Recent Soviet Visitors to College Criticize U.S. in Party Journal

Soviet tourists who visited Cambridge last November have reported their largely negative impressions of this country in a recent edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda, the daily newspaper of the Communist youth movement.

The Russian group, which consisted of 21 young professional workers from various regions of the Soviet Union, returned home in December after a month-long tour of the eastern United States arranged by the Experiment in International Living. The Soviet spent two days at the University during a week of sightseeing in the Boston area.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda article, writen by four of the Russian visitors, notes that "Americans are very diversified... but the majority are very likeable people. In discussions they asked us different questions-if we had children, how we ate breakfast, what time we got up. The questions they asked were now and then, naive, but almost always sincere."

But the Soviets add that during their stay "the young people of both countries did not always find a common language. This is understandable. Soviet youth has no illusions about the inhuman capitalist system."

The article describes at length several features of the capitalist system that the tourists encountered here, placing great emphasis on the slums of New York and Philadelphia, the high cost of private university education, and the lack of free medical care.

The sole reference to Cambridge occurs in a passage about the indifference of the wealthy to American housing problems, and concerns a recently built women's dormitory at M.I.T.: "One wealthy lady gave money for the construction of a girls' dormitory in Cambridge. It is a luxurious building, done in contemporary style... However, the lady benefactor did not at all aspire to do something good. She wanted to immortalize her name before death, and so it is immortalized, inscribed upon a memorial slate at the main entrance."

According to the article, Americans often told the tourists that young people in the United States do not have ideals to which to dedicate their lives. The writers remark that "the dollar is god, for whom many young Americans wish to work.

A member of the group who witnessed dollar worship at the New York Stock Exchange reports: "For me, a man from another world, it was funny to observe hundreds of people, fat and thin, short and tall, but completely alike because of some kind of avid possessiveness, running about the whole room... crying out magic numbers and sounding like adding machines."

Despite the hostile tone of their comments, the Soviet assert that "with thoughtful Americans one always came to the same conclusion-the people of these two great countries must live in peace."

Pictures accompanying the article show workers on strike in Dayton, Ohio, and swastika-wearing pickets in front of the White House with signs reading "Invade Cuba Now."