Russia: March to Moscow

On a languid afternoon last week, only a few Muscovites were out on Red Square strolling or feeding the pigeons. Then the peace was shattered as a small crowd bustled into the square shouting “Peace and friendship” in foreign-accented Russian. They bore a poster identifying them as “American-European March San Francisco-Moscow” and pressed handbills onto startled bystanders. The peace marchers from the U.S. had hit town.

The march began last December in San

Francisco when ten U.S. pacifists (later joined by 20 others in Europe) set out on foot for Russia. They were sponsored by the Committee for Nonviolent Action, which preaches nonviolent opposition against nuclear armament and is financed by “voluntary contributions.” The marchers ranged from a 33-year-old Chicagoan named Bradford Lyttle, who has served one year in jail for refusing to register with the draft, to the 48-year-old mother of U.S. Chess Prodigy Bobby Fischer (said she: “He’s very annoyed with me for getting into this”).

Along the way, across the U.S. and four other countries, the marchers picketed military bases and war plants; in London—after flying across the Atlantic —they joined 4,000 British ban-the-bombers who demonstrated in Trafalgar Square. There was also romance: two marching couples got married. When they finally reached Moscow, they were done out of a promised rally in Red Square, but Moscow University permitted the marchers publicly to condemn Russian (as well as U.S.) resumption of nuclear testing; Russian students were permitted to rebut with the Soviet view on the matter. It was a grand diversion, and when University Prorector Grigory Vov-chenko tried to end it after two hours, the Russian students howled him down.

Capping it all was tea with Nina Petrovna Khrushchev at the Moscow House of Friendship. Russia’s first lady remained friendly even when one of her guests asked her, over apples and chocolates, to “convey to your husband the deep concern we feel that within the past month the Soviet Union has tested 17 atom bombs.”

“I most certainly shall tell him that,” said Nina Petrovna. “We are also concerned over the necessity of these tests.” Earlier the same day, Russia had exploded Bomb No. 18, the biggest yet.