Sit on a bus or a train, walk through Red Square on a sunny Sunday, watch passengers boarding a plane, mingle with young people in Gorky Park, check out their parents at the Bolshoi Theater—and you would again be reminded that the Soviet Union was a mix of many nationalities, as many as 179. The Russians, Orthodox Christian by faith, dominated this polyglot mix: their language was the official language of the state, and their faces—oval, with high cheekbones, a stubby nose, and dark eyes—reflected the map of this vast country. I made it a practice wherever I was to look at the passing parade of faces. It made me appreciate one central fact: although the Russians ran the show, they had to manage people of many different backgrounds, religions, and customs—and they did so with characteristic insensitivity, which made smooth governance impossible. This was true under the czars, also true under the commissars, and now true under Khrushchev.
I wanted to see as much of this fascinating country as I could squeeze into my year-long assignment at JPRS. But the rules governing the Cold War made travel an uncertain endeavor, mostly because of the deep distrust each superpower felt for the other. Soon after the outbreak of the Cold War, the Russians decided, as a matter of both protocol and security, to limit a foreign diplomat’s travel to an area within a twenty-five-mile radius around Moscow. This meant we could travel to Zagorsk, site of the treasured Troitsky Monastery about twenty-five miles from Moscow, by simply informing the Foreign Ministry. But if we wanted to travel beyond the twenty-five-mile limit—to Leningrad, or Kiev, or Tashkent—we had to both inform the ministry and get its permission. We would send a letter detailing when we wished to leave and when we planned to return. Of course, since the Russians controlled the airlines, hotels, limos, translators—everything involved with domestic travel—they knew where we would be anyway. But we both played the game. In the United States we imposed the same restrictions on Russian diplomats based in Washington and at their UN mission in New York.
Here is an example of the official notification that the U.S. embassy would write to the Foreign Ministry:
EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Moscow
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
July 25, 1956
The Embassy of the United States of America presents its compliments to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and has the honor to inform the Ministry that Marvin L. Kalb, Attaché of Embassy, plans to travel to Kiev on Friday, July 27, returning to Moscow on Sunday, July 29. The trip will be made by Aeroflot.
I made many short trips, several requiring this sort of official notification, in my first six months in the Soviet Union.
On February 19, an unusually bright Sunday, I joined a small group of diplomats and journalists for a forty-five-minute ride to the official American rest house, or dacha, in the Moscow suburbs. “Once you leave the immediate heart of the city, you enter Russia,” I wrote in my diary. “For the heart of Moscow, big and blaring, is not Russia. Russia, it seems, is the small wooden cottages, or huts, which sit at different points of a wide expanse of white, snow-covered plains.”
The Soviet Union was a superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons, but it was also a third world country. Hard to imagine, but true. Away from the glitz of the capital and a few of the other large cities, such as Leningrad and Odessa, Russians continued to live in Slavic squalor. Small towns in 1956 resembled small towns a hundred or so years before.
On April 2, I took a train on a 100-mile journey northeast of Moscow to a troika of towns that centuries earlier symbolized czarist power: Vladimir, Suzdal, and Bogolyubovo.
The town of Vladimir dates back to the early twelfth century, when it became the unofficial capital of Russia. A kremlin, or fortress, was built on a summit overlooking the town. From there, the Russians fought the invading Mongols in 1238. Now this kremlin served as headquarters for the local branch of the Ministry of State Security (MGB). The doors were shut—no one allowed in, a guard informed us. Not discouraged, we walked quickly to the astonishingly beautiful Dmitriyevsky Sobor, translated roughly as “monastery,” built in 1194, where we marveled at the old frescoes painted by Andrei Rublev, one of Russia’s greatest painters. Vladimir, though endowed with an impressive history, looked tired.
Then, instead of eating lunch in Vladimir, we rented a car and drove twenty-five miles to Bogolyubovo, once a center of religious learning, now a tiny, unwashed town known for the small, white square church with the single cupola sitting on a lonely hilltop in the near distance. Regarded justifiably as an architectural masterpiece, this magnificent church, now empty, called Pokrov Na Nerli, looks down on miles of snowy countryside, a reminder for me of the historian Sir Bernard Pares’s observation that in Russia sky and earth seemed to meet and become one, giving rise to a mystical belief in many Russians that somehow they were closer to God than other people.
The following day we drove to Suzdal, thirty-five miles northeast of Vladimir. It had a courageous past, battling the Mongols, but its present-day life seemed sad and dull. Once it was home to thirty-six churches; now not one functioned as a church. It had three monasteries; now one served as an electric power station, another as a training center for KGB troops, and the third we were not allowed to see.
“Why?” I asked the guard.
“There is nothing inside,” he replied.
“Well then,” I said, “can we see the nothing inside.” The guard did not appreciate my humor. He walked away in a huff.
Yet, as I noted on the train ride back to Moscow, our farewell from Suzdal was memorable. A small group of people gathered around our car, waiting for us. They wanted to talk. More than anything, they wanted to stress that they did not want war.
“The American people are a good people,” one of them said. “We Russians are a good people.” Nodding for emphasis, he added, “You don’t want to fight. We don’t want to fight. That’s good.”
One young man pleaded for greater understanding and proposed increasing exchanges between the two countries. I asked no one in particular what people thought about Stalin’s now-discredited “personality cult.” “Better late than never,” someone said.
I continued on this theme, “Where were your current leaders when Stalin did all these terrible things?”
An uncomfortable silence descended on our conversation, broken only when a young man spoke of his faith in God. “I know that God will help us all,” he said loudly, “all of us, no matter. He will wish us well. God can do such things, you know.”
Throughout this friendly exchange, an old man held my hand. He did not let go. He kept repeating in a low mumble, “Please tell the American people we love them very much and do not want war.” He started to cry, still refusing to let go of my hand. Like so many Russians, he feared war. He wanted us to appreciate the depth of Russian suffering during World War II. It was for me a very moving experience.
The train stopped once on its way back to Moscow. I took advantage of the stop to breathe fresh air. I had not been feeling well since lunchtime. On the platform I asked a peasant woman running an improvised snack bar for a glass of tea. She did not have tea but she did have vodka. “No,” I said, waving her off, “no vodka.” She looked at me with sudden sympathy.
“Your stomach?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Where are you from?” she wanted to know.
“America,” I replied, puzzled. What did my nationality have to do with my stomach problem?