Undaunted, I made my way through the crowds to the Institute for Russian Literature, where I hoped my hunt for Uvarov’s archives would meet with a happier end. And, miraculously, it did. An old man greeted me in the cloakroom with… a smile, of all things. He seemed like a prerevolutionary relic—small, polite, curious, almost charming. When he took my coat, he paused to admire it.
“How much does it cost?” he asked.
“Seventy-five dollars,” I replied, “or roughly three hundred rubles at your official exchange rate.”
The old man seemed flustered. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “impossible.” He examined the coat more closely. “This would cost three thousand rubles here, at least, and in any case we couldn’t get it. We couldn’t find one like it. No, impossible.” One of his friends, overhearing our conversation, approached and felt the material of the coat with experienced fingers. He joked, “I can get the exact same coat in Moscow for two hundred seventy-five rubles,” at which point he and the old man snickered, each with a broad smile, knowing they could not buy such a coat in Leningrad or Moscow at any price.
I asked the librarian at the information desk if I could see—and study—the Uvarov archive. Like so many other librarians, she asked, “Why Uvarov?” I gave her my standard reply: I wanted to cover both sides of Russian history, the communist and the conservative sides. She nodded and asked me to wait in the vestibule. I waited, and waited, and waited, taking in large photos of Pushkin on every wall. After a while Pushkin’s face seemed to change—he began to resemble an unappealing KGB agent. Ten minutes passed, and then twenty. After a half hour had passed, I grew restless and thought about leaving. Why not? I could always return the next day or try another library. But then, in the semidarkness of the vestibule, a tall, graceful woman appeared. She was carrying an old file. My heart skipped a beat.
I rose as she approached. “Mr. Kalb,” she said, shaking my hand. “I have a file of Uvarov’s letters for you.” I gulped. “You will, of course, have to fill out some forms, but first I have a question.” I tried to contain my excitement. For a full year I had been trying, desperately, to get my hands on Uvarov’s files, but time and again the Soviet bureaucracy would either act dumb or impose obstacles. Uvarov seemed unobtainable. Now, wonder of wonders, this tall woman with a dusty file appeared, and suddenly a treasure house of scholarly goodies opened before me—but, I had to admit, at a very inopportune time. In a single week my stay in the Soviet Union would come to an end. “Don’t complain,” I said to myself. “Smile, and be grateful.” I tried.
Her question was the one I had come to expect from every Soviet librarian: “Why are you studying Uvarov?” My answer was the one I had fashioned over many months, one that was both truthful and, I hoped, understandable. I was a student of Russian history. The communist side of that history had been explored for decades, but the conservative side, shelved throughout the Soviet period, was largely ignored. It was about time its principal architect, Uvarov, founder of the famous slogan “Nationalism, Autocracy, and Orthodoxy,” was rediscovered and brought to the bar of history. Not persuaded but gracious nonetheless, the librarian nodded. “I guess so,” she said, shaking her head and sighing.
As I filled out the required forms, she sat opposite me and began to ask questions about American life, especially the prices of consumer goods—dresses, shoes, food, cars, apartments. Before long we slipped from consumer goods to a Q and A about the need for internal passports. I told her I found the Soviet practice of carrying internal passports on all domestic travel to be “offensive” and “demeaning.”
She was amazed. “Surely you need some sort of identification in the United States,” she said.
“Yes, of course,” I replied, “a driver’s license, a draft card, a library card, but not an internal passport. That’s for foreign travel.” Many Americans traveling in the Soviet Union, I told her, felt like criminals, having to show their passport at every turn in the road, their word never trusted.
“Well,” she countered, “Russians feel like criminals whenever they have to be fingerprinted during visits to the United States. Fingerprints are for criminals, not for honest people.”
“Look,” I said, “I had to put up with the humiliation of showing an internal passport just to get into this library.”
“I guess you’ve got a point there,” she said and then quickly changed the subject. She wanted me to meet a “treasure house of a man, a genius, a gift of God, who also knows a great deal about nineteenth-century Russia.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I’d be honored to meet him.” The librarian vanished for a few minutes and returned with a short man with graying hair, Professor Alexander Berkov, knowledgeable, it was soon apparent, in many fields of scholarship.
The librarian invited us into her office, shut the door, sat down in the corner, and listened to our discussion of Russian and Soviet historiography. I was amazed at Berkov’s familiarity with American scholars of the Soviet Union. He specifically mentioned Michael Karpovich of Harvard, George Vernadsky of Yale, Hans Kohn of City College, and Philip Mosely of Columbia. He also gave me valuable pointers on my Uvarov research. We spoke for about an hour, and I enjoyed every minute. We parted as friends. “Stay in touch,” he said.
I promised I would, and with an extra measure of energy and excitement sparked by our talk, I opened the Uvarov file and started reading a letter Uvarov had written to his wife in 1842. It contained no nugget, no special insight into his family life, but I was thrilled. I read one letter after another, a few more to his wife and staff and many relating to his special interest in Greek literature. He was, it was clear, a careful, meticulous man, but I saw no evidence that he was a brilliant scholar. I filled my note pad with many quotes and impressions, all valuable in the writing of a dissertation. After three hours I returned the file to the tall librarian, thanked her, and promised to return the following day.
As I left the institute I realized that I was grinning with satisfaction. It was finally happening. I was doing what could only be described as original research in the Soviet Union. Finally, Uvarov would have his day in the sun.
At 5:00 p.m., the day’s noontime sliver of sunlight long since gone, I made my way back to the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. This time, instead of asking to see the sour, unresponsive head of the manuscript division, I asked to see the library’s uchenyi sekretar, “academic secretary,” the catchall phrase for an institution’s top administrator and sometimes its principal intellectual. Much to my surprise, he agreed to see me, and he knew about my earlier request for access to the Uvarov archive. When I asked whether I could actually see the archive, he answered matter-of-factly, “Yes, of course. Why not?” I almost collapsed in surprise. After so many no’s, for the second time in one day I was getting a yes.
He could not resist the “Why Uvarov?” question, saying “Why anyone would want to study such a reactionary is beyond me.” But we were soon on our way through a maze of corridors guarded by uniformed militiamen who at each turn insisted on seeing the uchenyi sekretar’s propusk and of course mine. When we reached the manuscript division he gave me a thick file of official letters and documents relating to Uvarov’s time as Czar Nicholas II’s minister of education. I wasted no time. I thanked him, sat down at an empty desk, and began reading the letters and documents.
At exactly 7:00 p.m. the uchenyi sekretar asked how much more time I needed. He had been sitting at an adjacent desk reading a newspaper. I told him I did not know. At 7:10 p.m. he asked me the same question, only this time with more urgency. I again told him I did not know. At 7:20 p.m. he made no pretense of politeness. He simply told me to stop working and return the file. I was surprised and puzzled and asked why I had to stop—there was still much more to do, and I wanted to get as much done as I could. With a smile of embarrassment, he whispered that he had a ticket to a movie at 8:00 p.m., and it was his responsibility to escort me out of the building, past all of the inquisitive militiamen. I understood immediately. I could never have gotten out of the building without him. As we left the library he assured me I would have no trouble resuming my work on my next visit.