Voronsky’s defense was to confess again (by recapitulating the story of his fall, first formulated at his purge meeting) and to point out that he had never made any “political mistakes” in his work as a publisher of classic literature, and that no one had ever questioned the sincerity of the “very necessary” work he was doing in crafting the literary image of the underground Bolshevik:
I have decisively broken with the opposition. The Party is dear to me. Its past, present, and future are dear to me. I am certain that, under the leadership of its Leninist Central Committee and of Comrade Stalin, the Land of the Soviets will continue its steady march toward the establishment of a socialist society.
In conclusion, I would like to say that whatever decision the Control Commission of the Central Committee reaches in my case, I will continue to think of my life as being inseparable from the Party. Unconditional obedience to Party decisions and to the Party leadership headed by its Central Committee and Comrade Stalin will remain an absolute requirement for me.10
The response from the Party Control Commission did not arrive for more than a year. It was negative. Voronsky was formally expelled from the Party and the Writers’ Union and removed from his job at Fiction Publishers. At an interrogation conducted on January 25, 1935 (by Boris Volin’s and Boris Efimov’s brother-in-law, the investigator Leonid Chertok), Sergei Zorin had admitted that, “by virtue of maintaining, in 1930, 1931, and 1932, political ties with Zinoviev and Kamenev and being, on some questions, in agreement with their political views,” he had acted as a “double-dealer.” Since, for Party members, there was no such thing as a “domestic and literary” relationship distinct from a political one, it followed that, by virtue of maintaining, all the way through December 1934, domestic and literary ties with Sergei Zorin, Voronsky, too, had acted as a double-dealer.11
Voronsky did not entirely disagree. His fictionalized autobiography was about doubles: Brands and Peer Gynts, Don Quixotes and underground men, the self-doubting first-person narrator and his embodied Party nickname. The literary character of the Bolshevik Moses he had championed in the 1920s was either one character with two natures or two characters with one mission. His Lenin was both a thundering Moses and an artist with an “almost feminine tenderness toward the human being.” “Double-dealing” is what had happened to Koltsov’s “two faces—and only one man; not a duality but a synthesis.”12
Around the time of Kirov’s murder, Voronsky had received the proofs of his new book about Gogol. According to his daughter, Galina,
My father became completely engrossed in that work. For a while, he could speak of nothing but Gogol. At home, on walks, and visiting friends, he would talk excitedly about various episodes from Gogol’s life and work. Once, on a cold winter day, when he and I were walking around the Arbat, we stopped in front of Gogol’s statue, and he said:
“Gogol was a mysterious and strange man. There was something of the devil in him. I think I have managed to lift the curtain on his work just a little and say something new about him. But I cannot escape the feeling that he will not let me say what I want to.”13
The key to Gogol’s genius, according to Voronsky, was his dual nature, and the greatest turning point in Gogol’s life was the novella “Viy,” in which the “philosopher” seminarian, Khoma Brut, is assailed by the forces of darkness while he is in church in the middle of the night. “The doors tore from their hinges, and a numberless host of monsters flew into God’s church. A terrible noise of wings and scratching claws filled the whole church. Everything flew and rushed about, seeking the philosopher everywhere.” Khoma is protected by the circle he has drawn around himself until he is identified by the monstrous Viy with his iron face.
“Don’t look!” some inner voice whispered to the philosopher. He could not help himself and looked.
“There he is!” Viy cried and fixed an iron finger on him. And all that were there fell upon the philosopher. Breathless, he crashed to the ground and straightaway the spirit flew out of him in terror.
A cockcrow rang out. This was already the second cockcrow; the gnomes had missed the first. The frightened spirits rushed pell-mell for the windows and doors in order to fly out quickly, but nothing doing: and so they stayed there, stuck in the doors and windows. When the priest came in, he stopped at the sight of such a disgrace in God’s sanctuary and did not dare serve a memorial service in such a place. So the church remained forever with monsters stuck in its doors and windows, overgrown with forest, roots, weeds, wild blackthorn; and no one now can find the path to it.14
In the midst of the literary battles of the 1920s, Voronsky had compared his proletarian critics to “those righteous and steadfast men” who, like Gogol’s philosopher seminarian, “had drawn a magic circle around themselves lest the bourgeois Viy give the Russian Revolution over to the unclean and the undead.” Or had he meant to compare himself to the philosopher seminarian, and his proletarian critics, to the unclean and the undead? He was a former seminarian, after all, and they were those “everywhere-at-once young men,” whose “cleverness could sometimes turn downright sinister.” Or were both he and his proletarian critics doomed seminarians, assailed by the same monster? And was it not Bukharin who had first broken Voronsky’s pen and then chased away the Averbakhs? And wasn’t Bukharin later revealed as a double-dealer?15
According to Voronsky, Gogol had two natures and lived in two worlds.
The two worlds—the real world and the world of terrifying nightmares and evil spirits—struggle against each other in Gogol’s work, becoming ever more vivid and drawing closer together. In Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka reality gets the upper hand: monsters, witches, and vile snouts enter ordinary life, but are ultimately defeated by it. Even the sorcerer in “A Terrible Vengeance” perishes in the end. In Viy the dead, undead, and unutterable triumph over reality and become an integral part of it. The Christian writer does not even spare the “holy place,” the church. The undead get stuck in its windows.
What makes Gogol different from the philosopher seminarian is that his circle protects him even when he does look. And so he is able to stay inside it and bear witness. “The vile snouts burst in and come alive. After that, the artist’s gaze is drawn inexorably toward them—for he cannot resist the temptation and looks, and sees his native land crawling with smirking monsters, and knows that there is nowhere the philosopher poet can hide.” He tries to read the psalms, like Khoma Brut, but all he can see is the apocalypse. “He is like the priest who no longer dares celebrate the mass, and when he does, his words come out powerless and lifeless, and the images and characters meant to represent the sacred and reconciliation appear artificial and unconvincing. The artist’s brush is strong only when it paints the devil’s legions in all their picturesque and hideous monstrosity. Such is the artist’s curse.”16
In Voronsky’s literary theory, all true artists are prophets with “the special gift of clairvoyance.” Gogol’s gift was to live in a world in which the dead souls had won—and not to give in.17
The reader who pores over these glorious pages and wonders about the terrible fate of their creator may think of any number of images and comparisons. But the most terrifying of them all comes from Gogol’s unfinished novel about two captives in a dungeon, a man and a woman. The smell of decay takes one’s breath away; an enormous toad stares with bulging eyes; thick clumps of cobweb hang from the ceiling; human bones are strewn about. “A bat or an owl would be a beauty here.” When they begin to torture the female captive, a dark, frightening voice can be heard saying: “Don’t give in, Hannah!” Suddenly, a man appears: “he was alive, but had no skin. His skin had been torn from his body. He consisted entirely of boiling blood. Only the blue branches of his veins spread throughout his body. The blood was dripping from him. A mandolin on a rusty leather strap hung over his shoulder. His eyes blinked hideously in his bloody face.” Gogol was that bard with the mandolin, with the eyes that had seen too much. He is the one who, in spite of himsel
f, screamed in a dark voice, for all of Russia to hear: “Don’t give in, Hannah!”
For that, they skinned him alive.18
Who are “they”? And what happened to the “real world” in which the priest was supposed to celebrate his mass?
Voronsky spent the year 1936 waiting to be arrested. Most of his friends quit coming to see him; his daughter Galina was expelled from the Young Communist League; and the typeset of Gogol was destroyed at the print shop. He prepared a stack of books on philosophy to take to prison with him. According to Galina, “Father spent a lot of time writing and a lot reading, living an almost full life, and trying not to see or call even those few friends who had not deserted him.” The Voronskys celebrated New Year’s Eve at home. Galina remembered decorating a small New Year’s tree with Mandarin oranges and listening to Jules Massenet’s Élégie on the radio. At the end of January, Radek and several other defendants at the Second Moscow Show Trial confessed to having led double lives. According to Galina, Voronsky “did not doubt the truthfulness of the defendants’ testimony.” Two days after the verdict was announced, on February 1, 1937, Voronsky worked in the morning, went on his usual walk to Red Square before lunch, took an afternoon nap, and sat down to work again. In the evening Galina and Sima Solomonovna went down to the Shock Worker to see the last showing of Protazanov’s Without a Dowry. They got back to their entryway around midnight:
The guard opened the elevator door for us and gave us a long, strangely stern, searching look, but didn’t say anything. From the stairway we could see the windows of my father’s study. He usually kept only his desk lamp on because he didn’t like bright light. But this time the windows were brightly lit and that made me feel nervous somehow, but I didn’t have time to think why. My mother opened the door with her key. A short, fat man in military uniform was standing just inside the door holding a saber, for some reason. Five or six men in uniform were conducting a search. My father was sitting on the couch. My mother and I were not allowed to sit next to him or speak to him, but we spoke anyway, despite the constant screaming of the NKVD men. It was a very thorough search, especially when it came to the books. We had an anniversary edition of Goethe’s collected works, in gray leather bindings. They sliced into each binding and carefully examined it, with the NKVD man even making a pretence of asking our permission first.…
My father calmly and deliberately went about his preparations. Ignoring the NKVD men’s objections, he took quite a few things…. Before leaving he asked to be allowed to drink a cup of hot, strong tea.
When we were saying goodbye, I burst into tears.
He tried to comfort me: “Make sure to finish college. If they send me into exile, you can come visit me in the summer.”
I will never forget that scene: the dark hall, my father wearing his overcoat and fur hat with the ear flaps hanging down, and the large bundle in his arms.19
His manuscripts and books, including the proofs of Gogol, were arrested along with him. The arrest warrant was signed by Yakov Agranov, who was arrested himself five months later. Galina and Sima Solomonovna were moved from the House of Government to a communal apartment on 2nd Izvoznaia (Studencheskaia) Street. Galina was arrested almost immediately, in mid-March; Sima Solomonovna, in August. One of Galina’s interrogators was “a very nice guy”:
This young man turned out to be a huge fan of Esenin, and when he found out—this was during the interrogation—that Esenin was one of the writers I knew personally, he actually jumped in his seat: “No! Really?” Our subsequent interaction (as investigator and prisoner) consisted in our reciting to each other the verses of this forbidden, seditious poet (whom my father also liked very much) and correcting each other if either made a mistake, but whenever a third person (i.e., another NKVD officer) walked into the room, my K. (we’ll call him that here) would quickly readjust his manner and shout: “Voronskaia, you’d better start testifying!”20
Aleksandr Voronsky’s arrest photograph
Providing testimony at about the same time were Voronsky’s “proletarian” adversary but later friend and coauthor, G. Lelevich (a former Trotskyite), and the Party patron of the anti-Voronsky forces but later publisher and defender of his autobiographical writings, Semen Kanatchikov (a former Zinovievite). Just as Voronsky’s memoirs represented the canonical life of the Bolshevik “student,” Kanatchikov’s represented that of the Bolshevik worker. Both books were proscribed after their authors’ arrests. The head proletarian critic, Leopold Averbakh, was arrested on April 4, 1937. His sister, Moscow’s deputy prosecutor Ida Averbakh, was arrested along with her husband, the former NKVD chief, Genrikh Yagoda. (Her book on “reforming the consciousness” of the prisoners employed in the building of the Moscow–Volga Canal had been published a year earlier.) Their mother, Yakov Sverdlov’s sister Sofia, was also arrested, as was Yakov Sverdlov’s brother and former deputy people’s commissar of transportation, Veniamin Sverdlov. Yakov Sverdlov’s son Andrei, who had been briefly arrested in 1935, was rearrested in January 1938. Sergei Zorin’s interrogator, Leonid Chertok, jumped out of an eighth-floor window when his colleagues came to arrest him. His wife, Sofia Fradkina, an NKVD employee and the sister of Boris Volin and of Boris Efimov’s wife, was, according to Efimov, much happier in her next marriage.21
■ ■ ■
In January 1936, Voronsky’s old friend, Tania Miagkova (Poloz), had finished her three-year term in the Verkhneuralsk Political Isolator and been sentenced to three years’ exile in Kazakhstan. She had traveled to Alma Ata, where she had been told to go to Uralsk. She wrote to her mother that although Alma Ata was more interesting, Uralsk was a better option because it was closer to Moscow. She had found a job as an economist in a mechanical spare parts warehouse and rented a room in a “nondescript” house with no roof (the landlady had promised to put one on by spring), a piglet and roosters in the entryway (the landlady “had bought a rooster and a hen, but the hen had turned out to be a rooster, too”) and a “dilapidated” outhouse, also with no roof. The room was “clean and pleasant,” but “very petit bourgeois” (with a crystal cabinet, lace curtains, and a carpet on the wall). The windows did not open, and there were lots of wood lice. Tania was sick a lot and asked her mother to send her more clothes:22
Oh yes, I also wanted to let you know how I reacted to my shabby appearance when I finally crawled out of my hole into the light of day. In general, my reaction was (and still is to some extent) very subdued because of my exhaustion and my cold and also because I have been directing all my energies into achieving some essential and very practical goals. Still, my appearance did cause me some distress. My winter coat was wrinkled and stained, my boots were dirty, with patches on top of patches, and my gloves were completely worn through. My dress was also covered with patches and had a hole in the elbow, so I ended up putting on a green knit sweater that was stretched out and hung on me like a sack. It was awful! And just then some women walked by in the train in their sables, fancy shoes, cute little berets at an angle, and waves of perfume.… I even felt a little jealous. I had only a small, stained handmade purse for my money and a plain knotted rag for my coins. I have to confess that the first thing I bought here was a wallet. In general, I think it’s better to wait and buy good quality things, but during a transition period such as the one I’m in now, one should not stand on principle, so I bought myself an oilcloth wallet for 2 rubles and 5 kopeks. I also managed to buy a cheap belt and some simple stockings for a little over two rubles. My shopping spree came to an end with the purchase of a sponge for the bathhouse, at least until I find a permanent job. Still, I believe I am much more elegant now.23
She still had not fixed her false front tooth. “The tooth is just there for show. When I talk or laugh, it more or less stays in place and there’s no gap, but when I eat, I have to take it out. In general, my teeth are in need of major repair. I clearly need bridges in at least two different places. I am not planning on doing everything at once, but I would like to fix the front toot
h as soon as possible.” She wanted “to join, in that sense, the ranks of normal people (and, if possible, even a tiny bit higher than the average).” She asked her mother to knit a small beret for her. It could be dark blue, light blue, red, or black (“colors in order of preference”). In late March, her mother came to visit for two weeks. After her departure, Tania felt she had somehow lost her “taste for loneliness” (“I keep trying to convince myself, and coming up with all kinds of Herzen quotes to help, that a true human being should know how to live alone, but it isn’t really working.”) She also kept hoping that her daughter, Rada, would be able to come visit and perhaps stay permanently.24
Then, in early April, she was told to go back to Alma Ata. At first she was upset about having to look once more for a room and a job, but then she decided that whereas Uralsk was a better option because it was closer to Moscow, Alma Ata was more interesting and much more beautiful. She marveled at her own buoyancy. “I suddenly grew a bit frightened of this trait of mine: might it not lead to conforming to circumstances, rather than triumphing over them? I decided to watch myself very carefully. But, actually, come to think of it, there’s no reason for panic. I simply do everything in my power to improve my circumstances and to see the good side of things when I have no control over them.”25
The trip from Uralsk to Alma Ata took over a week, mostly by slow trains through the desert. “Such surroundings,” she wrote on the fourth day, “are trying very hard to provoke in me a feeling of melancholy, but I am standing firm and sticking resolutely to the rule I use in all kinds of trials: ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’” She was a priest’s granddaughter. The phrase came from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6 (in the Old Church Slavic version):
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