At 5:00 p.m. I walked back to the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, hoping that the Uvarov file had indeed been microfilmed. The smile on the uchenyi sekretar’s face screamed out yes. I signed some papers, paid a very modest fee, and, microfilm in my coat pocket, walked back to the Astoria, had dinner by myself, and left for Moscow the following morning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At the End of the Arc
The name of Stalin is inseparable from Marxism-Leninism.
On the long but pleasant train ride from Leningrad to Moscow, I put pen to paper in an effort to summarize my thinking about Russia before packing my toothbrush and heading back to Cambridge. I had arrived in late January 1956 and planned to leave in late January 1957, a span of time the Russians described as “the year of the thaw.” What happened to Russia and the Russians during this time? What had I seen? What had I learned?
If the “thaw” could be imagined as a work of art, it would look like a brightly colored arc splashed across the backdrop of a decaying dictatorship. It started its upward trajectory with Khrushchev’s stunning denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956 and then, in early November, plunged downward with the Russian suppression of the Hungarian Revolution.
The Soviet Union was changing, no doubt about it. Along the way there were fits and starts, changes in leadership, and shifts in direction. But the change was continuing, driven by a mystical belief, held by many intellectuals, that one day their country would evolve into a kind of democracy drawn to the West but anchored in the political and cultural traditions of a Eurasian land mass stretching from Poland to the Pacific.
Stalin, the “great genius,” as he was known for decades, was suddenly being portrayed as a brutal dictator who grossly distorted communist ideology. Throughout “the year of the thaw,” the effect of this change was visible at every level of Soviet society. Senior officials fled from any association with Stalin, wrapping themselves whenever possible in the safer garb of Leninism. The Russian people were not officially informed of the Khrushchev speech until decades later, but thanks to their incredibly efficient grapevine they learned of its core message at roughly the same time as they began to experience an easing of the Communist Party’s tight control over their lives.
It was as if a huge burden was being lifted from their shoulders. Intellectuals began to think more freely, discarding their ideological straitjackets. Teachers planned trips abroad. Foreign artists were invited to perform in Moscow. Students rebelled against dusty Marxist texts. Workers demanded better housing, clothing, and food. Some even dared to go on strike. Political dissidents, after spending years in Siberian camps, were released and allowed to return to Moscow and Leningrad. Unlike Stalin, Khrushchev showed up at foreign national day receptions, where he joshed with reporters and exchanged stories with diplomats. It seemed like the dawn of a new day.
By summertime the thaw was at its peak. Stalin’s icy dictatorship was melting, and Russians and Eastern Europeans were beginning to assume that things would naturally continue to get better at home and abroad. The evidence was everywhere, they felt, even in the rigid ideology that still undergirded the system.
For example, Stalin had painted a gloomy picture of dangerous conflict with the capitalist world. War, even nuclear war, was not only possible but inevitable, he had proclaimed in speeches and pamphlets. Khrushchev, though, turned Stalin’s bleak prognosis on its head, promoting a dramatically new vision of “peaceful coexistence” among nations with different economic and political systems. War, according to Khrushchev’s rewrite of Stalin’s orthodoxy, was no longer inevitable. For Khrushchev, coexistence replaced conflict.
But theory was one thing, practice another. Even though the theory of peaceful coexistence was appealing to many Russians, and also to many in Eastern Europe, its application, its conversion from theory into practice, ran into different interpretations. The obstreperous Poles could translate the theory in one way, the Kremlin in another, and the two could quickly find themselves on a collision course. By the time summer edged into fall, almost all of Eastern Europe was in some form of revolt against the Kremlin, the Russian thaw being the underlying reason for the unfolding upheaval. If Khrushchev could denounce Stalin, it was reasoned, then a Czech or a Bulgarian communist could likewise denounce the ultimate leader in his own country, and his policies as well.
It started in late June, when Poland’s Communist leaders invited businessmen from communist and capitalist countries to the Poznan International Fair. It was a perfect example of Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, except for one thing: the workers in nearby plants seized the moment and went out on strike, demonstrating for better salaries and improved labor conditions. They attacked Communist Party headquarters and torched the local prison. Before long, Polish tanks and troops, in an effort to restore order, opened fire on the demonstrating workers, killing many of them. The streets were suddenly awash with blood. The scene was hardly a good advertisement for communism.
Not too far away, in Czechoslovakia, students went on a rampage. Like their counterparts in Moscow, they questioned not only the presumed wisdom of communism as their governing philosophy but also the leadership of the Czech Communist Party. In one university town after another, students carrying anti-communist placards blocked traffic and brought life in the countryside to a virtual standstill. Only here, unlike in Poland, the police did not intervene, the troops stayed in their barracks, and the country seemed to slow to a stop. These scenes were repeated in parts of East Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria.
The rush toward disaffection in Eastern Europe reached its climax in Hungary in late October. Angry workers and disillusioned intellectuals pushed the country into open revolt against communism and Russia. Khrushchev faced a crucial decision. If he ordered the Red Army into Hungary to crush the rebellion, many people would be killed, and the myth that Russia was Eastern Europe’s best comrade-in-arms would be exposed as a lie. But if he did not order the Red Army into Hungary, he was certain he would lose all of Eastern Europe in a swirling anti-communist rebellion, and soon thereafter his post as first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev ordered his army into Hungary, feeling he had no other realistic option, and he suffered the consequences. His political position was severely weakened. In his Eastern European empire, now rent with bloody uncertainty, he was scorned and Russia was hated. And everywhere else, Russia was seen as a brutal dictatorship. All the glowing tributes he had earlier received from his anti-Stalinist shift in policy were reduced to rubble. Khrushchev knew it, and his political enemies knew it, too.
As the train rumbled slowly toward Moscow, I returned to my original question: What happened to Russia during the year of the thaw? One thing was clear: A dictatorship cannot be dismantled one speech at a time. Khrushchev had tried, and he clearly had failed in this effort. What else? After a year of conversations with Russians from Tashkent to Kiev, observing and talking with Soviet leaders (including Khrushchev), reading and translating the Soviet press every morning, and attending the Russian theater as often as my schedule would allow, and after cracking a small hole in the Soviet archives in my pursuit of the Uvarov file, four strong impressions of “Russia 1956” had formed in my mind.