Peripatetic Shel Silverstein, having amiably ambled into many a country and many a clime during his sketching tour of the world, started to amble into Moscow and stubbed his toe on a certain Curtain. Undaunted, he resorted to subterfuge and tried to get in as a tourist. No deal. He then tried again as a journalist. Nyet. Finally he passed himself off as a member of an American youth rally (despite his luxuriant chin-spinach), whereupon the editors of Playboy received a collect phone call from a "Mr. Wilkinson" in Moscow, who told us in a suspiciously familiar voice that his mission had been accomplished and then hung up. Not too long after, we received a bulky package of Moscow cartoons and photos, accompanied by a letter from Shel, scrawled on a gigantic page of his sketch pad. It read, in part:
"... As far as my personal adventures in Moscow are concerned, I have been bothered by no one and nothing -- except amoebic dysentery, which I found to be scientifically no more advanced than American amoebic dysentery. The people on the streets of Moscow are the friendliest and warmest I've met on my travels ... prices are tremendously high ... the girls are lovely (photographic proof of this enclosed). I talked with the editors and cartoonists of Krokodil, Russia's biggest humor magazine, and had a chance to meet many young artists. Nothing very funny is happening to me here. Moscow is a pretty serious place."
Meanwhile, back at the Playboy building, the staff sweated out some anxious moments when it was learned that a dozen members of the youth rally had accepted an invitation into Red China, minus State Department blessing, and were in danger of losing their passports. Might Shel be one of these reckless youths? we wondered. Assurance was forthcoming in good time: no, said Shel in another letter, the temptation had been easy to resist because he needed that passport to get him into all the other faraway places with strange-sounding names ripe for sketching by Silverstein.
"When is the next Sputnik scheduled to take off?"
"Just think of it, comrade----under the Communist system of equal distribution, once every eight years the White Sox would win the pennant!"
A Soviet army officer's interest is piqued. Soon after, Shel was surrounded by a curious crowd.
"Gee, Natasha----you mean you Russians invented this?!"
"Well anyway, there aren't any hidden microphones."
A truckload of girls from a collective farm near Moscow came to the big city on a visit and stopped long enough to dance the gopak with Shel right in the middle of the street.
Shel sketches changing of the honor guard in front of Lenin-Stalin tomb.
"You got any of that imported caviar?"
An old policeman out of a Chekhov play gets a drawing lesson.
"We Russian cartoonists have the same freedom as you Americans----you're allowed to criticize America in your cartoons, and we're allowed to criticize America in ours."
"What's so dangerous about this ...?"
Wherever he goes, even to a Russian railroad station, Silverstein finds pretty girls.
"So you see, Olga, with world tension as high as it is ... with humanity threatened with total destruction through an atomic war ... with Russian -- American diplomatic relations strained almost to the breaking point, it's up to people like you and me to cooperate! !"
