Word: russianism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...received a chance to go to Moscow through the Polish delegation as a non-Communist participant in the Festival. He said he was prompted to make the trip by a desire to see the country and the possibility that he could get the Western message across to some Russians. Once in the Soviet capital, he tended to pass up the Festival itself and concentrated on making more immediate contacts with the Russian people...
Abrams was chiefly struck by the fact that the Russian people "are thirsting for information from the free world." They've been living in a vacuum for too long, he said, and are told only what suits the government...
Abrams then read to his Russian listeners Fast's lengthy statement on why he was turning his back, not on the Russian people, but on their leaders and their form of government. "As I read it," he said, "the crowd hushed. Towards the end, however, when Fast told of his distress that mail from Soviet admirers was no longer reaching him, there was an outburst of indignation. Two young Muscovites said they had sent Fast a fan letter only recently. Obviously, the Soviet people are still writing to Fast, but their letters are being intercepted...
...Along about the tenth day of my Red Square oratory, I began to get very hoarse; I was losing my voice. The crowd became alarmed. People came up to offer me pills; my Russian interpreters spent a good deal of time relaying suggested remedies from listeners. They were worried, too, about the fact that I seemed to be losing weight and began to look tired after the first week...
Abrams reported that he often started talking in the afternoon and kept right on through the night until 3 or 4 or even 6 a.m. When either he or the crowd was exhausted, the gathering would break up, and almost every time his Russian listeners would contest for the right to pay his taxi fare back to his hotel. He tried not to let them pay, but on two occasions they succeeded in reaching the driver before he could stop them. "We made you stay so late, we want to thank you by paying your fare," they would tell...