It was the kind of work I did routinely on weekdays for JPRS. But even if there had been no financial reward I would have helped them on Sunday mornings anyway. They were my friends. We were in Moscow, and everyone seemed to be like family. In those years of the Cold War, we thought of ourselves as a band of brothers and sisters sharing a very special experience in communist Russia—one that we hoped we would be able to tell our children and grandchildren about someday. Every day had its own mysteries. Every day held us in awe of what we might behold tomorrow.
I felt closer to Schorr than I did to Levine, possibly because I was a CBS News radio listener. Schorr’s was a more familiar voice. In my memory bank were other CBS voices, none more prominent than Edward R. Murrow’s, although I could easily have recognized Eric Severeid’s or Howard K. Smith’s or David Schoenbrun’s. While still in college I had started dreaming that one day I would be a network correspondent specializing in Soviet affairs, meaning that I would become what was then called a Soviet expert or a Kremlinologist. Such people knew the language, history, and culture of the one country in the world that potentially could inflict mortal damage on the United States. That was why I intensively studied Russian history in my senior year in college, why I had set sail for a doctorate in Russian history at Harvard as a graduate student at the Russian Research Center, and why I had happily accepted the job in Moscow as an interpreter-translator.
As I considered my next career step, I had a feeling that I was not wasting my time. Such a background could well open a door in journalism, in diplomacy, or in the academy. Every now and then, during a trip or a meal, I would share my thinking with Schorr, Levine, and even Anna Holdcroft, who always regarded diplomacy as my natural home. Schorr, especially, had other plans for me. Journalism, he advised, was my natural home, specifically a job as a Moscow correspondent for CBS News.
One Sunday in November 1956, when we were asking and answering the question of the day, “Whither Russia?”—a game all Muscovites played with increasing frequency as Russia bounced uncertainly from de-Stalinization to the invasion of Hungary—Schorr surprised me by raising a related and very personal question. Usually I sat in a chair next to his desk, he in front of his desk and typewriter: I would translate what I considered an interesting article or editorial in Pravda, and he would type the phrase or sentence that filled his journalistic needs, and then use it in one or more of his broadcasts.
“I’ve been thinking,” Schorr said, with a smile forming around his lips.
“What about?”
“Well”—his smile widened—“what about you joining the bureau here, becoming effectively my number two?”
“Your number two?” I asked incredulously. “Come on. Be serious. What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you becoming effectively my number two,” he repeated, the smile no longer on his face. “You’d run the bureau, do some translating, and of course reporting. I mean, if we had two stories one day, you’d do one and I’d do the other. If I was going out of the country, you’d be here representing CBS. With you here, I would be able to do more traveling inside the Soviet Union. You’d be what you have always wanted to be—a Moscow correspondent.”
I wanted to respond, but I was momentarily at a loss for words. I looked down at the worn-out carpet on the office floor for a moment and then back up into Schorr’s eyes. “Are you serious? Are you really offering me a job? As a Moscow correspondent? For CBS?”
Schorr nodded. “Yes, the job you said you always wanted. You’d be here helping to cover the Soviet Union.”
I sat as silent as a Buddha for what must have seemed an eternity. Then I burst out laughing. “Let’s go back to translating.” That was safer, less challenging.
“No.” Schorr was persistent. “What do you think?” I could hear his large office clock ticking. “What do you think?” he repeated softly, looking for my eyes, which were fastened on my shoe tops. “I checked with New York. Of course, they’d like to see you and talk to you, and all that. But I think the job is there, and it’s yours, if you want it. And, by the way, I checked with the Russians, too, and they raised no real objection, but you can’t tell and in any case that’s for later.”
I realized Schorr was serious. He had just offered me a superb opportunity, the job I had told him and a few others I truly wanted. “Let me think this over,” I mumbled. “Let me think.” I needed time. Suddenly I could not say yes. I could not say anything except “Tomorrow. I promise you an answer by tomorrow.” Schorr had every reason to have expected an ecstatic yes, but instead he looked at me, understanding that I was in a state of shock, unable to say yes or no. He sat back, smiled, and lit his pipe. “Let’s go back to the translation.”
That night I did very little sleeping. The job I wanted was the job Schorr offered. Why not take it? It was for me a dream come true. And yet, I realized, after heated arguments with myself, that I could not take it, and the basic reason was a promise I had made to my mother. When Marshall Shulman offered me the chance to work in Moscow, I naturally checked with my mother and father. She was a reluctant no, and he was an enthusiastic yes. My mother’s concern was that I would become so absorbed with today’s Russia that I would forget about yesterday’s Uvarov. All my preparatory research would go to waste. I would not get my Ph.D. I would not teach at Harvard or anywhere else, where a Ph.D. was the equivalent of a union card.
With my mother’s concerns in mind, I had actually tried while in Moscow to do both my day job at JPRS and my evening research at the Lenin Library, and I thought that, to a very large extent, I had succeeded. As noted earlier, I had managed to gain admission and do research in Moscow’s top libraries (an achievement in those days), and I had even gotten to admire Uvarov’s singular contributions to Russian scholarship. But deep down I knew that if I took Schorr’s offer, I would be working a twenty-four-hour day, learning the (for me) new craft of broadcasting, keeping up with a crackerjack professional like Schorr, and somehow continuing my research on Uvarov. Seriously, would I have enough time for both Schorr and Uvarov? The answer was obvious. Almost certainly not. At the end of the day, the minute-to-minute demands of CBS News would require my full attention, and Uvarov would have to wait. My Ph.D. dissertation would have to wait. And the promise I made to my mother would have to wait. That, I felt, I could not do. A promise was a promise, especially one to my mother.
By dawn’s early light I understood that I would probably never again get an offer such as Schorr’s; by declining his offer I might be crossing out journalism as my ultimate career. But I felt, then and there, that I was making the right call. And what the heck! I’d still have diplomacy and teaching on my dance card of career options.
At two in the afternoon of the following day I made my way to the Central Telegraph Office, located a few blocks from Red Square. That was where foreign correspondents gathered to write their news stories and have them cleared by Soviet censors. It was also where radio reporters such as Schorr and Levine transmitted their broadcasts directly to New York. When Schorr arrived, he spotted me, and I him. He plunked his briefcase down on an empty table and asked, “Well, what’s up?”