Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story (14 page)

In the final year of Condi’s doctoral program, Polish shipyard worker Lech Walesa was named the official chairman of his non-communist trade union, Solidarity. After years of daring, illegal strikes, Walesa had gained rights for Polish workers and brought international attention to Poland’s struggles under communist rule. Not even the closest followers of these events dreamed that they signaled the beginning of the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Following world events like these fueled Condi’s passion for Soviet studies. Unlike the other subjects she had explored as an undergraduate, this field had powerful, real-world immediacy that impacted the way nations behaved, the way people lived, and the way history unfolded.

To Josef Korbel, Condi stood out among her fellow students at GSIS because she possessed the complete package—academic brilliance, self-motivation, and a Russian-language background. “Korbel liked Condi because she was smart, she was quick, she was energetic
and she knew Russian
,” said Feste. “Those are factors that mattered to him.” Foreign language was a crucial part of the program in Korbel’s view, and he demanded that students start working on a Slavic language before entering the program. “Korbel told students who wanted to study East or Central Europe or the former Soviet Union that they better have a language before they came to study with him,” said Feste. “Condi was a perfect candidate because she did have a background in Russian. Others didn’t; they had followed the politics but hadn’t studied a language. He told them to come back after they had studied one of the languages such as Czech, Polish, or Russian.”

Condi not only continued her Russian lessons but also began studying Czech, as her Russian professor Libor Brom was Czech and encouraged her to pursue it. Today, her professional resume states that she is fluent in Russian and has “research ability” in Czech and French.

Korbel was known for being extremely gracious with those he liked and severe with those who did not measure up to his standards. “He expected a lot out of people,” said Feste. “He gravitated toward people who he thought were very intelligent.” Condi got along very well with him, and he pushed her relentlessly to aim high in the field. Korbel’s support and enthusiasm for Condi’s career echoed the support he gave his daughter, and this attention made him a new father figure. “He was as proud of [Madeleine], and as aggressive about her prospects, as he was about me,” Condi said. His faith in her talent proved to be well justified.

One of Korbel’s themes that would come to light in Condi’s work with George W. Bush was his insistence that students learn to translate policy into clear, concise language. “It was Josef Korbel who taught her that a leader must articulate foreign policy in ways ordinary people can understand,” wrote Ann Blackman in her biography of Madeleine Albright, “that in times of crisis, citizens will not rally to the cause if they do not understand the impact it will have on their daily lives.” Condi took this lesson to heart and developed a reputation as someone who can bring the most complex policy issues down to earth. That ability made her George W.’s first choice as foreign policy tutor during the presidential campaign, and it is a central part of her job as national security advisor.

Although Korbel was Condi’s mentor and favorite teacher, they did not always agree. She said he was “probably more liberal on domestic politics than I was,” but added, “he was a wonderful storyteller and very attentive to his students. It was that attentiveness, plus his ability to weave larger conceptual issues around very interesting stories, that made him such a powerful teacher.”

The large amount of independent study work that Condi did at Notre Dame prepared her well for the rigorous process at GSIS. “Our program works best for students who work autonomously,” said Feste, “and she was one of those people. She was willing to seek out help when she needed it and just do the work; that was Condi’s approach.” Coursework in the program included topics such as military history, Soviet foreign policy, Soviet and Russian history, communism, international politics, and Soviet and Russian culture. She narrowed her research for her dissertation to comparative military regimes, working closely with Jonathan Adelman who co-chaired her dissertation committee and with George Brinkley, her former professor at Notre Dame. Her study analyzed the Czech military and its effects upon the nation’s society and politics. It was pioneering research that resulted in a unique contribution to the field. “There wasn’t a lot written about the subject,” said Adelman. “There wasn’t a lot of information out there, [but] that didn’t stop her. She rolled up her sleeves.” To Adelman, her eagerness to meet this challenge revealed a lot about her character. “People might see her as contained,” he said. “But she can be quite daring, flexible, and innovative.”

Her study included a seven-week trip to the Soviet Union with a brief stop in Poland. In Moscow, she was forced to be unusually creative in her research methods due to the scarcity of documented information. Her relatively brief visit put a real face on the research topics she pursued in the libraries at the University of Denver. “The General Staff [of the USSR] was my life for five years,” she said. “I would go to Moscow and count the windows in the Ministry of Defense General Staff building to figure out how many people worked there because the data was never published.” Later, when she was working in Bush Senior’s administration, she discussed the subject with Sergei Akhromoyev, who had been the leader of the Soviet General Staff for many years. She had estimated that there were about 5,000 members of the staff, and when she asked him for the figure, he said, “About 5,000.” Her creative research methods had worked.

On her research trip, Condi finally had the opportunity to experience the culture that had enthralled her for years. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, she could visit the concert halls in which Tchaikovsky conducted his symphonies, Rubinstein poured out Chopin, and young Rachmaninov conducted opera. She saw firsthand how the solid authority of the state manifested itself in the imposing walls surrounding the Kremlin, the sprawling memorials to the nation’s heroes, and the majestic architecture of the subway system. She was surrounded by the beauty of the Russian language, which swirled through the steamy coffeehouses and which by now she could speak and read with confidence.

Very few black individuals lived in Moscow, and although Condi had grown accustomed to predominantly white classrooms, she was a minority as both a black person and an American in the USSR capital. According to one Russian native, this would have made her a very popular character. Dmitri Gerasamenko, a native of St. Petersburg and graduate of the St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, noted the extraordinary phase in which foreigners, including black people, first trickled into the Soviet Union. “The majority of Soviets didn’t have the opportunity to interact with blacks before 1957, the year of the International Students Festival in Moscow,” he said. “The Iron Curtain had been up for forty years and suddenly people from all over the world were coming to Moscow for the first time. The visitors were astounded by the wonderful energy in Moscow, although the people were so poor, they were proud to share whatever they had, to have some room in their communal apartments to entertain.

“Foreigners saw that the people were generous and cheerful in spite of their poverty,” he added. “After that, foreigners began to visit the city, and many Moscow people saw blacks for the first time. In the 1960s you could see black people being followed down the street by curious Russians who would touch them to be sure they were real; they couldn’t believe their eyes. This was done with a sense of innocent curiosity. We students in the 1970s and 1980s were so hungry for another culture that we went out of our way to talk to foreigners, to try to make them feel comfortable in our culture and to learn about their lives and where they came from. The capitalist countries were of real interest to people. Our people didn’t know anything about life in America or other democratic countries.”

Reflecting on the five-year period in the late 1970s and early 1980s in which Condi traveled to Moscow for her dissertation research, Gerasamenko said, “A black student from a prestigious American university who could speak Russian would have been treated with much hospitality and respect,” he said. “In the first place, the Russians were so grateful to meet people who spoke Russian, even if it was just ‘Hi’ or ‘How are you,’ any attempt was met with great delight. I would assume that Rice’s knowledge and unique American experience must have been fascinating to the Russians who met her during those years.”

In the summer of 1977, Condi went on a domestic trip as part of her research, which gave her a glimpse into the U.S. military complex for the first time. She went to Washington to work as an intern at the Department of State, spending weeks inside the Pentagon. Later in her program she took on another summer internship at the Rand Corporation, the policy research organization that had been founded by the military airpower supplier, Douglas Aircraft, after World War II. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, and Arlington, Virginia, Rand was a perfect fit for a student focusing on international security. Its research areas include world political, military, and economic trends; sources of potential regional conflict; and emerging threats to U.S. security.

Back home in Denver, Condi’s social life continued to revolve around football—but with an added dimension. During those years she dated a member of the Denver Broncos and their romance turned into a very serious relationship. Condi’s boyfriend was a “very major player,” according to her friend Deborah Carson, and the couple got engaged. Condi socialized with NFL wives, sat in the good seats at games with them and became a well-loved member of that intimate inner circle of the NFL. She picked out her wedding gown and started to work with her mother on all the arrangements, but the couple broke up before the wedding. “She was seriously going to marry him,” said Carson, “and I really don’t know what happened. It wasn’t anything like a major blowup; I think they just got to the point where they didn’t get along.”

When Condi finished her doctoral program at Denver, she was twenty-six years old. She would date more football players, as well as men in other lines of work, but she did not get engaged again (up to the time of this writing in 2002).

The final product of Condi’s work was a dissertation entitled
The Politics of Client Command: The Case of Czechoslovakia 1948-1975
. This would become the basis for her first book,
Uncertain Alliance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948-1963
, which was published by Princeton University Press in 1984.

On the morning of August 14, 1981, she joined her graduating colleagues in the outdoor commencement ceremony on the University of Denver’s Margery Reed Quadrangle. With a Ph.D. in international studies and a post-doctoral position at Stanford in the wings, twenty-six-year-old Condi was set to embark upon a distinguished academic career. Although her parents and other family members stood proudly by, the absence of one person made the day bittersweet. Josef Korbel had died of cancer in 1977. He did not live to see his star pupil or his daughter become prominent world figures. “He died of stomach cancer, and he had a tough time at the end,” said Karen Feste, “but he was active to the last minute.” On his sickbed, Korbel continued working on a new manuscript about Czech soldiers in World War I.

From the mentoring she received from Korbel to the stimulating challenges of her research topic, Condi’s experience at Denver was extremely positive, and she remembers it warmly. “Because of the small, interactive faculty in the GSIS, I received solid training in political philosophy and methodology,” she said. “I liked the interdisciplinary curriculum and unrestricted choices.” Receiving her diploma that summer morning, Condi completed her college years in a field that she had not even heard of when she first began taking undergraduate music courses at the university. Later, she would recommend her students to make an active search for a field that ignites their passion, as she did. “I tell students, ‘If you don’t know what you want, start exploring. Find a class you like and a professor with whom you have a rapport. ’” The life-altering switch from music to Soviet studies had taught her a lesson in flexibility, in the virtues of not limiting yourself with a rigid plan. “[For years] I structured my life to be a concert musician,” she said. “That was all I wanted to do. And it fell apart on me. I’m never going to do that again.” This realization appeared to affect her career significantly—from that point on, she committed herself to working diligently on the job at hand while staying open to whatever might come.

The GSIS faculty attending commencement that day knew that they would hear much more from Condoleezza Rice. “I think we all knew that she was going to do something quite superior to the average student,” said Arthur Gilbert, another professor who reviewed Condi’s dissertation. Karen Feste echoed that prediction. “We always thought Condi would be successful,” recalled Karen Feste. “Over the years we have had some excellent students in our program who stand out during their time at Denver, and with each of them we know it’s going to happen—we don’t know when, but we know it’s going to happen.” With Condi, it all began to happen in California.

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