1. Eleven years after the end of World War II, the Russian people were in a desperate need of peace. They had endured terrible hardships during the war. Tens of millions had been killed. No family had survived without tragic losses. More than anything, they wanted the chance to rebuild their lives. Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin’s rugged adherence to communist doctrine was designed in part to respond sympathetically to this popular yearning.
2. Russia was a huge, wealthy country, but it was locked into a woeful economic system that stifled creative growth, producing just enough to maintain the necessities of life but little more. The bottom line was that the system, justifiably criticized at home and abroad, somehow worked. It worked badly, but it worked. Communist leaders promised annually that “next year” industrial production would soar, and things would get better. Workers had little choice but to buy the line, however reluctantly, or to become deep skeptics of the system itself, of communism as the driving dynamic of their lives. I met both kinds of workers. Only the peasants seemed chronically miserable. They wanted to own their own land and their own livestock, and they were tired of waiting.
3. Communism as a governing philosophy had lost its revolutionary magnetism. It was a dying ideology. Young people told me they would join a revolt against communism, if they thought it would do any good—but, shaking their heads, they expressed doubt that it would. I believed that communism would decay even faster if the Russian intellectual could find an emotional substitute of comparable appeal.
4. Russia was in a period of profound transition. One student told me that Russia was “between the old and the new.” The “old” was communism under Stalin and now adjusted by Khrushchev. The “new” was an uncertain, distant dream.
When I returned to the American embassy that evening, I noted in my diary that the “Russian people are much too imaginative to live forever as the docile servants of a bloodless cause. They are no longer the illiterate and inert peasantry that Stalin ruled with an iron discipline. They now know how to read, and they are also beginning to think. In a dictatorship, thinking is dangerous.”
The following day, a somewhat subdued Khrushchev attended a diplomatic reception and, in an astounding toast, raised a glass in tribute to Stalin, the Georgian he had attacked a year earlier as a criminal, a madman, a fiend. “God grant,” he said with bombastic force, stressing the word “God,” “that every communist be able to fight as Stalin fought!” His remark produced a startled hush. Diplomats turned to one another, puzzled looks on their faces. Reporters pulled notebooks from their pockets. They knew they had a story when they thought all they were getting was a drink. Khrushchev continued: “For all of us, Marxist-Leninists, who have devoted our lives to the revolutionary struggle for the interests of the working class and its militant vanguard, the Leninist party, the name of Stalin is inseparable from Marxism-Leninism.”
Khrushchev, in rhetorical retreat, looked solemn, only occasionally cracking a smile, as he made his way out of the embassy. Had he just signaled an end to his controversial reform of Stalinist Russia? I did not think so. Too much had happened during this year of the thaw. Too many hopes had been lofted. Too much freedom had been tasted, and enjoyed, at home and throughout Eastern Europe. It could not all be put back in the bottle. The Molotovs of communism would try and, on occasion, succeed. But they, too, would be unable to hold up the train of Russian history. With the thaw, it had left the station on a journey yet to be charted.
POSTSCRIPT
Five Months Later…
One morning in June 1957, an assistant at Widener Library tapped me on the shoulder. “Marvin,” she said softly, “you have a call, uh, from a man who says he is, uh, Edward R. Murrow.”
“Oh, please,” I brushed her off. “Edward R. Murrow is not calling me. Obviously a mistake—just, just hang up on him.” I returned to my reading of an obscure nineteenth-century Russian manuscript, which at the time I found fascinating. I was a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Harvard. I had recently returned from a long trip through Southeast Asia after a year-long assignment at the American embassy in Moscow.
Later that afternoon the librarian was back. “Marvin,” she said, this time with added resolve, “the same man is calling. You ought to talk to him.” I still did not think it was Murrow, but… he might have read a few of my articles about the Soviet Union. Several had appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature, one in the New York Times Magazine. He certainly knew my brother, Bernard Kalb, a New York Times correspondent in Southeast Asia. They had both covered Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s recent visit to Burma, as it was then called. It was not a totally nutty idea that Murrow might be the one on the phone. “Okay,” I said, yielding to my curiosity. “Is it the phone in your office?” She nodded.
The moment I heard his voice, I realized I had made a huge mistake. “This is Ed Murrow,” he said. I had been listening to his voice for years. “I hope I am not interrupting”—an oblique reference to his earlier call.
“No, no, no,” I stumbled, apologetically, “not at all. I’m so happy to talk to you, sir.”
Murrow quickly got to the point of his call. “I read your piece on Soviet youth, and I’d like to talk to you about it.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I’d be honored, delighted. Uh, when?”
“How about tomorrow morning at nine?” he said. “Here in my office. In New York.”
“Yes, sir!” I all but shouted.
I could not believe what had just happened. Murrow had called me. Unbelievable! He had just invited me to his office to talk about Soviet youth. Unbelievable! I had been listening to Murrow since World War II. “This… is London,” the signature opening of his inspiring broadcasts from the British capital during the Nazi blitz. I admired him enormously. More than any other broadcaster, he had set a standard for broadcast news unparalleled in the history of the industry. And he had just called me. Unbelievable! Only in America!
I took a late-night train to New York and, with a fresh shirt and tie, arrived at 485 Madison Avenue, then headquarters of CBS News, a few minutes before nine. Kay Campbell, Murrow’s secretary since his days reporting from London, greeted me with a smile. “No more than thirty minutes,” she said. “He’s got an exceptionally busy schedule today.”
“Yes, absolutely,” I replied. “I understand.”
At exactly 9:00 a.m., Murrow opened his office door and, cigarette in hand, welcomed me. “Come in, Professor.”
Murrow’s office was tastefully furnished: a sofa and a few chairs on one side, his large, dark- brown desk on the other, and on the empty wall behind his desk a plaque that read, “If I had more time, I would write you a shorter letter.” It was signed “Cicero.”
“Coffee? Tea?” he asked, as he sat down behind his desk.
“No, thank you.”
“Good,” he said, “then let’s get to it.” We discussed Soviet youth. Murrow asked the questions; I tried to answer them. He wanted to know what young people thought about Khrushchev, their rambunctious leader; about his famous speech the year before denouncing Stalin; about communism as a governing ideology. He also wanted to know whether many truly believed in communism, or merely mouthed an allegiance to communism as a gateway to a secure job. He also wanted to know what they felt about family, marriage, religion.
We were well beyond the thirty minutes Kay Campbell had allotted for our meeting. Murrow seemed indifferent to the deadline. He was clearly enjoying the conversation, and I was thrilled to be part of it. Throughout he called me Professor, and I called him Sir, setting a pattern that was to last for years.