'Visiting' Professors: Cambridge to Kazakhstan

Most College student last August were either finishing up summer jobs, returning from Europe, or dismally planning this year's courses. Most Faculty members were either finishing up summer research, enjoying the end of their vacation, or dismally planning this year's lectures. Two Faculty members, however, were doing something different. Harold J. Berman, professor of Law, and Richard N. Frye, associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies, were combining scholarship with unique vacations--in Soviet Russia.

Berman, a specialist in Soviet law, went to Moscow on August 13 primarily to make inquiries about international trade on behalf of a group of American businessmen. His other chief aim was to study the current state of Soviet law, which is undergoing major reforms.

Frye, who was in Russia from August 25 until September 22, went to gather information about his specialities, Iranian and Central Asian linguistics and history. His travels through Uzbekistan and Kazakistan were the first unrestricted Western visit to those areas since the war.

A recently announced desire of the Russians for increased trade with the West prompted Berman's trip. His mission was to find out what goods the Soviet wanted to export and import, and to study the commercial and legal questions involved. He discussed these subjects with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and with the heads of more than ten Soviet import-export combines.

Berman spent all but one day of his visit, which lasted till September 13, in Moscow. Besides his trade conferences, he met with leading Soviet judges, attorneys, and professors of law. He had extended opportunities to inspect court records and attend sessions of various courts. He then spent one day visiting the monastery at Zagorsk, 50 miles from Moscow, and talking to peasants along the way.

Meet Justice Douglas

The professor succeded in attending sessions of several Soviet courts but never could gain admittance to the Supreme Court. This tribunal, unlike its American counterpart, meets only in closed sessions. Even a special request to the Vice-President of the Court, who gave a dinner in honor of Berman and of United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, did not get Berman admitted to one of the closed sessions.

Justice Douglas also met Frye during the summer, incidentally, while both men were touring Central Asia.

This is the area where Frye, after a few days in Leningrad and Moscow, spent most of his time in the U.S.S.R. He visited the universities of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and Tashkent, even attending classes in the latter institution. But most of the time he traveled just as a tourist, seeing people at their jobs and talking to them whenever possible. Traveling alone, without guide or interpreter, the Russian-speaking scholar journeyed with as much freedom as he would have had in the United States.

"Whenever I wanted to go somewhere I just bought a ticket," he explans.

And Frye certainly bought a long string of tickets during his trip. Arriving in Helsinki by plane on August 24, just after the close of Summer School in Cambridge, he proceeded from there to Leningrad, where he gave a talk on Middle Eastern history at the Hermitage Museum. From there he went to Moscow, where he was interviewed on the radio in Russian and Persian, and then to Uralsk, in the Urals. His next stop was Aktyubinski in Kazakistan, whence he went to Dzhuzali near the northeast tip of the Aral Sea.

Long String of Tickets

From there he went to Taskhent, near the Afghanistan border, where he was again interviewed on the radio, and thence to Bukhara, from which point he retraced his steps--and his tickets--back to Helsinki and home.

Neither Berman, who speaks fluent Russian, nor Frye, conversant as well in Uzbek, was easily recognized as a foreigner. On more than one occasion Berman was asked for street directions in Moscow, and Frye acted frequently as an interpreter. Once at a bazaar in Uzbekistan he translated for an Uzbek and a Muscovite, neither of whom could understand the other.

On another occasion Frye was attending an Uzbek ballet when he noticed a commotion during the intermission. A member of an Indian trade delegation, for the moment without his interpreter, was trying to get the autograph of the prima ballerina. She had no way of understanding his intentions, however, and must have imagined all sorts of things. But then Frye came up and explained in Russian what the Indian wanted. The ballerina was pleased to comply. When he, too, asked for her autograph, however, she refused, saying, "Go away, it's only for foreigners."

Frye's skill in Russian was not matched by other Americans in the Soviet Union, however. Indeed, as the scholar learned when he was in Moscow, most of the American correspondents there do not know the language at all. "I did some translation for Welles Hangen of the New York Times, Frye reports.

Walk in Red Square

When once identified as Americans, both Harvard men found their Soviet acquaintances quite friendly. Berman noted no hostility and considers typical a conversation he had with a Russian lawyer one night after the theater. Meeting in a cafe at eleven o'clock, they walked around Red Square and talked openly about Russia and America for two and a half hours. Then the Russian finally said, in the manner of one who is putting a delicate question, "We have been quite frank with each other; let me now ask you a frank question: Why does your government not pass a law forbidding discrimination against Negroes?"

"A year ago," Berman comments, "that would have been his first question, and he would have put it belligerently. Today he asks it 'in the spirit of Geneva'."

Friendlier Than Americans

Frye too was impressed by the friendliness of the Russian people, and his experience was even more favorable than Berman's. Of course, as an American in Central Asia be was much rarer an item than was Berman in Moscow.

At any rate, Frye feels that "the Russians were more friendly toward us than Americans would be toward them." Their most characteristic attitude was one of curiosity, he says, adding "they have none of the anti American prejudices so often found among the British and French."

Frye emphasized that he was speaking of the people and not the government, and added that he thought the people had grown largely immune to official propaganda over the course of years. But American propaganda in the form of the Voice of America, he continued, has no effect on the peoples of Central Asia because there are very few radios and those that exist receive only station.

Though neither he nor Frye had difficulty in traveling, Berman had a long wast to get his visa is the first plate. He first made an application in 1947, and had intermistenly renewed it afterwards. In February, 1954, he applied for a visa for the coming summer, best was once more unsuccessful. When he read last winter, however, that Nikita A. Khruschev, First Secretary of the Russian Communist Party, had told newspapermen he was surprised to hear that Americans were having difficulty in obtaining visas and would try to remedy that situation, Berman immediately cabled Khruschev, explaining the details of his own case and informing him of his previous application. Soon after that he received his visa.

Berman's advice to those who wish Russian visas now is simply to apply and hope. "It's just a matter of luck," he says, adding that a cable to Khruschev can't hurt.

For the American gourmet who does manage a Moscow trip, Berman recommends the Praga Restaurant. A Russian friend took him to dinner there once, and it was quite a meal.

They ate from 3 p.m. until 8, running the gamut of caviar, vodka, and all the other traditional ingredients of Russian feasts. However, since the bill for two was 400 rubles ($100 at the inflated exchange rate). Berman strongly suggests that you visit the Praga only with a paying friend.

Frye had no trouble getting his visa this summer, and was generally given no trouble at all in coming and going. He gratefully reports that no inspection was made of his baggage as leaving the country, and that his was allowed to take out undeveloped film, in addition to books, manuscripts, and even microfilms. But on one occasion Frye had a brief run in with the MVD. While eating with some Indian travelers he had met, he was discovered by a trio of MVD agents. At first they were unable to believe that he was an American, and apparently traveling without restriction. When he produced a passport and other documents, the reaction from the chief MVD agent was, "But this is impossible." The agents left the room perplexed, and, Frye surmises, went off to telephone Moscow for instructions. When Frye emerged from the room, only one of the agents was around.

"Tell me," the agent said secretively in English, "My accent when I speak English, is it bad?"

MVD English Lesson

"You speak very good English," Frye told him, happy to have his lone encounter with the police come to so simple an end.

The most important discovery Berman made in the U.S.S.R. also concerns the MVD. He learned unexpectedly that the Special Board of the MVD was abolished two years ago, but that the law accomplishing this has never been published. Berman, in an address before the Institute of Law of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, said he had been surprised to hear that the Special Board, which he frankly termed "the chief legal instrument of terror in the Soviet Union," had been abolished, and that this fact had been kept secret. It appears, however, that the Russians still do not want this information released, for all reference to the Special Board was censored from American newspaper dispatches covering Berman's address.

Defendants Benefit

In his conversations with Soviet jurists, Berman learned of large-scale legal reforms now underway in the U.S.S.R. The trend in these reforms, he notes, is in the direction of increased rights for the accused and greater leniency in sentences. Any crimes which can be construed as offenses against the State are still harshly punished, however, and there exists a pre-trial hearing in which the accused is without right to counsel. But reforms are being pressed even in these matters, Berman reports.

Fry and Berman both speak with interest on the question of religion in the Soviet Union, but their conclusions are somewhat different. Frye, who attended a Moslem burial in Central Asia and visited various houses of worship, noted great interest in religion, but says that generally it was confined to the older people. He believes that religion is dying out as a result of the anti-religious propaganda taught in the schools.

Berman, from his Moscow experience, disagrees. "While there certainly is anti-religious propaganda in the schools, there are also many young worshippers in the churches," he says. He points out that at many services it was practically impossible to find room to stand in the church, and says that new construction and expansion of existing facilities are being pushed ahead. While in Moscow, he attended Baptist and Russian Orthodox services.

Cleaner than New York

The cleanliness of Moscow's streets also impressed Berman,--especially the way that people come out early in the morning to wash the sidewalks in front of their buildings. "Moscow," he observes, "is much cleaner than New York."

Frye and Berman both found the Russians interested in further educational exchanges with the United States. Berman noted, however, that the desire for exchanges of books and scholars was discernible primarily on the intermediate level, and he has no way of knowing what top-level policy would be.

Lecturer Invited Here

Frye, meanwhile, took a step to help push Soviet policy in the right direction. While in Moscow, he invited the Soviet Academy of Sciences to send a lecturer to the United States. This lecturer, who was invited on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America, would speak on the Middle Asian States.

"Our first hope," Frye said, "was that such a lecturer might give a course at an American university, but that appears impracticable. Our idea now is that he might give a series of lectures at some university here." This university might conceivably be Harvard, Frye added.

The Russians gave no definite answer to the professor's proposal, but said they would consider it.

Both Frye and Berman feel that their trips helped to improve understanding between East and West. They emphasize, however, that there is still much to be done toward this end. Berman tells, for example, of a case he witnessed in a Moscow courtroom.

A woman was suing for reinstatement in her job. When the judges left the room to deliberate, she became quite vociferous, insisting to one and all that she would get her rights. Someone in the courtroom tried to quiet her, and pointed to Berman, implying that she should not make a scene in front of the American guest.

At this the woman looked at Berman defiantly, and proclaimed, "I can say anything I want; this isn't America."Richard N. Frye