Before the Fall

In the late 1960s, Natalia Strelkova, was a young American living in Moscow, married to a Russian. Looking for work, she signed on to write a culture column for this magazine’s predecessor, Soviet Life. 

Early in my sojourn in the Soviet Union, I contributed a culture column to Soviet Life. I wrote my pieces in English, as did only one other contributor, the sports commentator. The rest of the magazine was translated from the Russian. With editorial offices in Moscow, that earlier publication – like your current one published in Vermont – dealt only marginally with politics, though attitudes came through just the same, as one might expect.

Although I could not even choose the name of my column (it became “Things Cultural”), nor contribute my pen-and-ink drawings for the masthead, I could not have been more fortunate in my first editor, Vladimir Posner (later to become  the Posner, TV host extraordinaire, but then only starting out on his soon-to-be stellar career). With him I had every possible liberty – choosing my events, interviewing anyone I liked, writing about anything and anybody I pleased – museum and gallery exhibits, opera and ballet performances, concerts… This even though my reviews were based on only an art major’s expertise, an abiding passion for music and ballet, and supreme confidence in the English I needed in order to give readers (primarily in college libraries, as I later learned) an idea of some of the new cultural phenomena in the new Russia (as many of us thought of what the Khrushchev “thaw” was bringing in – and later, bawling out).

Although I was not given any funds to purchase tickets to exhibitions, the theater, concerts or movies, these were generally not expensive, nothing like in later years. For visits to the Bolshoi, I had only to ask my father-in-law, Mikhail Chulaki, general director at the time, and he would cordially respond with a seat closest to the stage, generally in his official box. Incidentally, this was at a time when your son marrying a foreigner, especially an American, was frowned upon, particularly if you were a Party member. And he was an important official, too. Yet I never received anything but friendly, perhaps paternal, but invariably respectful treatment from Mikhail Ivanovich, as I continued to call him.

Once, at a family lunch at his elegant apartment, he smiled a mysterious smile and said the theater was buzzing with “bad news” about me and my magazine. I had recently had an interview with Irina Arkhipova, a leading soloist at the Bolshoi, someone I admired as much for her acting as for her opulent mezzo soprano. When I requested the meeting, she had had to get approval both from the Director and her Party office, as she was a deputy to the parliament.

Anyway, the interview was approved, and published in the next issue of Soviet Life. And that’s exactly what Mr. Chulaki showed me – only the photograph on the page was not Arkhipova at all, but a rival mezzo (and no great beauty besides)! Soviet Life had fallen flat on its unphotogenic face. And the famous mezzo was about to go on a concert tour in the United States, too. What a start! As for me, I personally had never been asked to review the illustrations, so I was not held responsible for the gaffe.

Finally, the magazine and I quietly parted company. One day, soon after Posner had left to continue his upward journey, his replacement [Comrade T.] came out of his office to offer some advice for any future columns, or more precisely, his requirements.

First, a series of questions:

“Why Moscow all the time? Don’t we have any culture outside of Moscow? Shouldn’t you be covering all of it?” Then came the requirement: “We need more ‘geography.’ Go out there and get it! “

I demurred: “I’d be glad to, but I have a little boy at home, my husband is at work all day. I simply can’t go traveling any time I want to.”

With his final argument came the clincher: “Who said you have to go out yourself? Just take the nearest Russian magazine article, translate it, tart it up and put it under your byline!”

“Okay. Thanks for the advice. Where do I pick up my last paycheck? Bye-bye comrade. Shastlivovo ostavatsya!” – the customary reply to ‘Bon voyage!’ 

I only wish I could have been more forthright. As it was, I merely told him I’d think about it, and just never went back.