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

At one point a French journalist walked into the mob of demonstrators in front of his embassy.

A burly Russian demonstrator grabbed his arm. “Who are you?” he asked in belligerent tones.

“A French journalist,” was the answer.

Suddenly the belligerence melted into a smile. “Good,” the Russian said, releasing his arm and patting him on the back.

At the British embassy, where the demonstrating mob actually pushed open the garden door, the distinguished British ambassador, Sir William Hayter, walked up to the MVD colonel, who was “in charge of” the screaming, presumably angry demonstrators, and in a beautiful expression of British understatement asked, “Could you tell me please when these demonstrations will end?”

The colonel, apparently not thinking, glanced at his wristwatch and replied simply, “In half an hour.”

On November 7 the Russians celebrated the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution with the usual parade through Red Square. Standing atop the Lenin Mausoleum were Khrushchev, Zhukov, and other Soviet leaders, bundled up against the cold. I had opposed the goals of the Bolshevik Revolution for many years, but on this day there was another reason for resentment. To those members of the diplomatic corps wishing to observe the parade from privileged positions near the mausoleum, the Foreign Ministry made it clear that they had to be there by 6:00 a.m., before the troops, tanks, missiles, and other armor, needed for the parade, blocked access to Red Square. Needless to say I objected furiously—but only to myself in my otherwise empty room. I got to my place near the Kremlin wall well before the 6:00 a.m. deadline.

The parade itself started at 10:00 a.m., at the exact moment when the Kremlin clocks sounded the hour. The military marched through Red Square, followed by the heavy armor, none of which, I was later told by the military attachés, was especially new or interesting. The “popular” part of the parade lasted until 12:30 p.m. Many Russians carried signs denouncing “Western” and “Zionist” aggression against Egypt. Zhukov spoke, and, consistent with the theme of the day, warned that Soviet troops were “available” to smash “Western aggression” against Egypt. By this time I was freezing but managed to jot down in my notebook his “warning” that Soviet troops were also “available” to “crush the Hungarian counterrevolution.” Had they not already done that on November 4?

That evening I noted in my diary: “It snowed for the rest of the day, but this did not disturb the Russians who flocked into Revolution and Red Squares by the thousands, most of them drunk, dancing, delighted, and not in the least concerned about Suez or Hungary. This was their holiday. They did not have to work tomorrow, and the band played catchy tunes from an open bandstand opposite the Kremlin…. Many extra platoons of militia patrolled the streets. They were very severe with the drunkards, and there were many of them.”

Quite often on Sunday mornings I did a little extracurricular work for Dan Schorr and Irv Levine, the CBS and NBC correspondents in Moscow, translating articles from the Soviet press for them. Monday through Saturday they employed official translators, Russians who knew both English and Russian, either because they were superb linguists, which many were, or because they were born and raised in Britain or the United States and had been brought to Moscow by communist parents who wanted to live in the land of Lenin. They brought their fluency in English with them, too. For my Sunday immersion in Pravda and Izvestia and a few of the other Soviet dailies, I was paid $25 by each of the correspondents. Not bad, I thought.

It was the kind of work I did routinely on weekdays for JPRS. But even if there had been no financial reward I would have helped them on Sunday mornings anyway. They were my friends. We were in Moscow, and everyone seemed to be like family. In those years of the Cold War, we thought of ourselves as a band of brothers and sisters sharing a very special experience in communist Russia—one that we hoped we would be able to tell our children and grandchildren about someday. Every day had its own mysteries. Every day held us in awe of what we might behold tomorrow.

I felt closer to Schorr than I did to Levine, possibly because I was a CBS News radio listener. Schorr’s was a more familiar voice. In my memory bank were other CBS voices, none more prominent than Edward R. Murrow’s, although I could easily have recognized Eric Severeid’s or Howard K. Smith’s or David Schoenbrun’s. While still in college I had started dreaming that one day I would be a network correspondent specializing in Soviet affairs, meaning that I would become what was then called a Soviet expert or a Kremlinologist. Such people knew the language, history, and culture of the one country in the world that potentially could inflict mortal damage on the United States. That was why I intensively studied Russian history in my senior year in college, why I had set sail for a doctorate in Russian history at Harvard as a graduate student at the Russian Research Center, and why I had happily accepted the job in Moscow as an interpreter-translator.

As I considered my next career step, I had a feeling that I was not wasting my time. Such a background could well open a door in journalism, in diplomacy, or in the academy. Every now and then, during a trip or a meal, I would share my thinking with Schorr, Levine, and even Anna Holdcroft, who always regarded diplomacy as my natural home. Schorr, especially, had other plans for me. Journalism, he advised, was my natural home, specifically a job as a Moscow correspondent for CBS News.

One Sunday in November 1956, when we were asking and answering the question of the day, “Whither Russia?”—a game all Muscovites played with increasing frequency as Russia bounced uncertainly from de-Stalinization to the invasion of Hungary—Schorr surprised me by raising a related and very personal question. Usually I sat in a chair next to his desk, he in front of his desk and typewriter: I would translate what I considered an interesting article or editorial in Pravda , and he would type the phrase or sentence that filled his journalistic needs, and then use it in one or more of his broadcasts.

“I’ve been thinking,” Schorr said, with a smile forming around his lips.

“What about?”

“Well”—his smile widened—“what about you joining the bureau here, becoming effectively my number two?”

“Your number two?” I asked incredulously. “Come on. Be serious. What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you becoming effectively my number two,” he repeated, the smile no longer on his face. “You’d run the bureau, do some translating, and of course reporting. I mean, if we had two stories one day, you’d do one and I’d do the other. If I was going out of the country, you’d be here representing CBS. With you here, I would be able to do more traveling inside the Soviet Union. You’d be what you have always wanted to be—a Moscow correspondent.”

I wanted to respond, but I was momentarily at a loss for words. I looked down at the worn-out carpet on the office floor for a moment and then back up into Schorr’s eyes. “Are you serious? Are you really offering me a job? As a Moscow correspondent? For CBS?”

Schorr nodded. “Yes, the job you said you always wanted. You’d be here helping to cover the Soviet Union.”

I sat as silent as a Buddha for what must have seemed an eternity. Then I burst out laughing. “Let’s go back to translating.” That was safer, less challenging.

“No.” Schorr was persistent. “What do you think?” I could hear his large office clock ticking. “What do you think?” he repeated softly, looking for my eyes, which were fastened on my shoe tops. “I checked with New York. Of course, they’d like to see you and talk to you, and all that. But I think the job is there, and it’s yours, if you want it. And, by the way, I checked with the Russians, too, and they raised no real objection, but you can’t tell and in any case that’s for later.”