Salisbury continues talking about the artists like writers, musicians and dancers being national assets to Russia. In a country with its history of tyranny, Russian society is becoming more permissive and relaxed, explained Salisbury. Khrushchev keeps the peace right now, says Salisbury but wonders, like the title of a new book he's working on, is this "A New Russia?".

Being a correspondent for the New York Times in Moscow gave others the chance to see Russia through Harrison Salisbury's reporting. Inside their country, the people, says Salisbury, they have started to loosen up and they have started to talk to one another. The freedoms of the arts have come back, too.

Journalist and correspondent in Moscow for the New York Times Harrison Salisbury discusses and reads from his novel “The Gates of Hell”, a novel that closely mirrors the life of Russian novelist and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. As Salisbury states, the characters in this novel discover the discrepancies between the legend and reality of the Russian revolution in a post-WWII era.

Discussing the book "The 900 days" about the siege of Leningrad during World War II.