Philena Weller Montgomery and John Ferguson Montgomery, Traveling Hard Through the USSR. Printed by the authors, 1105 Morrison Ave, Bronx, NYC, 1934.

Unusual and detailed travelogue through the Soviet Union in the summer of 1933.

11”x 8.5”, 77 leaves (printed on one side only), approximately 35-40,000 words, printed from the typed originals by mimeograph (?), with occasional line drawings in text by the authors. Perfect bound in wrappers with a cloth-covered spine. Front stiff wrapper is pretty tender, but overall the condition is VG. $2000

• WorldCat locates only one other copy (Antioch, where the two Montgomerys went to school). It seems to me that the work was printed but not published, as there is no trail for the work, anywhere. This copy is from the Library of Congress, and I suspect that the authors sent at least one copy there for the sake of posterity, and another copy was left with alma mater. I cannot find any reference to this work in any of the standard histories of this period.

The authors left with a group of 10 other people (fellow students?) for a loosely-guided trip through the Soviet Union in the summer of 1933. They write that even though they had a guide that they were in no way constrained from wandering off or speaking to anyone they wished; they felt that there was no control over their activity outside of the route they were following for their visit. The fact that they saw so much poverty and hardship, and interviewed whomever they pleased, attests to the limited control the state placed on their tour.

Their adventure begins in Leningrad, and moves to Moscow, Gorki, Kaza, Samara, Saratov, Stalingrad, Rostov, Yalta, Odessa, and then back west via Kiev. The authors write that if the USSR were really trying to control what the visitors saw that they would positively not send people out of or into the country via Kiev because of the state of the city and the people. More on that later.

The real flavor of this work, to me, is the ability of the writers to see the small local, personal detail—they weren’t interested so much in a grand building, but rather the women who were scrubbing the marble floors with some evil-smelling something because there was a shortage of soap; and not so much the boat they were passengers on, but rather the shabby dress whites of the captain and how he moved through the crew and how the crew responded to that; not the grand vistas of old St. Petersburg but rather the dirty shop windows that displayed pictures of items that they didn’t have in stock. That sort. It was a very interesting and unusual read.Here are some notes from my reading:

Kiev

• pale children working elevators at night of their hotel;

• more Bezpreysosny (orphans) here than they saw in all the rest of the Soviet Union combined;

• city swarmed with red Soldiers and OGPU;

• shop windows displayed odd assortments—corks, urinals, bridge lamps, washboards, side-by-side, with very little consumer goods;

• buildings were shabby as were the people, especially the children, “who show the effects of suffering”’;

• visit to a Jewish collective farm

• prophylactorium mostly for the peasants

• doling out gold colored safety pins to a throng of 30 women;

• Pechersk Monastery, with a translated story of the 1905 Revolution;

• the authors remarked that if the Soviet government wanted to give a good impression of their country that it would be best for them to leave Kiev out of the picture, as it “leaves a bad taste in your mouth”.