RANSVESTIA nsves

Something that had impressed me in Leningrad but which I thought might just be characteristic of that city turned up again in Moscow. There was ABSOLUTELY NO LITTER lying about in gutters, under trees, in alleys and sidewalks such as you see in almost any American

and for all that most other large cities. One day I was walking over to another hotel and not being sure of my way asked directions from a Russian woman going the same direction She spoke pretty good English and in the conversation I asked her, "What would happen if I were unwrapping a candy bar or just finished a pack of cigarettes and disposed of the wrapper by just tossing it away on the street?" She said, "Why someone who saw you do it would probably come up to you and tell you to go back and pick it up." I said that was about what I thought. She went on to explain that Muscovites are proud of their city and believe in keeping it clean. She said that each year every resident of the city donates one full day without pay to doing what- ever is necessary to repair, maintain or improve the city. Why not? The city, its streets, buildings, etc., belong to the people, not to some corporation or organization that is impersonal and doesn't care. They do and they act on it. One very large point for their society.

Another one is that everyone tells you, Russian and European alike, that a woman could walk about Red Square or most any other part of Moscow or other Russian city in the middle of the night by herself without fear of mugging, purse snatching or rape. Doesn't that, too, say something about a society that is in many ways more important than their politics and international diplomacy?

During the next three days we visited Red Square, the GUM De- partment Store, the Polytechnical Museum, Lenin's Museum, and many other places. In the Polytechnical Museum we found a young man who was studying electronics and who talked English and sort of filled in as guide in the museum. He showed us all over and was able to explain the things that we couldn't figure out because all the captions were in Russian. Toward the end we were going into a room of musical instruments. He asked me if I played the paino. I said no but that I had an organ at home that I occasionally took a flyer at playing. He said fine, then you can play on our organ. We went to it and it was a little bitty thing like Sears would sell for three to four hundred dollars. It wasn't large and multi-keyboarded like a Hammond or a Lowry. But that wasn't important. I sat down at the single small keyboard and began picking out tunes and pretty soon started to play America. The young man said, “What is that tune?" I said that if you were in England it would be "God Save the Queen," but in the U.S. it was

76