"A remarkable, reported memoir, full of life and fascinating historical context, true to the principled journalistic leadership of Marvin Kalb. Elegantly economical in prose, rich in insight—a great read."—Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent
"Here is a detailed, first-person account by a young American who spent all of 1956 in Moscow and traveled around the Soviet Union as well. The result of these adventures has now become a lively book, the greatest virtue of which is Kalb’s own presence in its pages. This is a unique document of its time by a witness to history who went on to become a major figure in American broadcast journalism."—William Taubman, Professor of Political Science, Amherst College, and author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
"An intriguing eyewitness historical account...—Kirkus Reviews
"Long before he anchored Meet the Press, journalist Marvin Kalb earned his stripes in the field and obtained an amazing education in the ways of politics behind the iron curtain. It was 1956 and he was fresh from his doctoral studies at Harvard, versed in the Russian language, and catapulted into service as an attaché because of this ability. As a child in the Bronx, he had experienced the poverty of the depression and had finally made it to the rarified heights of the academic world. But his life was to turn to world travels, journalism and a real-life education that few of us achieve. In his first memoir, Kalb gives us a blow-by-blow account of his year in Russian. Khrushchev was in; Stalin was out, of course; hope was in the air. By the end of the year, however, things had reversed themselves and Russian became brutal once again. I’ll leave you to discover how the author obtained his nickname. Anyone who wants to get a bit of a historical perspective on our cold war opponent and in light of today’s political climate under Vladimir Putin will savor Kalb’s memories."—Linda Bond, Auntie's Bookstore
"A fascinating memoir of a young American exploring Soviet society just after Stalin died. Based on notes Marvin Kalb made at the time, The Year I Was Peter the Great conveys a feel for Russian life with all the contradictory features that have puzzled and entranced foreign visitors to Russia through the ages."—Jack Matlock, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987–91, and author of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended
"Marvin Kalb’s account of the bumpy transition from Stalin’s dictatorship to a normal Russian society is extremely important. America and Russia are different civilizations, and we must learn to meet, and sniff, each other. On each page that is what Kalb does so well. The year 1956 was the first step in a historic transition that continues to this day—from Khrushchev to Putin."—Sergei Khrushchev, author of Khrushchev on Khrushchev—An Inside Account of the Man and His Era, by His Son, Sergei Khrushchev
"What’s that saying—those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it? As the West confronts a newly aggressive Russia, it’s important to understand the context of the Cold War from one of the most crucial years. Marvin Kalb’s chronicle of the Soviet Union in 1956 doesn’t just provide that context, but because it’s part memoir, it adds a personal touch that allows readers to feel like they are reliving the author’s experiences alongside him. And because this is a Kalb book, you know it’s not only well researched and accurate, but smart and insightful."—Chuck Todd, Moderator, "Meet the Press," and NBC News Political Director
"At the age of 25, Kalb was drafted out of a graduate program at Harvard to serve as a Russian translator and interpreter for the U.S. embassy in Moscow. He arrived in 1956, fresh from the classroom, wide-eyed and inexperienced, just before Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered his "secret speech" denouncing Stalin. After Khrushchev’s thunderbolt, the so-called year of the thaw that followed allowed Kalb to travel to many parts of the country. His account of his stray meetings and impromptu friendships in Central Asia, Ukraine, and ancient Russian cities provides a vivid, sometimes moving portrait of Soviet society in that jarring year. Most affecting is his tale of the old man he met by chance in the then rundown Podol district of Kiev. The man remembered Kalb’s grandfather, who took his family to the United States in 1914. Back at a Harvard after his year of service in Moscow ended, Kalb was interrupted from work on his dissertation by a call from Edward R. Murrow: the first step in what would become a distinguished three-decade career as a journalist at CBS and NBC."—Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
"The Year I Was Peter the Great is a rich and accessible snapshot of a unique time and place."—Chris Bort, Washington Independent Review of Books
2017-08-07
A veteran TV news correspondent's memoir of his first assignment in Russia, which corresponded with Nikita Khrushchev's unprecedented "thaw."A graduate student studying Russian history and language in 1956, Kalb (Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War, 2015, etc.) was plucked by the State Department to do translation work for an international organization in Moscow. In his first memoir, the former anchor of NBC's Meet the Press and senior adviser at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the author, now in his 80s, switches from writing history to writing about himself to depict this extraordinarily enlightening year—not an easy task. He relies on a diary he kept during this year working as a translator/interpreter, traveling around Russia, and even meeting Khrushchev himself, who made a historic address to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union tearing down the cult worship of the once-untouchable Stalin, who had died in 1953. Raised in the Bronx and in Washington Heights, Kalb attended City College in the footsteps of his older brother, Bernard, who became a New York Times journalist and whose advice proved prophetic: if the author wanted to become a journalist, he should "cultivate an area of expertise…that would catch the eye of an editor or producer." Learning Russian proved to be the ticket. In Moscow, Kalb was assigned the work of translating and analyzing the Soviet press, which would give clues to what was really going on in the Kremlin. Khrushchev's speech did change history, and during a time of enormous political uncertainty, Kalb describes scenes of spontaneous youthful demonstrations at the Lenin Library, which would spread that summer to the East Bloc. The author has an amazing story of an important year in Russian history, but the prose doesn't always match the gravity of the events he recounts. An intriguing eyewitness historical account rendered in a surprisingly pedestrian manner.
