by Nigel Cliff
234“Play, please play”: “Mikoyan Moved to Tears as Cliburn Plays for Him” (AP), Milwaukee Journal, January 20, 1959.
234Van’s starring role: Harrison E. Salisbury, “Cliburn a Guest at Mikoyan Fete,” NYT, January 20, 1959.
234outraged housewife: Jacqueline Stevens Hughes to Mark Schubart, January 6, 1959, Folder 10, Box 17, JAD.
235“ahead of the entire planet”: Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, xv.
236stood and cheered: “Bolshoi Opening Hailed by Crowd,” NYT, April 17, 1959.
236those of the FBI: “Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, December 21, 1963.
236La Scala: “Cliburn Cheered at La Scala” (AP), NYT, June 17, 1959.
236attend the Soviet exhibition: Farnsworth Fowle, “Van Cliburn Sees Soviet Fair Here,” NYT, July 27, 1959; Victor Rosenberg, Soviet-American Relations, 1953–1960: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange During the Eisenhower Presidency (Jefferson, NC: Mc-Farland, 2005), 123.
236another fact the FBI duly recorded: “Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, December 21, 1963.
237“Divine indifference”: Brendan Gill and Donald Stewart, “Struggle,” The New Yorker, August 22, 1959.
237“Your music and ours”: Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in Moscow, CBS TV film, 1959.
237American National Exhibition: My account is based on Opening in Moscow, documentary dir. D. A. Pennebaker, 1959; “Nixon in U.S.S.R. Opening U.S. Fair, Clashes with Mr. K,” newsreel footage, Universal-International News, July 27, 1959, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIGTFK2LiXs; Dan I. Slobin, “Excerpts from a 1959 Journal: U.S. Exhibition in Moscow, 2009,” http://ihd.berkeley.edu/1959_Slobin_ US_Exhibition_Moscow.pdf; “50th Anniversary of the American Exhibits to the U.S.S.R.,” U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/rs/c26472.htm; Marilyn S. Kushner, “Exhibiting Art at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: Domestic Politics and Cultural Diplomacy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 6–26; Susan E. Reid, “Who Will Beat Whom? Soviet Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,” Kritika 9, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 855–904; Andrew Wulf, Moscow ’59: The ‘Sokolniki Summit’ Revisited (Los Angeles, CA: Figueroa Press, 2010); Gregory Feifer, “Fifty Years Ago, American Exhibition Stunned Soviets in Cold War,” July 23, 2009, http://www.rferl.org/content/Fifty_Years_Ago_American_Exhibition_Stunned_Soviets_in_Cold_War/1783913.html; NKCS, 320–26; May, Homeward Bound, 20–21; Taubman, Khrushchev, 417–18; Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 176–81; TOML, 172; William Safire, “The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen,” NYT, July 24, 2009; State Department documents 92–107 in FRUS X:1.
239“I felt like a fighter”: Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 258.
240“CATCH UP WITH AND OVERTAKE AMERICA”: TOML, 174. The slogan first appeared in 1957 in relation to cattle breeding, but during 1958, it came to be applied more broadly to the Soviet economy.
15: KHRUSHCHEV IN THE CAPITALIST DEN
241“Only people who refuse”: Khrushchev in America: Full Texts of the Speeches Made by N. S. Khrushchev on His Tour of the United States, September 15–27, 1959 (New York: Crosscurrents Press, 1960), 10.
241Khrushchev touched down: My account of the visit draws on primary sources, especially the memoirs of Khrushchev’s interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev (cited as YM); and also Eisenhower, White House Years, 432–49; Khrushchev in America; M. Kahrmalov and O. Vadeyev, eds., Face to Face with America: The Story of N. S. Khrushchev’s Visit to the USA, September 15–27, 1959 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960); and Henry Cabot Lodge, The Storm Has Many Eyes: A Personal Narrative (New York: Norton, 1973), 157–82. U.S. Government records and contemporary newspapers were also consulted. Among secondary literature, Peter Carlson, K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), was essential; also valuable were Richard F. Weingroff, “On the Road with Ike and Niki,” Public Roads 78, no. 6 (May/June, 2015), https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/15mayjun/04.cfm; Alekandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: Norton, 2006), 214–40; Taubman, Khrushchev, 396–441; and Kevin M. Singer, “Face-to-Face with the Red Menace: Opposition to the 1959 Khrushchev Visit,” Cold War Museum, http://www.coldwar.org/museum/documents/face-to-facewiththeredmenaceoppositiontothe1959khrushchevvisit.htm.
242“old vaudeville trouper”: Warren Rogers, New York Herald Tribune, quoted in Carlson, K Blows Top, 71.
242“not even the end of World War II”: “Red Press Balloons Khrushchev Welcome” (AP), Times (San Mateo, CA), September 16, 1959.
243“The next day? Even richer”: Gaddis, Cold War, 72.
243“jazzy pop combo”: Carlson, K Blows Top, 84.
243Washington Post noted: Maxine Cheshire, “Van May Play on Mr. K’s Red-Letter Day,” WP, September 20, 1959.
243FBI listening in: “Van Cliburn,” memorandum prepared for Secret Service, December 16, 1963, FBI (FOIA).
243“Third from left, Khrushchev”: Bruce Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth-Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 77.
244“stuck in some people’s throats:” Carlson, K Blows Top, 95.
244“What do you mean . . . to the moon”: YM.
244“murderer”: Carlson, K Blows Top, 85.
244“So what”: YM.
245“If you don’t want to listen . . . great Soviet State”: Taubman, Khrushchev, 429.
245“If you’ve seen one skyscraper”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, trans. and ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 381.
245“conical shape”: Tzouliadis, Forsaken, 324.
245“We the workers”: Jeffrey Meyers, The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 179–80.
246“his eyes lit up”: “Nikita Is No Old ‘Softie,’ Shirley Says,” Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1960.
246“Just imagine, I, a premier”: Khrushchev’s famous rant is recorded in several variants by Sukhodrev, Kharlamov and Vadeyev, in Khrushchev in America, and in press articles. See also Carlson, K Blows Top, 158–59.
246“Screw the cops”: Meyers, Genius and Goddess, 179.
246John Wayne was there: Cecilia Rasmussen, “Soviet Leader Met Duke but Not Mickey,” LA Times, January 24, 1999.
246“Kiss him” . . . “great pleasure”: YM.
247“fat and ugly”: Meyers, Genius and Goddess, 180.
247“we do not agree”: Carlson, K Blows Top, 169.
247“We can always turn round”: YM.
247burst into tears: Mayers, The Ambassadors, 202.
247“I can go”: Carlson, K Blows Top, 170.
248“honest girl”: YM.
248“A person’s face”: Meyers, Genius and Goddess, 179.
248union bosses were traitors: At the meeting, Victor Reuther of the United Automobile Workers addressed Khrushchev in Russian and explained that he and his brother, Walter, had spent two years in the 1930s working at the Gorky Automotive Works, “named in honor of Molotov. Is it still called that?” “Nyet,” snapped Khrushchev. “We hanged the likes of Reuther in Russia in 1917,” he told John F. Kennedy at their Vienna summit in 1960.
248reception at the Soviet embassy: “Khrushchev Hugs Cliburn and Invites Him to Soviet” (AP), NYT, September 25, 1959. The reception was on the twenty-fourth. See also K. N. Nuzhin, “For Peace and Friendship!” SM, November 3, 1959.
248gave Van a tour: “Cliburn Visits Plane” (AP), NYT, September 26, 1959.
249internal memorandum: C. D. DeLoach to Tolson, “Van Cliburn—Pianist—Alleged Security Investigation—‘Chicago Sun-Times’ 9–25–59,” September 25, 1959, FBI file 105–70035–7.
249“my kind of people”: “Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, Febr
uary 19, 1968.
249“Rildia Bee, this is Sam Rayburn”: Madigan, “Mementos of the Musician.”
250“Berlin is the testicles of the West”: Gaddis, Cold War, 65.
250at a wake: KR, 413. State Department memorandums confirm that Nixon was present at lunch on September 26, not September 27, as is sometimes said.
250Eisenhower was astonished: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 447.
251memorandum of the conversation: Llewellyn Thompson, Memorandum of Conversation, Camp David, September 27, 1959, 1–1:45 p.m., “Quality of American Chocolates; Van Cliburn,” reprinted as document 134 in FRUS X:1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958–60v10p1/d134. Other records relating to Khrushchev’s visit form documents 108–39.
252“wise statesmanship”: Robert V. Daniels, ed., A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 2, Communism and the World (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), 280.
252“Main Street Americans”: Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 131.
253“Don’t you dare spit on us”: For a transcript of the bad-tempered conversation, see “Memorandum of Conversation of N. S. Khrushchev with Mao Zedong, Beijing, 2 October 1959,” CWIHP Bulletin 12/13 (Fall/Winter 2001): 262–69.
253“Duke, Merry Christmas. Nikita” . . . “Nikita. Thanks. Duke”: Rasmussen, “Soviet Leader Met Duke but Not Mickey.”
16: BACK IN THE USSR
254group of twelve: Marianna N. Tishchenko, “Crossing the Iron Curtain,” Harvard Crimson, June 1, 2009. The eight men and four women also included an actress, an engineer, and an accordion player.
254“It is clear to me”: A. Krivolapov, “Shadows and Light in New York,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, December 13, 1959. The episode is reconstructed from this article.
254breakfast with Rosina: Ella Vlassenko, interview with the author.
254readers of Sovetsky Muzykant: Lev Vlassenko, “My Impression from a Visit to the United States,” SM, n.d. [1959].
255“Wonderful sounds”: Krivolapov, “Shadows and Light.”
255audience of 16,100: John Briggs, “Russian Adieu,” NYT, February 15, 1960.
256swept the young pianist into his offices: VC, 207.
256“Get rid of the bum”: Robinson, The Last Impresario, 384.
256heard complaining: Howard Aibel, interview with the author.
256“What’s the matter”: Donna Perlmutter, “The Long Road Home,” LA Village View, July 1, 1994.
256Roberta Peters: Van and Peters had had something of a mutual appreciation society ever since she eyed him when he was a young man in the coffee shop of the Buckingham Hotel. Later they shared an elevator ride: she spoke first, and he admired her floor-length mink. Roberta Peters, interview by Peter Rosen, Reel no. 40, Van Cliburn—Concert Pianist elements, VCA.
256Ike himself had personally requested: Ibid.
257spindly black plane: The Eisenhower Library has put many documents pertaining to the U-2 crisis online at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/sputnik.html. See also Francis Gary Powers and Curt Gentry, Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004); “May Day Over Moscow: The Francis Gary Powers Story” (2015), News and Information, Central Intelligence Agency, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-sto ry-archive/2015-featured-story-archive/francis-gary-powers.html.
257six R-7s: Two were based at Plesetsk in northwest Russia, two at Baikonur. In 1962 the sites reached their maximum capacity of ten active ICBMs.
257“The way to teach these smart-alecks”: Taubman, Khrushchev, 442.
258Sverdlovsk: Now (as previously) Yekaterinburg.
258seat was rigged to explode: Stepan Mikoyan, An Autobiography, trans. Aschen Mikoyan (Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife, 1999), 260.
259“Comrades, I must tell you a secret”: “Excerpts from Premier Khrushchev’s Remarks on U.S. Jet Downed in Soviet,” NYT, May 8, 1960.
259veins bulging: TOML, 185.
259“could not help but suspect”: Thompson to Department of State, telegram, Moscow, May 9, 1960; reprinted as document 50 in FRUS X:1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958–60v10p1/d150.
260“I would like to resign”: DDE [ACW] Diary May 1960, Box 11, Eisenhower, Dwight D.: Papers as President of the United States, 1953–1961 (Ann Whitman File), DDEPL.
260still going to the Paris peace conference: For the unraveling of the summit, see Sherman Kent, “The Summit Conference of 1960: An Intelligence Officer’s View,” Studies in Intelligence 16, special edition (1972), Library, Central Intelligence Agency, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/sherman-kent-and-the-board-of-national-estimates-collect ed-essays/8summit.html; NKCS, 380–83; Michael Beschloss, Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 234, 242–52, 274; David M. Barrett, CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 386–400.
260“My feeling . . . grim prospect”: Mayers, The Ambassadors, 206.
261“stupid U-2 business”: George Kistiakowsky, A Scientist at the White House (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 375.
261anti-American propaganda: NKCS, 391.
262B-47: “Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Herter,” July 11, 1960, reprinted as document 158 in FRUS X:1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958–60v10p1/d158.
262“Well, I’m not going” . . . “wants you to continue”: Madigan, “Mementos of the Musician.”
262courtesy calls: The DMN of May 25 ran a photo of Van with Lacy taken the previous day.
262another American pianist: Byron Janis, Chopin and Beyond: My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2010), 106.
262yelling teenagers: In “Moscow Acclaims Cliburn on Return” (UPI), NYT, May 27, 1960, the figure is given as two hundred; Sol Hurok claimed that five thousand turned out.
262journalist from Teatr magazine: Viktor Gorokhov, “Van Cliburn: The Boy Is Me, Kind Neighbors That’s You, Parents That’s America,” Teatr 9 (1960): 144–46.
264green wooden dacha: Now dacha no. 30; according to Teatr, it was then no. 15. As well as the Teatr article, the episode is reconstructed from newsreel footage, photographs, and my own visit to Ruza. Van remembered his time there in “Nobody Dares Speak Badly of Russia in Front of Me.”
265Richter kept vigil: A well-known story: see Norman Lebrecht, “A Fusion of Piano and Cerebellum,” Standpoint, March 2013. That Richter played is confirmed in Ivinskaya, Captive of Time, 327.
265eloped with Neuhaus’s wife: Neuhaus’s wife, Zinaida, became Pasternak’s second wife in 1934.
265“We excommunicated Tolstoy”: Ivinskaya, Captive of Time, 331–32.
265quietly freed: Olga Ivinskaya was officially rehabilitated in 1988, the year Doctor Zhivago was finally published in Russia. Her role remains controversial: see Alessandra Stanley, “Model for Dr. Zhivago’s Lara Betrayed Pasternak to K.G.B.,” NYT, November 27, 1997.
265spoils included: TOML, 185.
266party of young Soviets: Roberta Peters, interview by Peter Rosen.
266“Does America really want war”: Ibid.
266his ex-wife, Tamara: Miansarova, “Shag dlinoyu v zhizn.”
266Thorunn Johannsdottir: Interview with the author.
266Liu Shikun: Interview with the author.
266he saw a mob: Walter Cronkite, interview by Peter Rosen, Reel no. 30, Van Cliburn—Concert Pianist elements, VCA.
267clutching at his clothes: Freers to State Department, July 18, 1960.
267“Aw, look at that”: CBS archival footage, Reels no. 116 and 117, Van Cliburn—Concert Pianist elements, VCA.
267huge bouquets of flowers: Roberta Peters, interview by Peter Rosen.
267Outside the conservatory: Sey
mour Topping, “Van Cliburn Wins Moscow Ovation,” NYT, June 4, 1960.
267“Madame” Furtseva: Teroganyan, “Yesterday at Cliburn’s Concert.”
268“Soviet cultural officials”: Thompson to State Department, telegram, June 4, 1960, quoted in Rosenberg, Soviet-American Relations, 123.
268“TO NIKITA S. KHRUSHCHEV FROM DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER”: “U.S. to Return Nikita’s Boat to Its Maker,” Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1960.
268“could do his own country . . . Russian leader”: F. B. Fritzell, letter to Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1960.
269“In the summer heat”: “Packed House Hails Cliburn in Moscow,” NYT, June 6, 1960.
270Aschen Mikoyan: Interview with the author.
270Van spoke glowingly of Rildia Bee: Roberta Peters, interview by Peter Rosen.
270“bounced out of his arms . . . Russian-American friendship”: “Van Cliburn is hailed” (AP), NYT, June 17, 1960.
270Tbilisi: A. Machavariani, “Van Cliburn Is Playing,” Zarya vostoka (Tbilisi), June 19, 1960.
270political statement: Van Cliburn, [interview], Literaturnaya gazeta, July 30, 1960.
270sang lustily along: “Halfway Coexistence,” Time, July 18, 1960.
271“More than 1,000”: “Cliburn Is Cheered by 20,000 in Moscow” (UPI), NYT, July 20, 1960; see also “People,” Time, September 5, 1960.
272Anastas Mikoyan warned Van: Van Cliburn, interview by Ed Wierzbowski, Moscow, 1989.
272Young Aschen: Aschen Mikoyan, interview with the author.
272speaker after speaker: Rosenberg, Soviet-American Relations, 133.
272page two of Pravda: On August 25, 1960.
272FBI was less impressed: “Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, February 19, 1968.
273eighty thousand rubles: About eight thousand dollars at the time, at the official exchange rate, or some sixty-four thousand dollars today.
273“of the heroes of the cosmos: Belka and Strelka”: The text of the TASS article is partially recorded in SA Leonard A. Butt to SAC, New York, June 19, 1961, FBI file 62–12802–2. Butt was conducting surveillance on the journalist who interviewed Van in the United States on behalf of TASS.