Daughter of the Cold War by Grace Kennan Warnecke

Author:Grace Kennan Warnecke
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780822983347
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

CHAPTER 7

New Waters

My new single life in San Francisco was jolted by a telephone call from John Wasserman, the funny and outrageous music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, whom I barely knew. “How would you like to go to Russia with Joan Baez?” he asked.

He explained that Joan Baez was to be part of a much-headlined concert, with Santana and the Beach Boys, in Winter Palace Square in Leningrad on July 4, 1978. The Bay Area impresario Bill Graham was organizing the show. Wasserman was looking for an appropriate folk song for Joan to sing in Russian, as well as a Russian speaker to accompany her on the trip as a translator and companion. For me, this was an amazing opportunity. I was being given a free trip to the Soviet Union, an opportunity to brush up on my Russian, and a chance to be part of the inner circle of an American folk icon whom I had admired for years. I couldn’t wait.

I rushed out and bought all of Joan Baez’s records. As usual, I was flying blind. I did not know any Russian folk singers, so I called all my Russian friends and one came up with a song, “Circle of Friends,” by Bulat Okudzhava, a well-known poet and bard. Often played and sung on the underground circuit, Okudzhava’s works were just beginning to be officially published. He was, like Joan, a popular protester.

Sitting at the press conference when Bill Graham announced this concert, surrounded by musical celebrities, I relished being part of the rock music scene. My children were impressed. I treasured my passport with its hard-to-come-by Russian visa. A week before we were to leave, however, Grigory Romanov, second secretary of the Communist Party in Leningrad, abruptly canceled the trip. I was crushed.

A few days later, John Wasserman called to say that Joan Baez had a new proposal. Since Joan had cleared her schedule for this trip and we had our visas, why didn’t the three of us take the trip, anyway, but go to Moscow instead of Leningrad? Joan wanted to meet with the famous physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov, known as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, had shocked the Soviet government by coming out against nuclear testing and was now an intellectual hero in the West.

I accepted Joan’s invitation but realized that this was a very different deal. In the original journey, with Bill Graham making the arrangements, there was a large staff seeing that everything was done for us; now I was the staff. John’s role was to write a series of articles about the journey for the San Francisco Chronicle, not to mention keeping Joan amused. I was to take the photographs to accompany John’s pieces, but I was also in charge of all logistics. While what we proposed to do was not illegal, I was acutely aware it would be viewed with skepticism by the Soviet authorities.

Joan was able to contact Sakharov’s stepdaughter, Tatiana, who had recently immigrated to the United States and was living in the Boston area.

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