We continued our walk along empty streets, each of us absorbed in the power of Kostya’s diatribe. We passed the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, which until recently had been called the Marx-Engels-Stalin Institute, which prompted Kostya to observe, “You know, we call this place ‘The Institute for Black Magic.’ Here anything can happen. Even Trotsky can be rehabilitated tomorrow morning. All of history can be rewritten. It is like black magic. It can do anything.”
Kostya’s face suddenly lit up. He remembered a relevant story. He told me he had recently attended a public trial of six Russians accused of illegally selling Western clothing. The prosecutor rested his case on the testimony of a few of the buyers, but the approach backfired. His first witness stated in simple Russian, “I was tired of dressing badly, of living badly. I had a chance to buy a good suit, and I bought it, and I would do it again if I could.” Kostya smiled. “What was funny was that all the people who bought this clothing were wealthy Russians who belong to our new aristocracy, just like my father.”
“Was there any conviction?”
“No, the trial is still going on…. Things happen today which no one thought imaginable when Lenin lived. Most people with money have become just like the bourgeoisie of old. They want material comforts. I guess I myself am no different, for I, too, am a product of this system. The system breeds the people, and I am one of the people. The only people who have not become contaminated by the system are the peasants, because they stand above the system. They are pure.”
Kostya was indeed a modern-day narodnik, I thought, capable of believing all kinds of fanciful romances about the “pure” peasants and the inevitable improvement in Soviet society once the people rise up from their long slumber. He still believed in a fairy godfather named Lenin and was destined, in my judgment, to be deeply disappointed.
“Are there any great leaders in Russia today?” I asked. “Leaders who stand for the rights and interests of a majority of the people? Aren’t Khrushchev and Bulganin able leaders?”
“Let me tell you what they are good for. Khrushchev would make a fine district party leader, and Bulganin, good Mr. Bulganin”—he used the English word “Mister”—would be better off eating five meals a day, living in a suburban dacha, and reading Pushkin. They are the kind of leaders who met the needs of the Stalin era well. They killed, and slept well afterwards. But these are not the leaders who can meet the challenge of the modern times. Now they rule sort of in between the old and the new, but they don’t realize that there is no going back to the old. There is no retreat possible at this time. Only forward movement, only change, and undoubtedly the people of Poland and Hungary have realized this too, for they don’t want us there anymore, and I don’t blame them.”
By this time, Kostya and I had circled back to the Metropole Hotel, where I was certain I could get a cab. It was 2:30 a.m. The rain had stopped but our coats were soaked. We had talked about everything, it seemed, even the historic events in Poland and Hungary, which Kostya knew could affect his life. He was hungry for fresh information, as, I assumed, were his classmates. “What is the latest you have heard?” he wanted to know.
“Well,” I began, “earlier this evening on the BBC, I heard—”
Interrupting me, he exclaimed, “We know all that. We also listen to the BBC and the Voice of America. We do so regularly. What I’m asking is, is there anything newer?” I had to disappoint him. I knew nothing newer.
In parting Kostya told me that Polish students at his institute had sent a letter to Wladyslav Gomulka, the new Communist Party leader in Poland, urging him to continue his reforms. They were thrilled by signs that a new nationalism was blooming in Poland. Kostya’s friend, Yanka, now insisted on being called Jan, his proper Polish name.
If truth was not to be found in Pravda, then how would Russians learn the truth about what was happening in Poland, Hungary, and other hot spots in Russia’s Eastern European empire? It would be very hard indeed. They could still read Soviet newspapers and try to translate the gobbledygook of Russian reporting from Warsaw and Budapest into something resembling reality. They could listen to Moscow Radio. They could keep their ears cocked, with sensitivity born of experience, to rumor and gossip, which was a full-time industry in Soviet Russia. And Russians with shortwave radios (and there were many) could listen to real news reporting from the BBC and the Voice of America, often late at night, after most of their neighbors had gone to bed.
It was not true that Russians had no information about the bloody riots in Poznan in June or the even bloodier revolt in Budapest and its brutal suppression in early November. They had limited information, much of it distorted, but they still felt shortchanged—they wanted much more, believing after the 20th Party Congress and the Khrushchev de-Stalinization shock that it was time for them to be told the truth after so many years of lies.
I had stumbled upon smatterings of this craving for truth during my many visits to libraries. One evening, in the main reading room of the Lenin Library, I found myself jammed into a rear corner by dozens, maybe hundreds, of Russians, who had come to hear a lecture titled “International Affairs” given by a young, nervous, paper-thin communist official wearing a black suit, with two medals pinned to the lapel of his jacket. The reading room, serving as a lecture hall, was located between the cloakroom and the manuscript room, where I would normally do my research. But on this evening I could not work my way through the crowd, nor did I really try; I let myself be squashed into a corner so that I could unobtrusively hear how the party informed young people about the big news of the day.
The lecturer, who seemed to have a nervous twitch in his right cheek, spoke for the better part of an hour, assiduously reading from his notes and hitting a single theme: that the Soviet Union would maintain a firm policy of peace and cooperation with all countries, regardless of their social or political systems. “Just today,” he said, “the glorious Communist Party and Soviet Government expressed their unwavering devotion to the Bandung Conference [of neutralist nations] and the spirit of Bandung in a talk with Mohammed Daud, prime minister of Afghanistan.” He continued in this vein, using the standard terminology of the Soviet press. Whenever he used a phrase such as “the glorious, mighty, genius-like Soviet people, who are building communism,” everyone around me, without exception, either made sarcastic comments or continued to read their books, magazines, or newspapers.
Toward the end of his talk, the speaker reached for Socratic eloquence to make his pointless points. “Who,” he asked, “consistently struggles for peace?” He answered his own question: “The mighty, genius-like Communist Party and Soviet Government, inspired by the great decisions of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and its Leninist Central Committee.” His audience fidgeted, yawned rudely, scratched imaginary bug bites, or restlessly shuffled from one foot to the other.