The woman, reading my mind, explained. “I have met other Americans with stomach trouble. Always the same reason—Russian food is too greasy. Trust me,” she said, “one hundred grams of vodka with each meal, and you won’t have problems anymore.” She was right, although sometimes I needed 200 grams.
On April 22 a few reporters and I drove to Zagorsk to see the famous Troitsky Monastery, a wondrous sight of high walls, priests in training, and parishioners in prayer, with church bells breaking into the musical liturgy every fifteen minutes. Zagorsk played a key role in the sixteen-month defense of Moscow against the attacking Poles during the Time of Troubles, a brief but intense period of political upheaval in the early years of the seventeenth century.
As I prepared to leave a young Russian approached me. “Are you an American?” he asked softly. No sooner had I replied, “Yes,” than he urged me to follow him into the museum’s men’s room. I did so, reluctantly. There, from under his coat, he removed two files. “These are my father’s. They will show you, prove to you, point by point, how awful things are in this country.” I told him I could not take his father’s papers. I was concerned that he might be KGB, setting me up for a classic sting. He appealed to me again and again, describing himself as an expert mechanic who had been out of work for three months.
“Take me with you,” he pleaded.
I shook my head. “No, that is not possible.” As I headed toward the door, I asked, “Aren’t you afraid that people will see you with a foreigner?”
He laughed. “If they threw me into prison, what difference would it really make?”
I wondered on the drive back to Moscow how many young people were desperate enough to ask a foreigner for help.
On June 17 I drove three and a half hours to Yasnaya Polyana, the birthplace and home of Leo Tolstoy, Russia’s greatest novelist. Millions have read his books War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and his life story has been studied for an understanding of his doctrine of nonresistance, which profoundly influenced Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Tolstoy had served in the Russian army during the Crimean War and then in smaller wars against Muslim tribesmen in the northern Caucasus. Toward the end of his life he was regarded as a saint, and many Russians brought their children to Yasnaya Polyana, hoping they would be impressed and influenced by the wisdom and wonder of Tolstoy.
I overheard one docent telling her group that Tolstoy especially admired Russian writers. She raved about his love of Maxim Gorky. He considered Gorky a “great artist.” Puzzled, I asked my guide whether that was true. He waited until we had left the main building before answering. “When peasants come to Yasnaya Polyana, that’s the sort of thing we tell them. But that’s propaganda,” he said with no shame. “That’s not for you or me.”
On July 23, I drove sixty-five miles on the Leningrad road to Klin, a small town known now as the home of Peter Tchaikovsky, one of Russia’s most prized composers. Actually, Tchaikovsky lived in Klin for only fifteen months, starting in May 1892, but for the first time in his vagabond life, he felt he had a home. It was there that he finished his Sixth Symphony. The house was large and yet modest, bright red in color and yet subdued. His desk was a wooden table, and his bed, in the same room, was like a cot. He loved his garden, where he regularly walked and rested.
Now the garden was open to visitors. My friend and I thought we would enjoy a picnic lunch there. We were not the only ones. We shared a table with an old man and woman. Soon we were in conversation, and when we told them we were Americans, they were wide-eyed with incredulity. “It doesn’t seem possible,” the man said. “A few years ago, we thought we’d never be able to meet Americans again.” He explained that he had lost both of his legs during the war (in Russia the “war” was always World War II) and had lived in Klin ever since. I offered to share our lunch with him and, we assumed, his wife, but he declined. As I told them about America, Harvard, my parents (both of whom were born in Eastern Europe), and my family, I noticed that the old man’s eyes welled up with tears, and as we talked, he began to cry openly. The woman explained that they were both Jews and had few friends. Their life in Klin was lonely. Occasionally, during outbursts of anti-Semitism, they lived in fear even of their neighbors. A postmidnight knock on the door could have meant their arrest. She asked if I was Jewish, and when I said yes, she smiled and, with sadness, told us that in 1904 her mother had expressed her wish to emigrate to the United States, but her father, who had the last word, decided that Russia would be a better place for his family. “So, you see,” she said, “if it were not for him, I’d be an American.” I could not help but think that if my father and mother had not decided to come to the United States before World War I, I might have shared their fate.
On July 27, after a terrifyingly rocky three-hour flight in an Ilyushin-14 from Moscow to Kiev, as the Ukrainian capital was then called, I vowed I would never again fly in a Russian plane. No seat belts. People smoking on takeoff and landing. Passengers standing in the aisle. Restroom unbelievably filthy. Yet it was a vow I was repeatedly to violate when I took many other trips through the Soviet Union.
Kiev, though, was worth the experience—for many reasons. It was, first of all, my mother’s birthplace. It was, and remains, a beautiful city with a rich history. It was the capital of what historian Pares called “the first Russia,” known too as Kievan Rus. At the time of my visit it was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of fifteen republics in the Soviet Union. After 1991 it was to become the capital of an independent Ukraine. Although I reached the hotel at a time when most good boys were asleep (it was almost midnight), I decided to take a walk.
My first impression was that Kiev did not sleep. What I saw was a city of cobblestone streets, trolley cars and hills, and many parks. Couples walked arm in arm, hugging, kissing, teasing. In a city where housing was tight, park benches served as private places for lovemaking and mating. It was all so different from Moscow. Kiev was southern, Moscow northern, and if the Russian capital was never quite sure her seams were straight, Kiev walked with a distinct pride, knowing they were. At 1:30 a.m., the trolleys were still crowded, people were still standing on street corners, and Kiev refused to end the night.
Back at the hotel I met Patrick O’Regan, a British diplomat, and Leo Haimson, an American scholar. O’Regan told a story about Russia’s rush to restore her old churches. It was a national obsession. During a visit to an old church, known for its fabulous Rublev frescoes, he saw an old worker energetically chipping away at a wall with still visible Rublevs. Piece after piece fell to the floor. O’Regan was as puzzled as he was angry.
“Why are you chipping away at the frescoes?” he asked. “They are invaluable.”
The old worker looked at the diplomat with contempt. “I am not chipping away at the frescoes, you fool. I am restoring them.”
Haimson had a better story. He had just been to Leningrad and had been given permission to visit the storehouse of the Russian Museum. He expected to find discarded works of Russian painters. Instead he found hundreds of paintings of Stalin.
Before going to sleep I ordered breakfast for the next morning. I asked the hotel manager, who took my order, whether he thought the hotel would have oranges. “We don’t have oranges in Moscow,” I explained.
“Of course,” he answered. “We have everything. This is Kiev.”
At 7:30 a.m., as requested, a waiter knocked at the door. He had my breakfast, but he had no orange. “Not today,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
After breakfast, I left for the Khreshchatyk, Kiev’s beautiful main street, a gathering place for leisurely strolls and angry demonstrations. A young Ukrainian walked alongside me for a block and then asked, “Are you an American?” My reply was an affirmative nod. “I knew it,” he said with the pride reserved for finishing a tough test. “I could tell by the way you walk.”