The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  Puntsuk the Mongol hunter,

  Puntsuk the Mongol hunter,

  Puntsuk the Mongol hunter

  Got himself a gun.

  Did a little jumping,

  Did a little shouting,

  Made the greedy lamas

  Turn around and run.

  Sergei Mironov’s job was to finish what Puntsuk and Fedotov had started. On October 18, 1937, he wrote to Frinovsky (who had left for Moscow once Mironov was firmly installed and the troika had begun to function) about the “discovery of a large counterrevolutionary organization in the Ministry of Internal Affairs”; on February 13, 1938, he asked Ezhov for permission to arrest the Mongolian Trotskyites and the “Japanophile wing of the Panmongols” (among others); and on February 22, he reported on the confessions of highly placed “Khalkha nationalists” involved in the creation of a “Japanophile Altai State.” By March 30, he had ordered the arrest of 10,728 people (including 7,814 lamas, 1,555 Buriats, 408 Chinese, 322 feudals, 300 ministerial officials, and 180 top military commanders) and the execution of 6,311 of them. Next on the agenda was the arrest of 6,000 lamas, 900 Buriats, 200 Chinese, and 86 ministerial officials. By April 1939, Choibalsan’s troika had sentenced 20,099 people to death.37

  As in Novosibirsk, the territory’s two top officials socialized outside of work. Agnessa was a regular participant:

  As head of the government, Choibalsan had a European house, where he held receptions. But in the courtyard there were two yurts, where he and his wife lived.

  At one reception, I remember, they served sausage. I was trying to watch my weight and not eat any fat, so I was picking out the bits of fat and eating only the meat. Suddenly, I noticed that all the Mongolian women had started picking out their bits of fat, too. Good heavens, I thought: that’s just because I’m doing it!

  Choibolsan’s wife was very young. I gave the hem of her robe a slight tug, shook my head, and pointed to myself, as if to say: why are you in a robe—you ought to be in a dress. So she pulled back the sleeve of her robe and stuck out her wrist, as if to say: see how thin my arms are—much too thin, and I told her: but that’s a good thing—and looks pretty!

  My hair was cut in the latest style that evening, and I was wearing a long cornflower blue dress. Choibalsan’s wife had a gorgeous braid, with real strings of pearl woven in.

  Then, at the very next reception, she shows up with her hair cut exactly like mine, in a blue evening gown! True, not of Crêpe-Georgette—you couldn’t get it there—but silk. And all the other ladies had on the same blue dresses.38

  Choibalsan personally directed the executions that followed the October show trial. Agnessa, who “was trying to introduce culture” by promoting the use of outhouses and other hygienic practices, went on an excursion to the local “Valley of the Dead”:

  The Mongols are Buddhists. Buddha forbade them to dig in the earth. They are herders, so they don’t need to till the soil for food. Fish and dogs are holy animals to them. They are allowed to eat sheep and cows. They do not bury their dead. They wrap them in shrouds and take them to the Valley of the Dead. The sun and wind dry out the bodies. I went there once in a car with Mirosha and Frinovsky.

  It was a large valley, and the field there was littered with skulls and bones. Savage wild dogs, with brightly-colored bits of cloth hanging all over them, lived on the edge of the field. When people came to dispose of a corpse, they would call these dogs (already trained for the purpose) and hang strips of cloth from their necks. Some had too many of these strips to count—which meant that they had eaten a lot of corpses….

  The Russians had decreed that the dead be buried in the ground. They had even dug some deep pits in the valley. But no one followed the decree.39

  Mironov did not get a chance to finish arresting six thousand lamas (his successor, Mikhail Iosifovich Golubchik, whom he brought from Novosibirsk, did). Soon after he wrote his April 3 report on the arrests and executions, he was summoned to Moscow. Agulia had scarlet fever at the time, so she and Agnessa had to join him later:

  We arrived at the Yaroslavl Station in Moscow. Agulia saw Mirosha from the window and started jumping up and down, yelling “Papa, Papa.” When he entered the train, she threw herself into his arms. She was such a pale little thing, her skin looking almost transparent after her illness.

  Mirosha had these wonderfully expressive, large, light-brown eyes. I had learned to read most of his feelings in them. So when our eyes met that day, I could see that he was happy, and not only because we were together again. I was dying to know what it was about, but he didn’t say a word and kept smiling mysteriously. I did notice that he was wearing a beautiful, imported Chesterfield coat instead of his NKVD uniform.

  There was a lot of bustle over how to unload and deliver our luggage, but none of it concerned us: it was the “lackeys’” job. We came out of the station to find a huge, luxurious car waiting for us. We got in and were whisked off through the streets of Moscow. After Ulaanbaatar, it felt like the Tower of Babel. First we passed Myasnitskaya (already renamed Kirov Street), then Dzerzhinsky Square, then Sverdlov Square. I was sure we would turn into a hotel, but no! We kept going—past Okhotny Ryad, Mokhovaia, the university, the Manege, the Big Stone Bridge … Where could we be going?

  At last we drove into the courtyard of the House of Government, where we took an elevator to the seventh floor to a fabulous six-room apartment—and with such furnishings! Fresh flowers and fresh fruit! I looked at Mirosha, who, laughing and happy that he had pulled off the surprise, hugged me and whispered in my ear:

  “Are you surprised? Don’t be. I am now the Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs for the Far East. Take a closer look at me!”

  I did, and there it was—the Lenin Medal on his chest. His eyes were shining. How well I knew that sparkle of success!40

  26

  THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR

  By the time Mironov and Agnessa moved into the House of Government, about four hundred of the original residents had moved out or been moved out. Among the first to go, in early 1934, was the recently forgiven Trotskyite (and former top Civil War commissar and prosecutor at the Filipp Mironov trial), Ivar Smilga. He had lost his job in the State Planning Commission, and the family—Smilga, his wife Nadezhda Poluian, their two daughters, the daughters’ nanny, and Nadezhda’s friend Nina Delibash (the wife of the exiled oppositionist, Aleksandr Ioselevich)—had been asked to move across the river to a four-room apartment in 26 Gorky Street (behind the Art Theater). Smilga was still formally affiliated with the Central Committee and worked for the Academia Publishing House. Shortly before the move, he had published an introduction to a new translation of Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers. “Our country’s youth,” he wrote, “will embrace everything that is useful and exciting in Dickens, while criticizing his weak points. The pedagogical role of Dickens as an artist is far from being exhausted. Our descendants will be reading him with profit and pleasure.”1

  Then, on the evening of December 1, 1934, when Smilga, Nadezhda, and the girls (fifteen-year-old Tatiana and twelve-year-old Natalia) were about to leave for a walk, the telephone rang. According to Tatiana, “Dad picked up the phone and said in an awful voice: ‘Oh no! Of course. I’ll be right over.’ He came up to us—we were all three standing in our coats. ‘My friends,’ he said in a strange voice, ‘Kirov has been assassinated in Leningrad.’” It was Bukharin calling from Izvestia; he wanted Smilga’s Civil War reminiscences about Kirov for the memorial issue.2

  A month later, on the evening of January 1, 1935, Tatiana and Natalia were in bed after a sleepless New Year’s night when Smilga walked into their room and said: “Kids, I don’t want you to worry, they’re just picking up some of us old oppositionists.” He was taken away in the morning, after a search that lasted many hours. According to Tatiana, his parting words were, “You do know you are saying goodbye to an honest man, don’t you?” He was sentenced to five years in the Verkheuralsk Political Isolator (around the time Tania Miagkova was
about to be released). He spent his time there studying philosophy and political economy and reading Racine and Corneille in an effort to improve his French. Nadezhda was allowed to come visit him. She asked him to swear that he had not participated in any conspiracies, but, as she later told Tatiana, he gave her such a look that she felt ashamed of herself. She was arrested herself on July 1, 1936, soon after her return to Moscow. Tatiana, Natalia, and their nanny stayed in one room; the other three were occupied by other families. Nina Delibash was also arrested, as were Smilga’s brother, Pavel, and Nadezhda’s brothers, Yan and Dmitry. Dmitry had been the presiding judge at Filipp Mironov’s trial.

  As Smilga said at the time, while arguing for the death sentence, the “terrible acts” committed by the Convention in the Vendée were “terrible from the point of view of a particular human being” but “justified by history.” The other top Bolsheviks who had been involved in the de-Cossackization campaign, but were now serving in different capacities—Iona Yakir (commander of the Kiev Military District), Yakov Vesnik (director of the Krivoi Rog Steel Combine), Iosif Khodorovsky (director of the Kremlin Health and Sanitation Department), Aron Frenkel (member of the Central Committee’s Control Commission), and Sergei Syrtsov (director of Chemical Plant No. 12, after being dismissed as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian Republic in 1930) were all arrested and executed within two years of Smilga’s arrest. The former commander of Trotsky’s armored train, Rudolf Peterson, who was dismissed as commandant of the Kremlin after the Kremlin affair of 1935 and employed by Yakir as his deputy for supplies, was arrested a month before Yakir (on April 27, 1937). In a note to his children from prison, he wrote: “Forgive me for everything” and “It has to be this way.”3

  Smilga’s closest collaborator from the time of the Mironov affair (as a fellow member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Special Group of the Southern Front in 1919), Valentin Trifonov, was arrested on June 21, 1937. One of the accusations was his continued relationship with Smilga. Since 1932, Trifonov had been chairman of the Main Committee on Foreign Concessions, but his chief preoccupation was Soviet readiness for an imminent enemy attack. Shortly before his arrest, he had sent his new manuscript, “The Outlines of the Coming War,” to Stalin and several other Politburo members but received no reply. His son Yuri was eleven at the time. He had recently passed his fifth-grade exams and was reading The Count of Monte Cristo, writing a short story, “Diplodocus,” and planning his escape to South America. The family was living at their dacha in Serebrianyi Bor.4

  22 June, 1937.

  This morning Mom woke me up and said:

  “Yura, get up, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  I rubbed my eyes. Tanya sat up in her bed.

  Ivar Smilga’s arrest photographs

  Nadezhda Smilga-Poluian and her daughters, Natalia and Tatiana, after Smilga’s arrest

  Nadezhda Smilga-Poluian’s arrest photographs

  “Last night,” Mom said, her voice trembling, “something terrible happened. Dad was arrested.” And she almost started crying.

  We were completely dazed.

  I have no doubt that Dad will be released soon. Dad is the most honest person in the world.

  Today has been the worst day of my life.5

  During the next two months, he played a lot of tennis and read “nonstop.” In early August, a new pier for passenger boats, with a café and ticket office, was opened on the Moskva not far from their dacha. On August 18, he saw a big air show and “balloons with portraits of Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin, Voroshilov and other Politburo members.” On August 28, he turned twelve. His mother and grandmother gave him two sets of French colonial stamps, an album for drawing, and a thick notebook for his short stories. In the fall, he saw A White Sail Gleams at the Children’s Theater, was elected chairman of the school literary club, finished “Diplodocus,” and wrote “Dukhalli,” “Toxodon Platensis,” and a “purely academic paper on France” (while Lyova Fedotov was working on his “Italy” album). On September 14, his uncle, Pavel Lurye, was arrested. On December 19, his other uncle, Evgeny Trifonov, died of a heart attack. It was on January 1, 1938, that he saw Lenin in October (“A wonderful movie! Excellent! Magnificent! Ideal! Superb! Terrific! Very good! Exceptional!”). And in early February, he teamed up with Oleg Salkovsky (Salo) in order to challenge the Lyova Fedotov–Misha Korshunov writing duo, but ended up—somehow—writing his first realistic story, “The Rivals.”

  Trifonovs after Valentin Trifonov’s arrest. Left to right: Yuri’s grandmother Tatiana Slovatinskaia, Ania Vasilieva (the wife of Yuri’s uncle Pavel Lurye), Yuri, his mother, his sister, his stepbrother Undik.

  3 April, 1938

  Last night NKVD agents came and took Mommy away. They woke us up. Mommy was very brave. They took her away in the morning. Today I did not go to school. Now it’s only Tania and me with Grandma, Ania, and Undik.

  On the 7th we’ll go with Ania to try to find out which prison Mommy is in. This is awful.

  Ania, Pavel Lurye’s wife, had been living with them since her husband’s arrest. Undik was Yuri’s twenty-year-old adopted brother, who had recently taken up smoking and started working in a chemistry lab.

  April 8, 1938.

  “Misfortunes never come singly.”

  My days have become completely empty. But someday this must end. On the 6th Tania, Ania, and I went to the Fine Arts Museum. We did not have time to see everything because Ania was in a hurry to feed her daughter, Katia. Grandma suggested that I write everything down, to let Mommy know how we are getting along without her.

  Today, right after school, Tania, Ania, and I went to Kuznetsky Bridge to try to find out where Mommy is. It was a small room with around 20 people in it. For about 30 minutes we waited for the little window to open. All the faces were sad, mournful, and streaked with tears. Soon the window opened, and I got into line. When my turn came, I showed them my number, 1861, and my school ID. They told me that Mommy was in the Butyrki prison. On the 11th I’ll go leave some money for both Mom and Dad. At school nobody knows yet. Yesterday Tania and I went to Natasha’s birthday [Natasha was Yuri’s half-sister, Valentin Trifonov’s daughter from his first marriage]. We spent about an hour and a half there and left. Now I’m reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

  I’ve finished my homework for tomorrow. My whole body feels tired. And no wonder, after two hours standing up. Ania and Tania could sit down, although Tania only did at the very end. Exams are coming up soon, but I’ll manage somehow.

  Oh, I’m so-o-o-o depressed!!!

  Mommy-y-y-y-y-!!!!yy!! I can’t stop cr …

  9 April, 1938

  I must be strong and wait.

  16 April, 1938

  Yesterday I got a C in Geometry. This won’t do! I need to be an even better student while Mom is away. I’m going to study a lot, I swear.

  21 April, 1938

  It’s evening now. Grandma went out to buy some bread. Tania, Ania, and I are at home. I feel sick at heart. Mommy! I am sending you my greetings, wherever you are. Today we received a letter from Pavel. He is in Ufa, on his way to Camp Freedom. It’s so depressing!

  Mommy-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y!!!!6

  ■ ■ ■

  Aleksandr Voronsky, who, in 1927, had joined with Smilga and the other active oppositionists, had continued to serve as head of the Classics Section at State Fiction Publishers. Between mid-1932 and late 1934 (when Smilga was working on his essay on Dickens), he had published the collected works of Goethe, Balzac, Flaubert, Griboedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, A. Koltsov (no relation), Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tolstoy, Ostrovsky, and Chekhov. According to his daughter, he had “kept to himself and refused not only to speak publicly about literature, but even to attend literary meetings and conferences.” He spent most of his time reading philosophy and writing fiction. As his boss put it during his purge meeting on October 21, 1933, “Aleksandr Konstantinovich has lost something in his life as a Communist, and he cannot quite find it to
this day…. The breaking of his pen, which is a political weapon handed to him by the Party, will certainly be followed by the breaking of many other weapons and, ultimately, himself.”7

  Right after Kirov’s death, he had been expelled from the Party—“for helping to organize aid for the writer Mirov, who had been exiled for anti-Soviet propaganda,” for failing to mention that fact at the purge meeting of 1933, and “for concealing his ties with Zorin, who had been arrested in connection with the murder of Comrade Kirov.” In May 1935, he appealed the decision to the Central Committee’s Party Control Commission, claiming that his relationship with Sergei Zorin (Aleksandr Gombarg, the former secretary of the Petrograd and Briansk Party committees) had been “of a purely domestic and literary nature” and that his compassion for Mirov had been a momentary lapse:

  It is true that in 1931 I gave material help to the beginning writer and anarchist Mirov. I admitted and continue to admit that I did commit that crime, having been influenced by reports that his family was in need, but I ask you to bear in mind that this help, given four years ago, was a one-time act. I have never given any help to any other exiles. Nor can I accept the accusation that I deliberately concealed my help to Mirov at my purge meeting. I simply forgot about it. When, in February this year, I was asked if I had ever given financial assistance to an exile, it was not until I got home that I, with the help of my family, remembered this fact and immediately reported it to the Party committee secretary.8

  The Bolshevik inquisitorial procedure, like its numerous Christian, Buddhist, and post-Freudian counterparts, assumed that a wholly virtuous life was impossible, but that partial reconciliation could be achieved through confession and that an unconfessed sin could be forgiven if it was honestly forgotten, not deliberately concealed. The difference between honest forgetfulness and deliberate concealment, apparent to God, history, and perhaps an experienced interrogator, was, in most human interactions, a matter of trust. But, as Stalin would tell Bukharin at the December 1936 Central Committee plenum, after Kirov’s murder, no one, even those who “volunteer to personally execute their friends,” could be trusted. It was a “hellish situation”: sincerity, as the events of the previous two years had demonstrated convincingly, had become a relative, and therefore irrelevant, concept.9