Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean
First Part. (The only part I've read so far)
Fitzroy Maclean was a British diplomat stationed in Paris, but having grown bored with Paris he decided to obtain a transfer to Moscow. This was in the 1930's when Stalin was in charge of the Soviet Union. There he picked up some Russian and on his vacations traveled to Soviet central Asia for no apparent reason except that it was a difficult place to get to and he had a hankering to see some of those exotic out of the way places. That he got away with doing so in a time when it was made clear that these far flung provinces were off limits to foreigners, and when people could be liquidated for so much as being seen talking about the weather with a foreigner (much less a British diplomat) . This was kind of a tribute to his ingenuity. He traveled to Samarkand and the historic old cities of the silk route. He traveled to Afghanistan. He even tried to get into Sinkiang in China, but did not succeed.
The Soviets and the NKVD were naturally suspicious but apparently his faith in his diplomatic immunity kept him safe as he bluffed, intimidated, and wore down minor officialdom that stood in his way. As a result he gained not one but two plainclothes tails that followed him throughout his travels. The fact that their surveillance was something of an open secret and he knew full well who they were , led to some comic moments as he navigated the labyrinth of red tape and difficulties. This part of the book at least is reminiscent of the adventures of Paul Theroux in his books and especially "The Great Railway Bazaar".
He also writes of his witnessing the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s when Stalin systematically destroyed anyone and everyone who could have possibly been a political threat. When his Five Year Plans and economic plans led inevitably to disaster, he inevitably cast about for convenient scapegoats, beginning with Trotsky, through Bukharin, and finally to his own henchmen, Yagoda and Yezhov. People were accused of counter-revolution, of being saboteurs and wreckers, and so the whole nation was in a state of continual terror. Evidence was manufactured, the accused threatened with the destruction of their families, and tortured in the interim between court appearances. All this was fodder for the vast propaganda machine. Above it all was Stalin, the benevolent, the fatherly, who pretended not to know about the horrifying means perpetrated by his underlings, and so was forgiven by the long-suffering Russian and Soviet peoples.
In short it is an excellent book so far. I look forward to finishing it.
