Despite a persistent fever, the day Szilard wrote Khrushchev he checked out of Memorial Hospital with Trude and rode by taxi to Idlewild (now Kennedy), New York’s international airport, for an overnight flight to London. During the last leg of the trip, several members of the American Pugwash group said they were nervous about their first visit to Russia. Talking among themselves, they wondered what treatment they might expect from their Soviet hosts and from the notorious secret police. Szilard tried to put the group at ease.
“You know,” he said, “in a socialist country everything is better organized. That has bad points and good points.
“The bad point is if you go into a toilet the chances are you’ll probably end up saying, ‘Goddammit! There’s no toilet paper in here!’ The good point is that about three minutes later you’ll hear a knock on the door. Someone will be bringing you toilet paper.”17
When the Americans arrived at Moscow’s airport, their Soviet hosts, acting very formal with foreign visitors, met the party and asked, “Who is the leader of your delegation?” The Americans had not thought to choose one and for some moments looked perplexed.
“We are all leaders,” Szilard announced. The Americans laughed, but their Russian hosts did not like his answer. They still needed a leader and from then on considered Szilard head of the US delegation.18 As a result, Szilard was the designated leader and was treated lavishly by his hosts. His suite at the Metropol Hotel had a high-ceilinged living room, a large bedroom, and a bathroom with a huge tub. He also had the prettiest interpreter and the biggest car.
In Szilard’s suite that first evening he, Trude, Bulletin editor Ruth Adams, and several other Americans met for a party. They were all still nervous about the trip but also exhilarated by thoughts about the meeting that would begin in a few hours. They shared an optimism about being in the Soviet Union at all, and they saw the conference as a positive first step toward attaining something concrete in nuclear arms control. Toasts and laughter mingled with moments of serious discussion until well after midnight.19
For most participants, the Pugwash Conference that began the next morning seemed somber and boring. The gloom of Moscow’s winter helped set the tone, for the sun did not edge over the snow-topped roofs until around 10:00 A.M. and set by midafternoon. Gone were the freewheeling summertime talks in small groups at remote seaside cottages or mountain resorts. Here participants filed into a long, bare-walled room for the opening session and sat on tightly spaced chairs at two narrow tables. The hosts at the Soviet Academy of Sciences seemed eager to demonstrate how rational and responsible they could be in their own capital city, but to some Americans they appeared pompous and inflexible.
At first, one Russian participant even seemed deranged. Every few minutes the famous aircraft designer Andrei N. Tupolev rose from his chair and paced the aisles, muttering odin, the Russian word for “one,” over and over. Some Americans thought the old man crazy or senile, although he was then only in his early seventies. But a Russian colleague explained that Tupolev walked around every fifteen minutes as a longtime habit, one developed to preserve his sanity when in solitary confinement during a Stalinist purge. And odin, they said, was Tupolev’s terse way of stating that all nuclear weapons should be reduced to one bomb, although he did not say which country should have it.20
Every move was carefully planned. After breakfast at the Metropol, delegates walked or were bused a dozen blocks to Dom Mir, or “House of Peace,” where discussions began promptly at nine-thirty. At twelve- thirty, the group returned to the Metropol for lunch. Then it was back to Dom Mir for an afternoon session that lasted until five-thirty. Next came a reception, a dinner, or a visit to the ballet. The food was always rich and heavy, which Szilard loved but other Americans found unappetizing. The vodka and wine flowed. The Russian hosts were obviously trying to please their guests, but somehow their formality, the scrutiny by so many local officials, and the enlarged size of the gathering (in all seventy-five scientists from fifteen countries) worked against the creative discussions that had been a feature of earlier Pugwash meetings. As a result, too many things went unsaid, too many thoughts went unfinished, and many participants seemed weary and frustrated—a disappointing contrast to the high hopes they had borne to Moscow.
Historically, the meeting did lead to results, but as often happened, from actions taken behind the scenes. Two American participants would soon join the incoming Kennedy administration—Jerome Wiesner as science adviser and Walt W. Rostow as deputy special assistant to the president for national security affairs—and for them the week in Moscow offered a personal introduction to their Soviet counterparts. One day, when Wiesner tried to telephone Washington, he discovered there was no direct link; his calls had to be relayed through European and American cities. This gave the new hot-line proposal urgency and helped advance that idea within the Kennedy administration.
Informal discussions with Russian scientists also highlighted a striking imbalance in the deployment of US and Soviet nuclear forces. At the time, the United States was committed to expanding its submarine-launched nuclear warheads as part of a “triad” of weapons based on land, in the air, and at sea. Some of the Americans urged their Russian counterparts to consider doing the same thing—in the name of strategic stability— and before long, submarine-launched missiles did become official Soviet policy.21 Another day, Wiesner was able to begin arrangements for the release of US B-47 pilots then held by the Soviets.
For Szilard, an erratic participant at most conferences, being in Moscow was an opportunity to talk with people, preferably one-to-one, and especially a chance to meet again with Khrushchev. Szilard attended most formal receptions and dinners, sometimes exchanging cheery toasts and quips, but he participated in few discussion sessions.22 He preferred to take his interpreter and driver around Moscow, looking up friends and acquaintances.
On one excursion Szilard visited the conference participant Nikolai N. Semenov, a physicist and physical chemist who had won the 1956 Nobel Prize in chemistry for research in chemical and kinetic chain reactions and the study of explosions. A tall, thin man with a trim mustache, Semenov met Szilard in the director’s study at the Institute of Radiation Chemistry. There the two discussed radioactivity caused by pairing protons, and Szilard asked questions enthusiastically. Later, in Semenov’s apartment in another wing of the institute building, he picked up a large cast-iron ashtray from the piano and handed it to Szilard. “This comes to you from your friend at MIT, Charles Coryell,” Semenov said. “He sent it in advance of your arrival in Moscow.” At first puzzled, Szilard studied the heavy object, then beamed a smile. The piece was adorned with a large dolphin. Before their dinner party ended that evening, Szilard presented a dolphin gift of his own: a Russian translation of excerpts from his book.23
From the Metropol Hotel, Szilard wrote Khrushchev, trying to arrange a meeting and offering to raise “a rather interesting possibility” that the Soviet Union might employ “to take the initiative and to take steps to stop the cold war. . . .”24 Khrushchev had planned to meet the Pugwash delegates, but when he canceled because of illness, Szilard continued to try for a private get-together.
At the discussion sessions he did attend, Szilard made few comments— a contrast to his ebullient performances at earlier Pugwash conferences. With Rostow as chairman one afternoon Szilard read as his “paper” excerpts from The Voice of the Dolphins. He tried to be provocative, but the meeting’s tone stayed serious, and he fell into making distinctions and quibbles.25 Szilard’s deep irony so confused a Chinese delegate that he took seriously the excerpts.
“I particularly dislike what he said about China,” Chou Pei-yuan complained. “That such an article could have been presented as a scien tific paper is to me a mockery of science, a mockery of the Pugwash Conference. Will Professor Szilard please excuse me for my frankness?” In particular, Szilard’s passages about Sino-Indian relations “are extremely incorrect and are in reality slanders.” Chou advised Szilar
d “to withdraw this book immediately from circulation for the sake of peace.”26 In his story Szilard had written, among other things, that between 1960 and 1985 China tried to extend communism to India, “but after ten years of Communist rule in India it began to dawn on the Chinese that the success of their own regime in China may have been to a large extent due to the civic virtues of the Chinese, which the Indians were totally lacking.”27
Donald G. Brennan, an MIT mathematician and nuclear strategist, praised Szilard’s “forceful perception” of arms-control problems at another session, referring especially to his understanding of the need for both flexibility and communication. Citing The Voice of the Dolphins, Brennan said,
Although these writings are widely known among students of arms control, this perception has not been widely recognized because Szilard’s papers have treated these functions in a rather implicit and allegorical manner, while explicitly discussing certain other matters (primarily inspection by public reporting and a bizarre form of a limited retaliation doctrine) that are largely unrelated to the basic problems of flexibility and communication.
The “inspection” scheme he probably had in mind involved international agencies paying scientists $1 million to report their country’s secret nuclear tests. The “bizarre” retaliation was, no doubt, Szilard’s idea for a “list” of cities to be traded in a nuclear war.28
If feelings were strained, and hopes frustrated, during this first Soviet Pugwash meeting, nevertheless, an air of camaraderie filled the main hall at the Soviet Academy of Sciences on the last night of the conference. Physicist William Higinbotham, a lively and politically active veteran of the Manhattan Project, brought his accordion to Moscow, and at the academy, Topchiev called him to the stage. Higinbotham warmed up the crowd with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.” Soon a Russian joined in, pounding on a grand piano. Together they played the “Internationale.” Higinbotham then “called” a few American square dances. Other dances followed, and the evening ended with the delegates swaying arm in arm and singing “Auld Lang Syne.”29
But when his colleagues left for home on December 5, Szilard stayed on at the Metropol, still awaiting Khrushchev’s reply about a meeting. In his suite Szilard tinkered with the Dolphins manuscript and other drafts.30 A week passed, and a second, with still no word from Khrushchev. At the academy, Topchiev could only say the premier was ill. Finally, on December 20, Szilard wrote to Khrushchev with regrets that he was not well and that the two would likely not meet. Still, Szilard volunteered to stay on in Moscow for a few more days.
In this letter Szilard said he was trying to think up “some simple move” by the Soviet Union that might help to “bring the cold war to an end.” In a scheme as odd as the Humphrey-campaign donation he had posed to Kennedy, Szilard now suggested that Khrushchev make a “bridal gift” to the incoming American president, who will face “a somewhat embarrassing problem” of an “outflow of gold” when he takes office in January. “What would happen,” Szilard asked Khrushchev, “if you were to offer to him on behalf of the Soviet Union to loan the United States three to four billion dollars of gold for a period of three to four years?” Szilard said he had asked Rostow about this idea during the Pugwash meeting. “Professor Rostow thought that if this offer were to be made publicly, it would probably cause resentment,” Szilard wrote. “But if it were made privately and if it were accepted by Kennedy, then this could be a very good thing. Naturally, Professor Rostow was not able to predict what Kennedy’s reaction would be.”31
Szilard lingered in Moscow a few days more and, while waiting, sent Khrushchev flowers. No reply ever came from Khrushchev about the “bridal gift” of gold, but the Soviet premier, speaking through Ambassador Menshikov in Washington, did thank Szilard for the flowers a few months later.
Just before the Western Christmas, Szilard and Trude left Moscow, flying through Kiev to Vienna. From there Szilard telephoned his boyhood friend Josef Litván. “Come to Vienna,” Szilard said. “I will be here for a day or two and we can talk.” Litván urged Szilard to visit Budapest, but he refused. He would never return to Hungary, Szilard said, because he feared the Fascists. They had hunted him as a young man in the wake of the Béla Kun regime in 1919. They had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Szilard insisted that he would never take the chance of being near them again.32
From Vienna, Szilard also telephoned Inge Feltrinelli, the wife of Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and a friend of Eva Zeisel’s, whom he had met years before in New York.
“How is the weather in Milano?” asked Szilard.
“But Leo,” she said, surprised and delighted to hear his voice, “I heard you were dying in New York City.”
Soon the Szilards were on a plane to Italy. From Milan the four drove toward the Piedmont range, to the Feltrinellis’ imposing Castello di Villadeati, near Asti. There Szilard, Trude, and their hosts walked the sunny terraces and snow-covered lawns, lounged in the Renaissancestyle villa’s imposing rooms, and joked and relaxed. Szilard recalled with Inge their New York friends. With Giangiacomo, Szilard talked about biogenetics, the Soviet Union, and the Italian Communist party, which Feltrinelli then worked in as an active member. The two men also chatted for hours about books. The Feltrinellis, who had first published Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago in the West, would publish the Italian edition of Szilard’s Dolphins in 1962.33
In this hilltop retreat Szilard ended the fateful year 1960 enjoying as he had for months a life of comfort. His health improving, his hopes for the new American administration rising, his holiday hosts a delight to be with, his wife by his side, Szilard could later look back on this year as one of his happiest and most productive. How long, and where, he might live were for the moment questions of minor concern. In the photographs that survive from this visit to the villa, Szilard grins boyishly, as he rarely did in any other place or time.
CHAPTER 28
Is Washington a Market for Wisdom?
1961–1963
He was still alive. That much Leo Szilard knew, and savored, as he returned to New York City from Europe in February 1961. He felt well, and tests at Memorial Hospital confirmed that his bladder cancer was still in remission a year after radiation treatment was completed. He could not know how long he might live or what to do with the indefinite time that was still his, but just being alive was itself a daily reward.
The Szilards moved into the Hotel Webster, an inexpensive but comfortable place on West Forty-fifth Street, and began calling on friends. The galley proofs for The Voice of the Dolphins had to be checked, but beyond that pleasant chore there was little for them to do now that Szilard’s illness and his hospital room were no longer the center of so much attention. Still living from their suitcases, the Szilards reviewed the new medical-test data and wondered what they might try next. During her year’s absence to attend her husband in New York, Trude’s teaching post at the University of Colorado Medical School had been abolished. She had become unhappy with her work there even before Szilard’s illness, so Trude had little desire to return to Denver.1 Chicago held little appeal for Szilard and none for Trude. Where would they live, and what would each of them do next? They began looking around New York, a city they both enjoyed, a city now rich with concerned friends and acquaintances from their busy year spent at Memorial.
From Eva Zeisel, Szilard heard that her brother had a large apartment to rent on Central Park West. Szilard and Trude went to take a look. Perhaps, they thought, this could be their first “home” together, or, at least, a shared pied-à-terre. As they walked through the spacious apartment, Szilard immediately liked the large living room, with its wide French doors and dramatic entryway. “It matched his bourgeois tastes,” Zeisel later reflected. Her nephews and nieces, and their teenage friends, were also around that day, filling the empty rooms with playful conversation and giving Szilard an idea.
“I could see myself seated here, greeting guests, tal
king with young people,” Szilard thought aloud as they stood in the living room. But the apartment frightened Trude. “Too big,” she said as she paced from room to room, shaking her head. ’Too much space. Too much to dust and keep clean.” After the visit, Szilard and Zeisel stood on the front steps, chatting.
“This won’t do for us,” he said, looking disappointed. “Trude is looking for a place to live in. I’m looking for a place to die in.”2
Later that February, Szilard was still fatalistic as he spoke on CBS-TV to interviewer Mike Wallace. “Right now,” Szilard said, “I feel perfectly well, and I’m able to work. I don’t think this will last forever, but for the time being I feel well.” Is he optimistic? Wallace asked. “The doctors can’t prophesy. This is a disease which can recur, and I don’t think I should make ten years’ plans,” Szilard answered.
Asked if he “felt any guilt” about his part in beginning the nuclear arms race, Szilard said no, “because I was always aware of the dangers involved and I just chose the lesser of two evils. I thought we must build the bomb, because if we don’t, the Germans will have it first . . . and force us to surrender.” This, Szilard admitted, proved to be a false assumption. “But you cannot do better in life than to try to find out what the situation is and then act on that basis. I never blame myself for having guessed wrong.” Wallace recalled Einstein’s comment about Szilard, made in 1930 when considering the idea of the Bund. Szilard, he said, “may be inclined to exaggerate the significance of reason in human affairs.”
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