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

Later that afternoon the librarian was back. “Marvin,” she said, this time with added resolve, “the same man is calling. You ought to talk to him.” I still did not think it was Murrow, but… he might have read a few of my articles about the Soviet Union. Several had appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature , one in the New York Times Magazine . He certainly knew my brother, Bernard Kalb, a New York Times correspondent in Southeast Asia. They had both covered Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s recent visit to Burma, as it was then called. It was not a totally nutty idea that Murrow might be the one on the phone. “Okay,” I said, yielding to my curiosity. “Is it the phone in your office?” She nodded.

The moment I heard his voice, I realized I had made a huge mistake. “This is Ed Murrow,” he said. I had been listening to his voice for years. “I hope I am not interrupting”—an oblique reference to his earlier call.

“No, no, no,” I stumbled, apologetically, “not at all. I’m so happy to talk to you, sir.”

Murrow quickly got to the point of his call. “I read your piece on Soviet youth, and I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I’d be honored, delighted. Uh, when?”

“How about tomorrow morning at nine?” he said. “Here in my office. In New York.”

“Yes, sir!” I all but shouted.

I could not believe what had just happened. Murrow had called me. Unbelievable! He had just invited me to his office to talk about Soviet youth. Unbelievable! I had been listening to Murrow since World War II. “This… is London,” the signature opening of his inspiring broadcasts from the British capital during the Nazi blitz. I admired him enormously. More than any other broadcaster, he had set a standard for broadcast news unparalleled in the history of the industry. And he had just called me. Unbelievable! Only in America!

I took a late-night train to New York and, with a fresh shirt and tie, arrived at 485 Madison Avenue, then headquarters of CBS News, a few minutes before nine. Kay Campbell, Murrow’s secretary since his days reporting from London, greeted me with a smile. “No more than thirty minutes,” she said. “He’s got an exceptionally busy schedule today.”

“Yes, absolutely,” I replied. “I understand.”

At exactly 9:00 a.m., Murrow opened his office door and, cigarette in hand, welcomed me. “Come in, Professor.”

Murrow’s office was tastefully furnished: a sofa and a few chairs on one side, his large, dark- brown desk on the other, and on the empty wall behind his desk a plaque that read, “If I had more time, I would write you a shorter letter.” It was signed “Cicero.”

“Coffee? Tea?” he asked, as he sat down behind his desk.

“No, thank you.”

“Good,” he said, “then let’s get to it.” We discussed Soviet youth. Murrow asked the questions; I tried to answer them. He wanted to know what young people thought about Khrushchev, their rambunctious leader; about his famous speech the year before denouncing Stalin; about communism as a governing ideology. He also wanted to know whether many truly believed in communism, or merely mouthed an allegiance to communism as a gateway to a secure job. He also wanted to know what they felt about family, marriage, religion.

We were well beyond the thirty minutes Kay Campbell had allotted for our meeting. Murrow seemed indifferent to the deadline. He was clearly enjoying the conversation, and I was thrilled to be part of it. Throughout he called me Professor, and I called him Sir, setting a pattern that was to last for years.

Murrow was especially interested in Khrushchev. “What sort of person is he? Does he have a sense of humor?” he asked. I decided to tell him the Peter the Great story. Murrow burst into laughter. “Did he really call you Peter the Great?” Apparently, he loved the story as much as I loved telling it. Then, rather abruptly, Murrow turned from Khrushchev to CBS News. “Ever think about working for CBS?” he asked, lighting another cigarette. I was flabbergasted. It had been one of my not-so-secret dreams for years, discussed with my brother and close friends. Maybe, with hard work and lots of luck, I could become the CBS equivalent of Harry Schwartz, the Times ’s expert on Soviet affairs, or even the CBS correspondent in Moscow. I remembered Dan Schorr’s offer months before. Had Schorr spoken to Murrow about my rejection?

“Yes, yes of course,” I said, uncertain about what I should say or how I should say it. “It would be an honor, truly an honor.”

“Delighted,” Murrow smiled. He reached down to open a large drawer on the right side of his desk. Casually, he pulled out two large glasses and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label scotch. As he started to pour, I glanced at a wall clock, which noted unmistakably that it was only a few minutes after ten. My face must have reflected both surprise and shock.

“Oh, dear,” Murrow made a face. “You don’t drink.”

“No,” I replied. “Does that mean there’s no job?”

“No, no, no,” he answered with a wave of his hand. “But it does make things that much more difficult.”

Murrow finished his drink and we quickly returned to the safer terrain of Russian history. Murrow was especially interested in the tumultuous eighteenth-century reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, which absorbed us for much of the next two hours. At noon, Campbell knocked at the door, opened it, and in a loud whisper reminded her boss that he had a lunch date. She shot me a look of distinct disapproval, as though I had violated a treaty we had both secretly negotiated. For an instant Murrow paused, as if he might cancel his lunch date, but then he quickly straightened his tie and put on his jacket. “Come with me,” he said.

Outside the office he introduced me to Jesse Zousmer and Johnny Aaron, two of his producers. “This is Marvin Kalb. He’s Bernie’s brother. Knows a lot about Russia. Call Sig or John. Let’s see what we can do about setting him up for a job here.” Sig Mickelson was president of CBS News, and John F. Day was his vice president. I met both the following day. Upshot: I was offered, and accepted, a job at CBS, starting as a writer on the overnight shift for the local WCBS radio station. Pay was $137 per week. I was ecstatic.

By accepting Murrow’s offer, I knew I would probably not be finishing my Uvarov dissertation and certainly I would be disappointing my mother. But it was an offer I felt I could not refuse. Seven months earlier I had turned down a similar offer from Dan Schorr. But in the interim, especially during my trip to Southeast Asia, where the guerrilla war in Vietnam was spreading, I found that my passion for daily journalism had deepened. Moreover, this offer had come from Murrow, who was my idol. How could I say no to Murrow? As I was soon to learn, his offer opened the door to a dream job. A world of opportunity beckoned.

In less than three months, I went from writing hourly newscasts for WCBS to writing commentaries on global communism for Murrow’s nightly news program; working on a TV documentary, The Red Sell , with Walter Cronkite, who was then the rising star at CBS; soon thereafter promoting my first book about Russia, called Eastern Exposure ; and appearing on a CBS television special on the Russian writer Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize. I then applied for, and got, a CBS Foundation Fellowship, which I used to travel around the world and write a book at Columbia University about the splintering Sino-Soviet alliance. It was called Dragon in the Kremlin . In the spring of 1960 I was appointed CBS’s Moscow bureau chief and correspondent. Larry LeSueur, a Murrow colleague from World War II, had been slated for the assignment, but for some reason the Russians refused to give him a visa.