Letters to the Editor

To the Editors:

It’s great that “Cinema in the Round” (Russian Life, May/June) is still going. I vividly remember Kinopanorama in all its original glory in August 1961, when the show provided endless galloping horsemen and lengthy viewing of a gigantic metalworks in Voronezh. Another memory from that visit is of Stalin alongside Lenin in the Mausoleum, embalmed with a smug and self-satisfied expression, clearly unaware that Khrushchev would heave him out in October.

A third memory is of bewilderment in Berlin, where, at dawn and without explanation, the Moscow-London train was stopped and the passengers ejected and simply abandoned. We somehow muddled our way to the centre of East Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate, to find workmen building a wall, already about a meter high. All around were Soviet soldiers, armed Vopos, strained nerves and talk of war.