The next morning she continued the letter:
About my coming to see you, Levi. I am very worried about my ignorance of where I should go and whom I should apply to. Would you tell Gleb to ask his mother to get in touch with me when she gets back? (That is, get in touch with me first rather than with O. B. [Aunt Olga], whom she is bound to call on anyway.) She’s meant to return at some point in early or mid-July, and I could then, if need be, even go out of town to see her, although I have no right to leave at the moment. I don’t want to ask for a holiday in July (the first half at any rate), since I need to prepare myself both emotionally and financially for the trip, and I’d like to try to get permission here. Although Gleb’s mother says it isn’t necessary, it really would set my mind at rest, and in any case it can’t do any harm. As for how much time it would take, that I don’t know. If I am held up here, Mikhail Aleksandrovich [Tsydzik, Sveta’s boss] may well want to go on leave himself. I would then have to wait until he returns before I go. So don’t count on my coming soon. In the sense of taking a break, I would even prefer it to be later (in that respect I am unlike everyone else), since an early holiday is soon forgotten and it’s as if one hadn’t had a rest at all. However, Mikhail Aleksandrovich also likes taking his holidays late, for the same reasons … O. B. is here now, so I’ll have to stop …
We have asked Gleb’s mother to take with her the treats that have been trying to reach you since April: sweets from O. B., chocolate from Irina, naturally, and sugar from me, also naturally, because Irina can’t stand sugar, whereas I am indifferent to sweets. Since who knows what can happen, I am also sending you (and don’t get angry, or you’ll burst your liver) some money. That’s always useful to have, if not to buy something for yourself, then for your comrades. Another thing I have asked Gleb’s mother to take with her is a pair of spectacles for you. It’s a second pair which Shurka was able to get (a 3.5 prescription exactly). Papa has got his pair back now. And that’s all for now. Take care, my darling. I kiss you very, very warmly.
Gleb’s mother was more successful than the Litvinenkos. Once again, she managed to see her son for several hours over consecutive days, this time monitored by the guards but in the smaller guard-house between the industrial zone and the 2nd Colony barracks rather than in the bigger and busier one at the main gate. Lev warned Sveta not to attach too much importance to Natalia Arkadevna’s success. Gleb’s article was less serious than his; and his mother had been fortunate (or just very good at paying bribes). Sveta would be lucky to see Lev ‘for a few minutes’ and might even be met with a ‘blank refusal’ from the MVD. But Sveta was buoyed by what she heard from Gleb’s mother. ‘Natalia Arkadevna came to see me on Monday,’ she wrote to Lev on 16 July. ‘She spoke in detail about the material-financial side [bribes] and completely calmed my nerves on that matter. She supported my desire to travel. She is a charming person, that’s for sure, and I’m very grateful to her.’
What Sveta had learned from Natalia Arkadevna had not only strengthened her determination to travel to Pechora, whatever the cost, but also reinforced her idea that she could find some other means of getting to see Lev if she was refused permission by the Gulag administration. If not through bribery, she would find a way of smuggling herself into the industrial prison zone.
By 16 July, time was running out for Sveta to make the necessary arrangements for a journey to Pechora before the end of the summer. She had to wait for her boss, Tsydzik, to agree when she could take her holiday, not least because she would depend on him to cover for her while she was in Pechora. In the last week of July, Tsydzik went into hospital. On 1 August he had been due to go away on holiday to Kislovodsk in the Caucasus, not returning to Moscow until 12 September at the earliest, but his trip was now delayed. ‘Levenka, my darling, once again we will have to summon all our patience and forbearance – my leave has been postponed,’ Sveta wrote on 28 July. ‘I am meowing. But I would be willing to wait until December, if I knew that virtue will get its reward (in which case it would not be virtue at all?). Again, I am meowing.’
All through August, with much of Moscow away on holiday, Sveta went on working at the institute, where she took over Tsydzik’s administrative duties. ‘It’s 28 degrees here and everything is covered with a smokey haze from all the factory fumes and dust,’ she wrote to Lev on 12 August. ‘They’re hurrying to decorate the city for its 800th anniversary [on 7 September] and half the streets have been blocked off.’ While the city prepared for the festivities, Sveta made her own preparations for the journey to Pechora, which she now anticipated would happen at the end of September. She spent a lot of time finding out how best to obtain photographic materials for Lev Izrailevich, who would put her up in Kozhva and help her get into the wood-combine. ‘I asked about the photographic equipment,’ Sveta wrote on 12 August. ‘There’s no shortage at the moment, and it should be easy for anyone to purchase in a shop … I’ll get hold of everything and, if the trip goes wrong, it will still be possible to send it in a parcel to his address – yes? There’d be one for two – film for him and books for you.’
By this time, Sveta knew that she would be travelling illegally. She had given up on getting permission from the MVD in Moscow and, without that, she had no business going to Pechora, a secret Gulag settlement unmarked on the map. If and when she got there, Sveta planned to enter the wood-combine with Lev Izrailevich and hide in the house of one of the free workers inside the industrial zone. Lev would be able to see her there during his shift at the power station, if he managed to get past the guards at the entrance to the settlement. It was a rash and dangerous plan, involving enormous risks for Sveta. Entering a labour camp without the approval of the MVD was a serious crime against the state. Because her research had military significance, she would be sent to a labour camp herself if she was caught trying to contact a convicted ‘spy’. Anyone who helped her would be in trouble too.
To conceal the true purpose of her journey, Sveta planned to make it at the end of a work trip to Kirov near the Urals to inspect a tyre factory connected to her institute. Tsydzik would do the necessary paper work to cover her tracks when, as planned, Sveta sent a telegram from Kirov informing him that she would be delayed on her return to Moscow. From Kirov it would take her only a night and a day by train to travel via Kotlas to Kozhva, where she would be met by Lev Izrailevich. On 20 August she wrote to Lev:
Since there are local trains from Kirov and they’re completely accessible, I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone. If Mik. Al. [Tsydzik] returns on the 12th, then by the 15th I’ll formalize my working trip to the factory for about 10 days. From there I’ll go on, as if still on the work trip, only without a ticket but plenty of vitamin D [bribe money]. I’ll save on the cost of the ticket, but the most important thing is that the days spent travelling to Kirov and back won’t be included in my holiday leave, so it will be even better for me. I have about 2 to 3 days work in Kirov (I’ll need to have a look at the factory, write a report, and give some sort of advice to them). I must confess that I feel a little nervous about the journey. I’ll send a telegraph to your namesake (or somebody else?) as soon as I’ve set out from Moscow, and then again from Kirov – it will all happen in just a month. I don’t think I’ll get rid of the extra luggage, Levi. Some of the books (the ones difficult to get, like the latest English textbook and nuclear-related books) P. has promised to find for me. Nat[alia] Ark[adevna] is definitely going to send something, some sort of clothing, bread for the journey and so on. As I think I have said already, I want to send a parcel to your namesake, but at the moment I still haven’t got any photo equipment … O. B. [Aunt Olga] doesn’t understand why I don’t send the books to you, as I did the suit, but, Levi, I am scared of you. You would be cross with me. I swear on my father’s beard that after this I won’t poke my nose into a bookshop before the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution [7 November 1947] … This letter won’t reach you until around about the 5th [of September]. So if you need to tell me s
omething urgently, ask Lev Izrailevich to send a telegram, bearing in mind that my return letter won’t arrive in time. Also, you can send a letter to the Kirov poste restante. To be on the safe side, I’ll check in at the post office and the telegraph office while I’m in Kirov.
Ten days later, Sveta wrote again to confirm her travel plans:
All my plans remain in place, that is, on the 15th to travel to Kirov, and on the 21st to be with you. If there is an emergency, write on carbon paper to both M[oscow] and the Kirov poste restante or ask the namesake to send a telegram.
Meanwhile the summer was coming to an end in Pechora. ‘Autumn has drawn near,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 4 September.
The day before yesterday was the first early-morning frost, which froze all the potatoes in the local vegetable patches except for ours, because half of it was covered at night and the other half escaped because it’s near the dryers where there is no frost. All the same, they’ll be of little use. Summer was really too short. The nights have already become quite real, there’s darkness from 9 till 2.30.
Lev received Sveta’s letter of 20 August on 5 September, just as she had predicted. Now that he knew that she was definitely coming, he needed to make plans for her to be received and smuggled in and out of the wood-combine. By 7 September, he had made sufficient progress to write to her:
Svet, your letter, as you supposed, arrived on 5 September … but I didn’t reply straight away because I needed to clarify something here about your plan. This letter might not get to you before you leave. I’m still unable to write anything concrete, at least not before this evening, but I need to write now to have any chance of reaching you. You will get the exact address of your cousin21 – whom you’ll be able to stay with for a couple of days – in a telegram in Kirov (at the telegraph office, poste restante). Send a telegram with the details of your departure to my namesake. You will need to go to his house to get further directions and leave surplus baggage. Keep that in mind as your basic objective. We’ll worry about what happens next nearer the time. I’m angry with myself about the books. I fear that I’ve created extra difficulties for you – it would be best to send them to me in a parcel or, if he’ll accept it, to my namesake, as you had originally wanted, together with the photography materials.
The day he wrote that letter, 7 September, Sveta was at home as Moscow celebrated its 800th anniversary. She wrote to Lev from her room:
The salute has just taken place. Mama has gone out to have a walk around town but Papa and I already took a long walk yesterday. We can see everything really well from our windows – there are two large, radiant portraits [of Stalin and Lenin] suspended from balloons over Red Square, the sky over the whole city is full of bright red flags (also suspended from balloons), there are floodlights along the A. and B. rings [the Boulevard and Garden ring roads], and giant nets in shades of blue and lilac are moving through the sky (more balloons) with colourful explosions of fireworks from them. I adore the salute … The bridges have all been outlined in white lights and covered with lanterns and colourful garlands. The entire river flotilla … has been decorated. The Moscow power station is completely illuminated … Yesterday Papa and I went out at 10 o’clock … We had to fight our way through the packed crowd in the centre. There are orchestras in all the squares on open-air concert platforms, 120 portable searchlights, markets with gingerbread houses everywhere … I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like it anywhere … The whole of Moscow was on the streets.
Three days later, on 10 September, it was Sveta’s thirtieth birthday. Lev had no more news. He was worried about her impending trip and felt confused and frustrated, powerless to help her meet the many dangers on her way. He hardly dared to hope that she would come at all.
Nothing ever turns out quite as you expect. I won’t be able to find out anything for a while yet. I haven’t even managed to see I[zrailevich]. I’ll send a telegram when I do – in about two days. Today is your birthday. On this day, I always like to spend some time by myself, so at the moment I’m sitting on my own at work … And I think of you. My thoughts are not always clear or happy, sometimes they are confusing – well, as they should be, I suppose. Only one thing is clear – that these thoughts are all that matters in my life, and it’s bad that I can’t make them lead to anything useful or put them into action.
Sveta had a good birthday, as she wrote to tell him on 12 September:
At the institute they gave me two enormous bouquets of flowers (gladioli, dahlias and asters) and Mama gave me a third one (carnations). They say that flowers are a good omen. I left some of the asters in a flask at the laboratory for myself and some in a beaker for Mikh[ail] Al[eksandrovich]. The rest are at home. Irina and Shura gave me a special article of clothing I had requested for the northern expedition. Shura wasn’t there on my birthday … but Irina was and Lida from the institute … Mama baked a divine cabbage pie and we had two cakes (obtained with ration coupons in place of sugar).
The bad news was that Sveta would not be ready to leave for Kirov on the 15th, as she had told Lev she would be. There were delays at the institute. ‘I have the details of the work trip in my briefcase but the payroll office is empty and they’re not promising any money before the 20th,’ Sveta wrote to Lev. Friends and relatives began collecting money and raised about 1,000 roubles for Sveta, more than her monthly salary. Meanwhile Sveta received ‘another 300 or 400 roubles’ from her institute (money owed to her for taking charge of the laboratory during Tsydzik’s absence) by writing a report ‘about wages and discrepancies in the rates of pay’ and putting it into a pile of papers which the director signed without checking properly. If she had asked for the money herself, she would have been refused (the institute was short of cash and always looking for excuses not to pay its staff) and possibly accused of lacking the requisite public spirit of a research team leader. There might even have been some awkward questions about why she suddenly needed the money. Sveta was uncomfortable about tricking the director in this way: it added to her general anxiety about the greater risks she would have to take on her journey. ‘I’m very nervous about the preparations,’ she wrote to Lev. ‘It’s all down to the same superstitious feeling that if I get everything ready then I won’t end up going (or I will, but something bad will happen).’
Lev had still not been in touch with his namesake to finalize the plans for Sveta’s arrival. He had heard nothing from Lev Izrailevich since 5 September and had not even seen him then, he explained to Sveta, ‘so I wasn’t able to let him know what your letter said, give him advance notice, or ask him anything.’ There were still important preparations to be made for her visit, which he now planned to communicate by sending a telegram to her in Kirov once he had made contact with Izrailevich. ‘All in all,’ he wrote to Sveta on 17 Steptember, ‘nothing’s really gone that well in the last ten days or so.’ A major complication that had recently arisen was that Lev was being confined more frequently to the barracks – there had been a security alert in the 2nd Colony – making it harder for him to meet Sveta in the industrial zone.
Five days later, on 22 September, Lev still had not heard from his namesake. He thought Izrailevich must be ill. Nor had he had a letter from Sveta since the 5th. Presuming she had left Moscow already, one of the free workers sent a telegram to the Kirov poste restante on Lev’s behalf with the address of Lev Izrailevich in Kozhva where she should go when she arrived to wait for further instructions.
The details of Sveta’s journey are not entirely clear; she became confused about them in later years. It seems that she set off from Moscow some time shortly after 20 September. Her father and brother took her to the Yaroslavl station and put her on a train to Kirov, where she must have spent at least three days carrying out her duties at the tyre factory. As planned, Sveta sent a telegram from Kirov to Tsydzik (who was in on the plot) to let him know that she would be ‘delayed for a few days’. She then took a train to Kozhva, using a ticket bought illegally by her father from a milita
ry officer who agreed to take her with him as his ‘personal assistant’ on condition that she give it back to him on her arrival in Kozhva. Sveta had the upper berth in a sleeping carriage, an ‘unheard-of luxury’ for her, as she recalled.
What did Sveta feel as she travelled north, changing trains at Kotlas to continue on her journey to Kozhva? Was she afraid when she saw the first watch-towers and barbed-wire fences alongside the railway track? Did she even think about the risks she was taking by venturing illegally into the Gulag zone? Reflecting on the journey a few months afterwards, in April 1948, Sveta thought she had not been afraid, because she was ‘prepared for an unsuccessful outcome, and I was a bit emotionless’. Half expecting failure, she had not invested her emotions in the promise of success, and this had helped her keep her nerve. But as time passed she looked back on her journey with ever more amazement at her own audacity. Sitting in her kitchen more than seventy years later, Sveta would recall that at the time it had seemed ‘natural’ for her to make the trip. But then she added: ‘How could I have gone there without even thinking of the dangers involved? I don’t know. It was a foolish thing to do. A devil must have got into my head!’
For the illegal part of the journey, when she was in danger of arrest, Sveta had been given a dress to wear by her friend Shura, who had made it from the khaki wool material of her old army uniform. ‘The dress saved me,’ Sveta later wrote.
Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag Page 13
