Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (75 page)

256
  
heard complaining:
Howard Aibel, interview with the author.

256
  
“What’s the matter”:
Donna Perlmutter, “The Long Road Home,”
LA Village View
, July 1, 1994.

256
  
Roberta 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.

256
  
Ike himself had personally requested:
Ibid.

257
  
spindly 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.

257
  
six 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.

258
  
Sverdlovsk:
Now (as previously) Yekaterinburg.

258
  
seat 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.

259
  
veins 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.

260
  
still 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.

261
  
anti-American propaganda:
NKCS
, 391.

262
  
B-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.”

262
  
courtesy calls:
The
DMN
of May 25 ran a photo of Van with Lacy taken the previous day.

262
  
another American pianist:
Byron Janis,
Chopin and Beyond: My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2010), 106.

262
  
yelling 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.

262
  
journalist 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.

264
  
green 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.”

265
  
Richter 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.

265
  
eloped 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.

265
  
quietly 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.

265
  
spoils included:
TOML
, 185.

266
  
party of young Soviets:
Roberta Peters, interview by Peter Rosen.

266
  
“Does America really want war”:
Ibid.

266
  
his ex-wife, Tamara:
Miansarova, “Shag dlinoyu v zhizn.”

266
  
Thorunn Johannsdottir:
Interview with the author.

266
  
Liu Shikun:
Interview with the author.

266
  
he saw a mob:
Walter Cronkite, interview by Peter Rosen, Reel no. 30,
Van Cliburn—Concert Pianist
elements, VCA.

267
  
clutching 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.

267
  
huge bouquets of flowers:
Roberta Peters, interview by Peter Rosen.

267
  
Outside the conservatory:
Seymour 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.

270
  
Aschen Mikoyan:
Interview with the author.

270
  
Van 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.

270
  
Tbilisi:
A. Machavariani, “Van Cliburn Is Playing,”
Zarya vostoka
(Tbilisi), June 19, 1960.

270
  
political statement:
Van Cliburn, [interview],
Literaturnaya gazeta
, July 30, 1960.

270
  
sang 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.

272
  
Anastas Mikoyan warned Van:
Van Cliburn, interview by Ed Wierzbowski, Moscow, 1989.

272
  
Young Aschen:
Aschen Mikoyan, interview with the author.

272
  
speaker after speaker:
Rosenberg,
Soviet-American Relations
, 133.

272
  
page two of
Pravda
:
On August 25, 1960.

272
  
FBI was less impressed:
“Van Cliburn,” FBI summary, February 19, 1968.

273
  
eighty 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.