To the editors:

I am writing in response to Simon W. Vozick-Levinson’s Dec. 11 comment, “Back From the U.S.S.R.” This guy is an Editor? He can clean my toilet with his editorializing tripe. I vote a B- for creative writing and a zero for making sense.

For your information, universities in Russia are all called state universities. No one has $20 billion to fund a kindergarten like Harvard. Furthermore, if you think they are just copper bells you know nothing of metallurgy (the bells are bronze with a high silver content). Why else would the Communists have wanted to melt them down? Of course, I do not expect Harvard or the snot-nosed children spending their daddy’s fortune to understand the concept of cultural or national treasure. To Harvard, the bells are just Cold War souvenirs.

An article like this confirms my assertion that there is no honor at Harvard; divinity left with the monks. If the students of Harvard lived and ate as those monks, they would run crying home to mama. Grow up Harvard. Father Roman of St. Danilov Monastery has more humility than the Harvard Divinity School and more religion under his finger nail than all of Harvard. Burn your money, children, for you do not trust in God.

David S. Savage

Tucson, Ariz.

Dec. 11, 2003

The writer is a graduate student in the Russian department at the University of Arizona.