I Went to the Soviet Arctic.

p. 16-17, for her journey north: Accordingly I packed into one pocket of the duffel bag the Compleat Explorer’s Equipment…. The other pocket was filled with notebooks, typing paper, pencils and a little library of books and newspapers which I would leave with the people who were starving, I was sure, for culture.

p. 112-13, on the Igarka, Siberia, newspaper, the Arctik Bolshevik with its English supplement for foreign sailors: This remarkable article and all the others in the English section were set up in the print shop by a woman. For a young Arctic city, the print shop, divided from the city office by a vestibule, had more than fair-sized equipment: a cylinder press, several cases of type, a large paper cutter (at least Igarka had ample paper, even if the paper itself was bad) and a small linotype where you usually found the woman in printer’s apron and smudged hands working over English mats….

The paper was distributed among the foreign seamen, who if they read it, must have done so in the privacy of the forecastle. I never saw anyone but the Russians reading it on the docksor in the street. And they read it avidly.

p.130, local performance of Tartuffe.

p. 213, about an old woman (100) who relished the changes from the old feudal society to modern Soviet society: She can read… Had the printed words become the new savior? Faust, pondering in his dark medieval study, had discovered that in the beginning was the Word. Now the once illiterate races of the Arctic were learning it too. They were discovering the terrific responsibility of the word—of education and culture which opened the way to a new life.

p. 249, visit to Dickson Island, a Soviet science station on an island first discovered by Nordenskiold: Study was considered part of their entertainment, and culture part of their relaxation. Every scientific worker held lectures in his special field, while the political organizer (or commissar) gave courses in Marxism-Leninism and Party History. There were regular classes in mechanics, biology, most of the sciences, and in foreign languages, especially English and German. The classes were open to anyone to join. The library had 3,000 books; newspapers were brought regularly by plane from Igarka.

p. 278, on the Anadyr , the freighter which opened the northeast passage for regular traffic, and while took her back to Murmansk: …the crew had better quarters on this Arctic ship than on many ships navigating in conventional southern waters…. There were no dormitories in the forecastle; two sailors shared a cabin equipped with radio earphones and a writing table. They had an astonishingly large library of Russian, English and German books. They had portable phonographs with Soviet and American records….