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

A Washington-based columnist, Walter Lippmann, gave a name to this struggle. In a short 1947 book called Cold War he wrote that the United States and the USSR were already involved in a fierce global competition, jockeying for strategic advantage, using proxies in local wars, and building up their military strength—but stopping short of actually engaging in direct combat, or hot war. In this dangerous environment, he asked, what was the best strategy for the United States? George Kennan, an old Moscow hand, offered a possible answer in an article for Foreign Affairs , “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which was a slightly sanitized version of his famous “long telegram,” written while he was still a diplomat based in Moscow. He proposed the containment of expanding Soviet power—not, he later stressed, by depending on American military power but by gradually advancing a “smarter” policy of bilateral cooperation. Known as the containment policy, it was adopted by a succession of administrations, starting with Truman’s.

The rise of the Cold War led me to a number of important decisions about courses and faculty. When I first enrolled at City College in February 1948, I found myself flitting, like a restless butterfly, from one major to another, never quite sure if I wanted to be a pre-med student, which would have satisfied my mother, or pre-law, which would have delighted my father, who was always convinced that I was put on this planet to be the best lawyer in America. Besides, I was already working for a lawyer and enjoying the experience. Lester Bachner used me for more than sharpening pencils or running out for coffee. He had me do research for his cases, and occasionally he even invited me to court to watch him argue a case. “How did I do?” he would ask after a trial, and I would praise him to the skies. Still, after a while at City College I was drawn toward a concentration in Russian language, literature, and history, prompted in part, I think, by my World War II obsession with huge maps on my bedroom walls. Using red-white-and-black-topped pins, I tracked the island-hopping American war against Japan in the Pacific and the ultimately unsuccessful Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

I was also inspired by the teaching and example of Hans Kohn, a Prague-born professor of European intellectual history who had recently come to teach at the college. He was all a professor was supposed to be: kind, encouraging, and stimulating. He made history exciting, basing many of his lectures on the adventures of real leaders. If not for Kohn’s emphasis on the role of individuals in history, how else would I remember Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès, two influential French nationalists, whom my roommate, Mark Maged, and I would affectionately refer to as “more ass and bare ass”? Also, with the rise of the Cold War, he took public positions that put him at odds with American foreign policy. Although he supported “vehemently [resisting] aggression anywhere in the world,” he disagreed with General Douglas MacArthur’s decision to cross the 38th parallel in Korea and advance toward the Yalu River, and he disagreed with the American decision to rearm Germany. For him and for others born in central Europe, Germany was often at the center of their strategic concerns.

The biggest issue for Kohn was always personal freedom. He feared that in our Cold War obsession with Soviet communism, we would lose sight of the one principle fundamental to our democracy, and that was our personal freedom. Even when I disagreed with Kohn (he was less concerned about the threats posed by the Soviet Union than I was), I admired him enormously. He was a decent, honorable man and a superb scholar. He had a major influence on my own thinking about U.S.-Soviet relations in a Cold War environment.

There was a very practical reason, too, for my growing fascination with Russian language and history. We were then in the early days of the Cold War, and knowing something about the Soviet Union—“Know Your Enemy” was the popular, often overused, cliché of the time—could open the door to a job. That certainly proved to be my experience. My older brother, Bernard—always Bernie to me—a reporter for the New York Times , had advised me on more than one occasion that if I wanted to go into journalism, which was always in a corner of my mind, I ought to have more than a degree in English literature. I ought to know something special, perhaps cultivate an area of expertise—something that would catch the eye of an editor or producer at a newspaper or a network. Harry Schwartz was a scholar and an expert on the Soviet Union and he worked for the Times . He set an example for others, like me, who specialized in Soviet affairs but who might not want to be a college professor. Every time I saw one of Schwartz’s analyses in the Times , I realized that my brother’s advice was golden. Maybe one day I could be the Harry Schwartz of CBS News. My father always believed, as did I, that in America, if you worked hard and obeyed the rules, anything was possible.

It was not surprising, then, that in my freshman year journalism beckoned, and I saluted. A shameful story, involving racial and religious discrimination, was brewing at the college. In October 1948 about 2,000 students, expressing their outrage, organized a sit-in. They demanded that two professors be fired. Six months later, on April 11, 1949, the college was shut down by similar mass protests, no different really from those that later rocked college campuses during the Vietnam War. City College was just ahead of its time. Many hundreds of students, carrying placards denouncing the professors and shouting “Jim Crow Must Go,” blocked traffic on Convent Avenue. Police on horseback, wielding batons, rode directly into the demonstrators, as if they were trying to contain stampeding cattle. Many students were bloodied. Sixteen were arrested. A Times headline the next morning read, “City College Students Clash with Police in ‘Bias’ Strike.”

The professors were William E. Knickerbocker, chairman of the Romance Languages Department, accused of blatant anti-Semitism in a college where roughly 80 percent of the student body was Jewish, and William C. Davis, an economist, charged with discriminating against Negroes, as African Americans were then called.

I always believed that Knickerbocker was a bigot. The evidence seemed overwhelming. I was never sure about Davis. In fact, at times I thought he got a bum rap. In any case, in the history of City College, Knickerbocker and Davis were forever twinned in infamy. They were unavoidable distractions from my studies, but they were essential lessons in journalism. I was one of a number of Campus reporters covering the protests. I did well enough, apparently, for my editor, Sandy Socolow, who was later to be a colleague at CBS News, to name me sports editor for the 1949–50 academic year. Soon I would be covering an unforgettable story—the grand slam of college basketball.

At City College basketball had been the most celebrated sport on campus ever since 1920, when Nat Holman began to coach the Beavers. There were sixteen varsity teams, but at the Campus we covered one more than any other, and the legendary Holman was the reason. Immodestly he referred to himself as “the master,” and he looked like a British aristocrat. Even in warm-up garb and sneakers Holman conveyed an air of elegance, like a character out of Downton Abbey , his dark hair speckled with gray and his soft hands looking like those of a surgeon. After practice Holman would emerge from the gym looking like a Wall Street banker—his dark, double-breasted jacket fitting perfectly, with a handkerchief folded neatly in its pocket and a tie always of the latest fashion. His accent was more London than New York, Rooseveltian with broad a ’s and a roll of r ’s. Only occasionally, during a close, intense game, did his original accent break through, betraying his humble New York roots. Before he shortened his name it had been Nathan Helmanovich. He was always fascinated by the spoken word. “Speech,” he once said, “deserves the respect of using it as well as you can.”