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

“I know the history of that building,” I said softly.

“We all know the history of that building,” she responded, even more softly. I had a feeling she had deliberately taken this “short cut” so she could show me the infamous building. And having showed it to me, she vanished.

Uzbek State University was located on Maxim Gorky Boulevard, which was broad, leafy, and very attractive. The university, which had recently celebrated its twenty-eighth birthday, looked older than that. An Intourist guide, all smiles, greeted me with an invitation to see the rector, who, he explained, had taken time from his busy schedule to welcome me.

I expressed my gratitude but added, “I do not want to be an imposition. I’d be happy just to wander around and meet with students.” But that was precisely what they did not want me to do.

“No,” he repeated firmly, “the rector has taken time from his busy schedule to welcome you.” I again expressed my gratitude.

The rector’s office was surprisingly plush. His desk was large, the rugs were thick, and on the wall behind his desk were two immense photos, one of Lenin and the other of Stalin. Sitting on a hard-back chair, the rector, a short, trim man wearing a white tunic and trousers, resembled the caricature of an Asian despot trying desperately to exude an image of authority. But when he spoke, I could hear an accent in his Russian, and I knew immediately that his authority had to be limited. As in many institutions in central Asia, he was the ethnic front man for the inevitable Russian deputy who made the important decisions.

His assistant, a young Uzbek, placed a tray of tea, cookies, and candies on a table near the rector’s desk. Everything was to follow proper protocol. The rector explained that there were 4,000 full-time students at the university and another 3,000 who were part-time and attended evening classes. All courses were taught in the Uzbek language. A thorough knowledge of the Russian language was required. If a student could not read, write, and speak Russian fluently, he or she would not be accepted at the university. Courses in dialectical materialism and communist ideology were mandatory. Most interesting to me was the rector’s explanation of how Uzbek history was taught. It was never taught as an independent subject, standing on its own. Rather, it was always taught as an integral part of pre- and postrevolutionary Soviet history. Likewise with Uzbek culture and language, which were always submerged in a greater Russian culture. As I noted later in my diary, this pedagogical approach was an “attempt to smother the dignity and value of independent Uzbek studies and to mold—at the risk of rewriting—Uzbek history into the totality of Soviet history, regarding everything prerevolutionary as ‘regressive’ in a Marxist sense and everything postrevolutionary as ‘progressive,’ in this same sense—thereby inflicting upon every student the impression that he is involved in the wave of the future, having freed himself absolutely from the shackles of the past.”

I raised the subject of a linguistics conference that had just been concluded in Tashkent. It focused on how to teach the Russian language more effectively in schools with non-Russian students, such as those in central Asia. I asked the rector whether this issue posed a problem at his university. It was obviously a sore point, because he abruptly switched topics to biology, which was his field of study. I insisted on an answer, and he obliged reluctantly. There was no need to study this subject at his university, he said as though on automatic pilot, reciting a line from a political fairy tale, because there were “indissoluble bonds” linking Uzbekistan to the Soviet Union. The Tashkent conference was simply addressing the problem of pronunciation. Apparently Russian was difficult for Uzbeks and Tajiks, because it contained sounds not found in their own language.

“Is it not possible,” I asked “that the Uzbeks and the Tajiks were actually resisting the imposition of the Russian language?”

“Absolutely not,” the rector answered.

Gently I changed the subject to one he was certain to find equally problematic. Khrushchev had insisted on destroying Stalin’s personality cult (at that very moment Stalin’s face was staring down on us), raising Lenin’s ideological profile and focusing more on technical courses than on the humanities. “What has been the impact of the 20th Party Congress on the university’s curriculum?” I asked.

The rector answered flatly, “We have made no changes in the curriculum, and none are planned.”

At which point, arriving at just the right time to include his own point of view, the chair of the Humanities Department burst into the room. A bright, enthusiastic, talkative Russian, he plunged into the “difficulties” and “shortcomings” of his department in responding to the Khrushchev challenge. “With Stalinism gone and Leninism resurrected, this was the time for action!” he shouted, as if from a soapbox, “But none has been sanctioned.”

The rector squirmed, and the Intourist guide tried to change the subject; but the chair was not to be deterred. He continued his highly unorthodox critique. “Western philosophy must again be taught,” he cried. “Locke and Montesquieu must again be studied, especially The Spirit of Laws , which is Montesquieu’s classic treatise on democracy.”

Then came a sudden and surprising display of power by the Intourist guide: he turned on the humanities chair and, with a fake smile, screamed, “Shut up! Our visitor has little time for such unnecessary pronouncements.”

My name having been invoked, I thought I had the right to intervene in this intra-university squabble. Of course I sided with the humanities chair. I told them about the American system of checks and balances, about a free press, about elections, about state and federal representatives.

I could have continued, but I suspected I would be hurting the poor chairman, not helping him. Besides, the rector was clearly in anguish and the Intourist guide in high dudgeon.

“I’m late for my ride to the cotton collective farm,” I announced. It was as good a reason as any in the Soviet Union for ending a conversation. Before the rector or the guide could raise an objection, which they would not have done, I shook hands with both and left the room, leaving behind only a smile of support for the beleaguered humanities chair.

In the afternoon, still brutally hot and dry, I joined another Intourist guide, Pyotr, for a thirty-minute ride in a ZIS limousine to the Friedrich Engels Cotton Collective Farm on the outskirts of Samarkand. The streets of Samarkand were almost deserted, the only exceptions being a straggling donkey or horse from a nearby collective farm, and I could not help but wonder why Tamerlane had not chosen a better location for his capital. (Of course, we complained endlessly about the icy Moscow winters.) Our driver, an Armenian, asked a few questions about Armenians in America. A college friend was Armenian, I told him, and he lived very well, as did his friends. The driver said he had read in Pravda that they all lived poorly. I answered as diplomatically as possible that truth ( pravda in Russian) did not always reside in Pravda . He looked at me as if it was the first time he had ever heard so outrageous a thought.

Most of the ride out of Samarkand was on a paved road, but then, after a sharp turn to the right, we suddenly found ourselves on a bumpy dirt road. The ZIS’s tires kicked up a dust storm for the ages, but looking from side to side, I could still see an endless field of cotton. “We’ve still got ten days to harvest, ten days before the cotton is in full bloom,” Pyotr explained. I would not have known whether it was ten days or twenty—this was my first time anywhere near a cotton field. We continued for another few minutes until I finally made out a small building in the whiteness of the cotton field. It looked lonely.