Dancing on Thin Ice: Travails of a Russian Dissenter

ONE

The Cliff Edge Where It All Began

MY BUMPY DESCENT into that prison began nearly twenty years before I was locked up there.

In the fall of 1958, after my escape from the northern city of Kostroma, where I had been living since 1956, I called Markevich, department head of the Working Woman magazine, Rabotnitsa. The essay I had just completed for him on the women of the forest was already in the galley, and recently he had talked of prospects for long-term cooperation. Markevich sighed, So, you’ve returned to Moscow. He sighed again. What happened in Kostroma?

The First Secretary of the Regional Party Committee didn’t like my piece.

"That was clear from the Literary Gazette’s response to the criticism for publishing your satire," said Markevich.

Oh, so you know, I said, surprised.

Well, that’s beside the point, he said. You’ve got to come in. My editor-in-chief wants to speak with you. She won’t publish your work.

An hour later, as I walked into his office, Markevich asked, Is it true—you sent us a piece already published in your Kostroma paper?

I choked with hurt, My editor knew that I was submitting to you the work mostly about the same timber enterprise. She called it ‘great publicity for our region.’ My voice was faltering. I didn’t cheat. Your story is three times longer.

I think you’re in trouble. Tell Vavilina what really happened.

The whole country knew Valentina Vavilina. As an appointed staunch opponent of the Western warmongers, she was an ever-present member of Soviet peace delegations, of the Committee of Soviet Women, of the Committee for the Defense of Peace, and a member of the Soviet parliament—a Supreme Soviet. In addition, she was photogenic.

Does she know about my satire?

He nodded.

I was screwed.

Immediately after this lampoon, they demoted me, I said, attempting to explain. But the First Secretary wanted to keep me there until the end of the one-year trial period for my Party-candidacy. Then they could expose my political failure and moral unscrupulousness and not accept me into their ranks.

Yes, and no publication under the sun would accept you even as a doorman.

If someone had told me that it was an incidental allusion to my distant future, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Vavilina, Supreme Soviet deputy, did not give me the chance to talk, though she was as sympathetic to me as circumstances unknown-to-me could allow.

We cannot work with you currently. How old are you?

Twenty-eight.

You’re young, and I hope you’ll draw the right conclusion from this. By law, we’ll pay you fifty percent of the fee for the galleys.

At this, the audience was over.

I returned to Markevich with the voice of an injured child. I guess, I should see this fee as a bold manifestation of support.

If Vavilina wanted to, he said, she could find a reason not to pay you a kopeck.

Only one thing was clear—the Father-of-the-Kostroma-Region was able to stop even my unpublished essay. All my efforts to find work would henceforth have to be kept secret.

My parents saw our dour expressions when my wife Irina and I talked in hushed voices on the couch three yards from them. We had no other place to live.

My father spoke: Stop whispering, children. Your secret is known to everyone. You’re our family and can live in this room for as long as you wish.

Tomorrow morning, in the line for your only restroom, I said grimly, ask the neighbors of this communal apartment for their opinion on this hot subject.

My mother stepped into our conversation. Aunt Fannie invited all of us to dinner, she said.

Their son will bring a family friend who works for the TASS agency, Papa said.

But I knew that all TASS correspondents abroad were intelligence operatives. Their Human Resources would have been examining my behavior since I came into this world at the maternity hospital.

And kids, please, don’t joke about Jews on a visit to Fannie. In 1919, Ukrainian bandits…—Mama searched for the right words—tore this journalist’s mother to pieces while he lay in plain sight in a cradle. Fannie already was in a potato sack; the Ukrainian family made a little hole in it for her to breathe, and she heard a man stomping around the bags in the dark cellar looking for her and crying out, ‘Where is this skinny Jewess?!’

This friend must be very influential, I said. TASS, the largest news network in the world, already has its token Jew.

It’s a widespread notion that you Jews are very good at promoting each other, Irina said.

We were having a nice dinner when the gray-haired TASS journalist said, I’ve heard you are an expert on agriculture. He was quiet and confident.

With my recent experience I was cautious. Yes, for a Muscovite I’m an expert—after two years of working in Kostroma I can tell a plow from a rake.

Can’t you be serious for a change? My wife’s voice cracked.

Okay, I reported on various agricultural activities, about meat and dairy farms, about flax, oats, and politically illiterate corn, which, regardless of Party directives, refuses to grow in the north.

He was amused. The political fashion!

We left the table, and I could not help but talk about the forest and about lumberjacks freed from hard labor camps a few months before my arrival in 1956. This was three years after Stalin’s death, and they still celebrated it every year, though cautiously. The TASS correspondent was not interested in the forest and asked whether I was a Party member.

I’m a candidate, I replied.

Days later, when my new acquaintance opened a heavy door upholstered with leather, four men of commanding appearance were waiting for us in the huge office. I doubted such a procedure was routine for hiring a newcomer. Everybody shook my hand and introduced himself. The Agricultural Department’s head led the conversation. He asked, Have you ever milked a cow?

They all laughed.

I was brave enough, I said, to touch the udder and even attempted to milk one unhappy creature. When she resisted, I tried to talk her into cooperation. Alas, neither party enjoyed this encounter.

My audience chuckled, and I continued to develop the story. I also took a stab at dragging heavy cans of milk. The girls were all giggling but after that, they shared with me their concerns and worries. They still work with a kerosene lamp hanging on a hook. The mechanization and electrification of all processes is needed; otherwise, the future of Kostroma dairy farms looks grim.

It’s obvious that you take to heart the problems of our agriculture, said the Head of the Main Editorial Board, who was chairing the gathering. I will reveal to you our little secret—our esteemed colleague was very pleased with the chance to converse with you. I don’t see a reason to test your skills and knowledge; you’ve already provided us with compelling clippings. He smiled. In addition, you’ve just shown your ability to gather the material.

I was delighted.

There is one more thing we have to stress, said the Agricultural Department head. I’m sure you understand the political importance of every single word produced by TASS. Our product is reprinted by hundreds of Soviet and foreign papers. Classified parts of our material go directly to the leadership of the country.

The chair concluded the meeting, Now we can pass you into the caring hands of our Human Resources Chief.

The KGB general, I thought. As the only person making written notes during our conversation, he flashed a smile as he handed me a small piece of paper. Call me Monday morning at this number, he said.

That big Monday morning finally arrived. I called him and only managed to say, This is Arkady Polishchuk, before he interrupted me. This aging KGB man sounded like a young detective in a movie who caught the perpetrator in the act. Now we know you better, he said. You’re not the person whom you claim to be.

He hung up.

I felt a sharp pain in my left temple. Only now did I understand the extent of the Kostroma Region’s first secretary’s influence. They called my satire a slander—but it wasn’t really a crime by any stretch of imagination. Had it ruined his ambitious plans to create a branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in his patrimony? Neighboring regions already had such branches, and some boy from Moscow had dared to prevent him from acquiring his own group of nationally well-known writers. He defended the honor and dignity of the Party while I, a fool, thought that I had simply been making fun of the three literary fraudsters with Party cards in their pockets.

I DECIDED TO LOOK for help where it all began nine years ago, when instead of high school finals I had dreamed of my upcoming brilliant career in journalism. The section editor of the youth newspaper Moscow Komsomolets remembered me and my silly failure to understand why my first satire was slaughtered by the censor.

I hope, old man, you wised up out there in the bucolic hinterland. The paper’s old hand still bowed his head, now more grizzled, to the side and narrowed an eye as if evaluating his interlocutor.

Not really, I said.

Then re-educate yourself into a house manager while you’re still young, he suggested cheerfully.

I’m looking for a job and ready to be your freelancer again.

I have a feeling that you’re in trouble, he said and took me to the third floor, to a good man at a new and rapidly growing paper.

This good man, Yegor Yakovlev, greeted me like an old friend.

I’ve read your lampoon. You whipped them nicely.

Flattered, I gave no sign of it, saying only, I paid for this dubious honor.

You came here right on time.

The Lenin’s Banner was already the biggest regional newspaper in the country. Two days later I began my new work. After two weeks, I took a train to a nearby city to meet with the inventor of an antenna box that dramatically increased the range of signals that a television could receive. Now, the family of this plant worker happily, though with interruptions, watched programs from our Baltic republics and even Poland.

My article was killed when a veteran of the editorial board clasped his hands and exclaimed, What if tomorrow this homegrown genius invents a device to watch American or West-German TV? Someone here went mad. This should be thrown out of the strip!

Vigilant newspaper wolf! Yegor said, relating the story.

Thank goodness Stalin has been in his coffin for more than five years, I said.

Otherwise, both of us, he said, and that inquisitive worker, would’ve been shot as an American and Monacan commando detachment.

I had already ranked the charming and straight-talking Yegor among my friends when I noticed a sudden change in him. After the fourth week was over, he said gloomily, "I’m sorry, old man, the editor-in-chief came to the conclusion that you haven’t passed the probationary period. Look for another