Soviet Safari

RUSSIAN JOURNEY (255 pp.)--William O. Douglas--Doubleday ($4.50).

Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas has made as much news with his ascents as his dissents. Of Men and Mountains, his Thoreau-like reflections on mountain climbing in the Pacific Northwest, scaled 1950'S bestseller lists. The previous year, a hike up the peaks of Azerbaijan near the Russo-Iranian border brought a salvo of charges from the Soviet press that he was leading "a gang of spies." Uphill and down in seven years, the journeying justice has covered tens of thousands of miles, toured 20 lands and written five books about his travels. Folksy, candid, and inclined to ramble in peculiarly unlawyerlike fashion, Author Douglas has a keen eye for homely detail and an easy gift for projecting his friendly, open-faced curiosity about far-off people and places. Russian Journey is his most interesting book to date and offers a penetrating glimpse of the enigmatic bear which is currently bent on retracting its claws and honeying up the world.

Ceremonial Sheep's Ear. Before he entered Russia, Douglas dined with India's Nehru, who was still bowled over by the warmth of the reception the Russians had given him on his own visit. Said Nehru: "The Russians remind me of you

Americans. Both of you are friendly and outgoing." So, indeed, did Douglas find the average Russian. At his first Caucasian collective farm, Douglas ran into the problem of the vodka toast, decided then and there that he would stick to wine for the duration. When other hosts proudly laid a sheep's head and ear before him, Douglas manfully nibbled some meat from atop the cranium (quite tasty) and the center of the ear (quite gristly). This was only the ceremonial dish in what sometimes stretched into a 21-course meal. After some feasts, entertainment followed, and the guest was expected to reciprocate. Douglas, a onetime Yale law professor, kicked out some pretty fair Cossack polkas and warbled the Whiffenpoof Song.

The festivities rarely prevented the Justice from asking pointed questions and getting evasive answers. Quoting official Soviet figures, he asked if forced collectivization had not resulted in the disappearance of nearly 1,000,000 of the Kazakh people of Kazakhstan between 1926 and 1939. Replied a local judge blandly: "'One million of Kazakhs must have gone to China.' "

Oats for the Mind. Lawyer Douglas found, like others before him, that the materialistic paradise of the workers is still pretty much a promise of pie in the dialectical sky. A haircut, he reports appreciatively, costs only 40-c---but in 1955 the average Russian male got exactly five razor blades. A Russian family eats meat no more than once a week. A worker can buy a refrigerator for $165, but his annual income is about $600. Six families sometimes share a kitchen and a toilet.

On the other side of the ruble: in a few areas the Soviet Union appears to outdistance the U.S. In 1956 the U.S.S.R. will graduate 20,000 doctors, as against 7,000 for the U.S. A striking eighth of the Soviet budget goes for schools and education.

One area of comparison, the law and how it works, was naturally intriguing to

Justice Douglas, and whenever the occasion presented itself, he dropped off at courtrooms. The Russians have no writ of habeas corpus, and a prisoner can be held totally incommunicado for 63 days, after which he must be brought to trial. He is presumed innocent as in U.S. law, but hearsay evidence is permitted, and no one is so injudicious as to inquire if the MVD has used torture. Since the Soviet is officially godless, the prisoner takes no oath and is free to tell all the lies he can get away with. Every judge on the People's Court bench (the main trial court) is elected, and frequently they are housewives, streetcar conductors and factory hands. Banishment to Siberia is as common a sentence under the Soviets as under the Czars, but on the whole a nonpolitical prisoner gets his fair day in court.

Douglas came away with an overall impression of the Russian people as "a great force moving incessantly and dynamically toward some unknown destiny." What do they want? In Douglas' view, the people overwhelmingly want peace; the Kremlin itself hopes to avoid war, yet the fundamental aims of Communism have not changed. The tactics have. Following a Russian proverb, the leaders now plan "to use oats, not a whip, to drive the horses."

The contest for the hearts and minds of men will be won in Asia, says Traveler Douglas flatly. What the Russians offer the Asians, Douglas implies, is a sort of poor man's U.S. The Russian worker's $600 a year is a fabulous annual wage to the Indian who makes $50. Some 50% to 80% of all Asian babies die in their first year, but the Russians have reduced infant mortality to the U.S. level. Despite their shortcomings, Soviet farms are mechanized, a tremendous advance over the primordial cleft sticks and oxen of Asia. A subtler appeal, as Douglas sees it, is Soviet discipline. Loosing the strict hold of family, faith and feudal status, the Asian intelligentsia, in particular, finds itself in a psychological vacuum, hungering for a new authority. Communist dogma offers to provide it.

"We Must Woo." How can the U.S. best meet these challenges? "We must have affirmative programs, not merely anti-Communist ones. We must have negotiable positions, not inflexible ones. We must woo where we have been prone to castigate ... we must learn to be at home in a world that is more socialist than capitalist. We must be rid of the attitude that those nations which refuse a military alliance with us are necessarily fellow-travelers or dupes of the Communists." Once this new tack is taken, argues Douglas, the West has a far-from-secret weapon with which to win the battle of competitive coexistence. The Soviet lip-serves human betterment but degrades humanity. As opposed to serflike security, the rights, freedoms and dignity of man "constitute our democratic faith. They give the West a great advantage in the competition -- if we will only think in terms of people, their fears, their needs, and their dreams."

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