We all loved and sympathized with “Ippolitych,” despite the fact that in contrast to Luppol [the previous director] he was slow in his thinking, had poor relations with his subordinates, had a quick temper, and was unjust in his arbitrary likes and dislikes. But we knew that he was scrupulously honest, unselfish and totally helpless before his bosses, especially when he encountered liars, bribe takers, careerists and other slime of which we had more than enough. We considered it our duty to aid him in all the institute matters, especially in providing for those people whom we had led out of Moscow.
“We,” the morally conscious, active group of “Tamara Khanum” who had become closely knit during the wartime disasters were: Liza Glatman, assistant director in organizational matters; Lidochka Kriuchkova, executive secretary, a warm and sweet person who completed medical school while in
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Tashkent and later became an outstanding doctor at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital; Varvara Nikolaevna Lanina, the irreplaceable chairman of the [city] district committee who was in charge of distributing wearing apparel—footwear, shirts, pants, etc.—and who did so with unfailing fairness and attentiveness though the goods were few and the demand high. Emmochka Evin, from the Pushkin Museum, was also part of the activist group. She was a wonderful comrade who maintained unbroken contact with all our colleagues who were at the front. There was also Tamara Motyleva, who in her business-like manner with high expectations toward herself and others, was a successful administrator throughout the evacuation. But the soul of the group was Olga Kuznetsova, who occupied no titled position, but had a fervid, generous and selfless spirit which drew everyone to her. Soon other co-workers who had fled Moscow independently of the institute began arriving at the “Tamara Khanum.”
The institute gradually recovered and renewed its labors. The work on the history of Soviet literature continued. One of the “English” volumes was nearing completion under the leadership of A.A. Elistratova. In evacuation we began work on the first volume of The History of American Literature which was to have such a controversial, even notorious destiny. And V.M. Zhirmunskii [a noted literary critic] began a definitive study of Uzbek folklore for which he, at the age of fifty plus, had to learn the far from easy Uzbek language.
Significant shifts in attitude were occurring among the inhabitants of “Tamara Khanum” as they were occurring among most Soviet people of that time. The confusion at of the beginning of the war was replaced by a wave of patriotism. We all lived with one goal and one emotion: only to win the war. At that moment our Olga announced that, since her daughters were being taken care of by the state in a children’s refuge of the Academy of Science, it was her duty to volunteer for the front where she would bring more benefit to people. And even though she was almost forty, she was sent to a military cook’s school, finished it with the rank of sergeant, and was sent to the front where she spent almost the duration of the war. And, along with many others, at the front she became a member of the [Communist] Party.
THE POST-WAR PERIOD: THE “COSMOPOLITE” CAMPAIGN
The second half of the 1940’s was marked by ruthless ideological pogroms accompanied by robust praise-mongering about the “most wise,” the “genius,” and the “beloved” great leader.
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The first attack was the pronouncement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union concerning the literary journals Zvezda [The Star] and Leningrad. Just a month-and-a-half earlier the newspaper Kul’tura i zhizn’ [Culture and Life] was founded. It was the organ of the propaganda section of the Central Committee in which loud praise for the achievements of Soviet culture alternated with ruthless vilification of its particular representatives. Each time, we opened the newspaper with horror.
Any judgement, proclaimed on its pages, was beyond appeal. Even if courageous people could be found to speak against it, their writings would not have been published anywhere. Books denounced in this manner were immediately removed from sale and from all the libraries of the nation. And their authors were subjected to lengthy and humiliating “workings over” at meetings of their institutions where they had to repent and admit their errors. Otherwise they were expelled from their positions and never hired anywhere again. In provincial cities this took on a more severe and ruthless nature. I had heard that at one such bloodletting in the city of Khar’kov the victim, who had been ultimately “worked over,” stood up on a dais and said, “You have convinced me, comrades. I have finally understood, that I am not one of us!” This phrase, “I am not one of us,” became a sardonic aphorism. The academic and social life at the IWL went on in an atmosphere of similar pogroms.
A [malevolent] article in Kul’tura i zhizn’ by Viktor Nikolaev accused Leonid Grossman [a noted scholar] of placing the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in “the same rank with the decadent French writer Marcel Proust.” This was characterized as “slavish adoration of bourgeois culture.” The list of the other “accursed” persons was chosen in a very deliberate manner. Thus began within the walls of the institute the pernicious “anti-cosmopolite” campaign which was already raging in the Writer’s Union and other ideological institutions and in which we did not immediately comprehend an elemental anti-Semitic pogrom that had been let loose by the highest directives of the Central Committee and “comrade Stalin personally.”
A complete replacement of the leadership of the institute took place as a result of Nikolaev’s article. This was followed by a series of notorious cases. The first target of the pogrom turned out to be The History of American Literature. The trouble with this work was that it was begun back during the war when we and the USA were in a united front against Hitler. But due to the tortoise pace of publishing, the book appeared only in 1947, at a tense time in Soviet-American relations. And then the calm, well-intentioned tone of the volume’s authors toward American literature seemed unacceptable to the “ruling comrades.”
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An unbelievable scandal began. The book was accused of containing distortions and political errors, that the “ringing of dollars” was heard in it, and so on. The workers in the foreign sector who had even a tangential association with the creation of the book were most severely castigated and, either immediately or some time later, dismissed from the institute. Abel Isaakovich Startsev was expelled as one of the senior editors, Tamara Motyl-eva—as the reviewer, Anikst—as a member of the editorial board, Tamara Sil’man—as the author of the article on Edgar Allen Poe, which was deemed to be “depraved.”
The repressed edition—a first effort on the history of American literature in the Russian language—was conceived by the authors in two volumes and written with great love and profound knowledge. The second volume was near completion at the time of the crushing of the first volume. But after the scandal, the materials for the second volume were rejected and destroyed without any discussion. (“I lament the fact, that we were not permitted to complete the second volume,” said Startsev many years later. “They could have castigated and abused us later, but the book would have remained!”)
After the reprisals against the Americanists, there came charges of “cosmopolitism” and the exclusion of a number of Jews who were Communists from the party. The “working-over” proceeded as follows. A commission would be formed within the Communist Party of the institute which would divide amongst itself the principal works of the accused, read them and elicit “ideological errors” which were evidence of the author’s obeisance to the West. All of this would be consolidated and presented at a Party meeting. The overall picture would be solid and convincing, and everyone would be amazed how it was that such a cosmopolite malefactor could do his foul deeds within the walls of the institute without punishment. The “malefactor” of course would try to defend himself. But this was quite difficult to accomplish. His students and admirers suddenly “having seen the light” in the best case
would blink their eyes in confusion or, in the worst case, join the pack of enraged dogs in the frenzy of pursuing their game. Then everything would be presented at a general Party meeting where, as a rule, the unanimous decision would be: “Expel from the Party and remove from work.”
Today, after the passing of so many years, it is worth contemplating by what means such unanimity was achieved. It cannot be denied that elements of fear and faint-heartedness played a role in this. After all, we lived in an atmosphere of all-penetrating government terror against which struggle was impossible. However, it was more complex than that. We had all been raised to respect the collective, the mass, the opinion of the majority, to reject individualism which had become a word of censure, so that in the end we had totally lost our individual face. It would never even enter our heads to defend
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an opinion against the opinion of the majority, the embodiment of which we believed was the Party, or more precisely, the Party leadership. Therefore, mass psychosis, even though organized and “pushed down” from the top, gripped and convinced substantial numbers of people.
I will refer to the story of one of the contemporary members of the Party executive committee, E.M. Evnina, a member of the foreign literature division. In her words one of the most shameful acts of her life for which she is ashamed even now was connected to the “case” of Tamara Motyleva. When the first “cosmopolites,” Iakovlev and Kirpotin, were expelled, E.M. reacted rather indifferently because she was not especially familiar with their work, simply believing the report of the investigative commission and what was said in the executive council. Having mindlessly voted, E.M. went on vacation, but having returned to Moscow in a month learned that the case of Motyleva had come up at the last executive meeting.
Though many considered Tamara to be an unprincipled chameleon and called her a “dry old stick” and a pedant, E.M. knew that she had a great capacity for work, clarity of purpose, was very erudite and had a command of several foreign languages. She had been an exemplary university student, always on the honor roll and maintained these qualities in her scholarly work. Upon hearing that Motyleva was being expelled from the party for having made mistakes in her doctoral dissertation, E.M. was extremely surprised since she always considered her a strong scholar and a “correct” communist.
Evnina and Motyleva worked in the same department and, while never having been close friends, knew each other quite well. Naturally, Motyleva turned to Evnina for aid and advice. Their conversation took place in the home of Motyleva in the presence of her mother, an old woman, doctor by profession, who fiercely insisted that it were not Tamara’s mistakes that were the cause, but her nationality. After all, Ania Elistratova, a fellow student of Tamara’s, was not being “worked over” by anyone. Tamara cut her mother short several times, returning to the main theme of the conversation. “I would like to limit it to a public censure rather than expulsion,” she would repeat. E.M. thought that there were no grounds even for public censure. They parted with the understanding that E.M. would defend this position.
However, the next day the party secretary of the IWL, Ivan Andreevich Martynov, called her to his office. At length and with great conviction he explained to her what great damage the scholar-cosmopolites were dealing the party by either intentionally or unintentionally praising bourgeois literature and art at the expense of our young Soviet culture. He cited examples garnered from instructional sessions at the Central Committee, shocked her with several criminal (from his point of view) positions and citations from Motyl-eva’s work. The point was that she was “debasing” our most great Russian
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writer, Leo Tolstoy, turning him over to the judgement of Western “pygmies.” And as Martynov spoke, E.M. sensed that her consciousness was being smothered by something alien, penetrating and mucilaginous, and that she no longer was capable or skillful enough to object. She could not recall his reasoning but remembered that he had convinced her. She came home totally demoralized and called Motyleva to say that the matter was much more complicated than she had thought, and that she could not do anything for her.
And several days later at a party meeting of the IWL an impressive performance was played out before us. The protagonist in the Motyleva case was A.F. Ivashchenko. With a theatrical gesture he would throw back a lock of hair from his, admittedly, high and handsome forehead and loudly read some “unacceptable” phrase from Motyleva’s dissertation, each time with the same refrain: “And this is being said by a Soviet scholar, a communist?!” “Shame!” Martynov would respond from the other end of the table. Then another phrase of Motyleva’s would be read followed by the same refrain: “And this is being said by a Communist?!” And again Martynov’s bass: “Unbelievable!!” “Shame!”
The whole assembly was shaken and struck dumb. No one objected and no one asked any questions. Those who performed mumbled something supporting the points presented by the protagonist. And our friend E.M. at Mar-tynov’s invitation stood up and like a parrot mouthed some stupid and empty words about “unacceptable” mistakes. Then we all voted to expel Motyleva from the party. We did it as if bewildered, even the most upright of us, even my Olga Kuznetsova, who now mercilessly excoriates herself for that unworthy act.
Many months later, after Motyleva had been reinstated in the party thanks to the intercession of Fadeev [a well-known writer] but not re-employed at the Institute, E.M. and I were at the first-run of some play. During the intermission we bumped into Motyleva and her mother. Tamara calmly greeted both of us without a shade of resentment. After all, she was a communist just as we were and had also voted for the expulsion of those “cosmopolites” whose cases preceded hers: Iakovlev, Kirpotin, Novich and others. But when Evnina proffered her hand to Motyleva’s mother, she demonstratively turned away, and I saw how the extended hand hung in the air. The old woman, not constrained by any party “norms,” would not forgive betrayal. E.M. moved away, shamed and abashed, having whispered to me, “Tamara’s mother is right.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
K. Vadot, The Terrorist
The act of denunciation was one of striking arbitrariness. Its encouragement and utilization, which saw a vast increase in the 1930’s, transcended all social and class categories. Families were destroyed by the denunciations of children who were then exalted by the state. Since the denunciations could be anonymous and vindictive (with only a hint of “crimes against the state” to trigger action by the authorities), they were yet another aspect of life in a totalitarian system over which the individual had no control. Vadot’s story deals with such a denunciation. Excerpted from K. Vadot, “V zhenskom rabochem lagere” [In a Women’s Labor Camp]. New York: The New Review, No. 116, September, 1974.
“Anna Timofeevna, now, Anna Timofeevna, please do stop crying. Now what’s really the matter? Don’t go killing yourself so. Calm down.”
“And how am I supposed to calm down when I find myself living in hell?”
“Straight to hell, just like that. Does that make us devils then?”
“No, you’re also unfortunate wretches. So then hell itself might actually be worse than this.”
“Well, don’t cry; better you should drink some tea. Look, the kettle’s already on the boil.”
“Thank you, girls, but I don’t want any tea. I’m going to die soon, anyway, so what’s the point of drinking tea?”
“You’ll get used to it. You won’t die. People aren’t cattle: we can get used to anything.”
“So, have you been here long?”
“It varies. I’m here eight years. That one over there, the young one, seven years; as for the others—no one has been here less than five years.”
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“But Aleksandra Ivanovna, sweetie, they gave me a whole twenty-five years, it scares me to even say it.”
“Yes, but that twenty-fi
ve years is your whole term. And we’ve all got the full bobbin: twenty-five years. I’m just talking about how much time we’ve already done.”
“Holy Jesus . . . It’s terrible to think about it.”
“It’s nothing; we can bear it. Better you should drink tea. It’s sweet.”
This conversation took place in one of the barracks of the women’s camp at Vorkuta. Aleksandra Ivanovna was pouring tea into half-liter jars, and Anna Timofeevna, on whom the brand-new camp uniform still fit awkwardly, sat at a table in the middle of the barracks, along with Masha—a girl with long braids wrapped around her head, Ania—a woman of about thirty with cold eyes, and Aleksandra Ivanovna.
“Go ahead, Anna Timofeevna, I’ll just splash some in a little jar for you,” Masha says tenderly.
Anna Timofeevna is a small, plump woman of about fifty years. Her eyes are frightened, wary.
“Thank you kindly, little daughter. You were right. Tea is good for the nerves. And it warms you up well. While they were bringing me here, I froze like a dog.”
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