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want you to talk to them.”

I said to them, “Now, Mary, you know I can't talk to them. They won't speak French. All we can say is ‘How do you do.' They mutter something and that's the extent of our conversations.”

She wanted us to be nice to them. She explained it was a great opportunity because it was the first conference to which the Russians had permitted any of their nationals to come. The speeches that they made were not interesting. Two of them made a speech. The third one was only a commissar, or kind of a guardian. He was watching what the other two did. One was aware of that. I had never seen that before. I thought, “What a queer way to live! How can you stand it?”

The speeches that they made were not interesting. They had nothing to do with the subject of how to prevent unemployment. This is a very vague recollection now, but I think they explained their conviction that there was no unemployment in Russia, nor could there by any unemployment. It's a story we've become very familiar with now, but at that time we hadn't heard it. At least, I hadn't heard it and I don't think many Americans had heard it. There wasn't any unemployment because the work was all parceled out. There was so much to do that everyone was employed and