◆ SpookStack

Introduction The Soviet Scene in Focus It is easy for the foreign visitor in the Soviet Union to feel a little as if he were looking at a threc-dimensional motion picture without the necessary colored spectacles that are nor- mally furnished by the management. Through one eye he sees. a political and social system vastly different from his own at home or from any of the systems he may know anywhere in the non-Communist world. Through his olher eye he sees ordi- nary human beings, very much like himself, who appear to be leading fairly normal lives within this strange system, and who know so little about the rest of the worid that it is dificult to discuss it in terms that are intelligible to them. The bewildered foreign visitor, after trying in vain to bring these two pictures into focus, is apt to give up and simply ignore one image or the other. The resultant picture of what he sees will be clear but it will lack the full dimensions of reality. The consequence is that the impressions of visitors rcturning from the Soviet Union tend to bc even more contradictory than those of the usual foreign traveler appraising a culture not his own. Two Clues to Clarity Unfortunately, the blurred images of what the foreign visitor sees in the Soviet Union cannot be brought into focus by any such simple expedient as looking at them through red- and-green spectacles. Facing the complex puzzle of a society vastly different from his own, the traveler finds himself casting about for somc clue to the puzzle, some simple formula that will enable him to understand and interpret what is strange about it in terms that are familiar to him through his experience in his own sociely. This effort to find simple interpretations can be misleading, and we are aware of its dangers; but we should like, neverthcless, to preface this account. of our visit to the Soviet Union by sharing two generalizations that have made our expericnces nore intelligible to us. One views Soviet noral- ity in termns of military necessity. The other sees Soviet dog- matism as an expression of a belief in "one irue faith." 5