Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (74 page)

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.

241
  
Khrushchev 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.

243
  
Washington Post
noted:
Maxine Cheshire, “Van May Play on Mr. K’s Red-Letter Day,”
WP
, September 20, 1959.

243
  
FBI 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.

246
  
John 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.

247
  
burst 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.

248
  
union 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.

248
  
reception 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.

248
  
gave Van a tour:
“Cliburn Visits Plane” (AP),
NYT
, September 26, 1959.

249
  
internal 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, February 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.

250
  
at a wake:
KR
, 413. State Department memorandums confirm that Nixon was present at lunch on September 26, not September 27, as is sometimes said.

250
  
Eisenhower was astonished:
Eisenhower,
Waging Peace
, 447.

251
  
memorandum 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

254
  
group 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.

254
  
breakfast with Rosina:
Ella Vlassenko, interview with the author.

254
  
readers 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.”

255
  
audience of 16,100
: John Briggs, “Russian Adieu,”
NYT
, February 15, 1960.

256
  
swept the young pianist into his offices:
VC
, 207.

256
  
“Get rid of the bum”:
Robinson,
The Last Impresario
, 384.