A curious insight into Nikita Khrushchev’s impulsive authoritarian personality is provided by the following story of how the young American pianist Van Cliburn with Nikita Khrushchev’s personal blessing won the First Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958.
Nikita Khrushchev’s impulsive and superstitious nature would reveal itself to its fullest extent in his Cuban adventure, which will be discussed at length in my later two entries, but the reader may catch a glimpse of it already in this instructive vignette.
While classical music in the Soviet Union was the best safe haven for human dignity, international music competitions often turned into cold war battlefields, or “armistice conferences.” This is a story told by Emil Gilels, who presided over the jury in the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958.
After the first of the three rounds of the competition, Khrushchev talked to Gilels and Oistrakh about how the field of the contestants was shaping up. Everybody expected Soviet musicians to win in both piano and violin. But Khrushchev was only interested in the American contestants. Who of them had shown enough talent and skill to go all the way into the final round?
When Khrushchev heard the name Van Cliburn, he grabbed Gilels by the sleeve of his jacket, and started shaking it, like he wanted to tear it off.
“What?! Ivan Kleeburn? We have an American boy with the name Ivan, and I didn’t know? Why wasn’t I told?!”
Ivan, Vanya, Vanechka Kleeburn, were now Khrushchev’s pet names for the American pianist who would become his main preoccupation in the days to come.
“How is my Vanya doing?!” he kept terrorizing Gilels all the time.
“Frankly, Nikita Sergeyevich, he is doing very well,” Gilels would reply. “He is a very talented boy. Too much sugar for my liking, but a very talented boy.”
“In America, I am told, they make sugar out of corn. It’s called corn syrup,” Khrushchev added playfully. “Watch over him for me, Milechka (Gilels’s pet name)!”
“...Watch Van Cliburn,” Gilels was telling everybody before Cliburn’s appearance in the second round of the competition. “He is going all the way to the top, with Comrade Khrushchev’s blessing.”
The deeply shocking news that the sweet American boy with curly hair was going to win the Tchaikovsky Competition to the chagrin and detriment of the proud Russian school of music, was quickly absorbed and enthusiastically accepted by Moscow elite before the start of the third, and final, round of the Tchaikovsky Competition. Van Cliburn was dubbed “First Lad of the Russian Village.” Every Russian now called him Vanya, and America was huge on people’s minds like nothing less than Russia’s twin sister. No more cold wars! Peace and friendship, and good will toward fellow men!
Where was now America’s image as the Empire of the Yellow Devil, the focus of evil, for the Russians, in the modern world? “Odi et amo: I love you and I hate you,” that would be the officially sanctioned feeling toward the United States in Russia for the rest of 1958 and for a very long time afterwards.
Khrushchev was a crude and vulgar man. But he showed his political genius in the matter of Van, “Vanya,” Cliburn, the baby-faced American, who was sent to Moscow by Providence to help Uncle Nikita change the world for the better.
Nikita Khrushchev’s impulsive and superstitious nature would reveal itself to its fullest extent in his Cuban adventure, which will be discussed at length in my later two entries, but the reader may catch a glimpse of it already in this instructive vignette.
While classical music in the Soviet Union was the best safe haven for human dignity, international music competitions often turned into cold war battlefields, or “armistice conferences.” This is a story told by Emil Gilels, who presided over the jury in the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958.
After the first of the three rounds of the competition, Khrushchev talked to Gilels and Oistrakh about how the field of the contestants was shaping up. Everybody expected Soviet musicians to win in both piano and violin. But Khrushchev was only interested in the American contestants. Who of them had shown enough talent and skill to go all the way into the final round?
When Khrushchev heard the name Van Cliburn, he grabbed Gilels by the sleeve of his jacket, and started shaking it, like he wanted to tear it off.
“What?! Ivan Kleeburn? We have an American boy with the name Ivan, and I didn’t know? Why wasn’t I told?!”
Ivan, Vanya, Vanechka Kleeburn, were now Khrushchev’s pet names for the American pianist who would become his main preoccupation in the days to come.
“How is my Vanya doing?!” he kept terrorizing Gilels all the time.
“Frankly, Nikita Sergeyevich, he is doing very well,” Gilels would reply. “He is a very talented boy. Too much sugar for my liking, but a very talented boy.”
“In America, I am told, they make sugar out of corn. It’s called corn syrup,” Khrushchev added playfully. “Watch over him for me, Milechka (Gilels’s pet name)!”
“...Watch Van Cliburn,” Gilels was telling everybody before Cliburn’s appearance in the second round of the competition. “He is going all the way to the top, with Comrade Khrushchev’s blessing.”
The deeply shocking news that the sweet American boy with curly hair was going to win the Tchaikovsky Competition to the chagrin and detriment of the proud Russian school of music, was quickly absorbed and enthusiastically accepted by Moscow elite before the start of the third, and final, round of the Tchaikovsky Competition. Van Cliburn was dubbed “First Lad of the Russian Village.” Every Russian now called him Vanya, and America was huge on people’s minds like nothing less than Russia’s twin sister. No more cold wars! Peace and friendship, and good will toward fellow men!
Where was now America’s image as the Empire of the Yellow Devil, the focus of evil, for the Russians, in the modern world? “Odi et amo: I love you and I hate you,” that would be the officially sanctioned feeling toward the United States in Russia for the rest of 1958 and for a very long time afterwards.
Khrushchev was a crude and vulgar man. But he showed his political genius in the matter of Van, “Vanya,” Cliburn, the baby-faced American, who was sent to Moscow by Providence to help Uncle Nikita change the world for the better.
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