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

“Nina,” a favorite of any student of Russian history, had lived for many years in an old one-story house, number 102 First Parallel Avenue, in a slum neighborhood that had recently been opened to foreign tourists. Why would such a neighborhood be opened? It was obviously an embarrassment. There could be only one reason: “Nina” had played a key role in seeding the ground for the Russian Revolution, and Intourist wanted foreigners to be impressed by it.

When I informed my guide that I wanted to visit “Nina” before I left later that afternoon for Tbilisi, he could not have been more delighted. “A ZIS limousine will be waiting for you in one half hour,” he said.

“No,” I objected. “I’ll walk.”

“No,” he insisted. “You’ll ride in a limo.”

We both understood that he did not want me to dawdle along the way and see the sorry mess that most of Baku still was—and, worse, stop and talk with people, who might want to share the story of their lives. I agreed to the limo. The ride was short and uneventful.

“Nina” was the nickname of a historic printing press in the early days of the twentieth century. In czarist Russia, such a press was illegal. It spread the message of communism and revolution, and it did so in newspapers called Iskra ( Spark ) and Borba ( Struggle ). Iskra , the more famous, harked back to an optimistic phrase associated with Alexander Pushkin: “From the spark will come the flame.” For Lenin the “flame” would be the Russian Revolution.

At Nina’s home, I was greeted by three MVD officers and the docent of the museum, who escorted me into a small room where the walls were covered with portraits of Lenin and Stalin. He explained Nina’s history with enormous pride, telling me of its central, controversial role in disseminating Lenin’s vision of revolution.

“Sir,” I said, impatiently, “where is Nina?” I was conscious of my tight schedule. I was to board a train to Tbilisi in a few hours.

“Just a moment,” he said. “Just a moment.” Slowly he led me to a tiny kitchen in the back of the house. It had a stove, a window, and a few cabinets. I did not see Nina.

“Where is Nina?” I repeated. At which point, the docent pulled a string, and, as in a magic show, the curtain covering the window dropped, revealing an opening to a small underground room lit by a naked light bulb. There in the middle stood Nina, an old printing press with many stories to tell.

“Nina began to function in 1901,” said the docent, making conversation as he and I made our way down a few treacherous steps into a dim cellar. “She played a very major role in the revolutionary movement, not only here in the Caucasus, but throughout the Russian empire. In September 1901 she began to roll off Iskra , the best illegal Marxist newspaper inside Russia.” The docent stressed that I was not to touch the press, which, he noted unnecessarily, was precious to him and historians. “There is only one Nina.”

“When it was printing, it made noise,” I said. “If anyone heard the noise, that would give away the whole show.”

The docent agreed. “The person most likely to hear this noise was the man who lived next door to Nina, the owner of this house. Fortunately he was drunk most of the time and only thought that he imagined the noise.”

“Why put up with this stressful situation?” I asked.

The docent had a simple answer. “These people had a mission. They did not like tyranny. They knew that to overcome tyranny, they had to endure great suffering, which they did. But they worked hard for their cause.” Their cause was revolution, and they needed newspapers to sell their message to the public. They needed Nina to produce their newspapers. Before the revolution, Lenin wanted and needed a free press, one free to publish his message. After the revolution, once in power, he banished freedom of the press.

The docent, who looked tired, sat down on a bench, caught his breath, and suggested I return tomorrow. I told him that by tomorrow I would be in Tbilisi.

From Baku the train ran south for almost four hours, by which time the sun had fallen behind the rising rim of the Caucasus, and we had begun our westward ascent to Tbilisi, nestled among the highest mountain peaks of Georgia. It was a capital city of warm springs, passionate nationalism, and an adoring pride in the dictator, Stalin, a native son whose legend was being brutalized everywhere else in the Soviet Union but not there. The train ride, though long, was thoroughly enjoyable, largely because my compartment mate was a chubby young Azeri woman named Maria, who unashamedly admitted that “pull” was the key to a satisfying life in the Soviet Union.

Her father was a prominent doctor in Baku who knew everyone and readily exchanged favors with other bigwigs in Azeri society. Her mother was a housewife who had never had to work, and her sister was in her second year of studies at Baku University. Maria was a French-language teacher in a small town in southern Azerbaijan, and she felt she needed a change.

“There is no fun there,” she said, her head shaking slowly from one side to the other. “What is a young girl to do? After work, I like fun, but there is none there. In Tbilisi, there is a lot of fun.” Her father’s friend, a communist with connections, was at that time using his clout to get her shifted from this small town to Baku. At least that would be a step up. She was confident he would succeed. “I know that someone must live and teach in such small towns, but it doesn’t have to be me.”

“Have you no guilt feelings?” I asked.

“Not at all,” she replied. Her tone was even, unemotional, like the Armenian’s the night before. “If I didn’t use pull, someone else would. Pull is the best way of getting anything in Russia. I think it is the only way.” She told me that corruption was “rampant” at the university. Students gained admission not because they deserved it but because their parents enjoyed special privileges resulting from their social rank or political position. “They bought admission, like buying an apartment,” she said. “Many of our young people are this way. I admit this. I am not ashamed. I have no conscience. I do not believe in God. In our family, we do what is good for us. That is the way it is here.”

When we arrived the following morning in Tbilisi, the sky was dark gray and the temperature was in the low seventies. After weeks in the merciless heat of central Asia, I was thrilled, but Maria was unhappy. “Tbilisi needs sun,” she grumbled. “It is beautiful only in the sun.” She was right, as I was to learn during my time in the Georgian capital. In fact, Tbilisi was picture-postcard beautiful. It was situated on the banks of the Kura River, which ran through a valley surrounded by the skyscraping peaks. Many stone bridges crisscrossed the Kura. Small houses looked as if they had been chiseled into the face of the mountain. Georgians seemed taller than Russians or Ukrainians, certainly taller than the Uzbeks or Tajiks. Most men sported mustaches, and women appeared stylish, well dressed, confident of their looks. Trolley cars clanged up and down hills, little different from those in San Francisco, and private cars honked incessantly on the main streets, unlike those in Moscow, which made their way timidly through the comparatively thin traffic. It was obvious that the standard of living was higher here than in the Soviet capital.

At the railroad station in downtown Tbilisi, I was surprised when I was greeted by a smiling Intourist face rather than the usual frowning one that had accosted me in other Soviet cities. A ZIS limo was waiting, and it whisked me to the Intourist hotel, where I was ushered into a giant suite with a gorgeous view, at the modest price of $15 a day, meals extra. The Intourist guide told me there was one other American in the hotel, a photographer from California named Max. He had scheduled a trip to Mtskheta, Georgia’s ancient capital, a thirty-minute-drive from Tbilisi along a narrow mountain pass. “May I go with him?” I asked. Maria had urged me to see Mtskheta, which she described as “exquisite” and “romantic.” Fortunately the photographer welcomed company, and off we went. He had a specific assignment—to photograph the ancient icons and frescoes; I simply wanted to see the city.