A Different Russia

In the early 1960's, the darkest, most dangerous years of the Cold War, Kalb brought the curiosity and excitement of a young American journalist to Moscow, where he kept a record of his daily CBS broadcasts on the building confrontation between Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and American President John F. Kennedy. Kalb had taught Russian history at Harvard University, spoke the language and traveled from one end of the communist world to the other, meeting ordinary Russians but also those, like Khrushchev, who chose to confront Kennedy at such risky places as the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna summit, the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis, when the threat of nuclear war hovered over the world. This unusual memoir, very personal but also professional, intimately recaptures this fascinating moment in Russian-American relations. Eye-catching is the surprising comparison it evokes with the modern, perilous Putin era, when a Kremlin leader regularly turns his back on the West rather than, like Khrushchev, leader of a "different Russia," pursues his aims, yet open to compromise and hope for better times.