Marvin Kalb - The Year I Was Peter the Great - 1956 - Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia

“Uvarov!” she exclaimed. (At least she had heard of Uvarov.) “Why write about him? He was a reactionary. You should write about Lenin.” I came up with a new response. I told her I was interested in prerevolutionary Russia. Since Uvarov was minister of education under Nicholas I, and since I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to know more about his approach to education and teaching, an explanation she found hard to reject. She said she would give me a propusk . For a minute I thought I had cracked my way into the Central State Archives. I was exultant. The archivist was about to tell the guard to grant me a propusk when, out of curiosity, I imagine, she asked where I was from. The United States, I answered. The poor woman’s jaw dropped. She looked at me once and then twice and said, “Please wait here.” She nodded to the guard to watch me. I thought about racing to the front door but instead sat down and waited.

Ten minutes later the archivist returned with a tall man, who looked like a muscular World War II statue of a heroic Soviet soldier. He was wearing a shiny dark gray suit. His shirt was clean but not pressed, and his tie had seen better days. But he exuded authority. He asked the same question I had already been asked by the archivist and a number of guards: “What is the purpose of your visit?” I repeated, as though for the first time, that I wanted to do research on Uvarov. He told me about a regulation, in effect since 1948, that obliged non-Russians wishing to do research at the Central State Archives to have their embassy send an official request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose to look favorably upon the request, then it would inform the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which had administrative authority over the Central State Archives. If the MVD agreed with the judgment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it could authorize the Central State Archives to cooperate with the non-Russian scholar, that is, if the Central State Archives considered the subject to be worthy of serious and safe study. I asked how long he thought this process would take. He paused before answering, and then, using almost the same words, repeated what he had just outlined. I was trapped in the Soviet bureaucracy. I thanked him and left.

That night, reflecting on the experience, I decided to ask the first secretary at the U.S. embassy to submit a letter on my behalf to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Why not? Maybe the thaw would open the door to the Central State Archives. If not, on this one occasion I would have experienced the powers of the tangled Soviet bureaucracy, something Russians experienced in different ways every day. The first secretary, in an example of embassy bureaucracy, nodded sympathetically and promised to discuss my request with the ambassador.

“When?” I asked.

“As soon as he has a moment,” he answered.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last of the Communist Party leaders, remarked years later that Khrushchev had taken a “huge political risk” in “beginning the process of unmasking Stalin’s crimes.” As a young Komsomol leader, Gorbachev had the responsibility of reporting on the speech to a meeting of rural officials near Stavropol in southern Russia. His party boss had warned him that “the people don’t understand; they don’t accept it.” Actually, the people were divided in their reaction to the speech. Younger, better-educated Russians supported it. Others angrily rejected it. And still others asked, “What for? What is the point of washing one’s dirty linen in public?”

It was my good fortune in those days, largely because I spent so much of my spare time in libraries and museums, to meet many students who were in their own post–20th Party Congress world of rebellion, confusion, and frustration. For much of their lives they had been moored to a rigid communist dogma, trained to worship Stalin’s genius, dedicated to the Soviet system. Then, by nothing more powerful than a speech, their world was shattered. What they had been taught all of their lives was suddenly subjected to withering criticism, mostly directed at the legacy of the one man who was always accepted as a kind of secular god, unquestioned, inviolable, a brilliant vozhd . But now his legacy was beset by doubts, questions, accusations, and criticism of a sort unimaginable only a few weeks before. What in heaven’s name was happening?

At the Lenin Library I was able, after much effort, to gain access to one file of Uvarov’s official papers. I spent two, sometimes three, evenings a week reading the file, taking notes, and then listening to a rising rumble around me of student discontent and anger at communism. Normally the large reading room was quiet, students respectful of one another’s reading and research. I think I was the only Westerner in the library, and I kept a very low profile. I did my work, and when I was finished, I left. But one evening, much to my surprise, the rumble became a roar as one student after another rose, spontaneously it seemed, to ask questions about the Khrushchev speech, specifically about his attack on Stalin. Library guards stood at the doors, listened, shook their heads in disbelief, but did nothing to stop the raucous crowd. Even after a few of the students leaped on top of the library tables, stomping on official papers, bellowing questions, tearing up copies of Pravda , the guards still did nothing to stop them. Could they have done anything? Were they waiting for an order from above?

I realized quickly that I was observing a memorable moment in Russia’s thaw. Students seemed to be in rebellion. They were no longer listening; now they were in rhetorical revolt, many of them shouting epithets against the government and communism. I was an outsider listening in on a national upheaval. I tried my best to look innocuous. Occasionally I would raise my head, but only briefly, lest I attract attention. I just kept taking notes, describing the scene, listening carefully to the outbursts.

“How did Stalin develop a ‘personality cult’?” one student shouted.

“Why didn’t they stop him?” another asked.

I heard someone yell from a corner of the reading room, “Khrushchev is developing his own ‘personality cult,’” and many others muttered, “Yes, yes” under their breaths.

“Down with communism!” “Down with Stalin!” “Down with Khrushchev!”—fearlessly students demanded dramatic change.

“Will there be a war?” I heard a student ask.

“No, no war,” many shouted. A widespread hum developed, first in a low tone, then louder and louder, “No war, no war, no war.”

So far as I could tell, there was no violence. For a long time, or so it seemed, this explosion of student unhappiness continued, and then slowly subsided. Students began to pack up their books and papers and leave. I stayed for a little while longer. I thought the students would continue their anti-government and anti-communist tirade outside the library, but I was wrong. The street was empty except for a straggler or two.

I had no intention of returning to American House. I felt I had to report this episode to someone, and who better than the American ambassador? I went directly to Spasso House, where the ambassador lived. Normally no one would disturb him, certainly not in his home after 10:00 p.m. If I were a professional diplomat, a true Foreign Service officer, I would never have bothered the ambassador unless there was a genuine catastrophe. But I was a translator for the JPRS. I had just seen and heard something of importance, and I wanted to share it with him.