Overview

THE ONLY EDITION APPROVED BY THE ATKINSON FAMILY Oriana Atkinson (1895-1989) was a wide-ranging novelist and journalist of the WWII era and in this amazing best-seller, Over at Uncle Joe's: Moscow and Me, she expounds on her short but hilarious time in Moscow in 1945-46 with her husband, Brooks Atkinson, correspondent for the New York Times and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence in 1947 for his observations in the war-torn and totalitarian government of the U.S.S.R. from Moscow. It is with Oriana's unassuming, unaffected, but definitely humorous writing that she describes the complexity of life in the Communist state of Stalin (Uncle Joe as he was often described by the citizenry and his propagandist media), highlighting that even those used to confusion and scarcity from war and socialist rule can be unique and bonded to life, family, and love. THE ONLY EDITION APPROVED BY THE ATKINSON FAMILY

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9781640660045

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Reviews

Public Relations for U.S. and U.S.S.R., OVER AT UNCLE JOE'S: MOSCOW AND ME. By Oriana Atkinson. Illustrations by Paul Galdone. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1947. 325 pp. WHY she is a very nice lady, exclaimed the little Russian girl to her mother. I can hardly believe that she is a capitalist. The little girl had just met Mrs. Atkinson, but she paid her immediate tribute .... By the same token, Mrs. Atkinson does a remarkable public relations job for the Russian people. She observes them shrewdly, assays them solely as human beings, sets down her findings with spirit, candor, and humor. Over at Uncle Joe's: Moscow and Me is that seven-day wonder, a book on the Russians that is free of propaganda pro or con, hearty with laughter, rich in hope for Russian-American understanding. As wife of The New York Times correspondent Brooks Atkinson, the author spent ten grubby, tiresome, frustrated, fascinating months in wartime and post-war Moscow. It was her second visit to the clean and picturesque Soviet capital. I know more about Russia, is her modest claim, than anybody who has never been there. There is more common sense in this book than you could shake a balalaika at. The author went to Russia with an open mind.... Admitting that Russia is a land of contradictions, she forms judgments on the premise: There is always another side of the picture in the Soviet Union. She neither judges the many by the few nor the rule by the exception....The author does not handle the Russians with kid gloves....But she uses bare knuckles on Americans. The Moscow subway is sub-humanly crowded, but so is the New York subway at rush hours. And Americans do not have the esthetic satisfactions of subway architecture to inspire them, as the Moscovites do....Mrs. Atkinson once told a GI balletomane from Syracuse that Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre is bigger, better, and more beautiful than New York's Metropolitan Opera House.... Throughout Mrs. Atkinson's chapters the human equation triumphs over ideological conviction. She tells the story of a threadbare Russian who acquired, through American channels, three new suits of clothes, Just see how much better conditions are today than they were a year ago, he boasted. Formerly I was in rags, but now, as you can see, I have three good suits. The author explains: He really meant it. ... He preferred to think that this new status was due to the careful planning of his own government and so we all let him think so.... What interests you most about life in the Russian capital-freedom of worship, family life, the theatre, beggars, prostitution, fashions, racial equality, class distinctions, courtship techniques, spontaneous demonstrations, the Russian ideal of womanhood? You may be curious about the zooming birthrate or how the Russians hold their vodka. Mrs. Atkinson has briskly stirred them all into her bubbling literary borscht.... In Over at Uncle Joe's: Moscow and Me there is an appealing Lydia Vyschinskaya who, speaking of Mrs. Atkinson, declared: Even though I could not understand her language, I wanted to understand her with all my heart. Perhaps we could do worse than call a moratorium on both appeasement and get-tough programs, ...and let Lydia and Oriana get together on a plan for Russian-American understanding. Ann F. Wolfe Saturday Review June 21, 1947

Author Information

ORIANA ATKINSON (1895-1989) was a native New Yorker who has traveled widely-Russia, England, France, Ireland, all over the United States, and around the world on a freighter. She lived for a year in Moscow and her experiences there produced a best-seller, Over at Uncle Joe's: Moscow and Me. Mrs. Atkinson is also the author of three novels about the Catskills: Big Eyes, Twin Cousins and The Golden Season. Her most recent book was Manhattan and Me, a New Yorker's book about her home town. She has written short stories and articles for magazines and newspapers. Her husband, Brooks Atkinson (1895-1984), is drama critic of The New York Times. Mrs. Atkinson says of herself: My hobbies are really not pursued; they more or less stand still and wait for me. I like trying to learn the Russian language; raising roses; reading all kinds of strange things; and going to the theatre. Paul Galdone (June 2, 1907 - November 7, 1986) was an illustrator and writer known best for children's picture books.

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