Word: ussr
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Powell: In a phrase made famous by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels: "No ruling class ever voluntarily gives up state power." I would be astonished if the ruling class in the USSR, especially under new leadership, volunteers...
...Siberia, USSR Trees Read Aldous Huxley on peyote tripping. Three meals: bread and cheese, fried eggs, cucumber, chicken soup, borscht. Read 541-page novel with jacket review, "...a man's world, where hate can swell like biceps and frontiers beckon as seductively as a woman." Play "hearts" on blanket between top bunks...
Once the French tour group disembarks at Ulan Bator, we are fewer than 35, most of us transit passengers with too little money and foresight to book an Intourist guide and hotel room in Moscow. To be ignored in the USSR is a privilege, but an unsettling one. Outside the window, peasants with produce, families with hampers, and soldiers with duffles reinforce this sense of travelers' limbo. We are insubstantial, unaffiliated. The Russians, much to our disappointment, do not stamp our passports. When we finally leave the country, they collect our visa form and leave us no trace...
...Siberia, USSR. Troll women in scarves and boots refill water tanks on train. Read every page of Time (People first): Wash hair in second-class sinkroom with Eddy (black suds). Stand at window and sing first verses of camp songs...
...USSR. Sick of bread and cheese. Read Soviet anti-imperialist proposals for the Indian Ocean from magazine rack. Eddy smokes last of Great Wall grass. Stand at window and imagine cranberry juice, oatmeal raisin cookies, pizzaburgers, Pack, Exchange addresses. Check connecting schedules. Arrive in Moscow a little before 5 p.m., 10 minutes late...