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

As I left the Podol synagogue that evening, I felt like “one silent cry.” There, I thought, but for the grace of God…

I had no idea how dreary Moscow could be in the summer. It was hot, smelly, and sullen. In August, Russians with connections (and money) would escape to their dachas on the outskirts of the capital. Others with still more connections would go south to Crimea—to Odessa or other spots along the Black Sea coast.

At the U.S. embassy many diplomats had already fled to Western Europe or the Mediterranean. The place seemed strangely deserted. I myself was restless for another trip. A month had passed since my memorable weekend in Kiev, and I set my sights this time on central Asia and the Caucasus. Ambassador Bohlen encouraged the journey, adding simply, “Be careful.” Central Asia had only recently been opened to foreign travel, and the Russians were likely to be especially suspicious of American tourists and to assume that they were all spies.

A year or two earlier I had read Harold Lamb’s romantic biography Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker , which at the time fascinated me. My itinerary included his glistening capital, Samarkand—at least, it glistened in Lamb’s account. I would also visit Tashkent and Bukhara. My imagination raced back to the late fourteenthth century, when Tamerlane’s empire stretched from the Mediterranean to Mongolia, from Russia to India. He was at the time a truly awesome figure, frightening to many, godlike to some. He stimulated the arts and left an impressive collection of monuments and museums, but he also slaughtered millions as he expanded his central Asian empire. He was called a “bloody butcher.” If proof be needed that he had earned the title justifiably, it lay literally in the mountains of skulls that dotted his warpath, each a stark reminder of his brutality. When he raided a town, he often decapitated all of its inhabitants. Tamerlane, a direct descendent of Genghis Khan, was the last of the memorable Turco-Mongol warrior chiefs, his empire the last to flourish in central Asia, which then slipped into centuries of sandy nothingness.

As I prepared for my journey, I suffered more than a few bouts of jitters, as I noted in my diary. I wondered whether I was wise to travel alone to a region only recently opened. Foreigners could be made to disappear, never to be heard from again. But I found comfort in my diplomatic passport, which afforded a degree of protection, and I always felt, foolishly, I suspect, that since I had nothing to hide, I had nothing to fear.

And so, at 2:15 a.m. on August 25 (why Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, always chose to depart from Moscow at such ungodly hours escaped me), I set a southeast course for Tashkent in a pitifully small two-engine, twenty-seater plane. Like my flight to Kiev, this one to Tashkent was an awful experience: it was unrelievedly bumpy, the food was indigestible, and the other passengers all looked like overweight bureaucrats, drinking vodka from takeoff to landing and smoking foul-smelling papirosi cigarettes—those, that is, who were not already sick from the flight, doubled over in discomfort.

Four hours later our first refueling stop loomed on the near horizon. It was Uralsk, a small town in the northwest corner of Kazakhstan. It was a town of no distinction. It had a primitive airport, but there was no terminal building, no hangars, only wide expanses of desert sand rolling into the morning mist. While the passengers stretched their legs, the plane was refueled.

Our next stop was Aktyubinsk, two and a half hours farther east. It had a modern terminal that sported, much to my surprise, a moderately good restaurant. There I met an official guide from the Soviet travel agency, Intourist, who explained with pride that by doing nothing more daring than looking out of the window I could see Khrushchev’s famous “virgin lands.” It was one of the Soviet leader’s most cherished projects—his way of demonstrating creative leadership, increasing grain production, and creating jobs. No doubt Khrushchev had flown into this desert metropolis on many occasions, which would explain why it had a paved runway and a decent restaurant. It was the modern equivalent of a Potemkin village. Khrushchev, like Catherine the Great, needed to be impressed.

Our third stop was Dzhusaly, another hot, dreary airport in the middle of the Kazakh desert. There were no other airplanes, no runways, no hangars, but there was the amazing sight of large photos of Stalin propped up one in front of another, extending from our plane to a ragged hut, where we could buy water, a precious commodity. An old Russian with a handlebar mustache explained, “Water to us is like gold to you.” I asked him why there were so many photos of Stalin here in Kazakhstan when he was being criticized so sharply in Moscow. “Oh,” he said, reflecting a widespread view in the Russian countryside, “Stalin was our great vozhd . He was a genius.”

Finally, at 4:00 p.m., local time, fourteen hours after we had left Moscow, we landed in Tashkent, a city of a million, the largest in central Asia, described by Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times as “Russia’s Number One Advertisement in Asia.” But if indeed it was such an advertisement, it left much to be desired. I was there for only a few days, but it did not take long to see that Tashkent was a city without character—trapped, it seemed, between an old, enfeebled nomadic culture and an imposed, stultifying Soviet style of life. Tashkent was neither one nor the other.

After dropping my bag at the hotel, I set off for a quick walk around town before dinner. Prospekt Pravda Vostoka, or Avenue of the Truth of the East, one of the main streets in Tashkent, led to Gorky Park, an inevitable destination in any Soviet city. I bought an admission ticket (required in all parks) and entered what a young Uzbek later described to me as “the only place in town where one can have a good time.” The park had everything—games, movies, dancing, even a free concert. Near the center, a lottery was being held, the winner to receive 300 rubles. I saw a young woman pull at her boyfriend’s arm. “Don’t buy a ticket,” she whispered. “It’s all fixed.” Uzbeks were mixing freely with Russians. Couples walked arm in arm, very proper, almost as though their parents were watching. Here decorum reigned, so unlike in Kiev, where couples were openly hugging, kissing, and more.

I approached a large, fenced-in area reserved for dancing. In one corner a four-piece orchestra was playing Western music. I thought I heard “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” Courtships were brief. Boys approached girls, a question in their eyes, the answer soon in their arms. The dancing was graceless and awkward, but everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Under the rubric “Weird Things Can Happen Anywhere at Anytime,” an MVD officer decided this was the moment for a lecture on Soviet hydroelectric power. Ten or fifteen young people gathered around him. As he looked at the dancers with obvious disapproval he proclaimed, “All of this energy could better be invested in building a hydroelectric power station, rather than wasted here on a dance floor. This is nothing more than a polite form of hooliganism.” Most of the young people nodded in apparent agreement, but when the officer left they giggled.

I asked a Russian, “Where is the best restaurant in Tashkent”? He burst into laughter. “Maybe in Moscow, but not here.” I figured it was time to test the one in the hotel.

A sickly odor of ammonia, apparent the moment I entered the large dining room, killed my appetite. The waitresses, heavy, wearing blotched uniforms, essentially indifferent to normal courtesies, did nothing to improve it. The dining room was crowded. I joined a young Russian who was alone at a table for two. He said he was a fourth-year student in a textile institute. Tashkent, he explained, was the center of an active needle trade. In front of him was a bottle of vodka, and he appeared to have been drinking heavily. “There is nothing else to do in Tashkent,” he grumbled. “I go to the park, but one can quickly tire of the park. Nothing of interest here. Nothing to do. Here everything is skuchno —boring.” He used the word skuchno several times, as if he were a character in a Chekhov play complaining about life in a village and yearning one day to visit Moscow. Then, realizing he might have spoken too candidly to a foreigner he had just met, he belted back another vodka, asked for his check, and left. I said good-bye, but he ignored me.