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

Now, eleven years after the war’s end but only eight months after Khrushchev’s bombshell at the 20th Party Congress, Baku was beginning to show signs of a post-Stalin thaw in culture and politics. But it would clearly need more time before the thaw could affect the life of the average Azeri. In the meantime, life meandered from one day to the next, meaningful change still more a hope than a reality.

Compared to my hotels in central Asia, my hotel in Baku was luxurious. My room was large and clean and had its own bathroom. From a picture window I could see the harbor, one of the most beautiful in the Soviet Union. It sparkled in the sunlight, and I thought it resembled Plymouth Bay in Massachusetts, a horseshoe of land washed by the sea on three sides. Here, though, were oil wells. No matter how far my eye wandered, I still saw them.

When I went on my tour of Baku, I was kept close to the hotel. Everything was off-limits except the old city. The old city itself was on a high hill overlooking the harbor. The guide pointed with pride to the cobblestone alleyways and to a decaying mosque that had served as a fortress hundreds of years ago.

“Against whom?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

The guide said he did not understand my question.

“Why would you need to turn a mosque into a fortress? Who was attacking you?”

The guide, realizing that an honest answer could only lead to trouble, suggested instead that I see the remains of an underground Moslem bath house that had been accidentally discovered in 1941, when a cover of earth collapsed, revealing this ancient site.

But that was it—the guide had nothing more that he could show me. I asked whether there was a history museum I could visit, assuming every Soviet city had one. The guide looked troubled, explaining that he had to check whether the Baku Historical Museum was open for visitors. It had been shut for “remont,” one of the most popular words in the whole country. He called headquarters, we waited, and finally he got permission to take me to what turned out to be a very impressive building, once the home of a Persian oil merchant. We could have walked to the museum, but he insisted we go by limo, eliminating the possibility that I could have seen something along the way that was “uninteresting.”

The museum was impressive in one respect, disappointing in most others. In one large room it traced the history of the Azeri people back to the Stone and Bronze Ages. It was a superficial review. In another room, Azeri history as presented ran up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Again, truly superficial. Finally, the jewel in the museum’s crown: the Azeri people living under Soviet rule. This was fascinating for only one reason: the way Azeri history was shoehorned into the Soviet experience. My guide used every cliché in his communist handbook to paint Azeri history in Soviet colors, stressing especially how “progressive” Azeris unshackled themselves from “regressive” capitalism and embraced the “glory and wonder of Marxism.” Paintings showed starving workers fighting fat millionaires. It was a dreadful presentation. If there was a saving grace, it was in the beauty of the building.

After a shish-kebab dinner, which was delicious, I went for a walk along the promenade fronting the Caspian Sea, and surprisingly my Intourist guide made no effort to stop me. I was not alone, of course. It seemed as if everyone else was also out for a walk. As I noted later that evening in my diary, “They too undoubtedly have nothing else to do.” Hundreds watched a young daredevil wearing a parachute jump from a rooftop to the promenade below, a jump of over fifty feet. He landed safely and everyone applauded. Apparently this was his way of earning some extra cash because he ran around with his tubeteika in hand collecting coins. I gave him a ruble, and his eyes lit up. “Big tipper am I,” I muttered to myself.

Tied to the pier were two sightseeing boats, one named Druzhba , “friendship,” and the other Mir , “peace.” I chose Druzhba , and another dozen or so passengers and I chugged into the bay for about a half hour, watching one another when we were not watching the oil wells, which never broke their up-and-down, twenty-four-hour-a-day routine. We passed a yacht club. I was told that it was private, guarded, and reserved for “rich people.” One passenger kept staring at me, and I had a feeling he wanted to talk. So I approached him and in Russian asked whether he lived in Baku and what he did for a living. By this time we were already returning to the pier. As we left the boat, he started talking about his life in English. It turned out that he was Armenian, and his English was excellent. I bought each of us an ice cream cone and we sat down on a park bench. He said he was born in Palestine and lived there until 1948, when, as he put it, “I made the greatest mistake of my life.” He decided to return to Armenia, the land of his ancestors but a land controlled by Russia. “All Armenians love Armenia,” he explained. “Once we were a great people. I think we still are. I thought that the communists had given us a chance to build an Armenian life once again. I found out in one year that I was wrong, that such a life under Soviet rule was impossible.” He never gave me his name. Nor did he explain why he was now in Baku. “Since then I have been trying to get out,” he continued. “But this, I now know, I cannot do. I am hopelessly their prisoner, here so close to my own home.” Armenia borders on Azerbaijan.

Even as he spoke of himself as a prisoner, he showed no emotion. It was as if he had finished crying long ago. Now all he wanted to do was practice his English. All I wanted to do was listen.

“Baku is a crazy kind of city,” he said, matter-of-factly, his voice flat, betraying neither approval nor disapproval. “There are many nationalities here—Armenians, Jews, Georgians, Russians, Ukrainians. But the Russians are a minority only in number. They run Baku. They call the Azeris zvery , wild animals. The Azeris call the Russians onionheads. But between them there is no hostility, none you can see anyway.” He paused, as if struggling for the right words. “During the day, they smile at each other. At night they hate.” Three Russian sailors happened to stroll by at that moment. My friend looked away, as though searching for something that had dropped behind our bench.

“Are you frightened of them?” I asked.

“No, but it is not good to be seen with foreigners. Actually, I don’t care. But still it is not good.”

I asked him whether, in his judgment, Russia had changed since the Khrushchev speech denouncing Stalin.

“Yes, this cannot be denied,” he said. “Things have eased up considerably. Now people will not be arrested as much in the middle of the night, and people talk a little more, but only among their best friends. In the presence of some who are not trusted, no one says anything but ‘the weather is hot’ and ‘when do you think it will cool off?’ The communists are like sheep. If the top man says boo, all below him will jump. They do not think independently, and why should they? They have it so good here now.” My friend again looked behind him, as if he was afraid of someone or something. “I only make five hundred rubles a month working in a plant, but my wife earns three hundred, and we get along. I must go, but thank you for listening to me. I feel like a person again.” He shook hands with me, his face breaking into a polite smile, and off he went into the night. As he walked away, I later noted in my diary, “he seemed so completely without spirit, so lifeless, so corpse-like.”

I decided that I would leave Baku the next day, but first I was determined to see “Nina,” who at fifty still had the ability to tickle my intellectual curiosity about her special role in Russian history. I had read about her, and wanted to know more.