The Russians

As some Soviet doctors emigrated along with other Jews in the Seventies, both American and Israeli doctors who were trying to help them adjust to foreign medical systems were surprised to find Soviet doctors generally less qualified than they had expected.

By 1970, the Soviet Union had the highest ratio of doctors to population in the world — 23.8 doctors for each 10,000 persons (compared to 15.8 in the U.S.).

Travel is cheap. A Russian can ride a train or plane 1,000 miles and spend only 50-60 rubles ($66-80).

The military sector is the only sector of the Soviet economy which operates like a market economy.

By Western estimates, for example, Russia spent $45 billion on manned space flight from 1958 to 1973 compared to $25 billion spent by America.

We were tasting Bulgarian canned goods and we were almost thrilled with the high quality and good taste. We asked the representative of the Bulgarian firm how they managed such high quality. He looked at us in surprise: 'Why— we always follow your Soviet recipes and technology without change.'

Martic Martentz, an Armenian-American Communist who voluntarily returned from New York to try living in the Soviet Union, told me he was astonished at the Soviet image of Americans. "They think everyone [in America] is rich," he gasped. "They don't realize how hard people have to work in America."

Although Russians are capable of great exertion if pressed to produce, sustained hard work is not a national characteristic. They do not have the work ethic of Americans, Germans, or Japanese.

Russians are genuinely put off by the impatience of Westerners, especially Americans, who go up the wall with frustration at the dawdling uncertainties of Russian life.

The Russian sense of time is at once enchantingly and frustratingly loose or nonexistent. It bears little relation to time in a commercial society.