I realized quickly that I was observing a memorable moment in Russia’s thaw. Students seemed to be in rebellion. They were no longer listening; now they were in rhetorical revolt, many of them shouting epithets against the government and communism. I was an outsider listening in on a national upheaval. I tried my best to look innocuous. Occasionally I would raise my head, but only briefly, lest I attract attention. I just kept taking notes, describing the scene, listening carefully to the outbursts.
“How did Stalin develop a ‘personality cult’?” one student shouted.
“Why didn’t they stop him?” another asked.
I heard someone yell from a corner of the reading room, “Khrushchev is developing his own ‘personality cult,’” and many others muttered, “Yes, yes” under their breaths.
“Down with communism!” “Down with Stalin!” “Down with Khrushchev!”—fearlessly students demanded dramatic change.
“Will there be a war?” I heard a student ask.
“No, no war,” many shouted. A widespread hum developed, first in a low tone, then louder and louder, “No war, no war, no war.”
So far as I could tell, there was no violence. For a long time, or so it seemed, this explosion of student unhappiness continued, and then slowly subsided. Students began to pack up their books and papers and leave. I stayed for a little while longer. I thought the students would continue their anti-government and anti-communist tirade outside the library, but I was wrong. The street was empty except for a straggler or two.
I had no intention of returning to American House. I felt I had to report this episode to someone, and who better than the American ambassador? I went directly to Spasso House, where the ambassador lived. Normally no one would disturb him, certainly not in his home after 10:00 p.m. If I were a professional diplomat, a true Foreign Service officer, I would never have bothered the ambassador unless there was a genuine catastrophe. But I was a translator for the JPRS. I had just seen and heard something of importance, and I wanted to share it with him.
Russian police guarded the old mansion. As I approached, I flashed my diplomatic ID card, which they examined and returned; then they stood back. I could proceed to the main door. I rang the bell and a U.S. Marine sergeant opened the door. He recognized me. We both lived at American House. I gave him a thumbnail sketch of my reason for wanting to talk to the ambassador. His eyes widened. “Wow!” was all he said. He escorted me to the waiting room.
Ambassador Bohlen, when he appeared a few minutes later, was, as always, gracious. He immediately eased my anxiety about whether I was “bothering” him, as I put it. “Just tell me what happened,” he said. I described the scene at the Lenin Library. I read from my notes. The ambassador listened carefully, asked a few questions, and then called the sergeant and told him to get a car. We were going to the embassy, where Bohlen drafted an urgent cable to the State Department. “Thanks, Marvin. Good job,” Bohlen said. “Can I give you a lift to American House?” He was not only a superb diplomat; he was also a gentleman. We were to go through this routine one more time during my tour in Moscow. A week or two later, I happened to be at the Historical Library when students there exploded in similar fashion.
At the time I was the embassy’s only source for tracking student discontent with the communist status quo. The story was to appear for the first time in the Western press in early June, after the CIA leaked a copy of the Khrushchev speech to the New York Times. I was thrilled. Every time I read a story about the students, I remembered how I “bothered” the ambassador and earned a pat on the back for doing so.
The Khrushchev revelations about Stalin’s crimes affected everyone in Russia, but especially two groups. One was the senior leadership of the military; the other was the chief ideologues of the party. Both groups had suffered grievously under Stalin’s fanatical rule.
Ever since the late 1930s, when Stalin eliminated the top generals and marshals of the Soviet military, dramatically weakening its strength on the eve of the Nazi invasion, the Red Army had been sensitive to any party encroachment on its military responsibilities. The post–World War II leaders, such as Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the new minister of defense, wanted to build a big, thick wall between themselves and the party—but they failed in this effort. The party almost always prevailed. Until the Khrushchev speech! The military wasted no time, quickly seizing upon it as proof that the fault for Russia’s lack of preparedness lay entirely with Stalin, not with them. One day at the JPRS I spotted a small article in the influential journal Military Messenger charging that Stalin, not Hitler, had been the greatest threat to state security in 1941. Military intelligence knew about Nazi plans to attack. Stalin was informed—but Stalin did nothing to repel the Germans. He was at fault for the early setbacks and heavy casualties, and the military demanded that its good name be restored.
The party ideologues had their own problems with Stalin, but until the Khrushchev speech they, too, kept these problems to themselves. Fear ruled the day. Among the ideologues, though, nothing upset them more than Stalin’s suppression of the so-called Lenin Testament. Written by Lenin in late 1922, finished in early 1923—a few months after he suffered the first of a series of strokes that made it impossible for him to manage the fledgling Communist Party of Russia—it outlined his considered judgment (in effect, his last will and testament) about the party’s internal struggles, then threatening to tear it apart. At the time, while Lenin lay dying, Stalin and Trotsky were in mortal combat about who would ultimately emerge as the party’s leader. Lenin had surprisingly positive things to say about Trotsky and decidedly negative things to say about Stalin, describing him, among other things, as “coarse,” “unfit,” and “intolerable” for party leadership. Lenin then went one critical step further, recommending for these reasons that Stalin be removed from his current position as general secretary of the party’s Central Committee.
Every single leader of the party knew about the Lenin Testament. It was political dynamite. How would Stalin handle this crisis? Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who had reportedly been bullied by Stalin, had demanded that the party not only discuss her husband’s testament but act on it—Stalin was to be dismissed. But at meeting after meeting, Stalin managed to manipulate the levers of power and retain his job until, finally, during the 1930s, he eliminated his party rivals and became the ultimate czar of the Soviet state. As a result, the Lenin Testament was never discussed or published in Russia until the 20th Party Congress in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death.
On June 30, 1956, the highly influential party journal Communist, on Khrushchev’s direct order, published the full text of the Lenin Testament. It became topic number one at party meetings, dinner tables, and university seminars.
In the meantime, while communist officials pondered the underlying significance of the Lenin Testament, diplomats yearned for a break from the daily demands of Kremlinology, and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain provided it.