Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Some light tanning due to age. 1963 first edition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In March 1957 I received notice that everything was ready for me to go to Burma for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Preparations for the great drama had held me in nervous tension for approximately three months; now they were finished. Every incident in my back- ground and in those of my relatives and antecedents back to my grandfather was checked thoroughly hundreds of papers and special forms were filled in and I appeared before two different commissions. I stood on the sixteenth floor of the monolithic new building of the Soviet Foreign Ministry on Smolenskaya Square in Moscow before the massive desk of the chief of cadres for the whole South-east Asian Section. This man was writing as I entered. I stood silently in front of him waiting in vain for an invitation to sit. At last without lifting his head from the papers he said ‘You’re very lucky Comrade Kaznacheev very lucky.’ He spoke slowly as if unwillingly. ‘Honestly I didn’t expect your candidacy would succeed. Of course your background is quite clean everything is O.K. with your rela- tives. Your academic records are also good. But you weren’t especially active in the Komsomol and recommendations in this respect about you are rather mild. What sort of youth is growing up nowadays! He lifted his face to me assuming an expression of simulated disappointment and anger. ‘Five years ago we wouldn’t allow anybody with such a Komsomol record as yours even to dream of going abroad.’ Then in a more kindly tone: ‘You are a smooth one Kaznacheev; you’ve managed somehow to pick up this Burmese language before others got the idea! We need people with a know- ledge of Burmese. So’-he smiled slightly-‘my congratulations; we send abroad only the best chosen from the best of our young people the cream of the cream so to speak. (SP)