“Moscow Mary” Looks behind the Iron Curtain

Dorothy Day (1897–1980), the co-founder and central figure of the Catholic Worker movement, and current candidate for sainthood, visited Poland, the USSR, and other countries in the Soviet bloc for three weeks in summer 1971. In her youth, she had associated with communist and left-wing causes in the United States, and retained a radical political outlook derived from her understanding of the true interpretation of Christianity. Her intent in visiting Eastern Europe was to satisfy a lifelong fascination with Russian culture and to explore religious conditions behind the Iron Curtain. Although Poland was a secondary destination, she found its capital unexpectedly charming and moving. In Moscow, she irritated her Soviet hosts with open statements of admiration for the banned writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The article is based largely on Day's own writings and materials in her archival papers at Marquette University.