RANSVESTIA

and all the rest. It is the locus of maybe 20-25 "Institutes" or special research centers in electronics, physics, chemistry, biology, math- matics, mining, nucleonics, and many others. They are all in separate buildings nestled into the forest which occupies all the land that isn't built upon. It is a marvelous place to do concentrated scientific work since, with specialists in various branches of science near at hand, problems that involve two fields such as biology and physics, for example, can be dealt with by both kinds of experts with any other consultations that may be necessary easy to obtain. It is one more area where I believe the Soviets are forging ahead of us. In a private enterprise economy scientists working for one company are not in a position to share all their findings with other scientists who, although they are working in the same field, are also working for competing companies. Thus the need for industrial secrecy has a stifling effect on scientific communication. In Science City on the other hand there is no need for secrecy and anything that might turn up in the course of one kind of research which might be of value to someone else is available since it all "belongs" to society at large.

Siberia is still rather sparsely populated and so the government of- fers inducements for people to emigrate there from the more crowded sections of European Russia. Workers there get more pay for the same work plus free transportation back to their home city on the Trans Siberian Railroad or Aeroflot Airlines for vacations after a certain number of years of work there. I suppose it is very cold in winter but when we were there I was rather charmed with the city. It has a cer- tain open, forthcoming, pioneering and adventuresomeness to it that I found very interesting after the older more traditional cities I'd seen.

Next we flew to Irkutsk arriving about 10 P.M. in a rainstorm. Since we were due to leave next morning for Ulan Bator in Mongolia, they figured us not to be visitors to the city, but transients and thus de- cided we should stay in the airport tourist hotel which was about two blocks away. Although they provided transportation for our bags as far as the hotel we had to tote our flight bags and other carry-on equipment the two blocks in the rain. After a long delay in figuring out room assignments we had to carry our own suitcases upstairs to the second or third floor. Since there were a number of older ladies on our trip who couldn't carry their heavy bags up those stairs I became a porter for them as well as myself and was really pooped when I finally got to bed.

The following day we trekked back to the airport and loaded our-

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