In connexion with the visa problem one's troubles are not over when one has obtained the signature and seal of the F. BE. R.'s Harbin representative. This painstaking and cautious government maintains another official at Man-chub with instructions to counter-visa all passports of persons bound for the territory of the F. E. R. and to charge three-quarters of a gold rouble for his autograph. Further trouble for the Moscow-bound traveller occurs at Chita, where the Ministry of the Interior maintains a passport department which insists on seeing and visaing every passport that comes to town, The visa charge at this office for the foreigner travelling to Moscow is gold Rs. 10.50 per passport, and it takes anywhere from one to three days to obtain the visa. When I informed the officials of this office that my visa and open letter from the Soviet delegate at Peking ought to be sufficient to get me into Soviet Russia and that I did not need their visa in addition, they informed me with a smile that theirs was the only visa recognized on the Soviet frontier and suggested that I "try it and see."
At this office, too, one has to fill out, in Russian, an enquéte, or inquiry form, which searches deep into one's personal and family affairs and digs up many skeletons that were hitherto known to one's self only.. "How much money have you got and where is it?" and "To what political party do you belong?' are among the more striking of these puzzlers. If, however, travellers to Russia have with them letters of introduction to the Foreign Minister or officials of other departments at Chita, they will find these gentlemen most sympathetic and anxious o help smooth over the numerous technical difficulties connected with getting in and out of the country. While the present passport system in the F. E. R. and Soviet Russia is infinitely more annoying and cumbersome than it was in the days of the Romanoffs, and while foreign travel in these countries will be for business only until this system is modified, the officials who invented and administer the system are courtesy itself and will spend more time and pains in seeing the hapless foreigner through his troubles than will the corresponding officials of other nations in other places.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.