MY RINGSIDE SEAT IN MOSCOW

An interesting inside Russia which lends a personal accent to the political scene and which provides a fairly full report on life behind the Iron Curtain in 1947, when Nyaradi, the Hungarian Minister of Finance, was sent to Moscow to negotiate the ""arrears"" of his country. His mission, protracted over a seven months' period, enabled him to observe life on all levels-overcrowded housing, inferior clothing, food- but only at a price payable by Party officials. Here too is a closeup of the Politburo, ridden by schism; of espionage and purge- in constant operation; of propaganda in all media from education to entertainment; of the bureaucracy of red tape and the new aristocracy of the Party; of the war machine- and the Red Army; of Stalin, and the legend and speculation he provokes, etc. etc. With the successful conclusion of his mission, Nyaradi returned to Hungary until its absorption by Russia when he left suddenly, and advisedly, for safety in America. He closes with a warning to the western world in that armed preparedness is perhaps our only assurance of containing the Russian (and not the Communist) threat.