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

Rummaging through old papers from October 1956 while preparing this memoir, I came upon clear examples of a country in modest retrenchment, yet clinging to the hope that greater freedom was still possible, including better relations with the West, especially the United States:

• Fifty American millionaires arrived in Moscow to explore increasing trade and investment opportunities. They were well received, optimistic, and determined to do business.

• Two students at Moscow University were expelled after voicing criticism of government policy at a meeting called expressly for that purpose. They later disappeared. No explanations were offered.

• Shortly after Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization speech, the Kremlin circulated two letters to all party officials, which stated that open criticism of party and state “shortcomings” and “high-handedness” was not only to be tolerated but also encouraged. Then a third letter was circulated that contradicted the message of the two previous letters: now such criticism was to be discouraged. Criticism of the party and its leaders needed to be constrained.

• Molotov, who had opposed Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policy and, as a result, lost his job as foreign minister, was just appointed to a new job: head of a state commission to determine the acceptable cultural and ideological limits on the new “freedoms” marking the Khrushchev era. Everyone assumed Molotov had just been given authority to cut back on those freedoms.

• An old, sad feature of Stalinism was the widespread practice of snitching on family members and neighbors. If you heard anyone criticize Stalin, the party, or the state, you had an obligation to inform your local communist cell. One out of every ten workers in a factory had that responsibility. At the 20th Party Congress this practice was publicly denounced and most Russians breathed a sigh of relief. It has now been brought back. Apparently, the party did not appreciate the avalanche of criticism generated by the 20th Party Congress.

• I heard this story from a Russian friend. At a recent party meeting at a Moscow factory, where workers were told that criticism was officially encouraged, a worker rose and criticized his foreman. His courage was applauded, even by the foreman. The following week, the worker’s norm—the amount of work he or she was expected to do—was arbitrarily tripled. Every worker had a norm, which had to be fulfilled. This worker was already working at peak capacity, but according to his new norm he was producing only one-third of what was expected of him. As a result, his salary was effectively cut to one-third of what it had been. The net effect of this worker’s criticism: (1) his salary was cut; (2) his status as a top-flight worker was undermined; (3) he was forced into a position where he had either to recant or quit (he recanted). Result: no further criticism.

Strung together, these vignettes suggested a regime edging toward a major crackdown. By the late summer of 1956 the Kremlin learned that freedom of speech in the form of criticism, even sanctioned criticism, was intoxicating and could, if unchecked, undermine the foundations of a modern totalitarian state. Although Khrushchev continued to believe in his policy of de-Stalinization, he also realized that it had a dangerous, corrosive effect on his own power base and therefore had to be contained. In fact, in a short time Khrushchev faced a Molotov-led challenge that came close to ousting him from power.

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,” wrote Karl Marx, whose work inspired the Russian Revolution, “the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In Russia, no force except perhaps nationalism was more powerful than religion, which made official communist preaching of atheism so foolish and counterproductive. During World War II, when Stalin needed to galvanize the Soviet peoples to fight Nazi Germany, he soft-pedaled atheism and, with drums and flourishes, returned the Russian Orthodox Church to its central role in the life of the Soviet people, a role that it has never lost since the war. (Up to that time, Stalin never spent a kopeck to rebuild mosques or resuscitate Islam, which he and other Russian leaders always distrusted.)

In October 1956 I paid a visit to Zagorsk, home of the famous Trinity Monastery. I saw the continuing power of the Orthodox Church in Russian life. On October 8, a special day of prayer in the Russian Orthodox Church, thousands of Russians young and old crowded into Zagorsk to celebrate the 650th anniversary of the death of St. Sergius. To gain admission to the Troitsky–Sergieva Lavra monastery, whose fourteenth-century walls were covered with golden icons honoring the revered saint, they had to wait for many hours, and they did so with remarkable patience. Once inside they were enveloped in both melodic prayer and incense wafting from colorful censers being swung by priests wearing gold and purple robes and dark stovepipe hats, called kamilavki . They sang a prayer known to anyone who has ever been in a Russian church, “ Gospodi pomiluy ,” “God have mercy,” repeatedly crossing themselves and listening to church bells ringing with enchanting regularity, like background music for their prayers. Hundreds of candles burned on small altars, and in a private chapel, opened specially for this occasion, was a delicately sculptured water fountain. A priest stood to one side, with one hand blessing the believers, the other dispensing holy water to many in the crowd appealing for help to cure incurable ailments. Some came with cups. Those so blessed with drops of holy water seemed rapturous, as though each drop was a personal gift from God.

Outside, large groups of schoolchildren in gray uniforms waited for their turn to enter the church. They talked among themselves. They, too, waited patiently. Even the weather was in a festive mood, the sun shining brightly on this scene of religious observance with an unusual warmth for early October.

Watching this impressive spectacle of religious devotion, evidence of a total failure of the state’s official policy of atheism, I recalled a scene at a Moscow church a few blocks from the Kremlin only a week before. It was not an unusual scene. A small group of young Russians was being baptized. Parents beamed with pride and pleasure. As a visiting American with more than a passing knowledge of Russian history I watched and observed, and asked myself: “Could this have been much different fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, even two hundred years ago?” I did not think so. There are certain constants in every society. Religion was a constant in Russian society.

I also recalled a conversation with Valya, a twenty-seven-year-old Russian who worked at a Western embassy in Moscow. She told me with a mix of pride and joy that for the first time in her adult life she had attended services at her neighborhood church the previous Sunday. She and her husband had never attended church services. “We saw no reason to,” she explained. “Our friends never did either.” But her four-year-old son, Volodya, once asked her a question she could not answer. He usually went to church with his grandmother, Valya’s mother, a very religious woman.

One Sunday Volodya returned from church services to find his mother sitting in the kitchen in her nightgown. “Momma,” he said, “why don’t you go to church? Everyone I know does. And Granny goes; so why don’t you and Poppa?” Valya felt she could not tell Volodya that she did not believe in God—that would have raised too many questions. So she promised that she would go to church with him and Granny the following Sunday.

On that day she got up early, dressed, and with her mother and son attended services at their neighborhood church. “And do you know what?” she said, a broad smile on her face. “I enjoyed every minute of it. It was like when I was young all over again. I liked it, and I am going to go again. All thanks to my little Volodyushka.” A moment later, she added as an unhappy footnote that her husband did not attend services, and would not. He remained the family’s atheist, arguing privately that it was better that way if he wanted to maintain his privileged position at his factory.