Part 9 (1/2)

Although the Soviet leaderas luck had changed far faster than he could have imagined, he knew he had to move faster still. The situation on the ground in Berlin remained stubbornly unchanged. A whole new generation was congregating in Berlin, eager to soak up the sights and atmosphere of the only city in the world where they could watch the worldas two feuding systems compete openly and without mediation.

Khrushchev wanted to take no chances about where it would all lead.

Jrn Donner Discovers the City.

What drew young Finnish writer Jrn Donner to Berlin was his conviction that the place was more of an idea than it was a city. For that reason, it served his postgraduate l.u.s.t for adventure and inspiration far better than any of the available alternatives.

Parisas Left Bank had Sartre and his disciples, Romeas Via Veneto offered its Dolce Vita, and nothing could rival Londonas Soho when it came to Donneras search for the combined attractions of learning and debauchery. Yet only Berlin could provide Donner such a unique window on the divided world in which he lived.

Donner considered the difference between East and West Berliners to be purely circ.u.mstantial, and thus they served as the perfect laboratory mice for the worldas most important social experiment. They had been the same Berliners shaped by the same history until 1945, when an abrupt application of different systems left one side with the decadent vices of prosperity and the other with the virtues of a straitjacket. Berliners had always been pinched geographically between Europe and Russia, but the Cold War had transformed that map into a psychological and geopolitical drama.

Twenty years later, Donner would produce Ingmar Bergmanas film f.a.n.n.y and Alexander, and it would win four Academy Awards. But, for the moment, he fas.h.i.+oned himself as a modern-day Christopher Isherwood, and, having just completed his studies at the University of Stockholm, he wanted to launch his artistic career by chronicling Berlin as the living history of his times.

Isherwoodas Goodbye to Berlin had tracked the improvised street battles between communists and n.a.z.is during the 1930s that were the prelude to World War II and the Holocaust. Donner regarded the story he would tell of no less historic significance, though the role of Berliners themselves would be more as pa.s.sive bystanders to the high politics that surrounded them.

Germans disparagingly employ the term Berliner Schnauze, or aBerlin snout,a to describe Berlinersa irreverent boisterousness, and none of that had been lost during their postwar occupation. Author Stephen Spender described Berlinersa apparent Cold War courage this way: aIf Berliners show a peculiar fearlessness which excites the almost unbelieving wonderment of the world, that is because they have reached that place on the far side of fear, where, being utterly at the mercy of the conflict of the great powers, they feel there is no use being afraid, and therefore they have nothing to be afraid of.a In the cold damp of the West Berlin subway, Donner studied the unpleasant, incurious Berlin faces that were at the center of his drama. Though the fate of humanity might be decided in their city, Donner found Berliners curiously apathetic, as if the reality were too much for them to absorb.

In a search for the right metaphor to describe the divided city, Donner would later apologize to his readers that he could not resist athe sleepwalkeras almost automatic maniaa to describe Berlinas division through the contrasting nature of its two most prominent avenuesa”West Berlinas Kurfrstendamm and East Berlinas Stalinallee.

Like West Berlin, the Kuadamm (as locals called it) had emerged from the chaos of the postwar years full of restless energy, neon lights, aspirational fas.h.i.+on, and new cafs and bars competing for expanding wallets. Like East Berlin, the Stalinallee concealed the underlying fragility of its society with its centrally planned neocla.s.sical grandeur, which dictated everything from each apartmentas size to the width of its hallways and height of its windows. State security directives determined precisely how many informants would be planted among what number of residents.

Though the heart of the Kuadamm was but four kilometers long, that stretch contained seventeen of the countryas most expensive jewelers, ten car dealers, and the cityas most exclusive restaurants. War widows begged on corners where they knew the cityas finest citizens would pa.s.s. One such spot was directly before Eduard Winteras Volkswagen showroom, where Berlinas richest man was known to sell thirty cars a day when not running his Coca-Cola distributors.h.i.+p.

Isherwood, whose book gave rise to the movie Cabaret, spoke of prewar Kuadamm as a acl.u.s.ter of expensive hotels, bars, cinemas, shopsaa sparkling nucleus of light, like a sham diamond, in the shabby twilight of the town.a The Cold War atmosphere remained much the same, though postwar reconstruction had introduced the sharper concrete and gla.s.s architectural edges of the 1950s.

The Kuadammas seedier side had also survived the war. In one tawdry bar, called The Old-Fas.h.i.+oned, Donner observed a Dsseldorf businessman licking the ear of a blond bar girl until she wearily drew back and his lips fell into her armpit. Berlin was a place where Germans came to pursue their pleasures in anonymity and without curfew, from its transvest.i.te bars to more conventional amus.e.m.e.nts. What happened in Berlin stayed in Berlin.

Across town in communist East Berlin, Donner found the Kuadammas alter ego. In 1949, in honor of Stalinas seventieth birthday, Ulbricht renamed the cityas grand Frankfurter Stra.s.se for the dictator, and it would keep his name through November 1961, even though he was dead and had been renounced by Khrushchev.* During World War IIas final days, Soviet soldiers had hung n.a.z.is from trees that lined the street, often fastening to their corpses identifying papers with the inscription: HERE HANGS SO-AND-SO, BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO DEFEND WIFE AND CHILD.

Ulbricht had rebuilt the street as Stalinallee to be a showcase for the power and capabilities of communism, athe first socialist road of Germany,a whose purpose was to provide apalaces for the working cla.s.s.a So construction crews from 1952 to 1960 produced a long row of eight-story apartment houses of Stalinist monumental architecture. Wartime rubble was transformed into high-ceilinged flats with balconies, elevators, ceramic tiling, marble staircases, anda”a luxury at the timea”baths in every apartment. To provide a sufficiently wide and long promenade for military marches, builders made Stalinallee a tree-studded, six-lane, ninety-meter-wide, two-kilometer-long highway. Stalinallee would provide the backdrop for the annual May Day parade, but it also was where the 1953 workersa uprising gained its momentum.

Only a short distance from Stalinallee, Donner described the quiet desperation of East Berliners who had pa.s.sed through the ravages of World War II, only to again land on the wrong side of history. The Raabe-Diele was one of the oldest pubs in Berlin and sat on Sperlingsga.s.se, a narrow lane still blocked in the middle by wartime ruins that had not yet been cleared. It had but three tables, a counter, benches along the walls, and simple, tattered chairs.

Its sole proprietor was Frau Friedrich Konarske, who at age eighty-two had worked the same counter for fifty-seven years. She would not discuss her own sad life but happily gossiped with Donner about her clientele, all men save for a loud, forty-something woman who drank straight shots while recounting her stomach operations.

aTen drunk men are better than one half-sober female,a complained Konarske.

Two middle-aged men strummed their guitars at a table by the window and sang sentimental songs. As they prepared to go home, a man with a hunchback shouted a last request in a squeaky voice. aPlay aLili Marlene.a Thatas what I want to hear. And then Iall buy you a round.a The best-dressed man in the bara”and who, because of that, the others took to be a Communist Party member or state security officera”shouted his objection on the grounds that the song had been one of Hitleras favorites.

The hunchback protested angrily, aWhatas that? aLili Marlenea was played during the war in order to give voicea”yes, to give voicea”to the longing of the soldiers for peace. It has nothing to do with n.a.z.ism.a And it was true: the song had been written during World War I by soldier Hans Leip while he marched to the Russian front from Berlin. The hunchback protested that even Americans and Englishmen loved the song.

aItas a universal melody!a shouted an inebriated young man who looked like he had been a boxer, with his large, flat nose, cauliflower ears, and finger-tips yellowed by nicotine. One after another of Frau Konarskeas clientele sounded agreement in an uprising against the supposed communist, but the singers still hesitated, as momentary acts of defiance could result in long jail sentences.

Made courageous by drink, the boxer type threatened the well-dressed man: aIf you donat want to listen, you can leave.a He then began to sing the first verse alone, after which the two musicians joined in, followed by one additional voice after the other, until the entire pub joined in song around the still-silent man in the dark suit who sipped his beer.

Frau Konarske offered drinks on the house. She then took Donner aside and showed him the small, framed text behind her on the wall, dating from World War II. It read: WE SHALL GO TO OUR DEATH JUST AS NAKED AS WE CAME INTO THE WORLD.

She asked the stranger, aDo you think that anyone will take over my place after I am gone? All my relatives and friends are in West Germany. Do you think they want to come over to East Berlin and work in a little hole from ten in the morning until two at night?a She answered her own question: aNo.a

9.

PERILOUS DIPLOMACY.

The American government and the president are concerned that the Soviet leaders.h.i.+p underestimates the capabilities of the U.S. government and those of the president himself.

Robert Kennedy to Soviet military intelligence agent Georgi Bolshakov, May 9, 1961 Berlin is a festering sore which has to be eliminated.

Premier Khrushchev to U.S. Amba.s.sador Llewellyn E. Thompson Jr., at the Ice Capades in Moscow, on the goal of the Vienna Summit, May 26, 1961 WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1961.

Wearing a white s.h.i.+rt, a loosened tie, and a jacket held casually over one shoulder, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy bounded down the steps of the side entrance to the Department of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue and extended his hand to Soviet spy Georgi Bolshakov.

aHi, Georgi, long time no see,a the attorney general said, as if reacquainting himself with a long-lost friend, though he had met him only briefly once, some seven years earlier. Beside Kennedy stood Ed Guthman, the Pulitzer Prizea”winning reporter who had become his press officer and sounding board. Guthman had arranged the unprecedented meeting through the man who had delivered Bolshakov by taxi and stood beside him, New York Daily News correspondent Frank Holeman.

aSo shall we take a walk?a Kennedy asked Bolshakov. The attorney generalas casual manner was disarming, considering the unconventional, unprecedented contact he was about to initiate. He nodded to Guthman and Holeman to stay behind as he and the Russian spy walked onto the Was.h.i.+ngton Mall in the spring evening mist, making small talk about the magazine that Bolshakov had been editing that day.

At Kennedyas suggestion, the two men sat on a secluded patch of lawn, the air scented with freshly mowed gra.s.s. The U.S. Capitol stood in the background to one side, and the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument to the other, with the Smithsonian Castleas front gate directly behind them. Lovers on early evening walks and small groups of tourists looked to the rain clouds above, which threatened a storm.

Bolshakov described his closeness to Khrushchev, and he offered himself up as a more useful and direct contact to the Soviet leader than Moscowas amba.s.sador to the United States, Mikhail Mens.h.i.+kov, whom Bobby and his brother had come to consider a clown.

Bobby told Bolshakov that his brother was eager to meet with Khrushchev, and that he hoped to improve communication in the run-up to their first meeting so that the two sides could get the agenda right. The attorney general said he already knew about Bolshakovas links to some of Khrushchevas top people and was confident he could play that role, if he was willing. aIt would be great if they receive information firsthand, from you,a Bobby said. aAnd they, I believe, would have a chance to report it to Khrushchev.a After a roll of thunder, Kennedy joked, aIf a bolt of lightning kills me, the papers will report a Russian spy killed the presidentas brother. It could trigger a war. Letas get away from here.a They first walked briskly and then accelerated to a run to escape the downpour, regrouping in the attorney generalas office after riding up in his private elevator. They removed their wet s.h.i.+rts and continued their conversation while wearing unders.h.i.+rts and sitting in a tiny room with two armchairs, a refrigerator, and a small library.

Thus began one of the most unique anda”even years thereaftera”only partially understood relations.h.i.+ps of the Cold War. From that day forward, the attorney general and Bolshakov would communicate frequentlya”during some periods as often as two or three times monthly. It was an exchange that went almost entirely unreported and undoc.u.mented, an omission Robert Kennedy would later regret. He never took notes at the meetings, and reported on them directly and only orally to his brother. Thus the Bolshakova”Kennedy exchanges can be reconstructed only imperfectly through a dissatisfying Robert Kennedy oral history, Soviet records, Bolshakovas partial recollections, and the memories of several others who were involved at one point or another.

President Kennedy had approved of his brotheras initial meeting with Bolshakov without consulting or advising any of his chief foreign policy advisers or Soviet experts. That reflected the Kennedysa increased distrust of his intelligence and military apparatus following the Bay of Pigs, their penchant for clandestine activities, and their desire to put the pieces in place as carefully as possible for a smooth summit meeting.

For Khrushchev, however, Bolshakov was more of a useful p.a.w.n than a significant player. On a complex chessboard, Khrushchev could deploy Bolshakov to draw out Kennedy without revealing his own game. From the beginning, the structure of the exchange provided the Soviet leader with an advantage. President Kennedy could learn from Bolshakov only what Khrushchev and other superiors had provided him to transmit, while Bolshakov could extract much more from Bobby Kennedy, who so intimately knew the president and his thinking.

Bolshakov was just one of two channels Khrushchev was working to reach Kennedy in early May, and while top Soviet officials engaged in both to their maximum benefit, their U.S. counterparts knew only about the formal contact made five days earlier. It was then that Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had telephoned Amba.s.sador Thompson with Khrushchevas belated response to Kennedyas letter of two months earlier, inviting the Soviet leader to a summit meeting.

Gromyko had apologized to Thompson that Khrushchev himself could not personally transmit his interest. The Soviet leader was leaving Moscow for yet another trip to the provinces to put the pieces in place for his October Party Congress, and he would not return until May 20. But speaking on Khrushchevas behalf, Gromyko said the Soviet leader adeplored the fact that discorda had grown between the two countries over the Bay of Pigs and Laos.

Reading carefully scripted language, Gromyko said, aIf the Soviet Union and the U.S. do not consider that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them, they should draw the appropriate conclusions from this, namely that we live on one planet and therefore ways should be found to settle appropriate questions and build up our relations.a Motivated by that end, Gromyko said Khrushchev was now ready to accept Kennedyas invitation to meet, and believed abridges have to be built which would link our countries.a What Gromyko wanted to know from Thompson was whether the Kennedy invitation aremains valid or is being reviseda after the Bay of Pigs. Though Gromyko had posed the question politely, its underlying message was an impertinent one. He was asking whether Kennedy still dared meet with Khrushchev after having so badly shot himself in the foot in Cuba.

With that, Khrushchevas approach to President Kennedy had entered its third stage. The first had been Khrushchevas initial flurry of efforts to meet Kennedy directly after the U.S. election and during his first days in office. The second had been Khrushchevas withdrawal of interest following the new presidentas hawkish State of the Union message. Now Khrushchev was again eager to meet and press his perceived advantage over a now weakened opponent.

Thompson put down the phone and prepared a cable. He immediately concluded that if the president wished to reverse a perilous worsening of relations, the dangers of agreeing to such a meeting were far outweighed by its necessity. Thompson followed his 4:00 p.m. secret telegram reporting on his conversation with Gromyko with a similarly cla.s.sified message to Secretary Rusk that urged the president to grasp Khrushchevas extended hand. Critics would argue that Kennedy was walking like wounded prey into a bear trap, but Thompson suggested Kennedy reveal publicly that he had issued the invitation to Khrushchev long before the Bay of Pigs, and that the Soviet leader was only now responding.