The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  Uriel Acosta at the State New Theater (Courtesy of the State Central Theater Museum)

  Fedor Kaverin, 1937

  The play’s achievement—and the mythology of the House of Government children—is summed up in the Pravda review: “Uriel is not a heroic titan who brings down the temple’s columns like the legendary Samson. He is a pure and exuberant youth who courageously enters into an unequal struggle against talmudic scholasticism and religious fanaticism…. The real historic Uriel may have been much older (at the time of his excommunication, he was fifty-seven), but the young one is better, more convincing. He fully ‘fits’ his passionate monologues, which contain much more romantic rebellion than mature but cold wisdom.” The fathers were the titans, ruling the world during the golden age, and possibly Samsons, succumbing to the seduction of hen-and-rooster problems. The children were both romantic Uriels and his youthful disciples, carrying his books “into real life, into the future.” Kaverin arrived at this realization too late: within five months of the publication of the Pravda review, his theater was expelled from the House of Government for not being pure and exuberant enough. The author of the exuberant Pravda review was a prominent theater critic, Osaf Litovsky (Kagan). His other pseudonym, going back more than ten years, was “Uriel.”25

  22

  THE NEW MEN

  The House of Government children were pure and exuberant Uriels with no old world to confront. They had inherited a happy childhood; their job was to read nonstop and “work on themselves” as they—and their country—grew into adulthood-as-immortality. They did spontaneously and together what Tania Miagkova was attempting to do in her “political isolator” (except that they had no more need for Das Kapital).

  Boris Ivanov, “the Baker,” and his wife, Elena Yakovlevna Zlatkina, had three children: a daughter, Galina, and two sons, the “hooligan” Anatoly and the eldest, Volodia, whom Galina described as “good-looking, intelligent, and self-disciplined.” Volodia liked acting and kept a diary (a task he found difficult but necessary). In an entry from April 14, 1937, when he was seventeen years old, he described his morning’s activities: looking out the window to see how the reconstruction of the Big Stone Bridge was going, “washing up” in the bathroom (probably bending over the bathtub, splashing water over his back and shoulders, and rubbing himself dry with a towel, as was the custom), making his bed, and reading the newspaper over breakfast, “beginning with the events in Spain,” which he summed up in his diary: “Today the Republicans have once again pushed back the rebels and the German and Italian interventionists on all fronts. On the central front, in the Casa de Campo Park, the Republicans have taken some of the rebel positions, and the commander of the defense of Madrid, General Miaja, has called on the rebels in the University City to surrender. The Republicans are doing a great job beating the interventionists! After that I read about other events happening abroad and in our country.”1

  After graduating from school, Volodia went to work at the Research Institute of the Fishing Industry. In early 1938, he responded to the Party’s appeal for more Komsomol volunteers in the Far East, and in July 1938, set out for Kamchatka. The trip took three months: outside of Blagoveshchensk, the Trans-Siberian Railway was shut down for four days because of flooding on the Zeya, and in Vladivostok, there was a month-long wait for a ship to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. As Volodia wrote in a letter home, “You must know from the newspapers about the provocation of the Japanese militarists, and here, in Vladivostok, the indignation that our people feel toward the Japanese aggressors can be felt very strongly. And so, in connection with these events, the steamers, which have to pass by the Japanese Islands, are being detained in Vladivostok until further notice.” (Another reason for the delay may have been the arrival of large numbers of new prisoners, who needed to be shipped to labor camps in Kolyma.) After another month of waiting in Petropavlovsk, he caught a steamer to the Kikhchik Fishery on the west coast of Kamchatka, where he was going to work in the chemistry lab.

  Volodia Ivanov, drawing of the view from his apartment

  Volodia Ivanov, 1936

  For a very, very long time, we traveled with no water and no bread. I was elected by all the passengers as their representative, which meant that I had the following responsibilities: first, to try to get water, and, second, to procure bread and, in general, deal with all the problems, of which there were many on that ship because it was designed to transport cargo and not passengers. But the worst part was the storm. You cannot even begin to imagine what a terrible sight it was with the ship rocking, the waves washing over it and carrying into the sea whatever had not been attached or tied down in advance, the passengers all sick—but don’t think that I was sick, too. No, I held up bravely, and the sea had no effect on me whatsoever. And so we arrived in Kikhchik with the storm.2

  Life in Kikhchik was hard. “It’s not so nice here in Kamchatka because it’s cold and there’s nothing to eat,” he wrote to his parents. “It keeps snowing, and the wind blows with such force that the roofs of some of the buildings fly off, and when you step outside, it takes a lot of strength and energy just to walk a few steps.” He suffered from colds, boils, fevers, toothaches, and exhaustion, and his eyes hurt from the bright sun. His salary was high, but he did not receive it regularly, and whatever he did receive he spent on food. His parents kept asking for money, and he gave them his “word as a Komsomol” that he would start sending it as soon as he could. “I feel terrible when I think that Mother and Galya do not have coats, but I can’t send the money now because my salary has been delayed, so I don’t have a coat either and have been walking around in a leather jacket.” The trick was to remain optimistic. “Right now, our store is as empty as a desert. There are no suits, no coats, no socks, and no underwear, but I don’t get depressed because I know that soon we’ll have everything.” He continued to keep a diary and practice self-restraint. “What do the local people do?” he wrote in a letter, apparently in response to a question from his parents. “The local residents, although of course not all of them, are mostly engaged in drinking. They drink pure alcohol, which costs 50 rubles a liter, or make moonshine, but not the kind of moonshine you have in Moscow; it’s a much stronger brew. You probably think that I have learned to drink alcohol and moonshine here, but I swear on my Komsomol honor that I have not had a single drop of either alcohol or moonshine.”3

  No one had said it was going to be easy. “Overcoming difficulties” and “conquering nature” was at the heart of the Bolshevik ethos and of Volodia’s own education, in and out of school. What mattered was that “the fishery workers are showing unprecedented rates of labor productivity and that Kamchatka as a whole is growing and getting stronger: new workers’ settlements are being built, new refrigerators are being set up, and, in the not too distant future, Kamchatka will be connected to the ‘Mainland’ by a railroad from Petropavlovsk to Khabarovsk.” His own life, with or without a coat, had to be measured against the life of the entire Soviet Union and in conjunction with the lives of his fellow volunteers, his fishery coworkers, and his family, which had contributed to his education and served as a microcosm of Soviet society: “Listen, Mom [he wrote on October 3, 1939], Galya tells me that you’re worried about me. I ask you not to be anxious about this, for I am living and working well and cheerfully, and I’m glad to be working here in Kamchatka because I can feel the eyes of the whole country on the Far East and that makes me glad and fills me with joy, so you shouldn’t worry, but instead be proud that your son is living and working on Kamchatka for the good of the USSR.”4

  His younger brother was also doing his part as a future scientist: “Let Anatoly study, and when he finishes his studies, let him build airplanes that will be capable of flying from Moscow to our remote but beloved Kamchatka.” His sister was working on the music front: “Galya must have become a true piano virtuoso by now, playing day and night. That is very good!” His own contribution had proceeded along several lines at once. He had completed a three-
month political agitator’s course, become a candidate member of the Party, worked hard at the fishery (even when “the blizzard howls, the snow keeps falling, and it’s scary to step outside”), and continued to “work assiduously on himself” by reading the Short Course of the History of the Party. He also continued to write regularly to his family and to act in the local theater, hoping to reach the “Artistic Olympics” in Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok.5

  His family was as firmly attached to his country as Kamchatka was to Moscow (the eight-hour time difference notwithstanding). As he wrote to his parents on March 10, 1939, “Today, when the whole country is rejoicing on the day of the opening of the Eighteenth Congress of the VKP(b), I write to you, my loved ones…. As a gift to the Eighteenth Congress of the VKP(b), our Young Workers’ Theater has prepared Furmanov’s play Mutiny, and so, today, at 8 p.m. local time and noon Moscow time, we will walk out on stage in order to represent, before the eyes of our spectators, the struggle of the Red Army in 1920.”6

  Another important date that year had not been foreseen by Volodia and his family. On September 17, 1939, they learned of the Red Army’s entry into Poland. “All the people of Kamchatka, who are an inalienable part of the Soviet people, have met Comrade Molotov’s speech with such enthusiasm that the rallies that have been taking place at all the fisheries have been full of devotion to our government, with the residents of Kamchatka saying that, if necessary, they will give their lives in defense of their country and expressing their support for the policy of the Soviet government, which has taken under its protection our class brothers, the Ukrainians and Belorussians.”7

  Molotov had spoken of “blood brothers,” not “class brothers,” but Volodia, raised in the faith that had brought his Russian-peasant father and Jewish-seamstress mother together, does not seem to have noticed. Shortly before, he had received an offer to become a full-time Komsomol official (the assistant political secretary for the Komsomol in the political department of the Kamchatka Corporation), but he had a more exciting prospect. “First of all, I can give you some very good news: I am going to serve in the Red Army, this year’s draft has assigned me to the armored troops of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army until further notice, and it gives me great pleasure to know that I am fit and that I am going to join the ranks of our glorious Red Army.”8

  ■ ■ ■

  As the oldest of three children, Volodia Ivanov had important family responsibilities. He wrote to Galina and Anatoly with advice, encouragement, and an occasional reprimand, and knew that he was expected to help his “barely literate and politically underdeveloped” parents in matters practical, political, and ideological. Valia Osinsky’s role in his family was quite different. According to his sister, Svetlana, “our parents adored him, especially our father, who did not conceal his preference for his youngest son, never regretted spending time with him, did a lot to educate him, and took him along on his trips around the country.” The Osinskys were not just much better off than the Ivanovs—as former “students,” they subscribed to the intelligentsia belief that child rearing was primarily about passing on “cultural achievements” and intellectual passions (along with the faith, which they shared with the Ivanovs but increasingly left up to the schools). In June 1934, Osinsky took Valia, who was eleven at the time, to a rest home with him. On June 22, he wrote to Anna Shaternikova:

  It’s good that I have brought little Valia here with me because I have to spend time with him instead of working, and he helps me relax without ever getting in the way—he’s such a sweet, well-read, and smart little boy. I like him very much. We have been reading Belinsky together, in the following way: first I assign him an article to read, then we read it together, then he takes notes on the article (naive and a bit clumsy, but he is just learning how to write). After that he reads the next article. Also, every night before his bedtime, I read one chapter from Heine’s Deutschland to him (the only thing by Heine that we could find in German here). He likes Heine very much (some of the poems he has read here in Russian), and once, when I mentioned something about Heine’s old age and death, he said: “I think Heine could never be old,” thus characterizing Heine very accurately. He, of course especially liked this demand:

  Yes, fresh peas for everyone

  as soon as the pods have burst.

  Heaven we’ll leave to the angels, and

  the sparrows, who had it first….

  I had thought that he read plays without much critical discernment (here he’s read Goethe, Schiller, Byron, Molière, Hauptmann, and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and The Pillars of Society—he’s a fast reader, but, amazingly enough, seems to remember everything), but no: while reading Belinsky’s article on Woe from Wit, which has a negative reference to Molière as an overly cerebral writer who gives us unconvincing, tendentiously caricatured types and droning bores, Valia suddenly grew animated and began agreeing with Belinsky, citing examples and elaborating on his argument. Actually, I don’t like Molière either and have never been able to read him.

  You understand, of course, that I am reading with him in the secret hope of making him a writer, something he will probably end up becoming in any case, of his own volition. But I want him to be my successor in the family business, or “N. O. II,” as he’ll need to sign his work. That’s why we’ve been reading Belinsky—my spiritual father, and Heinrich Heine—the friend and comrade of my ideological grandparents, Dr. Marx and General Engels.9

  Valia’s favorite part from Heine’s Deutschland came shortly after the stanza about building heaven on earth, which Sverdlov liked to sing. “N.O.” was the way Osinsky signed his own work. Marx and Engels were Valia’s and Volodia’s ideological grandparents whose work was almost always too early to read. (Just a few months earlier, Hubert L’Hoste, who was the same age as Valia, had finally confessed to Maria Osten that he had never read Marx because his father would not let him. “‘He was absolutely right!’ said Maria. ‘It is too early for you to read Marx.’”) Osinsky’s plan was to introduce Valia to his ideological grandparents in three or four years. Meanwhile, he wondered if Valia had enough intensity (“I mean lyrical intensity of a very particular kind: the lyricism of the beautiful in man’s best strivings”) and whether he was “acerbic enough.” N.O.II was “more good-natured” than N.O.I, according to the latter. He shared his father’s romantic intellectualism, but not his “uncompromising, red justice.”10

  Valia’s sister, Svetlana, described Valia as a “pure soul,” a “kind, sweet boy,” and “a tender son and brother.” They had an older brother, Dima (Vadim), born in 1912, and a cousin, Rem Smirnov, who was the same age as Valia and had been living with them since his father’s arrest in 1927. According to Svetlana,

  All of our relatives loved Valia, and he loved all of them: Grandma and all of our aunts. When we were little, we used to fight terribly, and he would hurl himself at me, fists flailing and crying with frustration. I liked to tease him—for his absentmindedness and his stutter. Poor Valia! He had developed a stutter after having scarlet fever as a baby, and no one had been able to cure him. For some reason, his agonizing attempts—he would lower his head and splutter and gesticulate wildly—used to irritate me, even later, after we became friends, and our childhood fights were a thing of the past.

  Valia’s absolutely favorite pastime was reading. Rem and I also liked to read, but no one could compare to him. He would wrap himself up in some kind of incredible rags—such as an old, tattered blanket, for instance—and curl up in some remote corner, and just read and read.11

  Valia Osinsky at the dacha (Courtesy of Elena Simakova)

  ■ ■ ■

  Yuri Trifonov, the son of Valentin Trifonov and Evgenia Lurye, was a writer as well as a reader. He wrote his first short story on October 11, 1934, when he was nine years old.

  The Aero-Elephant.

  It took place in America, in the city of Denver. Jim was walking to the tavern. He was walking and daydreaming. Suddenly the earth gave way under hi
s feet and he fell into the land of the aero-elephant.

  To be continued.12

  The story’s style and location came from the adventure stories in Valentin Trifonov’s library. A flying elephant machine must have seemed fitting three months after the world’s heaviest airplane, the Maksim Gorky, beat a world record by lifting a fifteen-ton load. (It is not likely that Yuri would have read Kataev’s Time Forward! before the age of nine, and neither The Road to Ocean nor Disney’s Dumbo had been released yet.) The next installment came on December 29:

  The Aero-Elephant. Part 2.

  … As soon as he felt his feet touch the ground, he looked up and saw 20 men standing near him and one of them had a revolver and was aiming it at him. Jim looked coolly at the revolver, but then one of them asked:

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Jim—from Philadelphia.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I fell in.”

  “We’re not going to let you out of here.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll find out later, but now follow me.”

  He led Jim down the long corridors until he finally brought him to a room with some kind of metal contraption in it (this was the aero-elephant).13

  Yuri, according to a classmate, Artem Yaroslav (the nephew of the Soviet Control Committee official and former “Rightist,” A. I. Dogadov), “reminded me a bit of a bear cub: thick and stocky with shaggy brown hair, he looked like a forest creature…. He always wore some kind of velvet or corduroy jacket, knickers, and had large glasses, which was fairly unusual for the time.” He kept a diary, collected coins and stamps, ranked writers and characters (“D’Artagnan’s got nothing on Edmond Dantès!!!”), dreamed of running away to South America, acted in school theater productions, went to movies (“Saw Lenin in October. A wonderful movie! Excellent! Magnificent! Ideal! Superb! Terrific! Very good! Exceptional!”), worked on himself by lifting his father’s weights, and, of course, “read nonstop.” In January 1938, when he was twelve, he spent ten days at the dacha, skiing with his friends (as he later wrote in his diary). “While at the dacha, I read Thyl Ulenspiegel, Hugo’s Hans of Iceland, Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night, and Gautier’s Captain Fracasse. It would have been nice to spend another ten days at the dacha.” He could not stay at the dacha because he had to go back to school. Three weeks later, he wrote: