I was born into a farmer’s family in the village of Chorniy Verkh, district of Arsenevsk, Tula region, in 1911.
At the time of the revolution my grandfather’s farm was counted among the stable ones. Two horses, two cows and a solid building. The family included eleven souls.
In 1921 my father and his brother returned from the front, for they had been wounded. However, soon after they had arrived home, there arose differences of opinion and various discrepancies. And a year later the farm was divided up among the family members, and instead of one family there were now four. Who received a horse, did not get a cow – and vice versa. My father was given a barn to live in – and a little shed serving as a cowshed and pen (for two sheep), which also went to him.
In 1924 father was granted a free loan for the purchase of a horse. And thus we became peasants of average means.
At that time I was already able to plow, harrow and look after the horses at night on my own. On free days my father drove over to Belev and Odoev, where he earned some additional money on the side, for he intended to buy a little log hut. He was our man of all work: brick-burner, joiner and carpenter, plumber and roofer – all in one person. The only work he did not do was as a blacksmith, since there was no forge. Later, father went to Moscow to earn some additional money. During that time he only came home for one-and-a-half or two months. And all his work, as well as my own, heavily rested upon my shoulders. I was an ailing, easily worn-out little fellow, who sometimes fell from fatigue. In the evening I cried and screamed that tomorrow I would not work at all. But no sooner was the sun up than I got down to work again, and my mother was delighted at it.
“You silly thing, the little log hut will remain yours and not go to anybody else”, she said lovingly.
Towards the year 1929 our family increased to six persons, and we bought a spacious log hut from a passive Communist, who had escaped collectivization. And thus we at once became kulaks.
Rumors went around in the village: As soon as Antonov joins the kolkhoz, his house will fall to the kolkhoz office, and he and his family will be removed to the sexton’s house. Father banged on the table:
“I will burn it to the ground, but I won’t give it up!”
“Stop talking that way; think it over again,” mother lamented. “They will imprison you and involve Kolya in this matter. He behaves like a grown-up already. And where do I go with the three girls? They won’t give us the sexton’s house either.”
Father did not join the kolkhoz. We were assessed taxes – more precisely: if father had sold the farm he would only have had to pay half of the taxes. They made a detailed inventory of all the belongings down to the smallest spoon, and fixed our expulsion. And one dark night we set out for Moscow. Father found a job in the building trade and settled down with his family in a barrack. Acquaintances had me registered. I only very seldom set foot in their room and slept on a folding bed in the entrance hall.
I found a job in the “Gagat” factory, where they produced plastic combs and various small things from synthetic materials. Every morning I loaded the semi-finished products on a handcart and took them to the lathe, and at the end of the day I picked up the finished products and loaded them off at the stores. Being accustomed to do hard work, this job seemed to be child’s play to me.
Two or three years passed by, and I understood that I would have to learn something. I decided to register at the workers' faculty, where they prepared workers and peasants for higher education. However, just at this time I fell in love and got married soon after. My wife’s father was kind enough as to share his apartment with us; he allowed us to live in a small corner of our own, and thus we started our married life. More and more I felt the necessity to go to university. And in 1935 I registered at the evening workers' faculty at the Krzhizhanov Institute for planning.
They arrested me in April 1937.
I was taken to the Butyrka prison; the cell was overcrowded with people. The elder wrote down my family name, first name and father’s first name and told me to sit down somewhere under the continuous plank beds, directly on the floor. My neighbors moved closer together. They remained silent. And I also did not try to start a conversation. Two days later I was called to appear before the investigator; his name was Smirnov. He exactly wrote down all my personal particulars and sent me back to my cell. I sunk in thought.
“What did the investigator talk to you about?” my neighbor, Sergey Kovalyov, asked in whispers. He had also studied at the workers' faculty, however at the Plekhanov Institute.
I told him about the investigation.
“You will now have to wait for the confrontation with the person that informed against you.”
“But it can’t be true that someone denounced me. I never gave anybody cause for such a behavior.”
“Well, that’s the way it is! Each of us imprisoned here has been denounced by somebody.”
About three weeks later I was called out of the cell again to appear before the investigator. When I returned, I crawled to my place under the plank beds, put my face down to the floor and grew quiet. Kovalyov did not disturb me with any questions. The next day I told him about what had happened during the confrontation. The person who had informed on me was Anna Chagina. We had studied together at the workers' faculty and had been sitting next to each other from the very beginning.
“How old is she?”
“About forty years old.” Mother of two children. Her husband is a construction chief. Both are Communists.”
“What do you think? Why did she do that – ruin your life and that of your wife and little child, too.”
“I have no idea. We had become friends. I often used to help her with the school work."
“But that was a very mean thing to do. Nobody will do something like that for any apparent reason. Did she ever ask you anything forbidden?”
“She told me, how in the Ukraine, in 1932, people starved to death. In some places there was even no one available to bury the dead. Five of her relatives died there. ‘They will have to be sentenced for that’, she said.”
“Oh, well! Now I understand! Being afraid that you could get her into trouble, she now informed on you”.
Three weeks after the confrontation I signed for my sentence: eight years camp detention. I was transferred to the former prison church situated below the transit building. There we had to undergo a medical check-up. And at night we were taken to some railroad station and loaded on freight cars.
In Mariinsk they directed our train on a siding and uncoupled some of the wagons. Around noon, when the sun mercilessly burned down on us, two trucks with high bars on both sides approached our wagon. Someone read out a list with our names, and we were bundled into the trucks.
Soon afterwards we moved off, over to the smooth path. Lots of people were working in the fields. There were horse-drawn reapers, plowing one furrow after the other. Somewhere in the valley bottom a tractor was noisily buzzing. We approached a village. The houses were built solidly, tall, with big windows.
“This is a place were they could really dispossess the kulaks,” I thought, and lost myself in memories about our own poor little village.
The cars left a gray cloud of dust behind them and rushed off into the distance. And once again there was the open countryside in front of us, with its immeasurable dimensions. Finally, fields with turnips and potatoes showed up in front of us.
“Thank God! They took us to a farming camp”, said a red-haired man, who was sitting beside me.
We drove up to the camp. There was a solid fence, about four meters in height, made of thick, wooden blocks, tapered off on the tops. Empty vats lay around under the gas lanterns, serving as kennels for the guard dogs. We were unloaded at the gates.
The “small town”, as they called the Novoivanovsk camp point, comprised four long barracks, two dugouts, just as long as the barracks and a kitchen. On the roofs of the dugouts sat some half-naked urkas, professional criminals, who were passionately playing cards, A few men were standing near the gates, looking at us with a thievish greed and a searching glance. The work assigner, who was just in the act of dividing young and old people into separate groups, noticed my feeble appearance.
“Go with the old men”, he said, “You will be their brigade-leader. The young people will be accommodated in a different barrack”.
The next morning, upon daybreak, someone started blowing on an iron rail signal, marking the end of the sleep. Before we were called out for “Assembly and dispatch” an old man with a white beard approached me.
“Brigade-leader, where can I put this bundle?”
I touched it: a dense and heavy fur coat covered with rubberized linen. “Oh, it was not made in Russia”, I thought.
“Go to the elder. Maybe he will hide it in a locker”.
“Don’t be afraid. I will put a padlock and demand the man on duty to keep an eye on it”, Pyotr Fyodorovich Kulokolnikov, the elder, promised.
On our way to the morning inspection old Nikolay Petrovich Uspenskiy told us that he had been working for the Soviet embassy in Peking for 20 years. His son had studied in England, at Oxford University, and had refused to return to Russia. And now this old man had to pay the penalty for his son.
The gates were still locked. But the accompanying guards were waiting for us outside. Most of them were prisoners, too, but with a short term of detention only. They had been sentenced on light criminals sections, lived within the zone and were not accompanied by guards.
We were taken away to sheave barley. Nikolay Petrovich did not sheave well and was unable to keep up with the others. I allowed him to walk past and finished the rest of the row myself.
While we were at work our barrack filled with people. It became crowded and noisy. And three or four days later, all barracks were filled to the limit, mainly with prisoners from the Mariinsk distribution point. In the second barrack were non-political prisoners.
The weather was fine. The authorities tried their best to finish the fieldwork before it began to rain. Three hundred people had been assigned for the sheaving of grain.
There were not enough bowls for lunch and no spoons at all. They drank the thin balanda (camp soup) from the edge. In fact, they did, because the soup was only a little cloudy.
My old men were already completely exhausted and hardly stirred anymore. The elder guard immediately noticed this. He jumped up, started screaming at the people, telling us that we were too slow. He hit me with the rifle butt, because I was badly leading the brigade. He threatened our guards. His cursing and scolding could be heard over a long distance.
Suddenly a shot was fired. Krasnovskiy, the tall and broad-shouldered brigade-leader, who had leaned on a rake for a moment, sank on his knees and fell on the side. Beside the dead man the elder guard was spinning around, cracking the horse’s lips with the curb bit.
All prisoners were supposed to lie down flat, with their faces down. Somebody shot into the air. We remained lying down, being afraid to move. Three members of the escort guard approached in a galopp. A carriage came near. The dead man was transported away to the camp.
Having returned to the “small town” Kolokolnikov approached me.
“Who did they shoot at?”
“The elder guard killed Krasnovskiy”.
“Krasnovskiy!? He had already served his time, and then had been kept here at disposal for special duty. Well, that’s the way it is!” We walked a few steps.
“I think it was a premeditated murder”, Pyotr Fyodorovich broke the silence. “His wife came here. She talked too much. She was a menace to them. It is doubtful whether she reached Moscow at all”.
On the following day our brigade was assigned for digging potatoes. Everybody was happy, entertaining hopes that we could bake potatoes and eat our fill. But no sooner had we lit the leafy tops of the potatoes, the escort spread them apart and stamped the fire out.
They brought our lunch. Lots of chopped, uncooked potatoes they had added to the soup (balanda). I looked at Uspenskiy.
“God forbid! You will catch dysentery and die”.
I warned the brigade, but the people were unable to stand the hunger and ate the raw potatoes as if they were apples. And died from dysentery.
Autumn was coming, the days got dull and rainy. My thin little coat, which at the same time served me as mattress, cover and cushion, looked so shabby and worn out after half-a-year on the bare plank beds that wind and rainwater continuously came through the cloth.
Wet snow often fell gently down to the earth. It quickly melted away on our summer clothes and penetrated them with an icy cold up to the skin. Our fingers grew stiff from all the dirt. Many potatoes had remained in the soil. The escort guards were furious. They kicked those who had not lifted all potatoes and hit them with the rifle butt.
Old Sigalayev was so terribly cold that he was unable to get his fingers apart. He only gathered up those potatoes that he found on the surface. The escort guard beat him several times. When the sentry approached once again, Sigalayev straightened up and raised his hands.
“Oh. Lord!” he exclaimed. Let a fire hyena come down on earth to punish these monsters of mankind.” And while crossing his hands over his breast he said: “Kill me, you bastard. Put me out of my agony”.
“Step aside and wait”, snarled the guard.
Sigalayev, with his last ounce of strength, doubled up and put his hands into the ragged sleeves. On our way back to the “small town” I supported him and tried to calm him as best as I could.
On the following morning, during the roll call, they discovered that Sigalayev had hung himself - on a cramp iron hammered into a post, where one could hold on to when climbing to the upper plank beds.
The weather grew worse. The camp authorities were now in a great hurry to get the potatoes and turnips out of the earth, and for that reason, everybody was chased into the field to the last man.
When it began to snow and a strong wind was blowing some decided to “go on strike” and refused to report for work. They punished us for it. We were locked up in the detention room for 24 hours. At night they arrested Nikolay Petrovich Uspenskiy from there.
There was a severe frost, snowstorms. Nobody from our barrack was taken out to work anymore. This marked the beginning of winter – with cold and hunger. My first winter in the camp. And I still had eight years in front of me.
1
On the 30th September 1943 I was released from the camp. In the first days of the war getting food became even worse, although it had already been bad before. For weeks we did not receive any bread – not the fixed 200 kgs, either. Instead, we were given half a liter of some revolting liquid flour concoction or a small ladle of cooked potatoes, as big as the eggs of a pigeon. The old and the sick were dying like flies. As of March 1943 they started to release those who were suffering from pellagra, scurvy and general exhaustion, but only those who had served at least two-thirds of their sentence.
I was released, too. I had nowhere to go. My parents lived in the occupied territory. My sisters had been evacuated to Krasnovodsk, and I did not know their address.
In the camp authorities office a strong, stocky lad stood beside me – Ivan Boldyrev, a bytovik (petty criminal), who had already served his sentence. We talked to each other. I told him that I did not know where to go.
“Well, come on – you can go with me! Into the country. My mother lives there all alone. You can stay with us for a while”.
I agreed immediately.
He lived in a village called Sorokino, district of Krasnoturino, Krasnoyarsk region.
… The young lieutenant attentively looked at me and leafed through my “file”.
“Where do we go then?”
I replied that I intended to go with Boldyrev.
“That’s okay” – the lieutenant agreed.
We were taken up to Mariinsk. Our escort provided us with identity papers and wished us a good trip.
Ivan and I got on the train from Novosibirsk to Krasnoyarsk and seated ourselves in the last wagon, which was uncoupled in Atchinsk and then continued on its way to Abakan.
The wagon was cramped; the air was stale, filled with the smoke of their own cultivated tobacco, oppressive.
From Abakan to the little village where Ivan lived we had to go another 100 km by ship, on the river Yenissey. And there was a steamer from Minusinsk to Krasnoyarsk via Sorokino only once a week. In order not to miss it, we had to run to the landing stage. Ivan supported me and dragged me forwards. I was completely out of breath. We only just managed to embark.
When we arrived at Ivan’s house, darkness had already set in. It was an old log hut with two little windows, with window crosses, and the frames looking fragile.
Columns supported the worn-down stair steps. The hut was covered with reed. Ivan climbed the staircase at a master’s pace, coughed and distinctly knocked at the door.
“Who’s there?” his mother asked. Ivan answered.
She silently pushed back the bolt. We walked into the narrow house. Inside the hut was semi-darkness. A petroleum lamp was burning. The floor was plain earth. A sooty black stove, which obviously had not been whitewashed for a long time. A table, old benches, bent and crooked as the porch.
“There we are – at home”, Ivan said. The mother burst into sobs and, wiping her eyes with a point of her dress, went over to the stove. – “Come, come, Ma, I have returned home at last”, Ivan said and began to undress.
Martha, as Ivan’s mother was called, took a small, took a small cast-iron pot with potatoes, which she had already prepared for tomorrow, put it on the stove, slightly covered it with brushwood and lit it with the petroleum lamp. The dry twigs gaily caught fire.
“What’s the news here”? Ivan asked.
“Enough about news. At best you can dry your tears. Your friend perished, Sergey Samsonov. Just a week ago he was buried”.
And the mother started to tell them, how many burials she had witnessed, who had returned wounded from the front and from who had not been received any more letters since the beginning of the war. Ivan listened to her with a grim face and looked at the flaring brushwood. The water was gurgling in the iron pot.
I sat silently on the edge of the bench, right at the door. The deceased Sigalayev came to my mind, my comrade in the cell. Desperately he had prayed to God to send a fire hyena to earth. And this hyena did come – the war, the Stalin camps, the prisons …
Millions of innocent people lost their lives. But the hyena did not exterminate and get ready for the blow against those who should have perished instead, I thought.
Martha stuck a potato with a knife, took the pot from the fire and poured the salted water over into a small pot. For tomorrow, for the soup. At the table Martha began to complain about the crop failure, which had struck all Khakassia. And what they had harvested went to the government.
The following morning I decided to go to Krasnoturansk – in order to get a passport and to search for a job. Ivan and Martha accompanied me in silence. And when I returned, they treated me unfriendly. Martha poured me some cold and thin soup into a bowl. And the next morning they advised me to look for a night’s lodging in Krasnoturansk.
The whole day I was walking from one institution to the other, but wherever I came I was encountered rejection. And in the district committee, the district executive committee, the district consumer cooperative, the district procurement department, and the district department of finance – they all were hostile towards me.
While roaming about the streets, I noticed a signboard “House of the kolkhoznik – District Inn”. Harnessed horses were standing at the hobble (tethering point?). A young man vivaciously jumped down the staircase. He took a piece of bread out of his pocket, a huge crust – not less than half a kilogram for sure – and got ready to give it to the horses.
“Wait, comrade!” I rushed up to him, seized him by the sleeve.
“Give the bread to me”. He turned around. Hastily I began to explain to him that I had not eaten anything all day long, that I came from the camp.
“You should have worked, not steal”.
“I’m not a thief. I did not harm anybody”, I stammered.
“And why did they jail you then, such an honest one as you are?”
“I … I am the son of a kulak”.
“A-a, then everything is clear”.
And by his face one could recognize an expression of compassion. He gave me the bread and took some bacon from his other pocket, which was wrapped in a piece of newspaper.
I was ready to kiss this generous hand, but he obviously guessed my intention and hid it behind his back.
"Go to the office - there you can rest and eat, and if you like to drink water, they will give you some".
I went over to the house. I wanted to know, who this good man was. Looking out of the window I could see that he got on a small cart. They told me his name was Dubinin, head of the kolkhoz "Red sky of Communism".
I sat down in a corner and ate up everything Dubinin had given to me. I ate and regretted that I did not leave anything over for later. But the hunger was unbearable.
I got tired and quickly fell asleep. When they woke me, it was already dark. The woman on duty decided that I should wait for the horse-drawn vehicle, but then she noticed that it was already late and that at this time hardly someone would pass by to pick me up.
We "made an agreement" and I asked for her permission to stay overnight. And she assigned me a place - on a board bench.
The next morning I once again went off to look for work. I scoured a couple of streets, but, of course, everything was in vain.
I saw another place to tie up horses, as well as a few horses that were harnessed. It seemed that inside the house there was a canteen. I went in. There were a few people. I sat down at an untidy table.
"Sit down at a clean table, I have just started to clear away the dishes over here", the waitress said, assuming that I had ordered lunch. I blushed with shame and asked her to leave some of the untouched soap on the table. She paused for breath and pushed a bowl over to me. She watched me, while I greedily gulped down the leftovers, then filled up another bowl and asked in a low voice:
"Do you have a passport?"
I showed her the document and explained to her, as best as I could, who I was. She left.
But a canteen is no inn, and therefore I soon had to go somewhere else.
The dead of autumn approached. And I began to "waste away". I did not even go out into the streets anymore, being barely able to drag myself along. I suffered from giddiness. In the canteen the leftovers lessened. The bench in the "Inn", which had been my overnight accommodation, disappeared. I felt my life coming to its end.
One evening I struggled myself along to the "House of the Kolkhoznik". A small light was burning in the window. I opened the door. Warmth assailed me.
"What happened", the officer on duty asked.
"Nothing happened", I replied. "I merely saw the light and dropped in to warm myself up".
We talked for a while. And then I recalled, how the down-and-outs in the tsar's time had worked during the summer, while, in winter, they used to commit petty thefts, whereupon they were put to jail for half a year, released in spring and then once again lived from day to day without grieving and making any particular efforts.
"Tell me, comrade officer on duty", I addressed the militiaman. Do they sentence people to six months' jail nowadays?"
"No, such a duration does not exist. The minimum is - three years. Do not expect less".
We continued talking for while, but soon I fell asleep. I often dropped off now from faintness and exhaustion, no matter where I was sitting or standing.
Before the arrival of the superior the officer on duty woke me up. I set out to locate the People's Court. I waited for the barrister and asked him, which kind of crime one would have to commit, in order to be put to jail for half a year. He immediately understood and replied straight out: "You have to steal some small thing, but without break-in".
And here he became aware that this would not help me.
"In your case they will apply section 35 of the Criminal Law of the USSR - for those who have no job and are without a fixed abode -, and this means a three years' term in a reform labor camp".
"Would you be my counsel for the defense?"
"No", he answered, "that's not necessary".
So what? We will risk it, I thought. As an everyday crook with a short-term duration they do not put me under escort and my life will be saved.
From the People's Court I struggled over the boarded sidewalk and carefully looked through the gaps of the fences and locked gates to find out if someone had possibly hung out laundry to dry in the court. Completely bewitched by this idea, I almost passed by some horses harnessed to a cart and tied up to the fence. I walked around them and purely accidentally noticed a faded and worn-out soldier's coat lying on the cart. "There they are, my six months, without break-in", it flashed through my mind.
I threw the coat around my shoulders and slowly walked away along the fence.
"Stop! Stand still!" sounded a voice behind me.
I stood still. A man came rushing up to me and pulled down the coat from my shoulders. I covered my face with my hands, as I expected he would punch me. But he merely tapped me on the head with the coat and stepped back. I could not believe it, but he went away. I turned round a screamed:
"Stop, comrade! Wait!" - and ran after him.
"What else do you want?"
"Take me to the militia and tell them that I stole a coat from your horse-cart. Save my life!"
He attentively looked at me.
"You have just been released from the camp and now you are begging for going back?"
"Nobody is willing to give me a job. There is no place for me to live. I don't know any other way out".
"Well then, come with me", he decisively said and guided me over the boarded sidewalk to the front door. The floor inside the house was painted, but this had already been done a long time ago.
I realized that this man was the superior.
We went into a clean kitchen. A tidy-looking old woman came to meet us.
"Mum, give this man something to eat. If you want to eat", he addressed himself to me, "go to the "House of the Kolkhoznik" and look up in the canteen. I will drive there straight away and take the necessary steps. And tomorrow about ten o'clock go to Lunacharskiy Street No. 19. Go to the second floor and ask for Belov. They will show you my office".
As I later learned, Belov was the superior, the administrator of the district butter manufacturing industry.
When I arrived at the "House of the Kolkhoznik", my bed bench was back to the place where it had stood before, the woman on duty politely invited me to sit down and have a rest, even at daytime. In the canteen they gave me the leftovers of some cloudy broth - until I had eaten my fill.
The next day Belov met me with a kind reception and asked me to sit down. Would you like to work as an accounts clerk?"
"With pleasure".
"Go downstairs to the bookkeeping department. There they will show you your place of work and you will receive advance payment on your wage. Apart from that you can have lunch there against payment. The employees will help you to find an apartment. And as of the 1st December I am going to send you to instruction courses for laboratory assistants in butter factories".
I started thanking him for everything.
"That's not necessary, not necessary", he cut me short. "And now go away".
While I attended the instruction courses the region of Kalinin was liberated from the fascists. Belov drove home to restore the milk industry. Thus, I did not succeed to thank him and shake hands with him at parting.
Having finished the courses I worked in the Novosvininsk butter factory as a laboratory assistant. Two years later they sent me to a school for butter production masters, as I was doing my job so well. Afterwards I worked as a master in the Moisseyevsk butter factory. Soon after I went to Khakassia and got a job as a master of butter production in the Bagradsk district butter industry.
With that, it seemed to me, I had covered the tracks of my past.
In December 1947 I moved to the Kursk region, made myself at home, and half a year later my sister brought over my son Genadiy. He was already 12 years old then. Nothing but skin and bone, with freckles on his face ... My poor boy. We embraced. He pressed me to his heart, burst into sobs and calmed down. And my tears dropped on his shaggy hair.
2
In 1964 I went on pension, due to incapacity for work, and began to write about those fearful years of Stalinist reprisals, which had brought me into the camp for many years.
Having finished my story, I collected all pages, numbered them and went to Moscow, to the Information Center of the Writers' League. There I read out a few pages - and after that they returned the hand-written pages to me.
"Nobody will print this", the woman, who had leafed through my manuscript, severely said.
It was a bad blow for me.
On my way back I noticed many foreign cars and militiamen besides the public park on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Street. Having read the signboard I knew that here was situated the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. An idea suddenly crossed my mind. "Here I can hand in my story".
I sat down on a bench in some distance, where I had seen a non-Russian car, and patiently waited. Soon the owner of the car approached. After a short conversation he gave me the telephone number of a journalist, whom I called immediately. He told me his address and I rushed off- for the Kutuzovsk Prospect.
In the courtyard a member of the militia stopped me. And thus I fell once again into the hands of the militia. They took the manuscript away from me.
About three hours later I was taken before the investigator. He listened to me, drew up a protocol and gave me the official order to immediately disappear from Moscow.
This happened in 1972. Almost one year later, already in summer, they asked me to appear before the Zheleznogorsk Department of the Committee of State Security in the Kursk region. Three men were sitting in the office. The head of the KGB and district department Davydov, his secretary and a lieutenant colonel from the regional KGB. I cannot recall his surname.
On the table they had displayed the mixed-up pages of my manuscript. On top the KGB certificate according to which I had been sentenced to the eight years term of detention for having uttered terrorist thoughts against comrade Stalin.
After I had moved away from Siberia, I carefully kept all this secret. The interrogation protocol said that I had written defamatory works and tried to send them abroad.
Davydov behaved in a rather rude manner, like an investigator of the 1930s.
He was a real NKVD officer!
A couple of days later, while leafing through the newspaper, my gaze fell on an article about the Helsinki Convention. It was about the freedom of associating with foreigners and the exchange of art. And, of course, I considered my story to be art.
The next day I requested Davydov to give the manuscript back to me, but he refused. On my way home I remembered having put all drafts into the oven late in May, and that my wife usually did not heat the oven during the summer. All pages seemed to be complete yet. On that very day I picked out all the sheets I needed and took the story to Kursk to have it copied by typewriter.
Three months later the girl-typist asked me to come. Besides the house, in which the "Service Office" was situated, I recognized a black "Volga" and immediately understood that this "Volga" was waiting there for me. When passing the car and crossing the yard, they took pictures of me.
I was given the manuscript and left the office, being convinced that they would transport me away in this "Volga", but the car had already left.
Soon afterwards Davydov appeared on a meeting of the district party activists. He showed my pictures to everybody, called me a turncoat and intriguer. He informed the others that I had been imprisoned as an enemy of the people. Davydov additionally mentioned that I was under surveillance and that they would not allow me to lapse into a traitor to my country. Until now I had only been an intriguer.
The party activists listened to him and exchanged glances. Whispers could be heard:
"Who would have thought that ... What kind of people there are still among us...”
From this day on I became a leper.
As a pensioner I occasionally earned some additional money at the district consumer cooperative. As a public man I took part in the commissions for the inventory and inspection of stores, warehouses and supply bases of the trading network.
After the meeting no one employed me anymore.
Many Communists, who had attended the meeting of the party activists, knew me very well. On the occasion of such gatherings they had always greeted me, some had stopped beside me in order to talk a little. After Davydov’s appearance all this ceased. They all withdrew from me.
The KGB employees and the district prosecutor Khavayev did not let me out of their sight.
And I stuck to my intention of getting my manuscript abroad. Three times I surreptitiously went to Moscow for the International Book Fair, in order to "sell" my story. And all three times turned out to be unsuccessful, although I knocked around the European pavilion for several days. Unfortunately, disguised KGB employees were on duty there. When chance would have it that I could talk with the foreigners in private, I pressed the folder to my heart and noiselessly knocked on it so that they would understand that I was keeping a manuscript inside. They looked around with fright, disapprovingly shook their heads and turned away. Anytime I suffered such a failure, I returned from Moscow in bad health. Thus, I did not succeed to publish my story in the West.
"Liberty" - magazine of prisoners of totalitarian systems, No. 1,
1993,
published by "Vosvrashcheniye" ("Return"), Russia, Moscow