Everywhere, as it happened, except in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, Stalin’s birthplace. We were hearing from different sources in the diplomatic community that there, pro-Stalin demonstrations erupted throughout the country when word of Khrushchev’s speech reached Tbilisi. Not only were photos and paintings of Stalin not being removed; new ones were being plastered on trolleys and buses or hung in museums. As many as 60,000 Georgians carried flowers to the Stalin monument in Tbilisi. They shouted “Down with Khrushchev” and “Glory to the Great Stalin.” When they marched on government buildings, tanks and troops interceded. Clashes followed. More than twenty demonstrators were killed, sixty wounded, and many others arrested and imprisoned. I noted in my diary, “The Georgians are not interested in seeing Stalin, one of theirs, blasphemed, perhaps because in his downfall they see a new attack upon Georgians in general.”
I stopped one afternoon at the impressive Tretyakov Gallery, where a famous painting of Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov standing together on the Lenin Hills overlooking Moscow had been hanging for many years. Now it was gone. Muscovites ambled past the empty wall space as if the painting had never been there.
Snow was falling and the traffic was heavy, but I rushed over to the nearby Lenin Museum to check on whether paintings of Stalin were still hanging there. Until recently this architectural monstrosity had featured paintings of the young Stalin being tutored by an older, wiser Lenin—the ardent and ambitious revolutionary joined at the hip to the brilliant, visionary, inspiring leader of global communism. Many of the paintings were still there but the talkative docent, while discussing the paintings, never mentioned Stalin’s name, not once. It was as if you were still able to look at Stalin and yet not see him. I assumed that the paintings showing Stalin would soon be replaced by less offensive paintings showing only Lenin. As I started to leave the Lenin Museum I happened to pass a sign that read “Zal 21,” “Room 21,” hanging at an odd angle on the door. Just at that moment a heavyset man carrying a tool kit opened the door. I glanced in and saw two huge paintings of Stalin being removed from a wall. “Black magic, Soviet style,” I thought—Khrushchev’s way of rewriting Soviet history.
For the next few wintry months, a time in Moscow of short days and long nights, snow and ice, and only occasionally a teasing flash of sunlight, I met many young Russians who were feeling the first flush of freedom caused by the thaw. They were experimenting with a new notion of free speech, sort of—what to say, how much to say, and when to say it. At the same time I was also fighting a nonstop war with the stuffy bureaucrats guarding access to Uvarov’s papers at libraries and archives. On reflection, I think I had better luck with the young Russians than I had with the library bureaucrats.
Early one evening I met Volodya, a twenty-nine-year-old graduate student at the History Institute. He was tall, bespectacled, sleight of build, and he spoke excellent English. After only a few minutes it was obvious that Volodya was probably a member of the Communist Party. Using the stilted language generally found in Pravda, he defended the Soviet position on every issue. He debunked the United Nations and expressed deep reservations about NATO and American policy in Europe. Over dinner at the Grand Hotel we discussed our dueling definitions of history.
“How would you define history?” I asked.
“History is the examination of the objective facts of a given period,” he replied, as if by rote, “in order to understand the vast forces at play.”
I raised a hypothetical question: let’s suppose, I said, a Russian student wanted to do an “objective” study of the 1905 revolution. He would have to have access to all relevant documents. “Could he do such a study?” I asked. “With all relevant documents?”
“Of course,” Volodya answered.
“You know,” I went on, “Trotsky was a very important figure in the Petersburg Soviet. In fact, for a while, he was chairman of the Soviet. Could this student read Trotsky’s speeches?”
Volodya took a long time searching for an answer. The band was playing a Russian version of “Love and Marriage,” a very popular American song. “Volodya,” I said, breaking into his reverie, “could an average student study Trotsky’s influence on the revolution, and, if not, can you still claim that Soviet scholarship is ‘objective scholarship’?”
When Volodya looked at me, he seemed not just troubled but trapped. His eyes, usually dark and piercing, looked vacant, searching for comfort suddenly by examining his shoes. “You hit the nail on the head,” he said, exhaling, lowering his voice to a whisper. “It’s that kind of question my friends and I have also begun to ask of late.” I chose not to press the issue. Probably for the first time in their lives, graduate students like Volodya felt they could discuss the role of Trotsky, an ideological enemy at the top of Stalin’s hit list, even with foreigners. One totally unintended consequence of the secret speech was that even the evil Trotsky was being liberated from Stalin’s hell.
A JPRS colleague and I went to dinner one evening at an Uzbek restaurant. We met a young Russian who told us he was, by the weird standards of Soviet education, a “master of basketball.” He was very tall, accessible, stylishly attired, and he loved his vodka. After only a few minutes of conversation he offered his unorthodox definition of communism. He spoke in a loud voice and seemed totally oblivious to the fact that he was sounding off in a crowded, popular restaurant in downtown Moscow.
“A communist,” he pronounced, “is a person who has a car, a family, a dacha, and earns lots of money every month.”
“That’s all?” I said. “What about communism as an ideology, as a revolutionary doctrine, as a way of changing society?”
“No,” he replied, with a mischievous grin. “A great communist has a car, maybe two, a dacha, maybe two, and a lot of money.”
“Who are the greatest living communists?” I asked, enjoying the exchange.
“Khrushchev and Bulganin,” he replied, “because they have cars, families, dachas, and lots of money.” He equated communism only with material benefits. There was no idealism in his definition, and there was no fear in his manner.
By the time we got to dessert, he had already had a few more vodkas. “War is inevitable,” he announced, echoing Stalin’s now discarded dogma. “Two years,” he said with absolute certainty. “It will come in two years.” I challenged him, arguing that Khrushchev had replaced the doctrine of “inevitable war” with one of “peaceful coexistence.” Besides, I insisted, there was no need for war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It made no strategic sense. But our Russian friend stuck to his gloomy timetable.
“No,” he insisted, “two years.”
But why? I wanted to know.
“Because the capitalists want to come here and dominate us. The Russian Ivan may not like the Khrushchev communists, but he loves Mother Russia, and he will crush the invader, as he has done many times before in her name.” Though I met many young Russians who, like our “master of basketball,” were skeptical about communism, some even sharply critical of communism, there were others who felt, as one told me, that “the communists have brought incalculable advantages to our country. They industrialized the country. They made peasants literate. For this,” he concluded with pride, “we Russians have Stalin and the party to credit. Now you in the West must look up to us. We, too, are a great power.”
On any given day I would ask myself what was more exciting: talking with Russians or hunting for Uvarov? And then I would answer myself: I can do both, or at least try. My only problem during the thaw was that the day had only twenty-four hours.