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美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Year I Was Peter The Great': A Young American In Soviet Russia

时间:2017-10-16 03:14来源:互联网 提供网友:nan   字体: [ ]
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

At age 87, Marvin Kalb has spent a great many interesting years. He was a Moscow bureau chief and a diplomatic correspondent for CBS and for NBC. He's been the host of NBC's "Meet The Press" and the author of many books. And his new book is a memoir1 of one especially interesting year - 1956. Kalb was a graduate student doing research in Moscow as part of the U.S. diplomatic mission to what was then the Soviet2 Union. And for reasons that we'll explain in a moment, his book is called "The Year I Was Peter The Great."

Marvin Kalb, welcome to the program.

MARVIN KALB: Thank you, Robert.

SIEGEL: And first, let's set the world stage here for a moment. 1956. It's a decade after the end of the second world war. The Cold War is underway. Joseph Stalin's been dead for three years, and his successor was a rough-hewn character named Nikita Khrushchev. And in early 1956, Khrushchev gave a famous secret speech denouncing Stalin, who to that point had been worshiped as a great wartime leader and modernizer3. Marvin Kalb, the speech was supposedly secret, but somehow all the people in Russia seemed to know at least part of what he'd said.

KALB: Because of the grapevine system in the old Soviet Union. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin, the impact was so enormous that people were seen in the auditorium4 taking nitroglycerin tablets. Some of them literally5 passed out. A number of them, when they got back to their hotel rooms, committed suicide because they were all associated with Stalin. But the impact which was so enormous to me was the impact on the Russian people. All of their lives, historically, they had never had a feeling of personal freedom. Everything was vested in the power of the vozhd, the great leader.

SIEGEL: Well, you were witness to something. As you describe it, you used to go to the reading room of the Lenin Library...

KALB: Oh, yes.

SIEGEL: ...To do research on the dissertation6 for the doctorate7 that you never actually finished. Is that right? And you would go there among students, mostly Russian students. Usually they were quiet. One evening, though, you describe an amazing scene. What happens?

KALB: What was amazing was you're right. Everything was very quiet. And suddenly one young man got up and, speaking not in a loud voice, began to say what Khrushchev had said against Stalin and then said, but why doesn't that apply to Khrushchev himself? And there was a gasp8, literally. You could hear a gasp. And then another person would stand up, and then a third, and then a fifth. Suddenly the entire room of hundreds of kids throwing copies of Pravda on the floor, denouncing Communism, denouncing Stalin, of course - that was now acceptable - but also denouncing Khrushchev.

I would go back night after night, and three out of five nights it was a repeat performance. And what was remarkable9, the police never intervened. So they must have got the word from on high that it was all right for these kids to denounce even Khrushchev.

SIEGEL: On the Fourth of July of 1956, the top Soviet leadership came to an American Independence Day party. The U.S. ambassador, Charles Chip Bohlen, was the host. And you, as a member of the diplomatic mission, you had an assigned role.

KALB: I did. At the time - I still am sort of - 6'3", thin. I had been in the United States Army. And I rose to the illustrious rank of PFC, private first class.

SIEGEL: (Laughter) Yeah.

KALB: And the ambassador says to me, you are going to have to look after marshal Georgy Zhukov, the great hero of the Battle of Stalingrad, the defense10 minister of the Soviet Union, the man who deals with nuclear weapons. And so the night before I read up everything I could at the embassy on Zhukov. And what I found out that was terribly important to me the next day was that he drank a lot of vodka. He arrives. I am introduced to him. And I begin to ask him questions about Stalingrad. He loved to talk about it.

Meanwhile, Tang, the butler of the ambassador whom I had briefed the day before, had a tray set up especially so that one corner of it was filled with vodka and the other corner with water. But they all looked alike. Tang set it up so that every time the marshal reached for a drink he invariably got vodka and I invariably got water.

SIEGEL: You downed a shot of water right there.

KALB: Shot of water, and he did a shot of vodka. After about 40 minutes he was getting a bit tipsy.

SIEGEL: (Laughter).

KALB: And so he grabbed me by the arm and walked me toward Nikita Khrushchev. And he said, Nikita Sergeyevich, I have finally found a young American who can drink like a Russian. Well, Khrushchev absolutely loved that line. And he looked up at me and he said, young man, how tall are you? I said, I'm six centimeters shorter than Peter the Great. He began to laugh. Everybody began to laugh. And from that moment on, even when I came back to Moscow for CBS, I was Peter the Great. That meant I could get close to Khrushchev when other reporters couldn't. And that was the power of the Russian czar Peter the Great (laughter).

SIEGEL: Now, in that year, by the time 1956 ended and this - what seemed like a great liberalization and great opening within the Soviet Union - by the end of it, Nikita Khrushchev is speaking in praise of Joseph Stalin.

KALB: That was one of the most disappointing moments in my life and, I think, in anybody who had spent any time in Russia in 1956. This thing called the thaw11, the way in which Khrushchev's attack on Stalin had the effect of liberalizing the society, it not only liberalized Soviet society. It liberalized the entire satellite world in Eastern Europe. And the effect was starting in Poland and then going on to Czechoslovakia and going on to Hungary. And there the Hungarian people went all the way. They wanted their freedom, which meant to them that they were able to vote, they could vote whom they wanted, they could have two parties, and they wanted to be independent of the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev then had a crucial decision. He could crack down on the Hungarian Revolution and end it, no matter how bloody12 that would have been, but he would have retained his personal power. Or he could have said to the Hungarians, go your own way. Have freedom. And what he did at the end of the year was not only re-embrace Stalin, but crack down and crush mercilessly the people who had risen to the promise of freedom that he himself had set loose.

And what the Russian people have learned in the last 50, 60 years, now with Putin, they live with their powerful vozhd, and they're happy with having a strong leader. But back in their minds is the memory of 1956. And what Putin is doing right now is saying, you Russians can have as much freedom as you like. You can talk about anything you like in your kitchen, in your bedroom with the pillows over your head. I don't care about any of that. But you will never talk against me. And that's that power that he still retains.

SIEGEL: Marvin Kalb's new memoir is called "The Year I Was Peter The Great." Marvin Kalb, thanks for talking with us.

KALB: Thank you, Robert.

(SOUNDBITE OF NIGHTMARES ON WAX'S "CHIME OUT")


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 memoir O7Hz7     
n.[pl.]回忆录,自传;记事录
参考例句:
  • He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
  • In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中,她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。
2 Soviet Sw9wR     
adj.苏联的,苏维埃的;n.苏维埃
参考例句:
  • Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
  • Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。
3 modernizer 16e8002a7a1c624d76c43fe2b54a96bb     
实现现代化的人
参考例句:
4 auditorium HO6yK     
n.观众席,听众席;会堂,礼堂
参考例句:
  • The teacher gathered all the pupils in the auditorium.老师把全体同学集合在礼堂内。
  • The stage is thrust forward into the auditorium.舞台向前突出,伸入观众席。
5 literally 28Wzv     
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实
参考例句:
  • He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
  • Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候,她不走到真正要昏厥了,决不肯坐下来。
6 dissertation PlezS     
n.(博士学位)论文,学术演讲,专题论文
参考例句:
  • He is currently writing a dissertation on the Somali civil war.他目前正在写一篇关于索马里内战的论文。
  • He was involved in writing his doctoral dissertation.他在聚精会神地写他的博士论文。
7 doctorate fkEzt     
n.(大学授予的)博士学位
参考例句:
  • He hasn't enough credits to get his doctorate.他的学分不够取得博士学位。
  • Where did she do her doctorate?她在哪里攻读博士?
8 gasp UfxzL     
n.喘息,气喘;v.喘息;气吁吁他说
参考例句:
  • She gave a gasp of surprise.她吃惊得大口喘气。
  • The enemy are at their last gasp.敌人在做垂死的挣扎。
9 remarkable 8Vbx6     
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的
参考例句:
  • She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
  • These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。
10 defense AxbxB     
n.防御,保卫;[pl.]防务工事;辩护,答辩
参考例句:
  • The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
  • The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。
11 thaw fUYz5     
v.(使)融化,(使)变得友善;n.融化,缓和
参考例句:
  • The snow is beginning to thaw.雪已开始融化。
  • The spring thaw caused heavy flooding.春天解冻引起了洪水泛滥。
12 bloody kWHza     
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染
参考例句:
  • He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
  • He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。
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