Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family

chapter twenty-eight

Returning to Denver without Dr. Korbel to guide me was disorienting. In the immediate aftermath of his death, I lost focus for the better part of a year. I made little progress toward choosing a dissertation topic, let alone working on it. My dedication to my academic work diminished significantly, and I spent a lot of time either goofing off or playing tennis. Life was full of interesting diversions, but I was twenty-four, living at home, still teaching piano, and making little progress toward getting out of school. Every time I went to register for a new quarter, the registrar, who’d known me since my freshman days, would say, “Are you still here?”

Adding to my vague frustration was the difficulty I faced in being an adult child in my parents’ house. For example, there was the expectation that I should account for my whereabouts. One evening I stayed out late—really late—with some friends. When I got home my parents were worried and furious. “Why didn’t you at least call?” I responded that I was an adult and didn’t have to call. But a few weeks later when my parents went to an anniversary party and didn’t call me, not returning home until one in the morning, I understood their point. After that, we agreed to keep each other informed so that no one worried.

By the beginning of 1979, I was increasingly frustrated and so were my parents. My father asked pointedly when I planned to finish. But, as was typical of my parents, rather than criticize me, they asked if there was anything holding me back. I explained that I needed to find a way to improve my Russian and wanted to study in Moscow. The problem was that in the 1970s most of the exchange programs would not take students who were studying modern Soviet politics. I was a budding Soviet specialist who had never been to the Soviet Union. Somehow my parents came up with the money themselves to send me to the Soviet Union in July of that year. The idea was for me to attend a major political science conference and then work on my Russian at Moscow State University.

My first exposure to Moscow had an enduring impact on me. The first time I saw Red Square and the Kremlin I somehow knew that I had made the right decision in choosing to study the Soviet Union. While life was not easy—fresh food was hard to find and the rooms were basic at best—I learned so much. I loved riding the elaborate subways, exploring Moscow and Leningrad, and spending time with Russian students. My linguistic skills improved considerably as I moved from using the language in the classroom to using it in real life.

One incident illustrated the point. When my roommates and I first arrived we found to our horror that our rooms were infested with roaches. I was deputized to go and tell our hall lady about the problem. I approached her gingerly and said in my best Russian, “Y nas y’est klopi,” meaning “We have bugs.” At least, that is what I thought I had said. But the word for “roach” is actually tarakan. I had unwittingly told the woman that we had lice. She recoiled, undoubtedly thinking that this was exactly what one could expect of Americans.

I came back from Moscow in the fall refreshed and ready to sprint to the finish line. For my dissertation I had decided to study civil-military relations in Eastern Europe, and chose to work on the case of Czechoslovakia. The Russian professor at Denver was Czech, and I convinced him to start a class in the Czech language. I talked five other students into joining me, though to this day I am puzzled as to why they agreed. Nonetheless, I learned Czech well enough to conduct research in it.

That fall I also applied for and received a coveted internship for the summer of 1980 at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where I worked on research projects related to my interest in the Soviet Union’s military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The internship was a breakthrough—I was beginning to collect experience and meet some of the best-known security specialists in the country.

Throughout my life, however, something has always come along to shake things up just when I am feeling settled. Maybe this is the fate of a striver, someone always trying to be “twice as good,” so that just good is never enough. The RAND internship had come on the heels of an even more fundamental turning point in my life: I became a Republican.

In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, everyone was worried about growing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. I’d previously registered as a Democrat and voted for President Jimmy Carter in my first presidential election in 1976; I had this narrative in my head about reconciliation of the North and South and how he was going to be the first Southern president. Now I watched him say that he had learned more about the Soviet Union from this Afghanistan invasion than he had ever known. “Whom did you think you were dealing with?” I asked the television set. When Carter decided that the best response to the invasion was to boycott the Olympics, he lost me. I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and a few years later I joined the Republican Party.

The security situation convinced the Ford Foundation that there was a need for people who were expert both in Soviet affairs and in hard-core, bombs-and-bullets security policy. I applied for the inelegantly named Dual Expertise Fellowship in Soviet Studies and International Security. When I received notice I’d won, there were four choices for where I could conduct my research: Harvard, UCLA, Columbia, and Stanford. I eliminated UCLA. I’d liked RAND but didn’t really want to return to Southern California. I sent inquiries to the other three. Harvard didn’t answer my letter. My colleagues there dispute this now, but trust me, I didn’t get an answer. My father eliminated Columbia, saying that he didn’t want me to live in such a dangerous neighborhood in New York. Fortunately, Stanford answered, and I was quick to accept the offer.