Word: oriana
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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OVER AT UNCLE JOE'S (325 pp.)-Oriana Atkinson-Bobbs-Merrill...
...Oriana Atkinson denies being an expert on Russia, and sensible readers of Over at Uncle Joe's will not wish to dispute her. Neither can they disagree when she writes, "But after ten months in Moscow I do claim this: I know more about Russia than anybody who has never been there...
...wife of New York Times Correspondent Brooks Atkinson (whose last year's Russian dispatches won him this year's Pulitzer Prize), Oriana was never permitted to leave Moscow during her stay in Russia. But her restless curiosity and good-natured brashness got her into schools, museums, churches, ordinary homes and, with the help of interpreters, into occasional friendly arguments. Over at Uncle Joe's is haphazard reporting on the breezy, often pointless level of a women's-club lecture. But it does convey something of what daily living is like for both foreigners and Muscovites...
...Oriana Atkinson liked the Russians enormously, admired their unfailing kindness as hosts, was touched by their uncomplaining acceptance of endless labor for pathetic rewards. In other ways, too, her reactions were typical of U.S. visitors to Moscow. She was annoyed by the sloppy workmanship everywhere, by the suffocating snarls of red tape, by one-party ballots which made elections a farce, by the fear of ordinary citizens to speak without looking over their shoulders. She saw prostitutes solicit openly (the Soviet Government proudly claims that it has ended prostitution in Russia), found beggars everywhere, watched black-marketeers operating in public...