Retort

After covering the U.N. General Assembly, Izvestia Correspondent Victor Poltoratsky wrote for his paper the kind of ill-natured piece about New York City that visitors have been writing ever since Dickens. From Moscow last week, New York Timesman Drew Middleton cabled a retort:

"Moscow does not look like a big rolling mill, which is the way Izvestia's writer described New York. Once you get outside the center of the city, it looks like the biggest village in the world. . . . The truth is, the town is a little big for its britches. When the Bolsheviks made it the nation's capital, the population jumped by hundreds of thousands. . . . There just isn't any place to put most of them without doubling up, so the family that has a room of its own is well off.

"Unlike Paris, Moscow is noisy without being gay. Most Russian drivers operate with one hand on the horn, so the traffic makes up in sound what it lacks in numbers. On the streets the people march along with set faces, grimly determined to get where they are going. Thoughtful observers sometimes wonder why. There isn't any racial discrimination in Moscow, and the sexes are equal. This morning, women were out chipping ice off the streets just like men.

"New York is a rude city, but it isn't the only one. Moscow's subway, which compares favorably in service with Manhattan's Seventh Avenue line, is just about as crowded in rush hours as is that line's Times Square station. I've occasionally heard someone say 'Sorry' in New York, but not in Moscow. You do hear a lot of stuff, such as 'Citizens, stop shoving,' and 'Citizen, you're standing on my feet.'. . .

"I see that . . . some operators in a clothing store shook down our visitor for $1.50 to get his new trousers fixed. When I asked a Russian friend about this, he said: 'It must have made him feel right at home.' The 'shake' is not unknown in Moscow, as most foreigners find out. I can compliment Mr. Poltoratsky's wisdom in buying a pair of trousers in New York. The Russians turn out millions of pairs a year, but their bottoms all have a tendency to bell out, like the ones Harold Teen used to wear, and still does, for all I know."

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