My first visit to the Soviet Union was in the summer of 1959. At that time I was a graduate student in Harvard’s Russian Studies program, and I received my M.A. the next year. I had already worked for a year at the Washington Evening Star, then one of the leading afternoon newspapers in the country, but because of my interest in Soviet affairs, fanned by Stalin’s death just six years earlier, I decided to go to graduate school. While there, I got a slot in one of the first U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange programs. This one was for an exchange of “youth.” It was sponsored by the Lisle Fellowship group, and we ended up with about 25 “youth.”
It was a fascinating experience. The Soviet authorities tried to keep us as far apart from Russians as possible, but of course, it did not work very well. Since at that time few Americans visited Russia, whenever one of us walked in a street, we were surrounded by Russians asking all sorts of questions, most of them friendly.
On our second night in Moscow, we were told to take a bus to a movie theatre to watch a propaganda movie about how great the USSR was. On the way back to our sleeping quarters (a student dormitory with no Russians present), a young Russian about 21 years old approached me on the bus, and pointed to my blue sports shirt and asked in Russian: “Skolka Stoit?” [how much does it cost?] He obviously wanted to buy the shirt off my back and I had to turn him away.
As part of that early cultural exchange accord, both countries mounted exhibitions. The U.S. exhibit was in Sokolniki Park in Moscow, sort of its equivalent of Central Park in NYC. The Russians had one in New York’s Coliseum.
We were lucky enough to arrive in Moscow just as the American exhibition was about to open. Vice President Nixon was to open the exhibition for the United States and he was greeted there by Nikita Khrushchev, the colorful Soviet leader. Their meeting will always be remembered for an argument they had in the “model” American kitchen, with Khrushchev claiming it was more fancy than an ordinary kitchen.
What I remember from that exhibit, 59 years ago, were the many American companies jousting for publicity. Virtually every automobile manufacturer had cars on the grounds of the exhibit. Pepsi-Cola had a soda fountain and were handing out paper-cup samples of “Pepsi.” At that time in history there were no carbonated beverages sold in the Soviet Union. If people wanted a cold drink they lined up at Kvass machines to drink the fermented bread beverage.
At the Pepsi pavilion, young Komsomol types were spitting out the beverage, in an effort to persuade people from standing in line. Now, of course, the big manufacturers have moved into Russia with all their beverages.
In the summer of 1959, there actually was a good atmosphere for Soviet-American relations. I would like to mention, however, two encounters I had on the trip that have lasted with me for years. Our group took a long overnight train ride from Moscow to Gurzuf, a small town in the Crimea which that year was the locale of a world Communist youth camp.
We all had to share compartments with Russians and I was in one with a family, a father, mother and young son. For the first many hours our conversation was strained—in part no doubt to my inadequate Russian—but at one point, I mentioned I was Jewish and this changed the atmosphere tremendously. I was aware, of course, of the problems Soviet Jews had in Soviet society then, but the father took it upon himself to let me know how tough life really was. His wife kept trying to get him to stop talking, but he did not want me to leave without getting a full briefing.
Gurzuf was a small town on the Black Sea. It was a popular vacation place for Muscovites, who would get rooms in people’s houses. On one bright sunny day, some of my American friends decided to just sit on the rocky Gurzuf beach and relax. At one point, a young Russian, maybe about 30 years old, approached us and said to me in good English: “Are you Jewish?” When I said yes, he became quite animated and sat down next to me. He then related a story about how he was a professor at a medical institute and his research specialty was cancer of the eyes. He also mentioned that his father had been a distinguished professor who had been arrested in Stalin’s time as part of the so-called “Jewish plot,” but luckily he was released upon Stalin’s death in 1953.
He explained that the only other scholar in the world who had written on this subject was a professor at Columbia University. But, he explained, if he wrote the professor directly, he would get in trouble with Soviet authorities. But, he added, if the professor wrote him first, he could get a dialogue going. So, he asked me to deliver a letter. I actually did so. I do not remember the names of the two academics. But I felt I did a good deed.
Upon returning to America at the end of August 1959, I talked to Charles Seib, who sort of ran things at The Star, and he asked me to come to Washington to help cover Khrushchev’s first visit to the United States in early September. I did so, and wrote some inconsequential articles about the Soviet press corps covering the visit. I also wrote articles for the Star’s “Teen Section” which appeared weekly about Soviet young people.
Khrushchev’s visit was of course the main story of the day. He toured the U.S. farm areas and went on to Hollywood. In Hollywood, he got into a spat with the head of Twentieth Century Fox, and threw a tantrum when he was told he could not visit Disneyland because of security concerns. But upon his return to Washington he and Eisenhower met at Camp David for talks. Eisenhower was due to repay the visit but it was never held because of the shooting down of the U-2 reconnaissance plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers on May Day 1960. That made it impossible for Eisenhower to visit Russia, and led to years of tension in relations.
I arrived back in Washington in June 1960 and rejoined The Star.I did not know what to expect, but it turned out that The Star was eager to use my knowledge of the Soviet Union to augment the coverage in the paper.
(to be continued)
