The determination to better relations between Washington and Moscow seems an ever more elusive goal. Yet this year's quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, now underway, rekindles memories of the time when just a reset did occur, during the darkest days of the Cold War.
It was 1958, a year after the Soviets had unveiled Sputnik, and Americans were bracing for the eventuality of bombs falling from the skies (school children like me routinely practiced a dubious protocol known as "duck and cover"). The United States attempted to answer Sputnik by launching Vanguard. It was a disaster: The rocket merely sputtered and fizzled. (The embarrassing headlines in the United Kingdom were "Stay Putnik," and "Oh, What a Flopnik.")
While savoring their victory in the race for space, the Russians set in motion plans for yet another propaganda coup. This time, they intended to show the world they were also superior in the arts by announcing the creation of the Tchaikovsky International Music Competition. So sure were officials of the outcome that they pre-selected the winner, a Georgian pianist named Lev Vlassenko. But, against all odds, a lanky, 23-year-old Texan, a brilliant pianist named Van Cliburn, swept the Muscovites off their feet and captured first prize, stunning the world and momentarily reshaping political reality. (I explain exactly what happened and why in my recent book, When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn's Cold War Triumph and Its Aftermath.)
From the early days of the twentieth century, when Maxim Gorky visited the United States and returned with a dystopian vision of American as greedy and artless, Russian antipathy was deep-seeded.
Nevertheless, the allure of America's vibrant culture infiltrated life in the USSR in many ways—including fashion, music, and film. Adventure movies, detective stories, and zany comedies were popular. Even Stalin adored an American film, The Great Waltz, about the life of Johann Strauss.
By 1957, young Muscovites were listening to banned music, including Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Peggy Lee. They danced the jitterbug, smoked Camels and Pall Malls, and addressed each other as "darling" and "baby." The official Soviet view of America's artistic life as worthless was crumbling on all fronts. In 1956 the Boston Symphony came to Moscow to perform. They were a revelation. So when an American pianist from Texas with the charisma of a movie star arrived, Moscow was primed to welcome him.
Economic pressures were also coming to bear. Then, as now, communist officials decried America's "rotten capitalist foundation," but their nation was in serious need of capital. Promoting trade and tourism became a crucial goal, and toward that end embracing an American emissary was a smart move.
At the competition's end, chairman Emil Gilels requested permission from Nikita Khrushchev to give the gold prize to Cliburn. The official story has Khrushchev agreeing without hesitation: "Was he the best? Then give it to him." But that version is a fiction. In truth, Khrushchev's advisors engaged in a vigorous debate over the issue—with advocates of a "thaw" with the West, like First Deputy Minister of Culture Sergei Kaftanov, standing in opposition to nationalists like Mikhail Suslov, the hardliner known as the "Black Cardinal."
The decision rested on a comment Khrushchev made to pianist Vera Gornostaeva: "The future success of this competition lies in one thing: the justice that the jury gives," she told me he had said. "I don't know who told him that," she added, assuming that he couldn't have reached that conclusion alone. It was likely Gilels, who also informed Khrushchev that giving the award to Cliburn could end the Cold War.
That moment in April of 1958 opened the channels of cultural and diplomatic exchanges between the two superpowers. Mainstream publications began to celebrate "The Arts as Bridges." Educational exchanges expedited ever greater change. Even the fact that most of the Soviet "students" who arrived here were KGB agents didn't detract from the positive gains that ensued. In the fall of 1958, Aleksandr Yakovlev was one of four Soviets sent to Columbia University. He liked what he saw, and after returning home, began working with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Yakovlev would later become known as the godfather of glasnost.
Could it happen again? It's unlikely—Cliburn's victory was the result of very special circumstances. Then again, no one could have predicted the outcome in 1958 either.
Stuart Isacoff's latest book is When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn's Cold War Triumph and Its Aftermath (Knopf).