19 - A Russian Journal (1948)

Summary

“Russian Journal.”

Time, 51 (26 January 1948), 58–9.

In London's Savoy Hotel, John Steinbeck overheard a Chicago Tribune man snort: “Capa, you have absolutely no integrity!” That wartime remark, says Steinbeck, “intrigued me—I was fascinated that anybody could get so low that a Chicago Tribune man could say such a thing. I investigated Capa, and I found out it was perfectly true.” Photographer Robert Capa and Author Steinbeck became great friends.

Last March, in a Manhattan bar, they met again. Over two drinks they decided to go to Russia to record, not the political news, but the private life of private Russians. Last week, in the New York Herald Tribune (which had jumped at the chance to pay their way) and in twoscore other U.S. and foreign papers, the first chapters of their Russian Journal appeared. According to plan, they had brought back no headlines but an unexcited (and sometimes unexciting) report that, like any proof that the Russians are people after all, would make the brazen voice of the Kremlin all the more disheartening.

The Soviets admitted them—with some misgivings about Capa (who, in any country, talks and looks like an enemy alien) and his cameras. “The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons,” says Steinbeck, “and a man with a camera is suspected and watched.” To a polite, but suspicious young man at VOKS, the cultural relations office in Moscow, they tried to explain their mission.