The Russian Century

by George Pahomov

  “Now, if you want to freeze, you just wait a little. The month of March— we consider that warm. We call it spring. You wait and see—you’ll change your tune come December.”

  “What kind of spring is this, Anechka, thirty degrees below. I’m used to Rostov.”

  “We were all used to it. It doesn’t matter—with the years and the intense cold you’ll get used to anything.”

  “Stop it, Ania,” Masha said reproachfully, “This person is broken as it is, and you’re dealing the final blow.”

  Anna Timofeevna looked at Masha with her eyes full of tears and in an unexpectedly low voice, so as not to let her weeping be heard, said, “You know, the main thing, girls, is that I am not guilty of anything. They sentenced me for no reason.”

  “Here in this barrack alone there are a hundred and twenty of us, and every one, Anna Timofeevna, sits here for no reason; every one is innocent.”

  “Listen, Ania, I beg you to stop, but if you can’t, then no one is keeping you here by force. You’ve finished your tea . . .” Aleksandra Ivanovna’s voice did not portend anything pleasant.

  “All right, there’s other stuff to talk about. I’m going to the drying shed; there at least I’ll find people, not just sheared little sheep.”

  Ania left. Anna Timofeevna sighed.

  K. Vadot, The Terrorist

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  “People like that are so rude and so difficult. It’s enough to make you cry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Anna Timofeevna, everything will pass, like the white petals off the apple trees. So, which article did you get?”

  “Fifty-eight, point eight.”

  “Eighth point?” Masha looked through the steam from the tea at Anna Tim-ofeevna, whose legs didn’t reach the floor and who sat entirely childlike on her stool, and smiled involuntarily.

  “Well, now, the eighth point, that’s for terrorism, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Anna Timofeevna said in a hushed voice.

  “Well how about that! A nice terrorist indeed.”

  “Ah, girls, as I told you, this business of mine is very distressing. This is why I’m so nervous and lost. It would be a sin for me to complain about my life. I worked as head midwife at a maternity home. And the pay was good, thank God. Thirty years of service and no one stinted on the presents. And on the side, sometimes you would get to do an abortion. And I had a little apartment; any one would love to have the likes of it. I even picked up matching furniture. And my neighbor wasn’t too bad. But now look at me: I have nothing. I sit here at the edge of the world and drink someone else’s tea out of a half-liter jar, and thanks be to those who gave it to me.”

  “I sympathize with you completely, but all the same, what has this got to do with terrorism? Because, excuse me, but making a terrorist out of you is like making bullets out of sh-t.”

  “I see that you’re both kind women. I’ll tell you only but, God forbid, don’t tell anyone else or people will indeed be frightened of me.”

  “Our kind isn’t timid. What did you do, cut someone’s throat?”

  “Listen to you! I used to have to get my neighbor to slaughter my chickens for me. I could never cut someone’s throat. Oi, girls, it’s terrible to say—I am in prison on account of Stalin. . . .Well, as I said, I was managing just fine; I couldn’t ask for much more. I was respected and everyone treated me with deference. But there was one fellow in our town, a driver. An attractive blond, tall, intelligent, well-read, and in general pleasant. He wanted to become a pilot, only the entrance exam was very difficult, and he didn’t pass. So, he worked as a driver. Pilot or not, he still gets to hang around motors. And so this Lenia [diminutive for Leonid] suddenly went to war and only returned last year.

  From the front, he immediately landed in a camp, was given a sentence, sat it out for five years, and came out when he was amnestied. They accused him of transporting some kind of [contraband?] goods around Germany in his truck. I don’t know, it’s easy to pin things on people. To make a long story short, he came back to our town. His father died before the war yet, and his mother had gone to her daughter in Vladivostok to help look after the grandchildren. Lenka

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  went to work as a driver on a poultry farm. And he brought poultry to us at the maternity home, and sometimes he came for the refuse, to collect any remains. They fed us well. There was one time when he was unloading, and I was just going off duty. So he says to me, “Come on, Anna Timofeevna, I’ll give you a lift home; why tramp through the mud?” He dropped me off. I wanted to pay him. He wouldn’t take it. He dropped me off once, he dropped me off twice. The third time, I say to him, “Come in, Lenia, I’ll make you some tea, since you don’t want to take any money for driving me.”

  The next day he came already dressed in civilian clothes made out of a foreign fabric. He lit his cigarette with a lighter, like in the movies, and told me everything about having been abroad. My husband had vanished at the very beginning of the war, when everything was still a muddle; I didn’t even get a death telegram about him. Lenka moved in with me. Everything would have been fine if it weren’t for my neighbor. Like a cancer of the womb, she gnawed at me. It was one thing and another, and the fellow is twenty years younger than you. Only she lied, it wasn’t twenty, it was fifteen. He’s only after your money, she says, and all of your belongings. He’ll take everything, and then, like in American movies, he’ll strangle you. Now I’m telling you, like a cancerous growth she ate away at me. It was all from envy. I put up with it; I didn’t say anything. I just tried to do the best I could by Lenka. After all, a man can always leave. True enough, he didn’t bring home his pay, but when he managed to get some extra he’d give me a hundred rubles or fifty. Shortly after Christmas, I went and bought a calendar, a pretty, tear-off one. I was always trying to buy pretty things for the house. I bought a picture with swans, gave two hundred rubles for it—a hundred of mine and a hundred of Lenka’s. I boasted about it and showed it to Praskov’ia. So all at once she says, “Well, at least you’ll have a picture with a proper couple in it.” I brought home this calendar, and on it there was such a lovely portrait of comrade Stalin wearing officers’ epaulets, all covered in medals. Lenka came home from work. I showed it to him: a calendar, I say, I bought it. All right, he says. But there were quarrels between us even before that, especially when Praskov’ia wasn’t home, since I didn’t want her to hear us and be gleeful. Then in the evening I wanted to go to the movies.

  Lenia ate heartily and then sat down to shave. I said to him, “Let’s go to the movies today.” But he answered, “I can’t, I met one of my army buddies today and promised to go out with him this evening for a beer.” I answered him, “So what are you doing shaving your mug for an army buddy? What, he’s never seen you unshaven?” One word led to another, and we wound up having a major talk. Suddenly, Lenka jumped up and said that there were two people ruining his young life—Stalin and me. “How I’d like to slash you with a razor right now,” he says, “but, I never again want to go to prison.” He took

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  the razor (he never shaved with a safety razor) and one, two, three, he went and sliced up the entire face of comrade Stalin in the portrait, and then even gouged out the eyes.—He put on his coat and hat, slammed the door, and left. I sat and cried, and felt sorry for the calendar, and felt sorry for myself. To be sure, if he could have he’d cut my throat, too. He served that sentence for something—they don’t put you in prison for nothing. And here comes Praskov’ia, and without malice, but out of kindness to me, says, so what are you doing, she says, you’re crying. So I went and told her everything. She immediately began to tremble and said to me that we had to destroy the calendar right away. You know what might happen, she said, on account of that. She took the portrait part, nailed the pages back up to the wall, and left. Well, my Lenka returned, and we made up.

  Only, three days later, my Lenia come
s home at an unusual time—I was sleeping after a night shift. He’s pale and trembling and says to me that he was called to the MGB. There they showed him that same sliced-up portrait and said, how is it that you could bring yourself to commit such an offense against a portrait of comrade Stalin. So, Lenka says to me, “You know, Aneta, (he called me Aneta, in the foreign fashion), I’ve already served one sentence and got out on amnesty. The absolute least they’ll give me for recidivism is ten years. But you’re a leading citizen, with irreproachable service, an exemplary worker. So I ask you, I beg you, go and say that this is your doing. They’ll swear at you for it, maybe give you a reprimand, but you’ll save a person’s life.”

  The lad is right, I think. The next day, we went to the MGB. We no sooner approached the watchman, than Lenka goes and says to him, “This is about the business of the portrait of comrade Stalin. “ They immediately let us in and led us to the investigator’s office. Lenka says, “I’ve brought her. She’ll tell you everything herself.” And he left. I told them everything, just as Lenka taught me. The investigator wrote everything down and then gave it to me to read over. “Everything’s written down correctly?” he says. “It’s correct.” “Then sign it.” He showed me where to sign. I signed. “Now, I say, may I go home?” “No, now I’ll send for the man on duty and he’ll take you to a cell.” “What kind of cell?” “A prison cell. You’ll sit there until the trial, and then we’ll see.”

  “What do you mean, until the trial? What trial?” “Well,” he says, “We’re going to try you.” “What are you going to try me for? What’s all this about?” “We’re going to try you for crimes against the state, according to the law.” Here I started to cry, and for three days in the cell I kept crying. After three days, they led me to the trial. They didn’t even want to hear what I had to say. “Is it you,” they say, “who signed your statement?” “Yes,” I answer, “but I didn’t know they would be passing judgment on it.” “Now,” they say, “it’s too

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  late. You should have thought about that earlier.” And the witnesses were Lenka and Praskov’ia. The judges retired for five minutes. Then they returned and read out my sentence: in accordance with article fifty-eight, point eight, for a terroristic act against a portrait of our leader and teacher, friend of all the nations, comrade Stalin,—twenty-five years in a corrective labor camp. And so they brought me here.

  Part IV

  Apogee and Fracture: 1954–1991

  Whatever the Soviet Union was under Stalin, it began to assume another face after him, though this was not always apparent. Nikita Khrushchev, impetuous and brash, seemed to contain many contrasting elements in his policies and character alike. A party official of the highest ranks, he was a faithful supporter of Stalin, and there was much blood on his hands.

  However, it was Khrushchev who shocked the party (and then the world) by being the architect of de-Stalinization. The secret speech to the 20th Party Congress on February 24, 1956, attacked Stalin for numerous crimes and the cult of personality. Among the beneficial results, besides those of opening a vast new forum for discussion, was the release of millions of prisoners from the GULAG. What could be more anti-Stalinist than this? Thousands of prisoners were also rehabilitated, though this honor was initially reserved for high-ranking Communist Party members. The number of those released from the camps is generally cited to be close to eight million; at least a million continued life in the camps, however.

  The other major shift credited to Khrushchev was the gradual relaxation of the strictures on literature and the arts. The term “thaw” is now universally used to denote this. If the Party itself admitted Stalin’s errors, it could relax the reins in the field of cultural expression. Vladimir Dudintsev’s 1956 novel Not by Bread Alone and Vera Panova’s The Seasons are two early markers; fortunately they were two of many. Negative elements of Soviet society could be (albeit carefully) portrayed. Sometimes this was fragile and arbitrary. Boris Pasternak was vilified for Dr. Zhivago, for example. Yet, four years later in 1962, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was cleared for publication.

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  Pa r t I V

  Khrushchev’s salutary gestures in these areas must be contrasted with his frequently bellicose foreign policy. The great de-Stalinizer was also the figure who fomented the Berlin Crisis of 1958 and the inordinately dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Simultaneously, Khrushchev sought summit meetings with western leaders and spoke of “peaceful co-existence” in quieter moments. The latter phrasing was inherited by his successor Leonid Brezhnev who replaced him in 1964. Both leaders maintained resolutely that communism would ultimately win out even if “peaceful co-existence” prevailed.

  Brezhnev’s rule is generally viewed as one of stagnation, especially from the 1970’s on. The system seemed often to be set in stone and major shifts in agriculture and industry could not be effected. The disproportionate percentage of the national budget allotted to the military did not help. The USSR’s military posture and space program were still powerful and prestigious and were useful elements in the political wars aimed at gaining adherents in the Third World. Yet, fissures began to surface. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 turned into stalemate, then loss, something no one predicted.

  China took a strong anti-Soviet position on the Afghanistan war. This only exemplified a truism apparent from the mid-1950’s – the two dominant communist powers never consolidated their political might and agendas. The fact that Brezhnev’s era saw nuclear test ban treaties signed, as well as those limiting strategic arms (e.g. SALT I in 1972), though viewed positively in the West, were seen as appeasement in Mao’s China. The political heritage of Brezhnev was broken by Gorbachev.

  Mikhail Gorbachev is generally seen as one of the ten most influential leaders of the 20th century. Though committed to communism, he nevertheless realized that overhaul was mandated at all levels of the Soviet enterprise. He was prepared to go to lengths whose outcomes he could not begin to guess. The effort, most noticed internationally via the twin political dictums of glasnost and perestroika, unleashed a plethora of decrees, policies, and emotions, ultimately helping to dismantle the Soviet Union. By the end of 1991, it was no more. History will always remember the irony that a true believer, though not an ideologue, oversaw the demise.

  Nickolas Lupinin

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mariia Shapiro, A Soviet Capitalist

  Mariia Shapiro found herself in a woman’s concentration camp in Eastern Siberia in 1946 after being arrested and sentenced for anti-Soviet writings. She was arrested in northern China, in Harbin, once a thriving Russian city established during the Russian expansion eastward. Its growth was greatly stimulated by the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway. After the Civil War many Russians found a haven in that city since it was not in Soviet territory. M. Shapiro completed law school there and turned to journalism as a profession. Her articles dealt with aspects of émigré life, but she also concentrated on Soviet legal proceedings. This did not stand her in good stead when Harbin fell to the Soviets after the defeat of the Japanese in World War II. She managed to keep a secret log of her years in prison which she later expanded into memoirs. Excerpted from Mariia Shapiro, “Zhenskii kontslager’” [A Woman’s Concentration Camp]. New York: The New Review, No. 158, March, 1985.

  DECEMBER 9th, 1957

  Once two new women appeared in our cell. They arrived loudly enough, in some sort of nervous excitement. In about two days they calmed down. The older of the women, Zoia Zhigaleva, immediately attracted my attention. I often recalled her later, already living in a camp, and tried to define the nature of this 38-year-old uneducated but clever woman with dark eyes and a quite correct, pleasant face which so distinguished her from the crowd that even our anarchist, criminal element immediately felt her power.

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&nb
sp; I soon understood that Zoia was a born leader and organizer. This is as much a talent as any other. It was as if Zoia was surrounded by a taboo. She would spread out the contents of her or her friend’s food parcel on a clean napkin on the table and a few times invited me. It was strange to sit and eat the tasty things so demonstratively in the public eye and in the presence of criminals who flung evil glances at us and gnashed their teeth like hungry wolves.

  Zoia was the daughter of a hardy Siberian peasant, an energetic and capable landholder in spirit (and perhaps by blood)—the descendant of courageous Siberian explorers. When the children became adolescents, the father decided to move to an absolutely out of the way place, far into the taiga, a few dozen kilometers down the Lena River from Iakutsk. There they built their home with their own hands and developed a large farm. Zoia told me in detail how much livestock they had, the kinds of vegetable gardens, outbuildings, etc. The house gradually acquired a cultured, urban appearance. The dining room even had a large painting and store-bought furniture. And all of this was created by the hands and labor of one family.

  The wild taiga was mastered. Gradually other people began to settle near the Zhigalev homestead. New homesteads appeared.

  The steamship lines on the Lena turned their attention to the new population center and established a landing there. The children began to go to school in town. But Zoia managed to finish only three grades. After the collapse of the White regime in Siberia and the end of the Civil War, the first wave of liquidation of private farms began. Zoia’s father, having created a blossoming household in the Iakutsk taiga with his own hands, was declared a kulak. A tax of 10,000 rubles was imposed on him. Of course, he was not able to pay such a tax. Having understood with his sharp and practical Siberian mind that this tax was only the beginning of future misfortunes and that they were not to farm the taiga, he declared to his family that they had to abandon the homestead, give it up, and move to the city.