He did want to make a point, though. “Last night we met a young American in this restaurant, and he told us that everything in the Soviet Union was bad, that women dressed poorly, that the food was terrible. And we began to think that all Americans were like him. This is very bad. If he does not like us, why does he come here? Why doesn’t he just go home? To us, this is the finest, the best country in the world. Granted, we have seen no other country, but we have this confidence. Maybe we are right. Maybe we are wrong, but this is what most of us believe. He is a guest here. He should respect our feelings.” I told him that I fully agreed with him, and that I hoped he would be able to meet many more Americans. We raised another toast to “peace and friendship.”
I remembered what an embassy colleague told me about the courtesies Americans ought to show while traveling in the Soviet Union these days. “Every American tourist,” he cautioned, “is a kind of poster child of American life. This year and next, they ought to be handpicked. It’s that important.” He believed that 1956, the year of the thaw, was potentially historic, perhaps in his judgment the beginning of the end of Soviet communism, and every American had to be especially careful to let history take its course and not rock the boat.
I spent the next day as the perfect tourist. Immediately after breakfast, no matter how rocky the beach, I made my way cautiously to the water’s edge and did what any self-respecting Soviet vacationer would do—I plunged into the Black Sea. The water was cool, and I thoroughly enjoyed my swim. I then dedicated myself to the worship of the sun, hoping that in an hour or two I could become as bronzed as the Russians—an impossible task, but that still didn’t discourage me from trying. In the afternoon, after a quick lunch, I rented a car with a driver for a ride to the highest observation point in the region. The view of the mountains, rolling, deep green, was awe-inspiring, and the Black Sea looked blue near the shoreline and purple farther out. Mother Nature had done a splendid job, creating a nest of beauty.
My plane back to Moscow was scheduled to leave the following day at 11:40 a.m., a proper time for departure. My monthlong summertime journey through central Asia and the Caucasus was rushing to an end.
The plane made two stops. The first was Rostov-on-Don, where the sky was beginning to cloud over. The second was Kharkov, where it had begun to rain. Moscow, when I got there, was cold, rainy, and dreary, and once again I needed my coat, scarf, and hat, which I found in my duffel bag and which sent me into uncontrollable laughter. In the morning, hot and lovely Sochi; in the evening, cold and dreary Moscow. The Soviet Union was a very large country, filled with dozens of different tribes and nationalities. Once it began to crumble, warned my Harvard professor Richard Pipes, it would be hard, if not impossible, to put the pieces back together again. It had not then begun to crumble, but after this trip I understood, perhaps for the first time, how inherently fragile this seemingly cohesive and powerful nation was.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Back to a Familiar Chill
Very quickly I returned to earth. The glorious scenery of Sochi, the mountain legends of Tbilisi, and the sandy, troublesome history of Samarkand and Bukhara receded reluctantly into my memory bank as a vacation well spent. The moment I got back to the Kremlinology of JPRS and the U.S. embassy, I realized that the “thaw,” which had generated so much hope for meaningful change, was now in retreat. Ever since Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress had delivered his historic attack on Stalin’s policies and personality, the country had been in a state of dizzying confusion. Could one really criticize the party and its leaders with impunity? How much freedom would Khrushchev actually allow? Could a dictatorship be dismantled, step by step, and still be a dictatorship? In short, had the “thaw” gone too far? And if it had, was it not time to throttle back? Left unanswered, such questions fueled deeper doubts within and outside the party. At the embassy it was assumed that a climactic battle had erupted in the Kremlin between Khrushchev on one side and such hard-liners as Molotov on the other. Which side would ultimately prevail? Bets were placed, but no one could yet collect a kopeck. One sensed that de-Stalinization might be rumbling off the rails, Russia might be losing its guiding compass, and something had to be done. But what?
Rummaging through old papers from October 1956 while preparing this memoir, I came upon clear examples of a country in modest retrenchment, yet clinging to the hope that greater freedom was still possible, including better relations with the West, especially the United States:
• Fifty American millionaires arrived in Moscow to explore increasing trade and investment opportunities. They were well received, optimistic, and determined to do business.
• Two students at Moscow University were expelled after voicing criticism of government policy at a meeting called expressly for that purpose. They later disappeared. No explanations were offered.
• Shortly after Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization speech, the Kremlin circulated two letters to all party officials, which stated that open criticism of party and state “shortcomings” and “high-handedness” was not only to be tolerated but also encouraged. Then a third letter was circulated that contradicted the message of the two previous letters: now such criticism was to be discouraged. Criticism of the party and its leaders needed to be constrained.
• Molotov, who had opposed Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policy and, as a result, lost his job as foreign minister, was just appointed to a new job: head of a state commission to determine the acceptable cultural and ideological limits on the new “freedoms” marking the Khrushchev era. Everyone assumed Molotov had just been given authority to cut back on those freedoms.
• An old, sad feature of Stalinism was the widespread practice of snitching on family members and neighbors. If you heard anyone criticize Stalin, the party, or the state, you had an obligation to inform your local communist cell. One out of every ten workers in a factory had that responsibility. At the 20th Party Congress this practice was publicly denounced and most Russians breathed a sigh of relief. It has now been brought back. Apparently, the party did not appreciate the avalanche of criticism generated by the 20th Party Congress.
• I heard this story from a Russian friend. At a recent party meeting at a Moscow factory, where workers were told that criticism was officially encouraged, a worker rose and criticized his foreman. His courage was applauded, even by the foreman. The following week, the worker’s norm—the amount of work he or she was expected to do—was arbitrarily tripled. Every worker had a norm, which had to be fulfilled. This worker was already working at peak capacity, but according to his new norm he was producing only one-third of what was expected of him. As a result, his salary was effectively cut to one-third of what it had been. The net effect of this worker’s criticism: (1) his salary was cut; (2) his status as a top-flight worker was undermined; (3) he was forced into a position where he had either to recant or quit (he recanted). Result: no further criticism.
Strung together, these vignettes suggested a regime edging toward a major crackdown. By the late summer of 1956 the Kremlin learned that freedom of speech in the form of criticism, even sanctioned criticism, was intoxicating and could, if unchecked, undermine the foundations of a modern totalitarian state. Although Khrushchev continued to believe in his policy of de-Stalinization, he also realized that it had a dangerous, corrosive effect on his own power base and therefore had to be contained. In fact, in a short time Khrushchev faced a Molotov-led challenge that came close to ousting him from power.