arrested by the secret police. But in America, as everyone knew, Soviet espionage was not of great interest to anybody. I knew about America from Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, and the very thought of going there was revolting to me. 74 America did prove a rather unpleasant place, if not quite as unpleasant as Hope had been led to believe. “I knew that America was the classic capitalist country, the most disgusting place in the world, and was anxious to see all the ‘ulcers’ of capitalism as soon as possible.” She saw the lines at Salvation Army soup kitchens, the “frightful enormity of stone” (“like a well”), and the “real despair” of unemployment, but she also found informality, prosperity, and many good friends (especially Whittaker Chambers, whom she and her husband knew as “Bob”). Most important, she found her favorite aunt and uncle, who had left their native Bershad because of family trouble and still knew her as “Esterka.” Uncle had his own window-cleaning business but had had to let his assistant go because of the Depression. “He had a five-room apartment; they took baths every day and drank orange juice in the morning. In other words, they had become real Americans.” Neither Hope nor Uncle himself was much impressed, however. Uncle was unhappy with capitalism and very interested in how people lived in the Soviet Union. He had heard about this person’s son becoming a doctor and that person’s daughter an engineer, and was very unhappy that his own children had not gone to college. He had wanted his younger son, Srulikl, who was now Sidney, to be a dentist, but he had become an ardent Communist, dropped out of school, and was working for a Communist newspaper in Baltimore. The older one, David, was a worker, a member of a leftist trade union. Aunt was complaining that her children were reproaching her: Why had she taken them out of the Soviet Union? Uncle asked me: “Do you think I’d be better off there?” I wanted to be honest: “I would not leave the Soviet Union if I were offered all the riches of Morgan. But I’ll be frank with you, Uncle: you may be a window washer, but you live better than our engineers. We don’t drink orange juice in the mornings and don’t eat chicken. Nobody has apartments like yours. We, for example, live in one room.” . . . Then my cousins arrived. They listened to me with rapt attention. . . . I was telling them: “You see, workers in our country feel that they are the true masters of the land. Through blood and sweat, we are