Go On Pretending: From Stalin’s Doctors Plot to Soviet Central Television
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin, the first Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) head of government until his death in 1924, had quite a bit to say about the media. Among his observations were:
The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy's cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this.
We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.
Truth is the most precious thing. That's why we should ration it.
Naturally, I had all of the above sentiments in mind when, for my third Soviet historical fiction novel, “Go On Pretending,” I created a character, Dennis Kagan, who was a member of the USSR’s media elite.
Readers first meet Dennis in 1985 when he, along with American counterpart Phil Donahue, host a televised “Citizen’s Summit” allowing Soviet and US audiences to speak to each other. While on the air, Dennis strictly follows the party line, as evidenced in this exchange:
Donahue: Millions of Americans view the lives of Soviet people as restricted. This is especially an agony within the Jewish community in the West who believe there are thousands of Jews in Russia who cannot emigrate simply because they are Jewish, or because of some unjustified Soviet reasoning.
Kagan: Phil, Phil, listen to what you are saying. How can what you are saying be true? I, myself, am of the Jewish nationality, as is Rose Janowitz, right here, as is her daughter, Emma. We are right here, and, as you can see, we are not suffering, we are free. Why do you have such bitter experiences, where do they come from? Why do you only have negative experiences, where are the positive experiences? You assume that we only have a country consisting of so many millions of unhappy people. You say Jews can’t leave the country because they are Jews? Jews are the main immigrants. It is easier for them to immigrate.
Donahue: Why would 250,000 Jews want to emigrate from the Soviet Union?
Kagan: Where did you get that number? Did you hold a referendum in our country? Have you, yourself, spoken to a Jew in the USSR? Have you asked them?
Later, however, when Dennis takes Emma, the daughter of American defectors Rose and Jonas, out to dinner (at The Praga, a restaurant where the VIP room in egalitarian, equal and Socialist USSR is reserved only for those with hard - i.e. non-Soviet - currency to spend), he spins a different tale:
Dennis looked around, and then he leaned in. Emma thought he might be meaning to kiss her, but, no, Dennis had something much more intimate in mind. “This hasn’t been made public yet, but it will be in the next few weeks. I am leaving Moscow. I am being sent to America. One of their networks, not a major one, a small one, on what they call cable television, they are giving me my own show. Once a week, for an hour, no commercials, I am to explain the Soviet Union to American viewers. Can you believe it? Can you imagine one of our television stations turning over an hour a week to an American to spew propaganda non-stop? There’s precedent for it. As part of Khrushchev’s rehabilitation campaign, he did allow a magazine called Amerika to be distributed in the USSR in exchange for a magazine called Soviet Life Today being sold in the US, but those were difficult to find here. You had to know it existed, you had to know the few newstands where it was being sold, you had to have permission to purchase it, you had to be able to afford it. Television is everywhere! And I will be the American’s Soviet face of it!”
“That is exciting,” Emma cheered sincerely. “Congratulations.”
“Come with me,” Dennis said.
“What did you just say?”
“They will love you in America. They love Negroes now, I am told. Though the proper term is Black. Or is it African-American? They cannot seem to make up their minds.”
“I don’t think that’s accurate. If my parents were certain of one thing, it was that they do not love Negroes in America. I believe history backs them up.”
“This will be different. Your story will fascinate the US press. The US press loves to be fascinated. They are like children with shiny objects. Or maybe cats.”
Why did he keep making her laugh? Especially when what he was saying was actually quite serious? As in life-changing.
“You want me to come with you to America…”
“We’ll need to get married, first, it’s the only way you’ll get permission to leave.”
“You’re asking me to marry you?”
“Not right away. There are still a few weeks before I leave. Get to know me. If you like what I have to offer, yes, let’s get married and go to America together.”
“You’re insane.”
“I am not. This is the USSR. All insane people are safely tucked away in asylums. The fact that I can walk the streets freely is the government’s seal of approval on my sanity.”
She was at some point beyond laughter now. She was now in silent incredulity.
“Can I at least think about it?” Emma managed to choke out.
“Think quickly.”
“Why? Are you afraid I might quit being cynical? Or a Negro?”
“No,” about this, Dennis appeared most sincere. “I am afraid this window of opportunity, this openness of Gorbachev’s, might close as quickly as the one after Khruschev’s removal from power. I would much rather be in New York than Moscow when it happens.”
New York Times coverage of “The Citizens Summit”
“The Citizens Summit” of 1985 was a real broadcast. Co-host Phil Donahue was a real person. Dennis Kagan is fictional.
I based Dennis on a real person, however. While I was growing up, Vladimir Pozner was the Soviet Union’s favorite apologist. Whenever anything happened in the world, there Pozner was, popping up on every American television show to explain how, whatever the situation might have been, the USSR was absolutely right, and the West was absolutely wrong.
Pozner was a popular guest on US talk shows because he spoke fluent English. He was born in France to a French Catholic mother and a Russian Jewish father. The family came to the US to escape World War II, where Pozner attended the same elite public high school my husband and oldest son graduated from (and my younger son dropped out from… but that’s a different story). After the war, the Pozners moved to the Soviet sector of Berlin, and later to Moscow.
Young Vladimir held on to his elite public high school English, which allowed him to move up quickly as a “journalist” for the KGB, where he was in charge of “disinformation,” editing English language magazines like “Soviet Life” and “Sputnik.” He then switched to television, hosting his own current affairs show, and appearing on “Nightline” and “Donahue,” the latter of which eventually led to the two co-hosting televised, weekly roundtable discussions from 1991 to 1994.
Pozner was the Soviet Union’s biggest fan. Until one day, he… wasn’t. Maybe the actual transition took longer and was more subtle. But to me, a Soviet immigrant living in the United States, it felt like he flipped on a dime and suddenly began attacking the Soviet Union as vociferously as he had once defended it.
Years later, Pozner would claim that his about-face was triggered by the realization that he was no more than a propagandist, and that many of the positions he’d publicly taken were “wrong and immoral.”
Personally, I always suspected it was a purely calculated move. When the USSR was in ascendance and paid his salary, he was their happily willing puppet. When Pozner read the writing on the wall and realized they’d soon have no more to give him, he switched sides.
That’s my opinion, anyway. And that’s the motivation I gave my fictitious Dennis Kagan. Unlike Pozner, whose political flip-flop came as a surprise to viewers like me, I foreshadowed my character’s turnabout by disclosing that Dennis was cynical and mercenary from the start. I even gave him a motive. One rooted in yet another of the Soviet Union’s many, many crimes….
Dennis took a sip of wine. He waited for the server to step away before asking Emma, “Do you believe that?”
“What?”
“All of it. Everything we’ve been taught from the cradle. That this,” he gestured past the exclusive restaurant, into the world they’d have to return to, “is, to paraphrase Volaire, the best of all possible worlds?”
She’d been toying with him before. Mostly out of boredom. Emma rarely met people who lived as privileged of a Soviet life as her family did, so it had felt fun, and a little transgressive, to step outside their prescribed boundaries and drip a few crumbs past what they’d been trained to say, what they were expected to say, what they were allowed to say. This parlay, however, was drifting dangerously towards the potentially incriminating.
Dennis recognized her apprehension, and, as insurance to allay her fears, went first. “My parents were Jews. I told Mr. Donahue the truth. They were doctors. Serving bravely at the front during The Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to protect them during the subsequent round-ups. My parents were arrested as part of Comrade Stalin’s Doctors Plot in 1952. Maybe they had a show trial, maybe they didn’t. They did sign confessions. Both signatures in the exact same hand, can you imagine that? Then they died. Maybe shot in the head in Lefortovo Prison, maybe frozen to death in a gulag, maybe somewhere in between those two customary fates. None of those details matter in the end. I was sent to an orphanage for the children of Enemies of the People. Made what Mr. Dickens wrote about his Oliver Twist feel like, well, like The Praga. It’s where I was shown my parents’ signed confessions. To make clear how worthless I was. That was also where, and this likely was not a part of my tormentors’ plan, I learned my own worth.”
She was intrigued in spite of herself. Emma had begun their exchange assuming she and Dennis were equals. She was beginning to suspect he was way ahead of her in an aspect she hadn’t realized was in play.
“And what are you worth, exactly, Comrade Kagan?” Emma kept her tone light. This could all still turn out to be a trap, albeit a more clever one than usual. With better wine.
“To the Soviet propaganda machine? Quite a bit. Once Comrade Khruschev made his speech denouncing Stalin and embarked on his tour to show the West how non-threatening the Soviet people were, I… well, I may not have been the first child of two enemies of the people who realized how useful I could be as a symbol of the new, forgiving USSR, but I’m pretty sure I was the first to do something about it. I began writing school compositions about how grateful I was that, even after what my parents had done, the Soviet Union still clothed, fed, educated and raised me. I let one of my teachers think it was his idea to send that essay to the newspaper. I let the newspaper man who came to speak with me about it afterwards think it was his idea to have me read the composition at a May Day celebration. After that, it was just a matter of letting more and more people think they had the idea to make me their poster child for everything that was noble and moral about the USSR. I make excellent speeches. If you’ve never heard one, I suggest tracking down a children’s record I was able to squeeze out before my voice changed. Very touching. I highly recommend it.”
Emma didn’t know whether to laugh, commend him for his ingenuity, or immediately turn Dennis in for making his libelous statements – before he turned her in for listening to them and not doing anything about it. This could still be some kind of trap. Though, no modesty intended, Emma couldn’t guess what he wanted from her. She was nobody. Her parents were maybe worth entrapping. Not her.
“Why are you telling me this?” Emma hadn’t grown up in the USSR without picking up rudimentary skills in asking a question that could mean a variety of things, depending on the context. She was already mentally preparing her defense, should the conversation take a turn too dangerous to continue indulging. Though, she also had to admit, this was the most intriguing conversation she could recall having in… ever.
Josef Stalin’s Doctors Plot found him proclaiming that a secret cabal of medical professionals was conspiring to murder leading government and party officials. It began with the arrest of nine doctors – six of them Jews, continued with press accusations of the Soviet Union’s Jews being responsible for a variety of robberies and other crimes due to their status as “rootless cosmopolitans” and “Zionist agents” in cahoots with the American and British intelligence services.
TASS was authorized (ordered) to report that: The majority of the participants of the terrorist group… were bought by American intelligence. They were recruited by a branch-office of American intelligence – the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization called "Joint." The filthy face of this Zionist spy organization, covering up their vicious actions under the mask of charity, is now completely revealed… Unmasking the gang of poisoner-doctors struck a blow against the international Jewish Zionist organization.... Now all can see what sort of philanthropists and "friends of peace" hid beneath the sign-board of "Joint."
Vladimir Pozner
Vladimir Pozner lived through this particular part of Soviet history. He was a Moscow University student at the time. I could find no reportage of how he felt about it then. Since this was during his pro-USSR era, I can only assume he believed it was a completely reasonable and legitimate operation, and all those who were arrested, imprisoned, and killed had it coming.
When it came to creating his fictional counterpart, I made it so that Dennis Kagan did not, in fact, feel that way. Instead, Dennis used what had been done to him to claw his way up the ladder of a system which had tried to destroy him and his family, for his own personal benefit.
But when it became more pragmatic to switch sides, Dennis didn’t hesitate. Because he’d never believed in anything he’d been saying in the first place.
About the Author
Alina Adams is the NYT-bestselling author of soap-opera tie-ins, figure-skating mysteries, and romance novels. Born in Odessa, USSR, Adams immigrated to the United States at age seven and learned to speak English by watching American Soap Operas. After receiving her B.A. and M.A. in broadcast communications at San Francisco State University, Adams worked in television as a writer and researcher. Years later she penned the As The World Turns book tie-in, Oakdale Confidential, which became a New York Times bestseller. Adams continued writing and is now a prolific and innovative writer who has authored more than a dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her book, The Nesting Dolls, is a Soviet-Jewish historical novel published by HarperCollins in July 2020. Her newest novel, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, was published by History Through Fiction in November 2022. Adams lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.
Go On Pretending
Three generations of women battle against the tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR and the rise of revolutionary Rojava.
