Misha loved his young wife. But his naval service he loved even more. He loved the sea, his submarine, the prolongued autonomous voyages, his sailors and officers. He quickly rose through the ranks and became an officer early in life. The crew idolised him. He was generous, attentive and prudent. There was order on his boat; the boat was always in good standing. The firing exercises were all flawless. Once the big brass came to inspect the ship. No blame found with the ship's management. What about physical training? Let's start with the commander, Mikhail suggested. Without taking off his tunic, he stepped towards the high bar and did 20 chin-ups. OK, OK, 'pass' for the entire crew. The young commander was considered one of the best belayers in the North. When he was at home, he was often called to make fast other vessels during the night or in bad weather. Sailing was his vocation, no doubt. But his tongue did him no favours. He loved to make up ditties and jokes that made fun of the high brass. This did evidently not help his progress through the ranks. But everybody loved him. He was a master of nautical tales. Later, much later, he became closely acquainted with Viktor Konetsky, the author of «Between Myths and Reefs», stories about Barracuda the Cat. People say that many topics from Mikhail's oral tales later found entry into Konetsky's stories. I don't know whether this is true, but I had the chance to hear Misha's tales. They always kept his audience riveted. Naval romanticism. We'll talk about that later.
How to become a Cosmopolitan
In 1949 there was the Leningrad Case, the straggle against the cosmopolitans; in 1951 the Minister for State Security, Abakumov, was arrested on a charge of organising a large-scale «nationalist Jewish conspiracy». In 1951 and 1952 there was the Doctors' Plot, directed against those looking after the health of the country's top brass. They were searching for cosmopolitans everywhere. It looks like my father ended up in this group in 1951 on his own initiative, at least partly. You see, he was a man of principle. The leadership were committing some kind of abuse. Somewhere they were doing something for their own profit. And he criticised this, naturally. What should those poor sods have done? They began to show interest in my father's work. He was in charge of the staff. It was him who chose people to work on new building sites. He would visit these building sites and organise the huts for the new workers to live in, sort out social matters. It turned out he'd sorted them out badly. That he had enabled «staff pollution». There really was such a term. He had hired a certain Movshovich. A cosmopolitan, that goes without saying. An enemy of the public. Nothing happened to this Movshovich. But my father was excluded from the party. A few days later he was fired from his job. He went to the regional committee. Tried to show them he was right. «Don't you know», the secretary of the regional committee said to him, «that the European part of the Soviet Union is no place for people of your nationality? They are preparing some territories in the Far East for you. Perhaps even further away. We don't understand what it is you're unhappy about.» My father wrote letters. To the district committee, to the Central Committee. He wrote about his military feats. He wrote to Comrade Stalin in person. It did no good. We expected them to arrest him. Any day now. When you could hear brakes screeching outside at night, my mother would rash to the window. Were the «visitors» coming to us? The light would come on in many windows at once. People were looking who they'd come for. The black police car didn't come. But we had to live. Nobody wanted to hire my father. My mother taught him to draw. She hoped to find him a job as a draughtsman. My father was good at drawing. He produced wonderful graphic script. We still have some sheets on which he practiced his letters. This is what he wrote: «The Party is always right. The Party must cleanse itself. The Party must strengthen its ranks. If you hew trees chips must fly. Each case may contain errors.» He couldn't get his head round the screaming injustice and baseness of what was happening.
It was some friends who came to my father's aid. They suggested he go to the North. They found him a job as a craftsman on a construction site near Kotlas. To work with criminals. It was evidently a settlement colony for convicts. My father went to his new place of work. A difficult contingent. The work wasn't easy. Three times he was the stake at a card game. When a criminal ran out of money he would try to recoup his losses. He would play «for Yashka». If he lost he had to finish off Yashka within a day. If he didn't finish him off he'd have to find the money or he'd be knifed himself for the gaming debt. Perhaps they applied different measures according to criminal customs, I don't know. Yashka found out in time, he evidently had his own guys in their groups, his snitches. When in Rome do as the Romans do… That was their life. My father spent the whole night near the entrance to his hut, axe in hand. Awaiting visitors. When the first sunlight appeared you could consider that the threat had passed.
That's how we lived – us in Leningrad and my father in the North.
In that year I wrote a poem for the first time in my life. A naive, childish poem: «Daddy beloved, daddy dear, I miss you so much. Please come home soon, come back here, I will make you lunch. I will grow up big and strong, fearless and courageous. For my homeland I will fight, I will fear no danger.»
The teachers at my school were amazing people. They knew that my father was in the North. But they never treated me badly. It seems they understood and felt compassion. They didn't lower my marks. And I was an excellent student anyway. The best in my class. But then the class wasn't very strong. I used to help many others with schoolwork. The boys would come to our house. I would explain the homework in the hard subjects. Later they would whisper behind my back. There was no gratitude. Understandably. The black cardboard loudspeakers kept droning on about the doctors who were murderers. About the cosmopolitans who wouldn't let us live in peace. Once the lads asked me to stay behind after lessons. They had decided to beat me up in secret. No words, no explanations. Just so I knew. Then our maths teacher came into the classroom, Alexandra Nikolaevna, a large, rotund woman. She was beside herself with fury. She let me go and remained behind with the boys. I don't know what they talked about, but nothing of that kind ever happened again. Not even a hint. Now I understand that this act, so simple and natural at first sight, had required a lot of personal courage from an ordinary teacher. In that class we were learning Spanish. Soon I joined another class that was learning English. I was lucky. The children there were completely different. And the teachers were different, too. Wonderful people, too. I loved them very much. But I will never forget you, Alexandra Nikolaevna. I take my hat off to you.
My dad spent two years in the North. At the end of 1953 the father of all peoples left us. He was weakened, evidently, the old viper, lording it over the other vipers in the can. He'd bitten them all, strangled them all. But ultimately he received his dose of venom from someone close, perhaps the one closest to him. The entire country mourned. Huge queues formed of people who wanted to say goodbye to their beloved leader. Children created a mourning page in their exercise books where they would write of their love for the Great Stalin. They would frame the page in red and black. Children and adults alike were poisoned with the venom of idolatry, the venom of worship before the most blood-stained figure in the history of Russia. Not everyone, naturally.
«He's the master of loud and threatening words, they help him flip the course of things. The man he sees living his own life he will suppress in a flash. Our path is straight nevertheless, he is the one who will lose. For life is ours for the taking, he's merely clinging to us», wrote «Emka», as the poet Naum Korzhavin was known, who was arrested in 1947 at the height of the fight against the cosmopolitans.
In a group of children there is always one whom no one likes. In our class this was Borka Ryaboi. Why we didn't like him? He grew up without his father. His mother was a quiet, unhappy woman. There was nothing distinguishing Borka from the others. He wasn't cheeky. A bit more stupid than the rest. A bit weaker than the other boys. Children are cruel. Borka was always guilty of everything. Now I understand why. One of the reasons was that Borka was Jewish. Just like me. The most horrible thing was that I sometimes supported the idea that «Borka is always guilty of everything» that was so popular among the boys.