The war lasted three and a half months. After the signing of the peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Finland in March 1940, Otto Kuusinen’s government was disbanded, and he was made chairman of the newly formed Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. His permanent address was Apt. 19 in the House of Government, on the tenth floor of Entryway 1. For Lyova, the greatest casualty of the war was his long-awaited trip to Leningrad. He had been there before, but not by himself. He kept hoping that the hostilities would end before the school vacations, but they did not, so he postponed the trip until the next winter break and spent the year of 1940 preparing for it.
Lyova Fedotov’s drawings
His other passion was Verdi’s Aida. He knew it by heart, played it regularly, and discussed it repeatedly with his mother, friends, and teachers. On August 27, 1940, he went to see it at the Bolshoi Theater Annex:
The conductor, Melik-Pashaev, a short, dark-haired man with a round head, receding chin, and squinting eyes behind glasses, gently stepped up onto the podium and lifted his arms….
From the moment I heard the first notes of the violin, I felt as if I were in a fever dream. The overture was wonderful. Melik elicited a warm, lush sound with bright overtones from his orchestra. The prayer was very well conducted. The priests sang almost inaudibly, barely opening their mouths, creating a sense of majesty that made a tremendous impression on me. I listened to Ramfis’s arioso, of course, with eyes wide open.
In short, I spent most of the time just watching the orchestra and the conductor! The arrival of the prisoners, the aria of the imprisoned Amonasro, and the funereal chorus of the priests worked their magic on me, as always. I tried hard to grasp the rhythm and tempo of the chorus so I could learn to play it better…. The Chorus of the People didn’t actually live up to its name because that melody was sung more by the priests surrounding Radames and Amneris, and not by the crowd. I have to give those bloodthirsty priests their due: the best choruses certainly belong to them.44
He had a great deal more to say—about the work as a whole and about particular arias, choruses, duets, instruments, and performers. On the whole, he found Melik-Pashaev’s version superior to Lev Shteinberg’s (“the orchestra sounded mellower and more together”). Aida was his “music school,” especially with regard to orchestration. But it was its emotional effect that mattered the most: “It’s impossible to describe the state I was in this evening after the performance. First, for some reason, I took the sugar bowl back to the bathroom instead of the kitchen. Then I turned off the light as I was leaving the room, even though Lilya and my mother were still sitting at the table. At one point, I spent a long time vigorously stirring my tea, forgetting that I hadn’t put a single grain of sugar into it. And, finally, to top it all off, instead of making my bed as usual, I dragged the whole pile of sheets and blankets over to the couch and spread them out there!”45
Lyova Fedotov, Giuseppe Verdi
A week later he went to see Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila at the Bolshoi, but, contrary to Modest Nikolaevich’s prediction, was not able to forget Aida, except “for a moment” during Chernomor’s march. The following week, on September 10, Aida was broadcast on the radio. “Channel 2” on Lyova’s radio receiver was not working, so he went over to Misha Korshunov’s apartment:
It is hard for me to describe my emotions when I am listening to or watching the scene in which the Ethiopian prisoners are led in. When I hear this passage, I begin to shiver all over like a poor little puppy caught out in the rain. I cannot listen calmly to that scene. Is it not a heartrending moment when the humiliated, chained prisoners appear before the pharaoh, and Aida, seeing her father, the Ethiopian ruler Amonasro, among them, rushes toward him, lamenting her orphaned Fatherland? And Amonasro roughly grabs her and whispers to her not to give him away! Yes, that is one of the best scenes in the opera.46
On October 10, many months of study, reflection, and careful listening resulted in an unexpected triumph:
Something extraordinary happened today! I’m not sure why, but when I got home from school, I was consumed by the overwhelming desire to play the march from Aida. I generally like to play it only when I’m in the right mood and try never to sit down to play it without desire or emotion. There was no one else at home, and I felt completely uninhibited. I put all my emotions into the march and played it the way it should be played, with all of its numerous complex shades and so forth. Normally it seems to come out sounding rather monotonous and shapeless when I play, but today I can honestly say that, because of the extraordinary desire I had to play it, it did not sound bad. I wish I could always play it like that.47
On November 3, Aida was broadcast again. On November 9, Lyova told his friend Zhenia, who was also going to Leningrad, that he had conceived the extraordinary idea of combining his two dreams into one: to conduct the entire opera in his mind on the train. “Just remember,” I said. “No matter what the conditions—whether we stand the whole way, sit, or lie down—I am going to conduct the whole of Aida from beginning to end. Won’t that be interesting? Isn’t it an amazing idea?”48
He spent the next month and a half reading about the “former Petersburg,” talking to Zhenia “about the upcoming blissful days in Leningrad,” and rehearsing different parts of the opera. “Scene after scene kept flowing through my mind, and no one could tell that I was now rehearsing the scene by the Nile where the furious Amonasro curses his daughter, Radames unwittingly betrays his country, as well as some other heartrending moments since I was lying quietly on the couch, as if taking a nap.”49
The plan, as he explained to Zhenia, was to take the night train and spend the first four hours conducting Aida. Zhenia worried that it might be too long, but Lyova explained that he wanted to conduct the entire opera because he had never done it before, and he wanted to combine his personal premiere with “such a wonderful event as a trip to Leningrad.”50
“The main thing is that it won’t be hard for me at all! Playing or singing is actually a lot harder! For those, you need to move your hands or strain your vocal cords, but for this you can be completely still—you can sit without moving, and the piece, since you know it well, just flows through your head, and all you have to do is listen. Besides, the rhythmic sound of the train will make it even easier to imagine the sound of the singers and the orchestra. And there will be no one to prevent me from seeing the opera in my mind and picturing all the scenes and characters, which means that I’ll get to experience Aida one more time in all its glory, and I’ll get to experience it the way I interpret it, since this time, I’ll be directing it myself. I’ll finally be able to correct all the defects introduced by our theaters in the Annex production!”
“I see what you mean!,” said Zhenia. “That will be very interesting for you!”51
Lyova and Zhenia were not able to get tickets for the same train. Lyova’s (no. 22, smoking car no. 12) was departing on December 31, at 1:00 a.m.
Finally, the day had come.
That evening I collected all the things on my list. Next to my suitcase, I put a pack of white drawing cards (I didn’t have a proper sketchbook), some color pencils, my diary notebooks with descriptions of our adventures under the Little Church and summer break, my notes and textbook for German, the finished drawings from the Little Church series, and even the game the reader knows as “To the Moon,” in order to play it occasionally with Nora. True, in my absence, my mother had already managed to stuff a huge pile of shirts and underwear into my tiny suitcase, but nevertheless, I decided that my diary and drawing things should have priority.52
Lyova’s mother came home from work around 9:00 p.m. “The time was ticking away.” She packed his suitcase. He wrote about his day in his diary. Finally, he put on his light fall coat (he refused to wear winter clothes), galoshes, and fur hat (a concession to his mother), and they walked out the door. “I almost hesitate to describe the feelings that were churning around inside me at that moment. The reader, I hope, will know what I mean. Th
e courtyard was empty and, since it was close to midnight, one of the street lights had been turned off. The darkened windows of the buildings made the walls of the house appear gloomy and blank. It was a beautiful winter night. The stars seemed to shimmer in the black-blue sky. The snow that covered the lawns and sidewalks looked like shiny white sugar frosting in the dark. The crisp air filled my lungs, invigorating my soul.”53
They walked across the bridge to the Metro station and rode to Railway Station Square. “On the square the winter night seemed even colder: the lights of the cars and streetcars intersected across the snowy carpet, and the station buildings looked like bright steamships tied up at the dock.” They walked past the “crowds of people scurrying to and fro and groups of porters standing by, chatting and waiting patiently,” found the right train, and walked down the platform to his car. He showed his ticket to the conductor, who was holding a flashlight, and climbed in. “The passageway was full of people trying to shove their bags onto the upper bunks, so it was not easy to get through. Blue ribbons of tobacco smoke swirled around the flickering orange ceiling lights.” His seat was occupied, but he found a better one in the corner by the door, across from the service compartment, ran out to say good-bye to his mother, rushed back to his spot, “which, fortunately, hadn’t been taken,” and sank “into the deep, dark shadow” thrown by the overhanging bunk. “I sat calmly watching the crowds of people passing by with their heavy loads—screaming, cursing, swearing, and calling each other names. Among them were some choice exhibits from the ‘Museum of Curses,’ which, fortunately, does not actually exist. I could also hear muffled laughter, conversations, and instructions as people settled into their places with their luggage. There were so many smokers in the car that everything was soon half hidden behind a ghostly blue veil.”54
Suddenly “there was a jerk and a clank, and then, a soft knocking sound accompanied by a slow, even rocking motion.” Someone said that the train was moving. “The knocking grew faster, and soon the train picked up speed.” The conductors went into the service room and closed the door behind them.
I sat motionless in my dark corner, convinced there was no better spot in the entire car.
Thoughts kept running through my head. It’s hard to even say what I was thinking. I could scarcely believe I was on my way to Leningrad, having become so used to only dreaming about it. It felt as if the train were heading somewhere into the unknown rather than to the city I had been longing to see all this time. The people around me were traveling to Leningrad, that I knew for certain, but I was traveling to some other place. My destination seemed divine, otherworldly. I simply could not comprehend that tomorrow I would be seeing the streets of Leningrad, the Neva, and St. Isaac’s, as well as my dear relations, Raya, Monya, and Trovatore. “Yes, all these people on the train are traveling to Leningrad,” I thought, “but I—I am traveling into the unknown!” And yet some strange, new, solemn feeling kept telling me that it was all a reality. It’s true, I swear! I felt as if I were caught up in a dream or reverie.55
Most of the passengers had settled in. A large man who had been standing in the aisle talking to Lyova’s neighbor returned to his seat.
Finally, the moment had arrived when I could begin to fulfill my dream—to perform Aida. At first, I could hear only the march in my head, then I repeated it, but I wasn’t up for doing it a third time. In order to become accustomed to my surroundings, I went through both marches from Il Trovatore and then stopped there. The rhythmic knocking of the wheels helped tremendously in achieving a clear and correct sound from my imaginary singers and orchestra. I kept postponing the beginning of the opera because I wanted to savor this moment of bliss and could not quite yet bring myself to commence with the prelude to Aida.56
Then one of his neighbors began to eat, and he decided to follow suit. When he was finished, he pulled out the postcard his mother had given him and, using his suitcase as a desk, wrote that the train had just passed Klin and that he was doing well and would describe the rest of the journey when he got to Leningrad. He put the postcard in his coat pocket and prepared to begin.
The car was finally quiet. The voices had faded, the tumult long subsided, and the air was filled with nothing but clouds of blue smoke.
“Time to begin,” I thought. In my mind’s eye I pictured the opera house, the rows of armchairs, the curtain…. The lights went out, and Aida began. Musical themes followed one upon another…. It was true theater, which even the company of such sad characters couldn’t ruin. At the end of act 1, I knew that an hour and five minutes or so had already gone by since the beginning of the performance.
Most of the people in the car were asleep, and the service door opened only during infrequent stops. My neighbor was already asleep, and I was not far behind. I propped my suitcase against the wall and decided to take a little nap before the opera’s second act.
It didn’t take long to fall asleep. My thoughts grew hazy, and I didn’t wake up until the train jolted, and I heard the railwayman telling someone that this was Bologoe. The conductor took his flashlight and went into the vestibule. I was so exhausted that I entered the world of dreams once more without waiting for the train’s departure. I heard someone saying it was very late, someone else agreeing, a door slamming somewhere, someone whistling in his sleep…. Time passed, and I once more fell sound asleep.
When I woke up, I saw that it was still dark and that the inside of the train looked the same. Everyone around me was still sleeping. I could see the first rays of the winter dawn through the frosted patterns on the windows. The sun was beginning to rise! Along with the sun, a new feeling was rising within me. Before that moment, I had grown used to the haze, shadows, and pale lamplight inside the car, but the new day’s rays penetrating the frozen windows reminded me again that I was on my way to the long-awaited city of Leningrad.57
He conducted the second act, “with its march, dances, and scenes of captive Ethiopians”; ate breakfast in his corner; watched “a bunch of peasant women with screaming five-year-olds” get on at Malaia Vishera; and, “to the accompaniment of chit-chatting women and kids jumping up and down and getting in the way of standing passengers,” finished the opera.
Suddenly, people were beginning to move. I looked around me. Outside my window I could see the flickering tracks, pillars of smoke, red walls of the train sheds, some green and blue train cars, and a line of locomotives. We were approaching Leningrad. Everyone was already packed, and, standing next to us, near the door to the vestibule, was a small cluster of heavily-laden people. The train began to slow down …
“Oh my goodness!” I thought, standing up at the same time as the village gossips. “Can it really be true? I can’t believe it!” I could feel a terrifying wave of happiness rising up inside of me.
I heard the wheels clank and the sound of metal, a blast of freezing air hit my face … and the train stopped!58
BOOK THREE
ON TRIAL
PART V
THE LAST JUDGMENT
23
THE TELEPHONE CALL
On December 1, 1934, Khrushchev was in his office in the Moscow City Party Committee when the telephone rang. “It was Kaganovich. ‘I am calling from the Politburo, please come immediately.’ I arrived at the Kremlin and walked into the hall. I was met by Kaganovich. He had a terrible, frightening look on his face, seemed badly shaken, and had tears in his eyes. He said: ‘Something awful has happened. Kirov has been murdered in Leningrad.’”1
The deputy head of the Military Chemical Trust and former representative of the Communist Party of Poland at the Comintern, Vatslav Bogutsky (Waclaw Bogucki), was in his House of Government apartment (Apt. 342) that evening. With him were his wife, a librarian at the Lenin Institute; Mikhalina (Michalina) Iosifovna; and their nine-year-old son, Vladimir, who later wrote about it:
One evening my father received a telephone call. He answered in the usual way. But suddenly, the expression on his face changed dramatically. In a voice f
illed with emotion he asked several quick questions. We could not hear the answers, but the tone of the conversation and the expression on his face frightened my mother and me. When he hung up the phone, he had tears in his eyes. My mother asked in alarm who it was and what had happened. He named the caller (it was someone he knew from the Comintern or the Central Committee apparatus, I don’t remember anymore) and said quietly: “Kirov has been killed.” Never again did I see such an expression of grief on my father’s face.2
According to Inna Gaister, who was also nine at the time, her parents found it strange that their next-door neighbors in Apt. 166, the director of the construction of the Agricultural Exhibition, Isaak Korostoshevsky, and his wife did not seem to grieve as much as they did. “My mother said they were less upset because they did not have any children.” The death of Kirov was a personal tragedy that different members of the Soviet family experienced to the best of their emotional ability and moral imagination, but everyone seemed to know that, as Khrushchev put it, “everything had changed.”3
Agnessa Argiropulo and Sergei Mironov were still in Dnepropetrovsk, where Mironov was head of the provincial NKVD office. On December 1, Agnessa came home and was surprised to see his hat in the hall.
I ran to his study. I found him sitting, still in his overcoat, with a strange look on his face and his thoughts far away. I knew then: something had happened.
The House of Government Page 93
