Open Season

Touring through the Soviet Union last week were twelve visiting farmers and agricultural experts from the U.S., chaperoned by a posse of Soviet "agricultural activists." The Americans were mightily impressed, to hear Moscow radio tell it, "by the comprehensive mechanization of hay mowing." But the travelers' problem turned around the consumption of food, not its production. Bitterly, the farmers protested that they were having to spend so much time downing eats that they couldn't get to see Soviet agriculture. "I brought two suits of underwear with me," snorted one of the farmers, "but only one stomach." Every day, starting soon after 3 p.m., the Russians served lunch--a meal that often lasted long into the night. Sample menu:

Hors d'Oeuvres: caviar, ham, roast beef, salted salmon, carp, sheep cheese, salami, potato salad, stuffed eggs, and fresh tomatoes with chopped green onion tops.

Soup: borsch.

Entrees: chicken, rump steaks or fried shashlik.

Desserts: Ukrainian cherry dumplings, ice cream, sugar buns, apricots, oranges, raspberries and apples.

Throughout the meals, collective farm-girls plied the farmers with vodka, Georgian champagne and sweet wine, Moldavian muscatel, Ukrainian riesling, Armenian cognac and beer. "During the meal at least a dozen toasts are drunk to world peace, Soviet-American friendship, the exchange of ideas, and to women of both countries," reported New York Times Correspondent Welles Hangen. "Thereafter it is open season for anyone to propose a toast to almost anything except war, Fascism and mass destruction." But as for Soviet agriculture, one member of the U.S. delegation remarked: "In general it seems to me that the living standard of American farmers is higher than that of Russian peasants."

The twelve-man touring delegation of Russian farmers (TIME, Aug.11), led by Acting Agriculture Minister Vladimir Matskevich, reached the farmlands of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota and Texas last week. Their repeated verdict on U.S. marvels: "It is interesting, but we have something like it in Russia." Matskevich neatly demonstrated, however, that he could gather in a few U.S. idioms. "They ought to sell this air by the pound in New York," he remarked brightly to the farmers of Nebraska. And in Texas he added: "Texans don't brag nearly as much as they could."

The Russians, in all cases, were fed normally by their American hosts (sample noontime meals: fried chicken, corn, apple pie). After a dinner of charcoal-broiled hamburger in Wyoming, Peter Babmindra said with feeling: "This, gentlemen, is the life!"

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