QOTW

From Proceedings of the Sixty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Bar Association, at The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs West Virginia, August 2-4, 1956, at 209, an address by the Honorable Robert F. Kennedy, Chief Counsel, U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, entitled Colonialism Within the Soviet Union:

When we first arrived in Russia on a ship up the Caspian Sea, we found nobody was prepared for us. No arrangements had been made to procure a guide and interpreter for us on our trip. The representative of the official Soviet tourist agency, "Intourist," with whom we talked, said that there was nobody available. . . To no avail did we explain that we had tried for four months to bring a guide and interpreter of our own from the U.S., that we had written four or five letters to the Embassy of the Soviet Union, and that they had not only refused to allow us to take an interpreter but had not even acknowledged our letters; that when we telephoned to the Embassy they had said there was nothing to worry about, that the Russian government through its Intourist Agency would provide a guide. The local government officials were singularly unimpressed. With this gloomy news we went to [Supreme Court] Justice Douglas' room but on the way we had a whispered conversation as to our strategy. There, in rather loud voices, we discussed what an obvious mistake these people were making; that although we hated to do so we would have to telephone Khrushchev to tell him of the very bad treatment we had received and that certainly Khrushchev would be very upset with those people who were treating us in this manner. Within an hour of this private conversation in our room, the Intourist group was knocking at our door and explaining that they had just made arrangements with Moscow to have a special guide furnished to us and that they were going to do everything possible to facilitate our forthcoming trip, and were we sure we had everything to make us comfortable.

(via reader Kurt D.)