Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  65“How good” . . . “even he knows”: VCL, 59.

  66Rosalie Leventritt: Gary Graffman provides a winning portrait of the belle of New York music in I Really Should Be Practicing (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 147–49.

  66“He’s going to win”: Gary and Naomi Graffman, interview with the author, August 21, 2014. Except where indicated, my interview is the source for the following quotations from the Graffmans.

  67Abram Chasins: The former pianist and composer entertainingly recounts the episode in VCL, 24–27. The competition was held in March 1954; unaccountably, Chasins places it in the fall.

  67“You won’t forget to pray for me”: Ibid., 60.

  68“He really loves music”: Ibid., 26.

  68“May I explain”: Ibid.

  68“Would y’all mahnd”: Graffman, I Really Should Be Practicing, 150.

  68Van went home to the Spicers’: The following scenes are drawn from SH; VCL, 61–62; Wallace, Century of Music-Making, 271.

  69Juilliard diploma recital: The original program is in VCJA.

  69“My best love to you, darling”: Van Cliburn to Rosina Lhévinne, January 13, 1954, Folder 20, Box 2, RLP.

  69“I won’t even try”: Van Cliburn to Rosina Lhévinne, June 16, 1955, Folder 20, Box 2, RLP.

  70“Most promising student I have had”: Folder 10, Box 27, RLP.

  70Van was missing: James Mathis recounts the story in VC, 72–73.

  70surveyed the parterre: The Graffmans’ account is drawn from I Really Should Be Practicing, 151, and my interview with Gary and Naomi.

  71“This is one . . . already been there”: TM1. The same night Van’s setting of Psalm 123, “Unto Thee I Lift Up Mine Eyes,” premiered at Calvary Baptist Church.

  72“that extraordinary guy”: VCL, 66.

  72Franz Liszt: Ibid., quoting Donald Steinfirst’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review.

  72“Tear out this name”: Ibid., 28. The review, in the Denver Post, was by Allen Young.

  73“create on the whole globe”: John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 59.

  73strontium 90: Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 352–53.

  73milk teeth: Walter Schneir, “Strontium-90 in U.S. Children,” The Nation, April 25, 1959.

  74“Those who engage . . . government office”: Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic, 1999), 95.

  74Donna Sanders: The account of the relationship and Donna’s remarks are found in her interview with Time’s Serrell Hillman; see SH.

  74Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts: TM1.

  75Buckingham Hotel: Van’s Juilliard Placement file gives his address as Buckingham Hotel, 101 West Fifty-Seventh Street, Apt 1104; according to Hillman’s interview, Van had moved there by spring 1955.

  75old gospel hymns: VCL, 71.

  75Jean Heafner: SH contains her interview with Hillman.

  76Mark Schubart, was gay: Steve Swayne, Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America’s Musical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 62.

  77listed the salaries: “The Economic Situation of the Performer,” quoted in Andrea Olmstead, Juilliard: A History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 164.

  77$1,000 per performance: VCL, 68.

  77his parents’ help: VC-2159 (Reel no. 33), Van Cliburn interviewed by Peter Rosen, TCU.

  78set about decorating: SH; VCL, 68–69.

  78pot roast sandwich: VCL, 83.

  78spent his lunch money on bouquets: SH.

  78“Would you call Van for me, please”: Gary and Naomi Graffman, interview with the author; I Really Should Be Practicing, 312–13; James Barron, “Old Acquaintances Remember Cliburn,” NYT, February 27, 2013.

  78Naomi was feeling flush: After Moscow, Van wrote her a check for one million dollars in repayment with interest for all the burgers. She did not cash it.

  79went berserk: Mary Russell Rogers, “A Midnight Conversation with Van Cliburn,” FWS-T, May 18, 1997.

  79Naomi Graffman . . . tailed him: Interview with the author.

  79help of a Juilliard classmate: VCG.

  80floating excerpts from Scripture: By the end of 1954, the Bible Balloon Project had floated 30,000 balloons carrying 163,000 Bible texts into Russia, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia from secret fields in West Germany.

  80“the singing of a beautiful hymn”: Dwight D. Eisenhower to Secretary of State, memorandum, October 24, 1953; Eisenhower, Dwight D., Correspondence, 1953(1); Box 50, C. D. Jackson Papers, 1931–67; DDEPL.

  80emergency presidential fund: The President’s Emergency Fund for Participation in International Affairs.

  80made Ike’s fund a permanent body: The International Cultural Exchange and Trade Fair Participation Act of 1956. The previous year, the State Department asked for twenty-two million dollars, but the House Appropriations Committee reduced the figure by half.

  80twelve orchestras: Including NBC’s Symphony of the Air, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic. Ten were approved but not used; thirty-eight were turned down.

  80“showing the gang warfare”: MMP, February 19, 1958, Folder 5, Box 2, WSP.

  81“We are not planning”: MMP, December 8, 1954, Folder 1, Box 2, WSP.

  5: THE SECRET SPEECH

  82“Stalin was a very distrustful man”: Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 102.

  84“horrifyingly empty eyes”: Richard Lourie, Russia Speaks: An Oral History from the Revolution to the Present (New York: E. Burlingame, 1991), 188.

  84“guarding a temple”: Tzouliadis, Forsaken, 320.

  84“Everyone who rejoices”: William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 96.

  84exceeded his quota: Ibid., 100.

  86“the most destructive war in history”: J. P. D. Dunbabin, International Relations Since 1945, vol. 2, The Cold War: The Great Powers and Their Allies (London: Longman, 1994), 233.

  86“the most dangerous person”: John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 239.

  86“The usually decorous elite”: Welles Hangen, “Boston Symphony Gets Standing Ovation at First Concert in Moscow Conservatory,” NYT, September 9, 1956. That year the Metropolitan Opera also toured Europe with CIA money.

  86“‘Culture’ is no longer a sissy word”: Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? 225.

  86“reserved for criminals”: Elie Abel, “U.S. Twits Soviet on Its Own Fingerprinting Rules,” NYT, June 2, 1956. The Moiseyev Dance Company finally made it to America while Van was competing in Moscow, thrilling audiences nationwide.

  87“might be ready”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 90.

  88“not cucumbers”: “The New Line,” Time, June 6, 1960.

  89The showdown: My reconstruction draws on NKCS, 228–47; Chuev, Molotov Remembers, 346–60; Avis Bohlen, “Khrushchev and the ‘Anti-Party Group,’” working paper CAESAR XV, April 27, 1962, Office of Current Intelligence, CIA, foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/14/caesar-30.pdf.

  89“rightist deviation . . . Trotskyist and opportunist”: Bohlen, “Khrushchev and the ‘Anti-Party Group,’” 18.

  90“Only you are completely pure” . . . “Stalin’s shit”: Montefiore, Stalin, 667–68.

  90“You are young”: Bohlen, “Khrushchev and the ‘Anti-Party Group,’” 23.

  91World Festival of Youth and Students: For its politics, see Pia Koivunen, “The World Youth Festival as an Arena of the ‘Cultural Olympics’: Meanings of Competition in Soviet Culture in the 1940s and 1950s,” in Katalin Miklóssy and Melanie Ilic, eds., Competition in Socialist Society (Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2014), 125–41.

  91CIA plants: TOML, 175; John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 92–93. For the American co
ntingent’s experiences, see Max Frankel, “Voices of America in Moscow,” NYT, August 11, 1957; Frankel, “Moscow Reality Cools U.S. Youth,” NYT, July 30, 1957.

  91Three million Muscovites: William J. Jorden, “Gala Parade Opens Moscow Youth Fete,” NYT, July 29, 1957.

  92“Brodvay”: Harrison Salisbury, “‘Lost Generation’ Baffles Soviet; Nihilistic Youths Shun Ideology,” NYT, February 9, 1962. In 1990 the street reverted to its original name, Ulitsa Tverskaya.

  92“Why should anyone”: Harrison E. Salisbury, “Russia Reviewed: Life of Soviet Common Man Is a Constant Struggle,” NYT, September 24, 1954.

  92“like parrots”: “Soviet Youth Gets Lecture on Sloth,” NYT, March 21, 1954.

  92educated hooligans: Harry Schwartz, “Hooligans Plague Schools in Soviet,” NYT, April 16, 1954.

  92“aristocrats and other loafers and hooligans”: Ibid. The speaker was Komsomol national secretary A. N. Shelepin; Malenkov and other top officials attended.

  93“Today you’re playing jazz”: As recalled by Lyuba Vinogradova.

  93efforts to jam it: By the late 1950s the Kremlin was spending more on jamming Western broadcasts than on domestic and international broadcasting combined.

  93“told wild tales”: TOML, 164.

  93one young Russian: Alexander Osipovich, “Fifty Years Since Sax Hit the Soviet Union,” Moscow Times, July 25, 2007.

  93“Moscow Nights”: Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi and Mikhail Matusovsky wrote the song as “Leningradskie Vechera” (Leningrad Nights) in 1955; at the Ministry of Culture’s behest, they rewrote it as “Podmoskovnye Vechera” (Evenings in Moscow Oblast).

  94originated with the Union of Soviet Composers: The sequence of events is unclear, but the idea seems to have been raised at the Second All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers held between March 28 and April 5, 1957; the Congress was delayed for a year to digest the upheaval of the Twentieth Party Congress and the Secret Speech, giving its doctrinaire leaders time to perform an about-face.

  94made him feel sick: Maya Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, trans. Antonia W. Bouis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 181.

  94arts spending: The following figures are from Howard Taubman, “Challenge for U.S. Seen in Soviet Culture,” NYT, July 4, 1958.

  6: THE RED MOON

  97“We are bringing you”: The Sputnik Moment, documentary film dir. David Hoffman, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJnt3xW2Fc.

  98“REDS WIN SPACE RACE WITH MAN-MADE MOON”: New York World-Telegram, October 5, 1957.

  98“SIGHT RED BABY MOON OVER US”: Daily News (New York), October 5, 1957.

  98“ORB SPANS U.S. 7 TIMES A DAY”: Ibid., October 6, 1957.

  98“What went wrong”: Charles Van Doren, video clip in The Sputnik Moment.

  98“This is a weight”: Ibid.

  98“slag heap”: Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 14.

  98“If Russia wins dominance”: Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, video clip in The Sputnik Moment.

  98“In a masterpiece”: NBC radio, audio recording in The Sputnik Moment.

  99“The time has clearly come”: Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), xvi.

  100“Our sputniks are circling the world”: Nikita Khrushchev, video clip in The Sputnik Moment.

  100growing crisis: Many documents detailing the Eisenhower administration’s response to Sputnik are accessible online via the Eisenhower Library at https://eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/sputnik.html.

  100“OH WHAT A FLOPNIK”: Daily Herald (London), December 7, 1957.

  100“KAPUTNIK,” “DUDNIK,” and “STAYPUTNIK”: Respectively Daily Express, Christian Science Monitor, and News Chronicle. The NYT recounted some of the international coinages in a December 8, 1957, article entitled “Enoughnik of This.”

  100“In 1957’s twelve months”: Time, January 6, 1958. Altogether, Khrushchev would appear on the cover of Time nine times.

  101Van was despondent: Mark Schubart says so in SH; in the same dispatch, Schuyler Chapin claims that Van’s career lull was deliberate policy on CAMI’s part.

  102“Wait and See”: Graffman, I Really Should Be Practicing, 97.

  102“Ugh, I look so white”: VCL, 82.

  103crossed the street: As told to Howard Aibel by Rosina Lhévinne and recounted to the author.

  103“Oh . . . The ocean”: SH. The same dispatch quotes Schulyer Chapin’s account of Van’s near drowning; Chasins gives a similar account in VCL, 73–74.

  104Billy Graham’s Crusade: For the revival meetings, see Curtis Mitchell, God in the Garden: The Story of the Billy Graham New York Crusade (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957); and Uta Andrea Balbier, “Billy Graham’s Crusades in the 1950s: Neo-Evangelicalism Between Civil Religion, Media, and Consumerism,” Bulletin of the GHI 44 (Spring 2009): 71–80.

  104“master-minded by Satan”: Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Balti-more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 81.

  104Jerome Lowenthal . . . met him: Tim Madigan, “Van Cliburn: ‘The Texan Who Conquered Russia,’” FWS-T, February 27, 2013.

  104Doctors Hospital: TM2.

  105draft board evaluation: Ibid.

  105“He has won many awards”: MMP, October 17, 1956, Folder 3, Box 2, WSP.

  105fear crept over him: “I was at my lowest professional ebb,” Van wrote in an article entitled “What Is Success?” in Guideposts Magazine, February 1959. “I had run up some sizeable debts, which my parents knew nothing about. The danger then was not to let fear overwhelm me.”

  105Olegna Fuschi: The story is captured in Rosina Lhévinne’s notes for an interview, Box 28, RPL. Rosina also records her instant reaction that Van was the only person she would encourage to go to Moscow, together with Van’s response and her campaign to persuade him. Further details are given in VCL, 92, and VC, 92.

  105Washington had vetoed it: MMP, February 8, 1955, and January 17, 1956, Folders 2 and 3, Box 2, WSP.

  105Fuschi was turned down: MMP, May 22, 1957, Folder 2, Box 2, WSP.

  106always reliable Emil Gilels: Possibly Gilels was not as attuned to the Soviet regime as he appeared; see Norman Lebrecht, “The Secret Torments of Emil Gilels,” December 31, 2010, http://slippedisc.com/2010/12/the_secret_torments_of_emil_gi/.

  106“Van”: VCL, 92. The quotations in the following paragraph are from the same source.

  107“You must go, Van”: VCG.

  107“Oh Van, you must go”: Ibid.

  107“But you can’t do that, Rosina”: VCL, 95.

  108“an agrarian country”: “American Sputnik.”

  108“The gold medal”: Rosina Lhévinne notes for an interview, Box 28, RLP.

  108“Dear Van, I beg of you, please go”: VCL, 96.

  108Schubart wrote to Van: Letter of November 13, 1957, Folder 5, Box 14, JAD.

  109He followed up with a letter: Mark Schubart to David Wodlinger, November 15, 1957, Folder 5, Box 14, JAD.

  109formal letter: Mark Schubart to William Judd, December 10, 1957, Folder 5, Box 14, JAD.

  109talented enough and willing to go: Mark Schubart, in SH.

  109“Take it”: VC, 94.

  109Russian or Soviet composers: For the semifinals, there was a choice of a prelude and fugue by Taneyev, Tchaikovsky-Catoire, Tchaikovsky, or Shostakovich; four pieces from a choice of sonatas by Russian or Soviet composers Alexandrov, Balakirev, Glazunov, Kabalevsky, Myaskovsky, Medtner, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Shostakovich, or Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; a movement from Tchaikovsky’s Sonata in G Major or C-sharp Minor; and a work by a contemporary composer, preferably from the candidate’s country.

  110bided his time . . . until 1954: In the Washington Times of August 21, 1994, Van is quoted as saying, “I began learning it in 1953, when I was 17, unbeknownst to Mrs. Lhévinne.” But Van turned seventeen in July 1951. The same piece adds that he performed it for the first time “that summer with conductor Walter Hendl at the Chautauqua
festival in New York.” Yet Van played the Tchaikovsky B-flat Minor Concerto with the Chautauqua Orchestra on August 9, 1953, and Rachmaninoff’s Third in summer 1954. Most likely he started working on the Rachmaninoff early in 1954, when he was nineteen, and performed it for the first time that summer, when he had just turned twenty.

  110“I won’t charge you now”: Martin Canin, interview with the author. Rosina’s lodger and domestic helper, Fiorella Miotto, later married Canin, who was Rosina’s assistant from 1959 to 1976.

  110three, sometimes four or five hours: Dowis, “Rosina: A Memoir,” 373.

  110“We have only three months”: VCL, 97.

  110“Without hard work”: “‘Vanya’ Cliburn: Popular Does Not Mean Good,” Argumenty I Fakty 39 (September, 2004). In the same interview, Van says that Rosina “forced” him to work nine to ten hours a day.

  110“HAVE JUST MAILED MY APPLICATION”: This and the following cables and letters exchanged between Van and Shostakovich, together with Van’s application materials, are preserved in Fonds 214, no. 20, GM.

  111flare-up of colitis: “All-American Virtuoso.”

  111convinced it was a fix: My account of Liu Shikun’s story is largely based on my interviews with him, conducted March 12 and 14, 2015. Liu claims he was the audience favorite in Budapest from the start and that the organizing committee gave him a precious lock of Liszt’s hair from the Liszt museum by way of an apology. The political currents are hard to untangle: Hungary was of course on the brink of an anti-Soviet revolution.

  112all-union selection marathon: The process is recounted in N. Mikhailov, “Report from the Ministry of Culture of the USSR on the Results of the Tchaikovsky International Piano and Violin Competition,” April 22, 1958, CCCP&C, 55.

  112Baku . . . Vilnius: Betty Blair, “The Era of Van Cliburn,” Azerbaijan International (Fall 1995), http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/33_folder/33_arti cles/33_vancliburn.html.

  113Ashkenazy refused, too: Vladimir Ashkenazy did not remember this episode when I interviewed him on September 3, 2014, but his refusal is recorded in Mikhailov’s report in CCCP&C. After Van’s sensational victory, some regretted their decision to cry off: violinist Eduard Grach entered the next competition in 1962, winning fifth prize.