SCRATCH A RUSSIAN
By H. S. Marchant This is a short chatty book (Lindsay Drummond, 7s. 6d.) by an enlightened schoolmaster, describing a few months of Russia-trotting in 1936. Mr. Marchant is painfully anxious to be fair, and has allowed himself and us to be bored by too many didactic young Commtmists with nothing to say that cannot be read over and over again in the red-light books. But he has an observer's eye and saw some out-of-the-way places, besides getting himself robbed by kurds in Trans-Caucasia. The book is dated by its many references to the defunct G.P.U. and by its author's innocent surprise that " terror still exists even among well-educated, innocent people." One of the best things in it is the descrip- tion of the " little mild-mannered man ' on the road to Erivan, who proved to be an expropriated " Kulak."
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