the Russians understand the system that we use and that is that we submit material to time we turn in material the time the time is requested and then time rewrites all such material the Russians understand this therefore did not hold me personally responsible for the article that offended them therefore they expelled Time magazine and I was expelled because I happen to be working for time and I was the only person in Moscow working for time so that they're sophisticated enough to understand us I don't know which our editors were sophisticated enough to understand this. Yes The question was Whom do I think will replace crucial of. The answer to the question who will replace Stalin would have been a terribly difficult thing to do an answer to give if you had asked the nine hundred fifty two before Stalin who is going to replace Don I think there were very few people who would have suggested the crew shop was going replaced on the answer to the question therefore of who is going to replace coach of is a difficult question at the moment shall we say the betting in the foreign community in Moscow is that it will be one of two people it will be either brashness who is now stepping down as president of the Soviet Union or it would be put Gournay who is a member of the president and is perhaps the most prominent member of the Brazilian now but it also seems likely that in either of these cases the succession would be an interim succession However interim successions have a way of becoming permanent succession in some countries in the Soviet Union after Stalin We had a shuffle that was reshuffled and shuffled again and it seems likely on the basis of past experience that this may very well happen after a crucial sleeves that will have a temporary man to replace by someone else. Sorry the question was that about a month ago or two months ago Khrushchev unequally on and I think it was with little burst. For breath and yes unveiled a large statue to the Ukrainian authorship Cenk Oh in front of the Ukraine Hotel in Moscow and this was not reported by the American press why was this not reported in as much as the American press usually reports all the activities are crucial I think the answer is fairly simple there had been a great to do about Shevchenko in Moscow for a period of about a month. In I was there early this year on the occasion of his anniversary in March of this year on that occasion a number of stories very few but a number of stories were carried in the American press about this literary phenomenon. The statute the ship chain go took a long time to put up as a matter of fact in front of the Ukraine and sell that put a large piece of what looked like plywood because the statue wasn't ready when the statue was finally ready the correspondence in Moscow had read so much about Shevchenko during such a long period that they themselves felt it wasn't really much of a story anymore edition the which it's not completely accurate that the American press reports everything the crew show does even those things which are in public view because basically there are so many things that tend to repeat themselves that one doesn't see the news value in these perhaps we didn't see the news value in reporting this because we had earlier reported what portion of it said for example memorial meeting Shevchenko and so forth or the speech that on the subject of ship Jingles too I think the nomination of Goldwater would have an effect on the China Soviet relationship I think the election of Goldwater as president would have a considerable effect on every relationship. And I that's violated my promise not to talk about politics. I don't know if the Russians would be terribly concerned until he were elected because I assume that their information is that he won't be elected president I think they would certainly be terribly concerned if they thought that he was going to be elected president they were terribly concerned because in Moscow Goldwater is known as quote a wild man unquote and Goldwater is also portrayed as a kind of. Fascist right wing or reactionary you can pick out just about any label you want to field and it's been used in Moscow so that the Russians are convinced that they would not be able to deal with Goldwater they would not be able to do anything rational with Goldwater that he'd be a threat to peace and their relations with the Chinese would certainly be affected it seems to me has there been a step up with an irreligious campaign in Russia recently there was an attempt to step up their own religious campaign in about the month of March when the when a speech by O.T.O.H. off to the audio logical commission was released in Moscow and the speech you know yourself was saying that any religious propaganda was not terribly sophisticated in Moscow people were being attacked for being believers instead of being persuaded that it was wrong to be a believer instead of being shown their errors they were being declared in effect criminal I don't think the campaign had the success Ilyich of hoped it would have there are. Periods of vigor and periods of calm in the end a religious campaigns in the Soviet Union and I think we're now in a period of relative calm compared to other periods I think to a certain extent the fact that religion has not been eradicated all these years has gotten home to Soviet leaders not that they're willing to admit it not that they're willing to drop periodic campaigns campaigns go on and they probably will go on are Russian sincere about coexistence I think the Russians are terribly sincere about coexistence to the to the extent that they would. Like to have Peace First of all but also they would like to have called the things on terms that would please them I think that there are determined that coexistence is not the first goal of policy I think the first goal for of policy for them is the continuation of communism in Moscow in the spread of communist system to whatever other governments they can help spread it to there has been a great deal of thought and speculation to the effect that there's been a great change in Moscow a feeling of detente and that somehow we're more friendly with them and we are co-existing with them better than we did before I think this is been overstressed I think there's been very little in the way of concrete measures that would indicate that things have changed in our relations with the Soviet Union we have the nuclear test treaty but essentially this changed very little ratified something that both sides were tacitly agreeing to we've had very little progress since then we've had a somewhat toned down propaganda against this but. Coexistence is one of those policies that Stalin urged to. Push off urged even before his troubles with the Chinese it's a very popular policy in the Soviet Union is popular with the people and it sounds very good it would be much harder to have a popular policy which said we shouldn't coexist with other countries and because it's a popular policy it's pushed at least in newspapers over the radio and so forth. Recently there has been talk about a rise in wage damage in the Soviet Union what does this really mean it means that if the wage that if the wages are. Raised as has been promised now that certain categories of people who are woefully underpaid will be getting more money this goes for a very small section of the population I think we should was thinking mainly in terms of teachers and doctors if they get a forty percent raise it will considerably improve their standard of living but forty percent raise will bring them roughly from perhaps. The official equivalent of one hundred dollars a month two hundred forty dollars a month so that's not an extraordinary raise in our terms but it is a sizable raise in their terms Also if a Soviet Union reduces its working week from forty one forty hours then I think this too will mean something of an improvement but it's not much of an improvement for a society that was aimed for the welfare of the workers ever since the beginning much of this is in quotes as you understand yes there are certainly more now than were available several years ago and I would say that it's certainly been the experience of those who were in the Soviet Union some years ago and who now return that there's been a vast improvement the question remains what improvement would there have been had other policies been applied with the improvement of been greater This is one of those almost idle questions that no one can answer satisfactorily but the Russian has been improving in terms of material benefits. And one of the great dangers for the society it seems to me is that the more a person has the more he once the Russians are now much more aware of what's available in other countries than they were before this makes them want more things one of the basic fallacies of the system seems to me that the leaders are always talking in terms of a certain year in which they can introduce pure communism when everybody will have everything he once as though a person wanted one small apartment and two suits and one set of drapes and perhaps an automobile that he could share with a number of other people but as we all know if we have one automobile we would like to have two if we have two We would like to have three and this is true in the whole field of consumer goods I'm almost ashamed to describe this is the question is you said it was hard to get permission to interview Russians if you couldn't talk to Russians then what was your typical working day I'm glad the none of my editors is here. A typical working day I would say for just about every foreign correspondent the Soviet Union consists of the following reading the newspapers if you can read themselves having his interpreter read whatever he once read in the newspapers and therefore the pence are a great extent on the honesty or the devotion of the interpreter who was assigned to you many of us have tossed teletypes in our offices in English or in Russian or in both we read what Taz has to say we have a should we say a very active social program which means Westerners to Westerners foreigners with foreigners very little Russian participation in the dinners in the cocktail parties that make up quite a round in Moscow and we get the feeling that we can't miss any of them because we're learning so little elsewhere that we should not lose the opportunity to try to learn something in the On these occasions we try to travel. We put in requests to go to places that people haven't gone to lately and these requests are turned down we put in requests to go to places that people have gone to on occasion and sometimes even these requests are turned on we worry a great deal this makes up I should say about four or five of the hours of the working day we worry about something that's happening that we haven't heard about but it's not perhaps as acute a worry as it is in other countries because if we haven't heard about it usually no one else has in the Western community not because we're good but because we're all in this terrible soup together that we just have very little way of knowing what's going on in the country one of the problems of the Soviet Union creates for itself is the fact that relying as we do to such a large extent what Soviet newspapers publish we're much more inclined to believe stories that are critical of something in the Soviet Union than we are to believe stories that have nice things to say about the country if we see a story saying the harvest is tremendous this year it was never is good it will be one hundred million bushels more than it was last year we feel it may be true it may not we'll report such a story but we won't be very enthusiastic about it if we see a story saying the harvest is terrible this year it was never so bad it's one hundred million bushels less than it was last year will feel thoroughly convinced that there is some truth here and that we should have no doubts about reporting this there are many critical stories in the Soviet newspapers about aspects of Soviet life about individual enterprises about individual officials not the top officials the stories we feel inclined to believe or at least to report and therefore the Soviet Union works against its own interest in restricting our access to news sources nerds have improved throughout the country I think they've improved less in the countryside and they have in the cities but there is a noticeable increase in the countryside as well. What is the Russian common opinion about the background to the Kennedy assassination I would think that most Russians feel that it was a right wing plot is that if Oswald were guilty he was only the instrument of the right wing that it wasn't one man who assassinated Kennedy but that it was a whole group of fascists or reactionaries or Texas altruist who arranged the assassination of Kennedy Yes. The question is what has been the effect on the average Soviet citizen of the shipments of Western grain does he know about this is he aware of this I think Soviet citizens are now very much aware of the fact that there was a failure of the harvest crucial of us and so on a number of other people have said so they would tribute of the blame to the weather of course crucial if as also admitted that it became necessary to import grain from the West so that this word has gotten around very widely the Soviet citizen is not informed on the occasion of the arrival of grain to the Soviet Union so that he knows that there is grain there but when he eats his loaf of bread he has no idea if it's Russian grain or American grain and when a ship arrives you know this so there is no announcement of this in any Soviet paper he has therefore been subject to. A certain questioning or he has let himself question a good deal of Soviet foreign policy and other policy because he knows the harvest failed he knows that bureaucracy isn't totally not to blame in this field and therefore he's had some doubts the doubts of expressed themselves of course in a number of anecdotes that have spread through Moscow about the grain harvest and so forth one of the most typical Being on what was good shops greatest mistake in the answer what was Stalin greatest mistake answer of course is not stocking grain for twenty years and there are numerous anecdotes that were told many many years before but they are now being repeated about the harvest in the grain situation. I would say that there are the question is doesn't the grapevine get the word around about the imports of grain based on foreign broadcast for example certainly there are a number of Russian citizens who listen to foreign broad kiss and if they listen to the news as well as to the jazz that's broadcast then they are informed and the grapevine does tell a good many people about what's going on in the Soviet Union you would rarely know this from talking to Soviet citizens because they're reluctant to admit to you first that they listen to the news on foreign broadcasts and second because they're reluctant to talk to you about something that involves government policy that is something that might indicate that government policy was not everything that it should be. The question is do did I or do other correspondents in Moscow normally listen to the radio for our own information do you mean Soviet radio or foreign radio yes I would say most of us listened at least to news broadcasts of for example the Voice of America or the B.B.C. or other networks and it keeps us informed more quickly than if we wait for the next day until the Paris edition of the York Times or The Herald Tribune comes there because we also hear a number of stories that don't appear on the toss teletypes that we have in our office it's in effect the only way we can keep informed very quickly about what's going on in the rest of the world or. Question is in the Soviet press for example and probably his best and also in the Republican press there are many attacks on western influences and the question is just how far is this effective or. How far is our western influences evident western influences are extremely evident in many fields one is in the field for example of popular dancing of the fact that youngsters like to dance to jazz the Russians call jazz any kind of popular music rather than Then the Minuet in the waltz and so forth are good Russian dances. It's evident also in the desire for consumer goods which are not available in the Soviet Union there is nothing that makes a Soviet citizen more avid than seeing some Western product that he cannot go into in self a Western automobile of Western suit Western pair of shoes so the he has been exposed at least those in the cities have been exposed to this kind of influence and there are very many cynical people in the Soviet Union who don't go around publicly saying that they would like to have some of these things or they would like to do some of these things but they would. Like. Are you forbidding to recruit your own secretaries now are you do you have to take the ones the government assigned you were forbidden to recruit your own personnel you know still the government agency in charge of providing personnel provide you with a person you are free to refuse this person to ask for another it may take you a few more weeks to get another nominated for you so that on occasion you're inclined to accept the first person given to you but you're also free to fire that person with two weeks' notice and therefore to ask for another person and eventually you'll get someone else but it will always be provided by the government. The question isn't concerning my typical day do I receive many handouts from Soviet agencies in the soviets know what I hand out is the Soviet certainly know what I hand out is they hand out a great many things via tossin via the newspapers they don't really know what I hand out via the mail is so that we're left should we say blissfully alone. We never get handouts from the foreign ministry there is never a background press conference of any kind any Soviet Ministry or office there is never a Soviet public relations man who comes to us with a story there is never an occasion on which we are offered a story. That is really of interest to us except if it's offered to just about everyone and the mail includes many things that come from abroad but virtually nothing that comes from the Soviet Union and in fact that is sometimes a blessing but I'd rather have a blessing the other way around. The question is are the restrictions that I cited concerning access to sources concerning interviews concerning travel apply to other newspaper men as well as Americans yes the restrictions are not only applied to other newspaper members there are also applied to correspondents from foreign communist countries so that they too must go through a Soviet office to ask permission to interview anyone they want to interview and they too must ask permission to travel and they to find themselves not granted this permission quite often if you ask does this make them cynical about the Soviet Union the answer is yes. The question is that I watch television in Moscow we watched a great deal of television in Moscow is yes what is television what is television like in the Soviet Union there are two chains. And I might be inclined to say that you have nothing to lose but your chains in the Soviet Union because there's not much to be gained from them one is on for about six hours nightly the other on for about five hours there are very many films that are shown on them devoted either to the revolution or to the Great Patriotic War World War two The Germans are bad men the Russians are good men and I'm inclined to believe that kind of film there are also films concerning the revolution and Lenin is good in prominence a great deal there are very many discussion programmes which are all centered on one side of the question. And if you have Meet the Press in the Soviet Union or if you have Face the Nation or something like that the Soviet version you have one person saying but the Greek Cypriots are right in this question the second person but they're very right in the third person say they're indeed right but you never have someone who question any of the comments. Obviously go on all afternoon because the questions are inexhaustible we are profoundly grateful to Israel. There are many who say that the very best programs we have to have in our club are those in which our own members are center of the. Presentation and certainly that was beautifully here today thank you.