RA ransvestia

That night we were due to fly to Novosibirsk, so we all got to the airport about 7:30 and finally got called to the plane about 9:00 and got aboard a very modern three-jet plane like the Boeing 737. All nicely finished on the inside, stewardesses and all the trimmings. But when the pilot got around to starting it up it wouldn't. He tried a number of times, came back to a panel on the wall behind the flight deck and played with what looked like a fuse box but again no soap. Finally after our being cooped up in the seats for about an hour they gave the word to disembark and return to the tourist lounge which we did. Apparently what happened was that the engine that ran the compressor which makes the compressed air which is necessary to turn over the big jets to get them fired up, was on the fritz so no air, no jets, and no go. We sat in the lounge and got bulletins every so of ten ready by 11 P.M.; no, ready at 12; no, ready about 1 A.M.; finally we were told to bed down in the lounge as we wouldn't be leaving till morning. They wouldn't take us to a tourist hotel so we sprawled on benches, settees and wherever we could and passed a long and uncomfortable night. I prowled around and found a big room off the upstairs hall that had a lot of padded seats but straight backed chairs in it. I put three of them facing the wall and next to it. Then lay down on them using my top coat for cover. Eventually morn- ing arrived for all of us and we were a pretty beaten up bunch. But there was one benefit and that was that we flew over the reaches of Kazakistan in the daytime which enabled us to see them which we would not have been able to do if the night time flight had gone as planned.

It was in this area the Krushchev "Virgin Lands" experiments took place. We could see large tracts of plowed land cropping up just here and there over hundreds of miles. They were not side by side but kind of all over. Although we couldn't distinguish it from the air I presume that the land in between was rough or hilly or otherwise unsuitable but they evidently were using all the relatively level and arable land they could. We passed several large lakes out in the middle of what seemed like nowhere impounded by large dams. They had certainly learned to conserve water. This was in northern Kazakistan and southern Siberia.

Finally we arrived in Novosibirsk and capital of the territory of Siberia. Just to straighten you out, Siberia is not the land which bor- ders on the Pacific and the Sea of Japan and is opposite to Alaska. Most Americans including myself have the idea the Siberia is the most easterly part of the USSR. Not so. Siberia is way east of