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

“Sasha, it’s true that we have written about a reign of terror, about fear, misery, and many other things. Some of these reports have been exaggerated, but basically they are true. Are they not?”

“No, they are false. They are all false.” His voice reached a falsetto pitch.

“Sasha,” I said in a whisper, “come back to the hotel with me.”

My question seemed to stun him. “What did you say?”

“I asked you to come back to the hotel with me for a drink. Will you?”

Sasha grew defensive. “No, I don’t think I shall.”

“But why? Why, Sasha? In America, this would be the normal thing.”

“Someone might misinterpret my visit.”

“But who, why?”

“Oh, someone might. Someone might.” His voice trailed off, his shoulders slumped, and his face looked twenty years older. He looked up at me after a while. I saw tears in his eyes. His hands, trembling, reached out toward mine. “Oh, my friend, my dear friend,” he said. “It is not easy. It is not so easy. Life is hard, very hard,” and he held both of my hands in his for a long time before we both decided we needed a breath of fresh air.

Outside we were greeted with a burst of frigid air. It felt like a reprieve from political exile. We walked quickly through dark streets, past a large cathedral, past the spot where Alexander II was assassinated, heading back toward the Nevsky. “Sasha, have you ever seen the Russian moderns?” I asked, wanting to change the subject and lighten the mood. I had heard these priceless wonders were stored on the third floor of the Russian Museum, not open for public exhibition. “No, I have not, but would you like to see them?” Sasha had a friend, he said, who might be able to get me in. At the hotel, he said he would call me in the morning if he succeeded.

Sasha did call the following morning. He spoke in a quiet voice. “I saw my friend this morning,” he said, “but I did not ask her for permission. And I did not ask her for permission for the same reason I did not come to your hotel for a drink last night.” His voice started to crack. I assured him I would find a way to see the Russian moderns on my own, some other time perhaps, and I urged him not to be upset. “But I would have liked to help you, my friend, but I can’t.” He seemed to be taking a deep breath. “You’re right, and I’m wrong, but what can I do?” Sasha then started to cry. He cried for a few second, and then I heard a click on the phone. He had hung up.

What more was there for me to do? I returned to the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, where I found the uchenyi sekretar to be friendly and cooperative.

“You’re early,” he remarked.

“I was in the neighborhood,” I fibbed, “and wondered if the microfilm was ready.”

“No,” he replied, “but I am expecting it back very soon.” He confessed that he had sent the Uvarov file to a colleague at another library, where the microfilm machine was functioning, and he expected it to be returned by 5:00 p.m., the agreed-upon time for pickup. I said I’d be back, and then spent the next few hours walking through the city, soaking up last-minute impressions of Peter’s “window on the West” and wondering, once again, whether Western values such as freedom and democracy would ever be enjoyed by Russians.

At 5:00 p.m. I walked back to the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, hoping that the Uvarov file had indeed been microfilmed. The smile on the uchenyi sekretar ’s face screamed out yes . I signed some papers, paid a very modest fee, and, microfilm in my coat pocket, walked back to the Astoria, had dinner by myself, and left for Moscow the following morning.

On the long but pleasant train ride from Leningrad to Moscow, I put pen to paper in an effort to summarize my thinking about Russia before packing my toothbrush and heading back to Cambridge. I had arrived in late January 1956 and planned to leave in late January 1957, a span of time the Russians described as “the year of the thaw.” What happened to Russia and the Russians during this time? What had I seen? What had I learned?

If the “thaw” could be imagined as a work of art, it would look like a brightly colored arc splashed across the backdrop of a decaying dictatorship. It started its upward trajectory with Khrushchev’s stunning denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956 and then, in early November, plunged downward with the Russian suppression of the Hungarian Revolution.

The Soviet Union was changing, no doubt about it. Along the way there were fits and starts, changes in leadership, and shifts in direction. But the change was continuing, driven by a mystical belief, held by many intellectuals, that one day their country would evolve into a kind of democracy drawn to the West but anchored in the political and cultural traditions of a Eurasian land mass stretching from Poland to the Pacific.

Stalin, the “great genius,” as he was known for decades, was suddenly being portrayed as a brutal dictator who grossly distorted communist ideology. Throughout “the year of the thaw,” the effect of this change was visible at every level of Soviet society. Senior officials fled from any association with Stalin, wrapping themselves whenever possible in the safer garb of Leninism. The Russian people were not officially informed of the Khrushchev speech until decades later, but thanks to their incredibly efficient grapevine they learned of its core message at roughly the same time as they began to experience an easing of the Communist Party’s tight control over their lives.

It was as if a huge burden was being lifted from their shoulders. Intellectuals began to think more freely, discarding their ideological straitjackets. Teachers planned trips abroad. Foreign artists were invited to perform in Moscow. Students rebelled against dusty Marxist texts. Workers demanded better housing, clothing, and food. Some even dared to go on strike. Political dissidents, after spending years in Siberian camps, were released and allowed to return to Moscow and Leningrad. Unlike Stalin, Khrushchev showed up at foreign national day receptions, where he joshed with reporters and exchanged stories with diplomats. It seemed like the dawn of a new day.

By summertime the thaw was at its peak. Stalin’s icy dictatorship was melting, and Russians and Eastern Europeans were beginning to assume that things would naturally continue to get better at home and abroad. The evidence was everywhere, they felt, even in the rigid ideology that still undergirded the system.

For example, Stalin had painted a gloomy picture of dangerous conflict with the capitalist world. War, even nuclear war, was not only possible but inevitable, he had proclaimed in speeches and pamphlets. Khrushchev, though, turned Stalin’s bleak prognosis on its head, promoting a dramatically new vision of “peaceful coexistence” among nations with different economic and political systems. War, according to Khrushchev’s rewrite of Stalin’s orthodoxy, was no longer inevitable. For Khrushchev, coexistence replaced conflict.

But theory was one thing, practice another. Even though the theory of peaceful coexistence was appealing to many Russians, and also to many in Eastern Europe, its application, its conversion from theory into practice, ran into different interpretations. The obstreperous Poles could translate the theory in one way, the Kremlin in another, and the two could quickly find themselves on a collision course. By the time summer edged into fall, almost all of Eastern Europe was in some form of revolt against the Kremlin, the Russian thaw being the underlying reason for the unfolding upheaval. If Khrushchev could denounce Stalin, it was reasoned, then a Czech or a Bulgarian communist could likewise denounce the ultimate leader in his own country, and his policies as well.