Malia Returns From Russia; Book Exchange Plan Begun

Back in the United States after a five-month tour of the Soviet Union, Martin E. Malia, assistant professor of History, yesterday reported great success in effecting exchanges of books through the Iron Curtain. Malia said that every library he visited in Russia now has the Kremlin's permission to trade books with the United States. The program will go into effect immediately, he said.

Contacted in Washington, Malia commented, "The chief asset of this exchange is that the Russian libraries are now ready to send us complete files of all their reading matter. We can now pick out whatever we want and it will be sent to us."

"My trip was successful," Malia said, "because, for the first time, the Russian libraries were really interested in expanding their exchanges. They were ready and willing to be cooperative and I had little trouble in making agreements with them."

During his tour, Malia used Moscow as his central base of operations and traveled from there to the different libraries in Russia and Central Asia. He effected agreements with the two largest libraries in the USSR, the Lenin Library in Moscow (the Soviet equivalent of the Library of Congress), which will now send back issues of PRAVDA to the U.S., and the public library in Leningrad.

Malia also made agreements with the university libraries of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and Tashkent to exchange academic journals of colleges in both countries. The libraries of Central academies of science in Moscow and Leningrad are now ready to send catalogues of their entire output to this country. All these agreements went into effect on Jan. 1 of this year.

On his several visits to Russian universities, Malia observed "strict regimentation of the students." The standard of technical competence that they have to achieve is very high," Malia said, "but they are not encouraged to think things out by themselves. They seemed bored by the Marxist doctrine that they have to adhere to so rigorously."

Malia felt that the Russian people "are charming, pleasant to meet, and interested to learn more about the West." Malia met Khrushchev and Bulganin at a cocktail party at the Kremlin. His impressions of the two leaders were that "Bulganin seemed bored and socially shy, while Khrushchev was vulgar and superficially exhuberant."