“You were spending too much time on the Nevsky,” said Sasha, breaking into my bleak urban reverie. “This is the real Leningrad, and these are the people who made the revolution. They represent the true proletariat. The revolution was made in their name. Now look at them. Look how they live, how they dress.” Anger and disappointment swept over his face, emotions so out of character with his generally mild, ascetic appearance.
“How would you like to have a beer?” he asked. “It’s not Ballantine, but it’ll have to do.” He smiled when he said “Ballantine.” “I know lots of trade names, like Chevrolet, Chrysler—is Fritz Kreisler really the manager of the Chrysler automobile company?—and Coca-Cola—have you ever really drunk Coca-Cola?” A beer seemed like a good idea.
We entered a pivnoy zal, a beer hall. It was small and smoky, filled with round tables but no chairs. I attracted immediate attention, standing at least a head or more taller than most of the clientele, and I was wearing a tweed overcoat, Western in design. The men there all wore dark coats, and many were drunk. Their favorite drink, it seemed, was vodka with beer chasers. They cursed in loud voices and seemed to take an instant dislike to me.
Sasha ordered two beers and we brought them to a table. A few feet away, around another table, four very drunk Russians stared resentfully at me and Sasha. One snarled, raising his fist, as though ready to fight. “Why would a stilyag come here? Why, I ask? To show off, that’s why. To show off.” He took a menacing step toward me. Sasha held up his hand, urging everyone to stay calm, but his effort failed.
Now not one but two men staggered toward us. “I hate stilyagi,” one of them hissed. He obviously thought we were rich Russians. “I hate you well-dressed stilyagi,” he bellowed. “I hate you and your Western clothing.” He turned toward his friend, and shouted, “I wouldn’t give two kopecks for his coat, or his hat or his suit. I hate him. And, you know, he does not really look like a Russian. He looks like one of those Germans I used to see during the war, and I hate Germans, I hate Germans, and I hate stilyagi.”
The atmosphere chilled. Everyone expected a fight to break out at any moment. The drunks formed a circle around us. I made a quick decision. I would speak in English and praise Leningrad. If I had spoken in Russian, they would have assumed I was a Soviet citizen, though perhaps not from Leningrad, maybe from the Baltic area or Moscow. “I love Leningrad,” I said, with as much of a smile as I could manage, “and I admire the Russian people.” A question clouded many faces. “Maybe he is a foreigner,” I heard one Russian say.
“No,” the loudest of the loud drunks exclaimed, before anyone else could speak. “He’s a stilyag, a rich stilyag. They come here and boast about how rich they are. I know his type. They’re all over here these days.”
His friend, equally drunk but suddenly more cautious, asked me if I was a foreigner. I pretended I did not understand him. I repeated what I had said earlier—that I “loved” Leningrad and “admired” the Russian people. The loud drunk lunged toward me, but his more cautious friend intervened, grabbed him by the collar, and threw him to the floor.
“Stop it,” he cried, shaking his head. “He may really be a foreigner.”
The loud drunk got up from the floor and again staggered toward me, but this time he did not look as though he wanted to fight. He turned to his friends and roared, “I shall ask him.” Sasha quickly stepped between us.
“Sasha,” I shouted in English, “let him come. It’ll be okay.” Reluctantly Sasha pulled back but stayed close to me.
The drunk asked, “Are you a Russian?”
I looked at him, and in English answered, “I do not understand you.”
The words in a foreign tongue seemed to strike him like a thunderbolt. He reeled back against his friend, who was standing directly behind him.
“Maybe he is a foreigner,” he said, a question mark in his voice.
The drunk then retreated to his table, looking like a person who had just suffered a stunning humiliation. He belted back a vodka, and then another, and then he retraced his steps and apologized to me. “I did not know that you were a foreigner,” he said. “I did not know.” I shook my head, again explaining in English that I did not understand him. He again apologized and returned to his friends. There would be no fight between the worker and the “rich stilyag.” Relieved, Sasha and I finished our beers and left.
“I feel terrible about what happened,” Sasha started. “Please understand: I spend very little time in a pivnoy zal. I don’t really know these people. I am as much a foreigner to them as you are.”
“Sasha, please don’t apologize. We both learned something today. I learned more about Russia in the last five minutes than I would have if I spent another week in the libraries. I should thank you. Today I met the Russian proletariat, and what’s especially interesting is, I think today you met him too.” Sasha nodded in agreement.
We decided to walk back to the Astoria. It was a long walk, but we had much to say to each other. Among other things: Sasha explained why he had not married the woman he loved (he was an intellectual, a teacher, of only modest means, and she was the daughter of a general, who insisted that she marry up, not down), and he also explained his feelings about communism pre-Hungary and post-Hungary. Pre-Hungary, communism was a “wonderful, idealistic idea, hardly perfect but certainly acceptable,” he said. Post-Hungary, communism became “my private nightmare, a dream filled with hope, shattered by an ideology lacking hope.”
Why, I wondered, had he not confided this change to me, when we discussed Hungary a few nights before? “I didn’t trust you,” he answered. “Just that simple.”
We also discussed music and books, and as we approached the Astoria, I told him about my “negotiation” with the uchenyi sekretar. He was amazed. “You must be a good diplomat,” he said, smiling. “Good luck. I hope tomorrow actually means tomorrow, and you get your microfilm.”
“I hope so too,” I said, a prayer hidden in my voice.
The following morning, at 11:00 a.m., I met with a young historian from Leningrad University whom I had first met a week earlier. He had assured me at that time that he knew a way to gain access to the Uvarov archives. “The Central Historical Archives,” he whispered, as if he was conveying a big secret. “They’re on Decembrist Square, near the statue of the Bronze Horseman.”
I told him I appreciated his help, but the archives were under the control of the KGB, and any effort by a foreigner to gain access was an invitation to frustration and ultimately to failure. “I tried once in Moscow,” I explained. “It didn’t work then, and probably won’t now.”
The young historian exploded in anger. “This I cannot understand! What difference would it make to anyone if you saw Uvarov’s personal papers? What difference at all? Certainly Uvarov’s papers would reveal no state secrets.” He lit a cigarette with shaky hands. “Sometimes I get so angry!”
After an awkward few moments, we swung the discussion to matters of Western historiography on Russia. I told him that in a number of American universities scholars were digging into the works of many prerevolutionary Russian conservatives—the Slavophiles, Nikolai Karamzin, Count Sergey Witte, Pyotr Stolypin. My study of Uvarov was only one of many, and far from the most important.
“This is what we need to do too,” the historian interjected. “We need real scholarship. We must be alert to all trends in history. Sticking only to Marxism cuts us off from the historical truth, which is made up of many different and even conflicting tendencies and trends.”