The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  “I’ll have to record this conversation in my diary,” I said. “It is precisely these kinds of details that make up an event such as my trip to Leningrad. Yes, I’ll definitely write it all down. And I’ll also write down what I just said … That would be original. And I’ll write down what I just said as well!”

  “Enough,” my mother interrupted me. “Or it will never end.”

  “You’re wrong: the end has come,” I said. And with that, the day ceased to exist.26

  A month earlier, he had written a one hundred–page entry, in which he attempted to provide a complete record of November 5, 1939. He called it “A Day in My Life” and wanted to read it aloud to his music teacher, Modest Nikolaevich, but there was not enough time, so he read the November 6 entry instead. He probably did not know of Tolstoy’s similar undertaking eighty-eight years earlier (or he would have said so: he was a scrupulous observer of scholarly conventions); either way, Lyova seems to have been more insistent on the circularity of the action-reflection process. According to his friend from the Central House for the Artistic Education of Children, Zhenia Gurov, every time they met, Lyova would play the triumphal march from Verdi’s Aida, read aloud a new chapter from his novel, The Underground Treasure (“Jules Verne’s influence was obvious”), “and then read out the diary entry about our previous meeting.”27

  The idea was to compress cause and effect into a single present. Two days after the conversation with his mother about how writing follows events, Lyova had a different conversation about how events follow writing. “Salo” was Oleg Salkovsky’s nickname, and “Mishka” (also known as “Mikhikus”) was Misha Korshunov:

  Today during history in our crowded little classroom, Salo leaned over and whispered conspiratorially:

  “Would you like to join Mishka and me? Only you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Okay, okay! What’s up?”

  “You know the church near our building? The Maliuta Skuratov one?

  “Yeah?”

  “Mishka and I discovered a vault there, which leads into some underground passages … some really narrow ones! We’ve already been in them. You’re in the middle of writing The Underground Treasure, so you should find it very interesting.”28

  Misha and Oleg described their previous trip to the dungeon, which had ended prematurely because they did not have a flashlight or the right clothes. “As I listened,” Lyova continues, “my curiosity grew … as I pictured the dark, gloomy tunnels—damp and low, the sinister rooms with mold-covered walls, the underground passages and wells … until my patience and imagination were exhausted. I could hardly believe that I would soon get to see it all in real life. In short, I reached a point of extreme tension. Mere words cannot begin to express what I felt.”29 But he was, above all, a scholar and chronicler. He pulled himself together and had Misha and Oleg draw maps of the dungeon independently of each other, to make sure they were telling the truth. Then he took charge:

  “You know, Mishka,” I said. “I think we should introduce a few changes to this underground expedition. You and Oleg went there the first time just out of curiosity, but now I’d like to propose bringing along a pencil and notebook in order to sketch some things down there, record our route, as well as all of our conversations, and to make an accurate map of the passages. This may all prove useful later from a scientific point of view.

  “That sounds good,” agreed Mikhikus. “Since you keep a diary, you can record all of our observations. And since you know how to draw, you can be in charge of that, too, okay?”

  “Sure, I can do that. And you know what else?” I said. “We should definitely record our first words after we enter the vault. That will be both interesting for us later on and very original. Is that clear? Our exact words say as soon as we find ourselves underground? We’ll need to record them all afterward, so we don’t forget. We’ll find some kind of little room or alcove where we can sit and record them all. But probably first, you’ll ask me—either you or Salo: “So, Lyova, what do you think?” And I’ll probably answer: “Hmm, not bad at all!”

  “You’re right, that would be interesting to record,” said Mikhikus. “Our very first words down there! That’s perfect!”

  “I’ll record that in my diary, too,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All the things we’ve just been saying. It’s precisely on such conversations that this expedition of ours is based, so I’ll record them all. And these words just now—I’ll record them, too! And these! And the next … and the next!

  “You could keep going on like that forever,” said Mishka. “And these … and the next!”

  “I’m not a fool,” I said. “I’m definitely going to record the words you just said in my diary, and I’m not kidding either.”

  “And will you record what you just said to me?”

  “You can’t spoil kasha with butter. And words can’t hurt you,” I said. And I’ll record that, too!”30

  And he did. On the day of the expedition (December 8, 1939), his equipment included his notebook, a pencil, a pair of compasses, and a flashlight. Victoria (Tora) Terekhova, the daughter of Roman Terekhov, was supposed to provide the batteries, but did not, so they had to use candles, which were more appropriate to the occasion, in any case. They also brought some matches, rope, and, on Lyova’s insistence, a weighted string to measure the depth of the wells. They made it through two interconnected vaults and into a winding underground tunnel, but had to turn back after several turns because the passage became too narrow. Lyova, who went first because he was the thinnest and most determined, had to be pulled back out with the rope. His step-by-step account ends at the entrance to the last tunnel. The next notebook has been lost, but the story is familiar: “I didn’t see no di’monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t we see them, then? He said if I warn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking.”31

  One of the two sacred objects Lyova kept in memory of his father was the “American watch” with the engraving “to Fred from Red” (his father’s friend, fellow tramp, and revolutionary, “Red” Williams). The other was a copy of Huckleberry Finn his father had given him on his tenth birthday, with the inscription, “To my little lion cub from the wild man. F. 10.1.33.” (“Lyova” is the diminutive for “Lev,” the Russian version of Leo, or “lion”). What Don Quixote was to chivalry romances, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were to Don Quixote, and what Tom and Huck were to Don Quixote, Lyova and his friends were to Tom and Huck. In Mark Twain’s story, Sancho takes over as both the narrator and central character (and, for a while, turns into Don Quixote). In Kafka’s parable, “The Truth about Sancho Panza,” Don Quixote becomes Sancho’s dream. In Lunacharsky’s 1922 play, Don Quixote Unbound, he is banned from the “Promised Land” because of his refusal to kill for the Revolution. In Platonov’s Chevengur, he kills “precisely but hastily” until he is killed himself (when he charges the four enemy horsemen). In Lyova’s diary, Don Quixote is back in charge (because he has learned how to make dreams a reality). Misha Korshunov is a joker and a trickster; Oleg’s Salkovsky is Salo (“Lard”); Lyova leads the way and tells the story. “My candle flared up just in time: at that moment Salo put his hand with the burning candle through the small opening of the door and, grunting, managed to squeeze through. His massive bulk took up the entire space of the door, so that all we could see was the lower part of his body and his feet sliding helplessly on the floor.”32

  Once, Lyova’s cousin Raya asked him if he knew what he wanted to do when he grew up. “I told her that at one point, as she well knew, I had taken up—and even now would never forget—history, astronomy, biology, geology, and geography, but that gradually some of these subjects had begun to capture my interest more than others, and that two had now taken the lead: geology, in the form of mineralogy and paleontology, and
biology, in the form of zoology. ‘And now it remains to be seen,’ I said, ‘which will prevail in the end.’” The final decision depended on a combination of inspiration (which could not be hurried) and rational choice. Lyova was greatly impressed by his Uncle Isaak’s idea that “in nature, there are no devious stratagems: everything in it is simple, as long as you know how to discover and decipher its laws.” Also, as Lyova explained to Zhenia Gurov’s mother, “A painter can’t have a lab on the side just to do some science every once in a while, but for drawing, all a scientist who works in a lab needs is some paper, paints, and brushes.”33

  Cousin Raya, Uncle Isaak, and Zhenia Gurov’s mother were not the only adults with whom Lyova discussed his future and his scholarly interests. He had close personal and intellectual relations with his teachers (principally Modest Nikolaevich Rober, but also David Yakovlevich Raikhin and two other teachers from School No. 19), his friends’ mothers (the fathers were usually not around), and, in particular, his many relatives, with whom he corresponded regularly and whose visits he awaited anxiously and documented religiously. His decision to record his life as fully as possible was inspired by a visit, in August 1939, from his Leningrad relatives: Cousin Raya (Raisa Samoilovna Fishman), her husband Monya (Emmanuil Grigorievich Fishman, a cellist and professor at the Leningrad Conservatory), and their daughter Nora, whom Lyova called Trovatore, after Verdi’s opera. “Those were some of the happiest days of my life, but I was foolish enough not to record them in my diary. So now they have vanished without a trace. It was that summer that Raya invited me to visit them in Leningrad during the winter break. How I regret now that I did not record everything about their stay in Moscow!”34

  Lyova Fedotov, To the Memory of Lyova Fedotov and Some Joint Underground Adventures

  Lyova Fedotov, The Entrance to the Dungeon Was Walled Up with Bricks

  Emmanuil had asked him then if he was going to describe their visit in his diary, but Lyova had answered that it was not remarkable enough. “Oh what a monstrous mistake that was! Today I blame myself bitterly for not having recorded such beautiful hours of my life as our Leningrad relatives’ visit. But not to worry! When I go to Leningrad in the winter, I’ll describe the entire trip in great detail. I can already picture the train compartment, the dim lamps, the darkness outside, the reflection of the berths in the window, and the sound of the wheels carrying me to Leningrad. Yes, there will be some happy moments in the future—though still a long way off.”35

  Lyova’s mother’s large, close, upwardly mobile Jewish family provided, along with teachers and friends, a vital link between Apt. 262 and the wider world of history, discovery, and socialism. Raya, Emmanuil, and Trovatore had come to Moscow to attend the opening of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. The exhibition’s function was to demonstrate the achievements of collectivized agriculture and—through the arrangement and appearance of its visitors, buildings, and statues—the achievement of an All-Union Gemeinschaft. What was a hope and a work in progress for Tania Miagkova was a reality for Lyova Fedotov. “Hail to the Exhibition!” he wrote on November 27. “Thanks to it, we have an extra opportunity to see our relatives, who are scattered across the many cities of the European part of the USSR.”36

  The USSR was one large House of Government that brought families together. All Soviets were part of one large family. Lyova’s next diary entry was for November 28, 1939: “Tonight I listened with great interest to a radio show about the Kirov Museum in Leningrad. It described the museum’s objects, which tell the story of the complex and beautiful life of our unforgettable Sergei Mironovich Kirov. It is clear that it is a very valuable and interesting museum. In short, that show made me think, and I decided that I would definitely visit that museum during my trip to Leningrad. I will be sure to share with my reader my impressions of this manifestation of the life of one of the most important revolutionaries of our era.”37

  “The reader” was Lyova’s omnipresent contemporary and constant interlocutor. So was the voice of the radio, which Lyova never turned off:38

  After that I was fortunate to hear a newscast about the official note from the Soviet Government to the Government of Finland protesting the provocative firing on Soviet troops. I found the Finnish Government’s response outrageous. It turns out that the Finns are denying their crime. Who ever heard of a country’s troops staging target practice in full view of the troops of a bordering state? And yet, that is exactly what the Finns are saying…. Their arrogance has no limits! It’s monstrous! And they even dare to threaten our Leningrad! Leningrad is a major port and has always belonged to us, so, therefore, we will be the ones to decide how to ensure its security, and we will not allow these Finnish oafs to interfere in our internal affairs! Let them take a look at their own country first. They will see some truly awful things. But they refuse to do this. Concerned with their own pockets and the interests of England and France, they ignore the suffering of their own people. But they will pay for it soon enough! Yes, they will! With their unwise and extraordinarily foolish policy of preparing for war with the USSR, they are hastening the arrival of the day of reckoning. The Finnish people will not allow them to threaten the USSR—the only hope and defender of the exploited masses of the world.

  I was very glad to hear the response of our wise Government, which unmasked the whole pathetic gang of Finnish scoundrels and executioners. Let justice prevail!

  After that I began working on my next “Italy” drawing, while listening to Verdi’s opera Un ballo in maschera. I cannot add anything to my previous reflections on this opera at present, so I will wait and do it the next time. In my drawing I depicted the Mediterranean seabed covered with corals, which the Italians harvest in large quantities and use to make jewelry and small decorative pieces.

  And that is how the day ended.39

  The ever-present radio brought news, pleasure, and instruction while bringing people closer together. The next day Lyova and Modest Nikolaevich had a long discussion about Verdi. After that Lyova read him the previous day’s entry from his diary and asked:

  “So, what do you think of Finland’s latest antics?”

  “They’ll live to regret it,” said M.N. “It’s too bad the people have to suffer, but we’ll teach those wolves a lesson!”

  “They certainly deserve one,” I said.

  “We’ll give them one they won’t soon forget,” added M.N.

  Then I began playing for him.40

  The next morning the Soviet Union attacked Finland. In school, Lyova ran into his friend, Izia Bortian.

  “I know,” he said. “Our planes have already destroyed two Finnish airports, one in Helsinki and one in Viipuri.”

  “I look at the map,” I said, “and think about how small but feisty Finland is. It must be counting on England.”

  “But how can England help?” said Izia. “The best route is through the Baltic Sea, but that route is closed off because of Germany. England is at war with Germany, so they won’t allow them through.”

  “That’s true!” I exclaimed. “Actually England can’t handle Germany even with France, and here they are talking about attacking us through Finland. They’re clearly biting off more than they can chew. Just look at the antiwar movement there. It will double in strength if England starts a war against the USSR because the English exploited masses won’t allow their country to turn against the only socialist country in the world.”

  “That’s exactly right,” confirmed Izia.41

  At home that afternoon, Lyova read the Pravda editorial about the fifth anniversary of the assassination of S. M. Kirov:

  It has now been exactly five years since the vile, cowardly hand of an enemy treacherously pointed the barrel of a gun at our comrade and pulled the trigger. What a good person Kirov was! A very good person! Yes, I will definitely visit his museum when I go to Leningrad!

  Today’s paper also included the text of a radio intercept: “The Appeal of the Communist Party of Finland to the Finnish Workers.” I re
ad it straight through. Very well said! Very plainly and clearly! I hope that it will be understood by every worker, every peasant, every intellectual, and every soldier. I believe that after reading the appeal, the Finnish soldiers must immediately rise up against their dim-witted rulers, who are leading them to certain death in the war against the Soviet Union.42

  Lyova Fedotov, drawing of troops in battle

  Lyova Fedotov, Venice

  He spent the rest of the day working on the chapter on the Italian colonies for his “Italy” report.

  No sooner had I sketched a view of the Libyan desert than, at exactly 6 p.m., the newscast came on. I put the radio receiver on my desk and began listening with my mother. I won’t go into great detail here, but will summarize what we heard. We heard about how the mutton-headed government of White Guardist Finland, after hearing that the Soviet troops had crossed the border, had panicked and all its members resigned. Serves you right, you scoundrels! And whose fault is it? Your own! Whatever possessed you to embark on such a nefarious adventure? Oh, that’s it! The English! Right, now it’s clear to me as two plus two equals four. Of course! And to top it off, many of the soldiers in the Finnish army, having understood the appeal of the Communist Party, have risen up against their hapless government. The working people have also risen up in revolt and are refusing to fight against the Soviet Union. In the town of Terijoki, in eastern Finland, a people’s government of a new Democratic Republic of Finland has already been formed, headed by Otto Kuusinen. The war against the USSR is over! It began this morning at 3 a.m. and ended this afternoon. So now it’s a war inside Finland, a civil war, a war between two governments—the new government of a free Finland and the dark, scary “government” of Tanner, who replaced Cajander and Erkko after they fled. It seems to have been the most remarkably short war in history, for it lasted for no more than half a day!43