RUSSIA: $100 Days

When the Raymond & Whitcomb cruise ship Carinthia (chartered Cunarder) with 450 U. S. tourists aboard hove into Leningrad last week, obliging Soviet travel agents appeared, conducted them on a four-day tour (including Moscow) for which each paid $400. This figures out to a total of $180,000, but the Soviet press presently announced that the tourists actually spent $250,000. “One man from Boston,” said Pravda, “paid our Government 25,000 rubles [$12,750] for a silver tea set which belonged to the Tsar.” Buying began on the very landing pier in a specially erected bazaar, stocked with products of Red workers and property confiscated from onetime Russian aristocrats, all of which the U. S. shoppers seemed eager to buy. They paid, according to Pravda, “more than $50,000 for confiscated property alone.” Ever since the revolution the Soviet Government has been trying—and failing —to sell Tsarist property at its “sentimental value.” European and U. S. jewelers have resolutely refused to buy sentiment, have mostly returned from Russia emptyhanded. It is well-known that the sale of the Russian Crown Jewels has been held up on this account. The next U. S. cruise ship, citizens of the Red State hope, may bring someone from the U. S. with “real money,” someone able and glad to pay not thousands but millions for, perhaps, the Crown & Scepter of the Tsars of All the Russias.