Leaving the USSR Part Three

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

By: Yuri Tuvim - Feb 24, 2007

One day driving Chukovskaya from her dacha to Moscow we had an interesting conversation. She was categorically against any emigration for a reason that if good people would leave who would be left to make the country better. I answered that the only thing which I could do for the country would be to commit  suicide on a collective farm field in order to fertilize the soil. But organize an opposition party and I would stay. Chukovskaya said that she was not a politician but a writer. We switched to other topics.  The question of an opposition party popped out a few months later when I was summoned to a police station where two KGB man were giving me a hard time asking about a small package which was taken by customs from an American pilot. This pilot called me one day and said that he had a letter to me from my friends in Boston. I met him and gave him  Bukovski's letter from a prison, an article by a scientist-refusnik Mark Asbel and my letter to friends. When the pilot was asked if he took something from somebody in Moscow, he immediately cracked and named me. I met him a few years later in Boston and discovered that he was extremely naïve and slightly stupid.

The KGB men were performing flawlessly  "Good cop – Bad cop." One would say: "There is no need talking to him. The place for this anti-sovetchik is in prison!" Another: "Ah, wait a little. He is a good fellow, confused slightly, he made a mistake, but he is our citizen, not an American agent!" I admitted the article and my letter but denied Bukovski's. Anyhow they were not much interested in those. They revealed the major concern when they mentioned in passing the opposition party. I told them that I am not going to retract my exit visa application which I would do if there would be such a party. They were visibly relived and we parted almost like old friends. How they knew about the party? The car was bugged and the device worked.

The best place to find the latest news and rumors was a small street of the Moscow synagogue. Not very many people would go inside, the biggest gathering was outside. You met friends, learned news and rumors. Plainclothes KGB agents would take pictures. When the crowd grew big during Jewish holidays, the parallel major street would be closed for traffic and endless stream of cars would be directed trough that street. I enjoyed going to the synagogue, this was my small demonstration against the totalitarian power of the state. There I usually would see Sanya Lipavski. I got acquainted with him in the apartment of  Professor David Asbel, who went on a hunger strike protesting the denial to emigrate to Israel. Sanya was a MD; he monitored the health of Professor Asbel. I liked Sanya. He was polite, he never asked me to introduce him to Sakharov or Chukovskaya, and he was not nosey. He worked at a clinic where people were examined to get driver licenses and he helped many folks to pass the test. Gradually we become friends. He invited me to his home where I met his father – a huge man of 300 plus pounds. Sanya told me that his father was the only one who was not shot after he was convicted with a group of others. They were involved with embezzlement of gigantic proportions. Sanya said that he was not shot because he did not admit his guilt when others confessed and were put against the wall. Later I understood the real reason for mercy.

Sanya was the proud owner of a new Volga car. That was very unusual, only a very privileged few possessed these cars. Sanya said that Volga was bought for him by his American relatives who also set up an X-ray office where he would work after emigration. He did not apply for a visa because his Russian wife did not yet make up her mind. One day he told me that the brake line hose of his car was snapped by KGB men and he miraculously avoided an accident in the middle of Moscow. He also warned me to be careful with another friend of ours because he was being seen talking with a suspected KGB informer. Nothing unusual with all of these stories, Moscow was full of themÂ…

I continued to enjoy my freewheeling life, driving Chukovskaya, reading underground literature, visiting Sakharov and meeting foreign correspondents. In Sakharov's flat I met Senator Buckley and before that I was in the apartment of Prof. Lerner when Senator Kennedy came to see Jewish refusniks. Senator Buckley impressed me very much by his pertinent questions but Kennedy's stupid ones were very primitive. I had a feeling that he did not understand or care about the answers.

In the midst of this activity my mother came for visit. After the death of my father she was living in Iceland with my sister who was married to an journalist. My mother was a dentist but she could not work in Iceland. Yet she was a very active person so she took to knitting and in a short time achieved quite a skill. She knitted sweaters with beautiful traditional Icelandic patterns for family members and many relatives and friends. This time she brought sweaters for Sakharov, Chukovskaya and Ruth Bonner, Sakharov's mother-in-law. I called Sakharov and asked if I could come for a visit with my Mama. The answer was yes and we went. I also had with me a box of 45 cans of evaporated milk without sugar. That milk was popular and not expensive but it was hard to find. Luckily, I got acquainted with a sales woman from one store. When that store needed to fulfill a plan they started to sell deficit products one of which was that milk.  The woman would call me; I would buy the whole box and pay a few rubles above the price. Everybody would be happy: the woman with a few rubles, I with milk and the store with the fulfillment of its plan. So, as you can see, shortages can bring happiness to many.

Do I experience something like that shopping in America? Not at all! The obnoxious abundance sickens and irritates me. Overstaffed stores, hundreds of kinds of cookies, untold number of sausages, meats, juices, potatoesÂ…This is one of reasons for obesity which endangers our society. But I got distracted, sorry.     
 
When we arrived at the apartment building where the Sakharovs were living (Elena Bonner was in Italy for an eye operation), several people were on the usually empty sidewalk. I helped Mama out of my small car and took the very heavy box from the trunk. The box was almost forty pounds and was circled by a luggage belt. Holding Mama under her arm with my right arm and the box with my left we entered the building. At that moment a big woman pushed me from behind. I let the box go and it crashed with a horrendous clank on the foot of a woman. She screamed, I apologized and we took an elevator up. I think the KGB decided that "Mama" was a code word and sent a detachment of agents to check. I hoped that the injured foot of the stooge would teach her a lesson.

In the summer of 1975 I received my exit visa. This was very unusual, hundreds of refusniks envied me and I, being ready to join them, was perturbed. To leave family suddenly become the new frightening reality. My son was in a summer camp. In two weeks I must leave without seeing him. That was out of the question and I went to the visa office and asked for postponement. To my astonishment I was granted the whole month and life started to look better. I decided to go to Smolensk to say farewell to my old nanny who was living alone in my parent's flat. I also wanted to see several friends from my father's liquor plant where he was chief engineer for many years. Directors of this plant were always party members but that did not warrant permanent employment. Some become alcoholics, some would be dismissed as unqualified, and one was arrested.  He was a Ukrainian. He sent an unsigned letter to a Ukrainian poet Sosura reprimanding him for brown-nosing Russians. Evidently, Sosura brought the letter to the KGB and they found and arrested the poor guy. The family was immediately evicted from their flat. They spent the whole winter in a shed without electricity. For heat they burned wooden scraps in an iron barrel. They believed that my father betrayed him to get a position. Poor stupid people! During the trial they learned the truth and apologized. Pretty soon the new director arrived and my father resumed his old duties plus teaching the newcomer basics of the technology.

The most important part of his work was manifesting itself during the days before the major holidays when managers of other socialist enterprises would arrive at the plant. All visits proceeded like this: the General Manager of the railroad station would come to my father's office. They would exchange some pleasantries; my father would reach into his desk drawer, pull out one or two bottles of vodka and present them to the visitor congratulating him with the approaching October Revolution day. So, if he needed cars to ship vodka he would get them on time. The big party bosses and the Attorney General of the region would never come by themselves but would send their chauffeurs. What my father was doing was unlawful and criminal, but if he would not do it his plant would never fulfill the plan, workers would not get bonuses, and the Ministry would give him a very hard time. But if inspectors would find about this activity nobody would even try to help him. That's how he worked between the Scylla and Haribda of the Soviet life. The workers respected and even loved him including our whole family also because some of them were my mother's patients.  

When I told them that I was leaving the country, they were shocked.
- You are going to Amerika!? You are crazy! There is no work, unemployment! Negros are lynchedÂ…
- Everybody is armed, people are killed on streets!
- How much money you are permitted to exchange?
- How you will survive on ninety dollars?
- How much a coat costs?
They asked me many questions for which I did not know the answers. Finally they said: -"Where did you park the car? Go around the corner to the lumber yard and wait there".

So I did and in fifteen minutes the factory truck stopped behind me. My friend Volodya Zelkovski put in my trunk a case with 20 bottles of Stolichnaya vodka. – "Be careful with these" - he said and shook the bottle. Large air bubbles quickly rose and disappeared.  That was not vodka but 196 proof alcohol poured and sealed into Stoly bottles. "This will help you in Amerika!" - He said. (Here I have to explain to my readers that vodka in Russia always was an equivalent of hard currency. My dear friends were helping me to start a new lifeÂ…) Upon returning to Moscow the precious cargo greatly enhanced my already interesting life. New friends were appearing, old friendships were strengthened, nobody was demanding to pay the union dues and the anxiety of the imminent departure almost dissipated in the fog of alcohol.