Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1962-02-25
BY MARGARITA DOBERT
Contributing Writer

When Sekou Toure asked the
Russian Ambassador recently to
leave Guinea because of med
ding" it was reminder that
psychological blunders are not nee
essarily monopoly Of the West.
In fact, reports on Soviet foreign
aid from underdeveloped coun-
tries indicate that there exists
such a thing as an Ugly Russian.
Like his American counterpart,
he. is accused of seldom speaking
the local tongue, Of being stand
offiSh and consorting mostly with
his own breed. In addition, Curl
ously enough, he is accused Of
not doing the very things Ameri-
cans are blamed for doing.
Americans are too lavish? They
throw their money around? They
live way above the local stand
ard?
Russians Are Stiney
Those things are bad, but look
what the Russians do: They are
stingy. They don't give employ
ment to local citizens. They wash
their own cars and carry their
own parcels. They lose face be-
cause their living standard isn't
very high. In fact, their wives, who
seem to spend lot of time shop
ping for items they can't find at
home, are known to drive a hard
bargain.
Remember Mr.. Khrushchev ruff
fling Indonesian egos when he
read cables and talked necessarily
with his secretary while Balinese
dancers performed for him? How
he disdained magnificent hand
made batik cloth because it was
product of bygone age" and
not "machine-made"? Or the
flooding of Buddhist Burma with
propaganda booklets in which the
Soviets boosted of suppressing
Buddhism in Outer Mongolia?
kociol FreIudIce
Nor have the students from
Asia and Africa who received So
Wet scholarships always been
happy about their treatment at
Russian universities. They have
bitterly complained of racial pref
udice, of attempts at indoctrina-
ton, of being dishonesty used for
propaganda purposes. There was
the case of the Uganda student
who was beaten unconscious after
dancing with a Russian girl, the
Somali students who sent a note
of protest to their Prime Minister
about their treatment in Moscow,
of a Togo student who left in
disgust and wrote a book about
his experiences. In fact, there was
so much friction that the Rus
slams built special university in
1860 - the University of Peoples
Friendship, renamed Patrice Lu-
mumba Friendship University in
1851 where students from AZ
RIGA, Latin America and the Near
East now study in virtual segre-
cation.
Some Technical Boners
In addition to the psychological,
there have been a number of
technical boners like the 1000
jeeps for Indonesia whose wind
shields melted in the tropical sun
and whose tires wore out after
only 5000 miles. There was the
mammoth bakery in Afghanistan
designed to bake yeast bread and
not the unleavened flat sheets to
which Afghans are used, the steel
cables for Argentina which split
and the power shovels whose mo-
tors burned out and the cement
hardening into ships ballast in
Burma's torrential summer rain.
But worse still and more sig
nificant are certain after effects of
Soviet economic aid. Such aid
usually is provided on the basis
of bi-lateral trade agreements
whereby medium-term credits are
extended to barter capital goods
for raw materials, such as Rus
sian and Czech arms for Egyptian
cotton or East German machinery