An American in the Gulag

by Alexander Dolgun

  The reason they looked on Stella as a Soviet was this. When she reached her sixteenth birthday, the only way she could get a ration card was to have a Soviet passport, and the only way to get a Soviet passport was to turn in her American passport. I had avoided this trap by getting a job at the United States Embassy; for Stella the alternative would have been to starve.

  In the years following that interrupted wedding party, Stella made five formal applications to leave the Soviet Union in order to join her husband. They were all turned down. Then in 1946, at a Kremlin reception, the British ambassador, Sir Archibald Clarke Kerr, made a personal appeal to Stalin on her behalf and in a couple of days it was all arranged. That was how things were made to happen in the Soviet Union in those days. It was practically the only way. If similarly high-level appeals had been made on my behalf at the very beginning, it is likely I would have been spared the ordeals of Lefortovo and Sukhanovka, but all that was done for me by the

  U.S. Embassy then was a couple of letters of protest, one of which Sidorov had shaken maliciously in my face.

  When Stella arrived in England in 1946, it was to meet a husband she scarcely knew. Too much time had passed. Nothing was the same anymore. Without rancor they agreed to separate and in November of 1946 Stella left for New York, where she became an interpreter at the fledgling United Nations. At least once a month she wrote me and I always wrote back, usually pretty punctually.

  And so when she heard nothing from me at Christmas in 1948 she was puzzled. But at first she was more annoyed than worried. I was a bit harum-scarum, self-centered and forgetful. She assumed that I must have taken a Christmas trip or just neglected to tell her about it. The first person she heard from about what really had happened was Mary Catto.

  When I failed to show up for our date to see Prince Igor at the Bolshoi, on that Monday night, December 13, 1948, Mary believed at first that she had been stood up. She had no way of knowing that I was pacing up and down in a stuffy box at the Lubyanka, and I guess she hadn’t taken seriously my romantic stuff about a mission and would she wait for me and all that. So it was several days before she decided to contact the embassy to find out what was going on. She was told curtly and officially that I had disappeared, and then someone had the kindness to tell her privately that it was feared I had been arrested by the Soviet authorities, but that she should not jump to any conclusions because there was no confirmation. Mary wrote about all this to Stella, who by then had gone to Paris with the U.N. General Assembly. When she got back to New York she set about trying to get the State Department to do something about my case and trying to get some information about my whereabouts and well-being—or otherwise.

  State was no help. They admitted they knew little about me. They surmised I was in prison somewhere. They said that relations between the United States and Russia were so touchy just then that if any approach were made on my behalf I might be shot. The State Department’s Richard H. Davis, who had known me in Moscow and was back in Washington, even phoned our cousin Marie Jackson and told her in a way that was fraught with frightening implications that on no account should there be any public outcry or any attempts by the family to get publicity. The family were all frightened and of course they shut up, although Stella did not stop trying.

  The truth is, relations between the U. S. and the USSR were very touchy at that time. The cold war had become a grim reality. The vast majority of Americans were nervous about Communist spies, as Senator Joseph Mc Carthy and his witch-hunting kindred spirits virtually took over the American political conscience for so many years. In the Soviet Union Stalin had initiated a new wave of terror. Suspicion spread its tentacles into every aspect of relations between the two countries.. So although Stella was a tough-minded girl, she was young and she was a bit new at being back in America, and inclined to do what she was told by important officials.

  However, she sought advice wherever she could get it. Our cousin Stephanie Hazak worked in Washington as an assistant and private secretary to the Secretary of the Air Force. She arranged numerous interviews for Stella. Few were sympathetic in any practical sense. One exception was old Senator Langer from South Dakota, and when he said that there was really no way he could do anything without making a public stink, Stella burst into tears. The old man hugged her sadly and tried to comfort her, but his hands were tied by this notion that publicity in the case could only harm me. Even my former boss, Bedell Smith, had absolutely nothing helpful to offer.

  For nearly three years Stella got nowhere at all and was nearly in despair. Then came news. Incomplete, alarming, and yet news all the same. It came in a strange way.

  During those trips by Stolypin car between Moscow and Dzhezkazgan in 1950, at every stop the prisoners exchanged information with other prisoners going in the opposite direction, hoping that sometime a message might make its way to relatives or friends. I never really believed these exchanges would lead to much, but one kind German, whom I do not remember at all but I bless him anyway, managed in 1951 to report to Stella that he had met me en route, and that I was in a forced labor camp in Central Asia. That was all, and it was not very good news, but to Stella it meant that at least I was alive, and it revitalized her determination to do something for me.

  But still the people at State, and the people she saw every day at the United Nations—among them Eleanor Roosevelt told her that the risk of raising an outcry was that I would be shot.

  By this time my mother had received my triangle letter from Kuibyshev, had gone to the embassy in Moscow with it, and had been picked up by the MGB. Now Stella’s regular letters to our mother received no reply, and after a while the letters themselves, and even the monthly money orders Stella sent, began to come back to New York marked NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS. That was all.

  If Stella guessed at the reality behind this cryptic notation, she must have suppressed it; when I told her the truth years later she was so shocked she was almost incoherent for several hours.

  It was not until 1955 that she would hear from Mother again. Her letter was written in such a shaky handwriting and its composition was so strange that Stella knew something was wrong and assumed that Mother must have been very ill. The letter said only that I was in Central Asia, and that I needed fats, and asked if Stella could send some food. Stella immediately sent off a parcel to Mother. That was the parcel, miraculously forwarded to me in Dzhezkazgan, with butter and bacon and Maxwell House coffee and Chesterfield cigarettes in it.

  And then, in 1956, came the first glimmer of good news, and it made Stella’s heart leap. It was a letter from the State Department: Your brother has visited the Embassy in the company of an officer of the KGB. He seemed in excellent health. When asked if he needed help he said that he did not. Embassy officials at his request gave him moneys due to him under the retirement savings plan.

  Or words to that effect.

  Well, if anyone at the embassy asked me whether I needed help, he must have spoken in a very low voice; I never heard it. In any case, Stella asked the State Department once again what they could do for me, now that I was safely out of prison camp. They told her to wait. They said there was nothing they could do until I made some sort of approach. Stella did not believe this. She guessed accurately that I was in no position to make an approach. By now we were m correspondence. Of course I had to be careful. I would never have tried code and I was even reluctant to make reference to common experiences in order to convey a hidden message. I knew that my mail was given the most intense scrutiny in the “black chambers,” and that any attempt to tell her the truth of my situation would be risky. I confined myself to saying that I had a good job as a senior editor, that I saw Mother frequently in the hospital and was able to visit Father from time to time, and that the weather was fine.

  Stella had no way of knowing whether I wanted help or not. On the surface it looked as though I might not. She wrote back diligently and waited for a sign.

  During this time I was examining the possibilit
ies, of course, and going over plans with George Tenno. I assumed that if I was ever to get out it would be through my own efforts, and so in a sense there was nothing I could talk about. I gave no sign.

  Stella remarried. Her new husband was a charming, energetic official of the United Nations. They moved to Vienna. Soon her time and imagination were understandably caught up in the excitement of her own new life. I gave no indication in my letters that anything was amiss with me, and until the middle sixties Stella was able to allow herself to be almost completely occupied with the excitement and turmoil of motherhood. She was raising two brainy boys in a lively city. Occasionally she traveled through the other Western European capitals with her husband, and every two years they spent a few weeks in New York.

  She had of course contemplated getting on a train to Moscow with a tourist visa and coming to see me. Just like that. That is Stella’s way. But she is careful, too. And when she sought advice about this, from United Nations and American officials, the advice was unanimous: because she had left the Soviet Union with a Soviet passport, she would still be a Soviet citizen in their eyes. If she went, she risked never coming back again. I had seen plenty of cases of just that kind of thing in camp, and I might well have given her the same advice, although I was dying to see her.

  I showed all her letters to Mother. Mother would gaze at them and hand them back. “That is not Stella,” she would say, pointing at photographs of the family Stella had sent me. “No, these are not Stella’s children. This is all a plot of the KGB. You see, I understand it all very clearly now.”

  To the end of her life, she never accepted Stella’s children as a reality, and she never believed I was in communication with my sister. When my Andrew was born, in 1965, I brought him to the hospital, and my mother was enchanted and accepted him completely. She was terribly proud of this grandson she could actually see; she simply did not believe in the existence of my nephews in Vienna.

  Stella also believed in my son; it seemed on the surface further evidence that I was settling into a permanent life in Moscow. But in 1966, a cousin of her husband’s traveled to Moscow on an official visit and was courageous and kind enough to come and see me and Irene and the baby in the apartment on Lilac Boulevard. I was so excited I was nearly indiscreet. But I turned up the radio full blast, moved close to this first flesh-and-blood envoy, and told him in no uncertain terms that I was counting on Stella. That she had to do something to get us out of the Soviet Union. That if there was any way possible for her to come and visit, please to try as soon as possible. I was very urgent about it. When the cousin went back to Vienna he told Stella that if she did not come to see me I would be brokenhearted, and so she started trying to figure a way to do it safely. But a lot of time was to pass before she made it. Too much time. In the winter of 1967 my mother was taken to the hospital bathhouse in her underclothes, caught a chill, developed pneumonia, and died. We buried her on a cold, cold day. George Tenno stood with us at the ceremony. I felt a deep bereavement; despite the madness of those last years, my mother had been an emotional anchor for me, and my visits had been a vital connection with my past.

  Arid something had convinced me that she would see Stella again soon, and that their meeting would be the beginning of the homeward trip somehow. Now that was gone. I did not dare write Stella the full story of the circumstances that had wrecked my mother’s life.

  Early in 1968 I got a letter that made my hands shake with excitement. Stella was coming to Moscow. Her husband was to make an official visit on United Nations business. She would travel with him, with diplomatic immunity. We would see each other at last. I was too busy at work to get down to Istra to tell Father, but I wrote him immediately and he wrote back that he was thrilled and would come up to Moscow in time for the visit. He never made it. He choked on a piece of meat and suffocated.

  Stella’s visit was planned for August; I buried my father in March.

  Stella and her husband arrived in Moscow by train, via Poland, on August 18, 1968, a Sunday. I got a call at the apartment at eleven thirty in the morning. Her voice was steady and cheerful and confident and yet very excited at the same time. “Alex, dear; we are just washing up at the hotel. We’ll be over to see you shortly in a taxi.”

  I could hardly stand the wait. I strode up and down in the apartment until Irene thought she would go crazy. Two steps, a half-step sideways, two steps back. Hands behind my back. The old Sukhanovka habit. I still do it when I am anxious about something.

  We kept watching out the window. Finally Irene, standing at the window with Andrew, said, “Here’s a taxi!”

  Two surprisingly fat people in European clothes got out. I could hardly believe that one of them was my sister, although it looked like Stella. Soon there was a knock on the apartment door. I opened it. It was Stella, very fat. But for a long time I forgot about that because it was hugging and tears and laughter.

  Then we sat down. “Tell me everything!” Stella said. I was horrified, and made warning signs with my hands and eyebrows, while saying, “Of course, of course.” Then I said, “Stella, dear, you’ve put on a bit of weight,” very shyly. There was a roar of laughter from both of them. They began to undress. Irene was embarrassed for a moment. Then we realized that they were both wearing two sets of American clothes over their own clothes. They brought these suits and dresses as gifts, but officials had warned them that if they were seen coming to the apartment with a suitcase full of clothes, we might be accused of speculating on the black market. The only thing they carried openly was a plastic Lego game for Andrew.

  Stella and I could hardly stop grinning at each other. To create a little security I put a pillow over the telephone and turned the radio and television up to full volume. Then I told my sister what had happened over the last twenty years. Twenty years! A lifetime of experience to recount in two days, and most of it a tale of the most appalling events. Stella was bold and strong and had guessed at some of what I had to tell her, but she was not prepared for the full magnitude. The waves of emotion that swept over her were visible, physical waves. And I could not stop until she knew the full outline of those two terrible decades. Stella’s fiber did not weaken until I told her how our mother, whom she adored, had been tortured and gone insane. That was too much. In the end it was the story of our mother that filled her mind with nightmare images, she said, to the point where the full impact of what had happened to me was submerged under her grief for Mother.

  The most important subject, the immediate future, we saved for a more secure location than the apartment on Lilac Boulevard. We visited Mother’s grave. When we were perfectly sure there was no one in sight, Stella said, “All right. Tell me. Do you want to get out?”

  “Do I want out!” I said. “Listen, Stella. I would walk out of here naked, backwards, on my hands and knees if that was the only way to do it. I’ve got to get out! But I’ve got to be careful. I’ve got to get Irene and Andrew out with me because they’ll never be safe if I leave them behind. And it may be possible, the way things are going, for me to get a tourist visa to Yugoslavia and simply not return. The essential thing is to find ways to let each other know what’s going on, and that probably means personal visits, and that means it’s going to take time. But we can’t take any risk of blowing everything up, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” she said firmly. She hugged me very hard. “I’m not going to let anyone forget you any longer,” she said. I knew she meant it, and for the first time I began to believe that I would really see my home again, and soon.

  When Stella got back to Vienna she wrote a personal appeal to President Lyndon Johnson. The reply she got from the State Department made her furious.

  Mr. Dolgun is one of an unfortunate number of dual nationals [it said] who desire to visit their relatives abroad.

  There was not much hope, the letter said flatly.

  Stella did not agree. She wrote a registered letter to Averell Harriman describing the case in detail. Harriman had,
after all, been ambassador to Moscow and was said to be well liked by the Russians. If Ambassador Clarke Kerr had been able to get her out in 1946 by personal intervention, maybe Harriman was her best hope to spring me.

  Harriman did not reply until November.

  Unfortunately your brother’s case is similar to that of a number of other dual nationals in the Soviet Union. Since the Soviets continue to regard your brother as a Soviet citizen under their law, any further representations by the U. S. Government on his behalf would probably be no more successful than they have been in the past.

  Now Stella was hopping mad. She knew I was no “dual national.” I had been born in the States. I was on the foreign service staff when I was kidnapped. And as for those so-called representations on my behalf, she thought bitterly, is that what they call a letter of protest in 1948 and then not one finger lifted since? She wrote Richard

  H. Davis, my former colleague at the embassy, who was now ambassador to Rumania. He answered that the whole thing seemed hopeless to him. Stella kept badgering the State Department. She confronted them with the truth about my citizenship and my foreign service status. At first there was no indication at all of help. Now there was a new administration in Washington, however: Richard Nixon had been elected. Once again she wrote a personal appeal to the top man, to this man who had promised so much in the field of international affairs. Her letter was never answered.

  In January, after Stella had sent a virtual snowstorm of letters to the State Department, she got a faint glimmer of hope in one reply: a suggestion. Alex should apply for an exit visa and work through normal channels, the official suggested, and added, “It is difficult, of course, to be optimistic in this connection.”

  Not for Stella. She might get angry, but her optimism was not going to be dampened now. She kept up the paper bombardment to everyone she could think of, and she got my aunt in New Jersey to send me a formal invitation to visit her. The letter came in both Russian and English and contained a signed undertaking to assume all the costs of both my transportation and my living expenses “while in the United States.”