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

“One writer of note,” he went on, “is Vladimir Dudintsev, who wrote the book which has raised so much clamor and fuss and hullabaloo. Not by Bread Alone, published in Novy Mir , must be discussed seriously.” Many in the audience nodded. “It is a fine piece of writing,” Brovman continued, “and it has a provocative theme. Dudintsev is a writer of very considerable talent.” The audience moved to the edge of their seats. It looked as though they were hoping that Brovman would change the party’s critique of Dudintsev—indeed, perhaps praise him, which Brovman in fact proceeded to do. “Dudintsev is a very exceptional writer. His characters are varied and brilliantly portrayed. He paints a very good picture of Drozdov, the bureaucrat, as well as Lopatkin, the inventor. Some of his chapters are absolutely wonderful and rank with the finest in Russian literature.”

Brovman was indeed complimentary of Dudintsev, and yet I feared there was going to be a “but” in his praise, even though he continued to sound positive. “Anyone who seeks to find a simple and clear solution to questions raised in this book will be disappointed,” he said. No one could argue with that proposition. “There are no simple solutions in life,” he continued, “and there are no simple solutions in this book. People simply are not that simple.” The audience burst into applause, grateful for Brovman’s positive tone and approach, and they did not let up for five minutes or so.

Summoning in his concluding comments the full majesty of the moment and the proper dignity accorded to his title and position, Brovman then dropped his “but” bombshell: “One thing, however, is clear, and in this respect we must all be keenly objective. The book has a major shortcoming of considerable importance. It is the fact that over the span of eight years Lopatkin did not once turn to the collective. We know that as a fighter Lopatkin can at times struggle alone, and this is satisfactory. But over eight years, certainly once, twice, he should have turned to the collective.” Like a tire suddenly deflated, the audience seemed all at once to lose air, their sense of joy and hope gone, leaving them feeling once again that change, real change in the system, might in fact be impossible.

Brovman continued as though he had said nothing of special note. “Surely, comrades, in Lopatkin’s place, would you not have turned to the collective at least once in eight years? Yes, of course, but Lopatkin does not, and this is a very bad feature of this book. One must in this country turn to the decisive truth of life, the party, once in eight years. It is only normal. By not having the character to do this, Dudintsev created a non-Soviet type, an egoist, an individualist of major proportion.” Brovman understood that although he could not persuade the audience of the rightness of his argument, still, in his view, they had to realize that Dudintsev, as a writer and novelist, had to be approached in an “objective” manner. “Whether we say that Not by Bread Alone is written in the style of socialist realism, or not, is not very important. Large-scale discussions of whether a volume is socialist realism or not is child’s play, for which we do not have the time.”

Brovman seemed to be a very practical critic. What he implied was that he admired Dudintsev, but the writer could have bowed ever so slightly to the rules of socialist realism without sacrificing his principles, in this way avoiding the avalanche of official criticism. Lopatkin could still have been portrayed as an individualist while he was inventing his centrifugal gadget, but once or twice over an eight-year period he could have checked in with the collective, the party, and then in effect done what he wanted. In such circumstance the party would have been stripped of grounds for criticizing Dudintsev. “Play the game,” Brovman seemed to be urging.

I always felt that though Khrushchev denounced Not by Bread Alone , he could have lived with it as a published best seller. Khrushchev, like Brovman, was not a stickler for form. He didn’t care whether the book was written in the style of socialist realism or not. He was not much of a reader. For him as a communist leader, books such as Not by Bread Alone could be published as long as they did not jeopardize the communist system he ruled—a pragmatic, if short-term, vision. Apparently he did not really understand, nor did he want to understand, that over the long term books such as Dudintsev’s did in fact jeopardize the communist system. When writers could write what they wanted, when books could be published on merit alone, when freedom could prevail in an open marketplace, then communism as practiced in the Soviet Union would not, indeed could not, exist. But such a scenario was for another day.

In January 1957, before leaving my assignment at JPRS, I spent two weeks in Leningrad The city, often called the cultural capital of Russia, was founded in 1703. It was christened St. Petersburg in honor of Czar Peter the Great, the name it retained until 1914, the start of World War I. Then it was renamed Petrograd to endow the Russian war effort with a special patriotic glow. In 1924, when Vladimir Lenin, the head of the Bolshevik Revolution, died, St. Petersburg became Leningrad, the name it was to hold until 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated. New postcommunist leaders arose, and they decided that the city ought once again to be known by its original name of St. Petersburg. So it was renamed, and so it has been ever since.

It was Peter the Great’s favorite city, built in the early eighteenth century in the swamplands of northwestern Russia, where the winding Neva River flows into the Bay of Finland. St. Petersburg was Peter’s “window on the West,” as it was often called. Like no other city in Russia, it looked and felt Western. Its narrow alleys and broad boulevards could have been transplanted to any Western European capital, and you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Inspired by Italian architects, many of the buildings, yellow and light green in color, decorated with tall classical columns, reflected the emerging imperial power of Peter’s Russia and Catherine’s later in the century. During my winter stay in Leningrad—just 450 miles from the Arctic Circle—the sky was often pitch black, except during the high noon hours, when the sun would occasionally peak through the charcoal-gray clouds. Ne sluchayno , as the Russians would say—“It is not an accident”—that many Russians were known to commit suicide during the winter months, so unremittingly bleak were the short days and long nights.

Despite the winter dark and cold, Leningrad had its magic. No matter the weather, the St. Nicholas Cathedral, with its aqua-colored walls and golden domes, inspired the people with song and prayer. On the first floor, small groups gathered around special candlelit icons; on the second, crowds of the young and old, huddled in heavy overcoats, listened to the melodious choir and the deep bass voice of the elderly priest. Together they composed a scene reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s novels or Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov . Now many were deeply enveloped in prayer, but during World War II the people of this city were trapped in a merciless Nazi siege lasting 999 days. Many died, victims more of the bitter cold and hunger than of tanks and rockets, leaving deep memories.

Nevsky Prospekt, the Fifth Avenue of Leningrad, glistened with a sort of subdued excitement—for those with rubles to spend. The shops were open. Trading seemed vigorous. I enjoyed visiting the old Duma, the czarist parliament, and the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library (where Uvarov was once an assistant librarian), and I was amazed by the Russian crowds—how they maneuvered around the city’s icy snow drifts in aimless panic, rushing somewhere or perhaps nowhere. The eye-catching statue of Peter the Great, brave and brazen on horseback, located in a vast park in downtown Leningrad, remained a magnificent magnet not just for the occasional winter tourist but for Russians as well, those who lived there and those who visited.