A Russian Journal (1948, this edition 2001) is the 40-day travelogue of American writer John Steinbeck (winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature) and celebrated war photographer Robert Capa through the Soviet Union in 1947.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) is 45 years old and Robert Capa (1913-1954) is 33. Their quest – ‘an old-fashioned Don Quixote and Sancho Panza quest’ – was to discover the private lives of the Russian people through ‘honest reporting’ for the New York Herald Tribune. They intend to record only what is seen, nothing more.
It is a photo-essay from 31 July to mid-September 1947. They travelled through Moscow, Kiev (now the capital of Ukraine), Tbilisi (now the capital of Georgia), Batumi (now the Black Sea resort town of Georgia) and among the ruins of Stalingrad.
They travel with 13 pieces of luggage, ‘thousands of flash bulbs and hundreds of rolls of film, with the masses of cameras and the tangle of flashlight wires.’
Steinbeck says of Capa: ‘He talks Spanish with a Hungarian accent, French with a Spanish accent, German with a French accent, English with an accent that has never been identified. But Russian he does not speak.’
Steinbeck writes of everything he sees (and how it does and doesn’t function) – hotel bathrooms, ordering food in a restaurant, grocery stores, a Ukrainian circus, country farms, a bakery, theatres, the ballet, and factories.
He notices that there are so few men of marriageable age, since the end of the war, and far too many with limbs missing and no prosthetics.
Steinbeck not only describes the things he is interested in, but also the things Russians find interesting. In 1947 Russians wonder why American writers are cynical, or don’t form unions, or are not important people: ‘In the Soviet Union writers are very important people. Stalin has said that writers are the architects of the human soul.’ How do Americans like Simonov’s play The Russian Question? Why are Americans so interested in abstractionists? Why doesn’t the American government control their newspapers? What farm machinery do Americans use?
My favourite chapters are about Georgia. Russians ‘spoke of Georgia with a kind of longing and a great admiration. They spoke of Georgians as supermen, as great drinkers, great dancers, great musicians, great workers and lovers.’ Of the Georgian men, Steinbeck writes that the ‘costumes of the young men were rather nice: tunics, sometimes of heavy white silk, belted at the waist, and long narrow trousers, and soft black boots. They are a very handsome breed, the Georgian men.’ Of the culture, he writes, ‘to the Georgians, whose love for poety is traditional, the lack of love for poetry is almost a crime.’
Capa adds a chapter called A Legitimate Complaint – about Steinbeck.
It is a poignant, sad, funny, interesting account of real people with their social and life challenges and struggles at a specific point in history, 71 years ago. And the photographs are now legendary and Capa’s legacy to his photographic reportage.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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