The students I met had very different ambitions. One said that journalism was just a beginning: "My real ambition is to write like Hemingway." He showed me a folder full of stories and poems he had written. Another wanted to be an art critic. The third wanted to write "against bureaucracy."

Although they were annoyed by the restrictions on them (not being able to travel to the West, not being able to get Western newspapers and magazines), these students were still very idealistic. They felt an excitement at simply being alive at that particular place and time which I have hardly ever seen in American students. They spoke as if they were entering a new profession. "In our country we have industry now, so the time has come to concentrate on other things: improving cultural life and political organization, developing a critical sense among the people."

They have a refreshing aversion to the slogans of Soviet journalism, and enjoyed making fun of them. At one point a girl friend of one of the students, wearing high heels and a lot of make-up, came into the room. When I asked her what she did she said she she worked in a factory. "Now you are meeting a real member of the Russian working class," said one of the boys, and they all roared with laughter. "You see," said another, "here in the Soviet Union all classes coexist happily--workers, students, and everybody." They laughed again.

The students could not have been more friendly, and when I left they firmly sent their greetings to the journalists and students of America." But I had the feeling that they were really not very interested in America. They wanted American things--both material wealth and more freedom of expression--but they never asked how their American counterparts believed or thought. They did most of the talking and only asked a few hesitant questions: "Why do you treat your Negroes so badly?" "How big a stipend does an American university student get?" Whenever there was a pause in the conversation they would always ask me, eagerly, what further questions I had about Soviet student life.

And the Assassination

I was in Kiev when Kennedy was shot. I heard the news on the radio two hours after he died. The next day's morning and evening news-papers sold out in a few minutes. Everything was fully reported in the Soviet press (even that Oswald had lived in Russia) and the funeral was on television, relayed by Telstar satellite.

When Oswald was killed, the news-papers began hinting that the whole business was a right-wing conspiracy. Kennedy became a hero in the Soviet press who had bravely protected the American people from the fanatics who finally did him in.

A few days after the assassination I was at a reception at Kiev University. Noticing I was an American, several students came over to offer their condolences. "You shouldn't let these extremists get away with such things," one of them said. "When the an-archists tried to kill Lenin here we had the Red Terror against them. That stopped them. You people should try that too."

I think the Russian citizens liked Kennedy much as their parents had liked Roosevelt: He was a President who wanted better Soviet-American relations and whose administration semed to promise peace and better times. They especially appreciated the test-ban. And young people particularly felt Kennedy's glamor and charm quite independent of his political role. "I know how most Americans must feel about this," one Russian boy told me, "but I think that people here were sadder than people in some states in the U.S."

Adam Hochschild '63 spent two months this fall traveling through the Soviet Union.