Introductory letters often revealed the gulf between the women. Confusion over names was indicative of deeper cultural differences. One Soviet writer, having received a letter from a Mrs Leonard Osborne, opened her response ‘My dear friend, Leonard!’ American women sometimes worried that they didn’t know whether their pen-pal was a Miss or a Mrs; they were reassured that ‘it makes no difference. Here we call all people “comrade” be they married or not.’ The American participants enthusiastically described their domestic comforts (‘We have a small, comfortable home with every modern convenience such as a telephone, electric lights and many electric appliances including a radio, vacuum cleaner and electric washing machine’). The Soviet women didn’t try to compete. Instead, they concentrated on their occupation and education (‘I am a scientific worker in one of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Not so very long ago I was just an ordinary “factory hand” in one of the Moscow factories’).
American housewives with hoovers, upwardly mobile Soviet workers: the introductory letters conformed to expectations. But as the epistolary relationships deepened and the masks slipped, the women found that they had problems, anxieties and challenges in common. Even if their new friend had different politics or beliefs, the women steered away from conflict, quietly reframing what had been said in their own terms. When Mary Roe Hull, an elderly Presbyterian from Wisconsin, and Nina Morozova, a war widow and mother, were set up as pen-pals they had little in common, save experience working as typists. But their correspondence flourished, fuelled in part by both women’s advocacy for world peace. Hull’s commitment rested on Christian teaching, and her letters were full of references to scripture; Morozova believed in the same cause but neatly ignored the religious prism through which Hull wrote. Morozova was sometimes dogmatic: ‘Expose those odious warmongers whenever you get a chance to. There is no word I hate more than “war”.’ But she also talked about her grief and loneliness, and Hull latched on to that, encouraging her to look for love again.