The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

The chapter of Ianevich’s memoirs from which this selection is taken deals with the Institute of World Literature from the 1930’s through the 1970’s. The selection discloses the intense politicization within the institute during World War II and after as well as the many internal vagaries aggravated by the war. The author’s introspection reveals her intimate knowledge of the workings of this prestigious institute. She notes that she had been employed there practically from its very founding. Originally published as “Institut Mirovoi Liter-atury v 1930-e–1970-e gody” [The Institute of World Literature from the 1930’s to the 1970’s] in Pamiat’. Paris: YMCA Press, 1982.

The first months of the war were horrific. The Germans were rushing toward Moscow. Every night our colleagues stood watch on the roof of our Gorky Museum tossing off incendiary flares. The capital was being evacuated. Children, old people, priceless museum items, paintings and finally whole offices and institutions were moved out. Leonid Ippolitovich Pono-marev, our director, waited in vain for specific directives from his superiors at the Academy and complained that they were more likely concerned with their own safety than with the safety of the institutes. He was confused and overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility for the destiny of the staff and the institute itself. He clearly needed the help of youthful and energetic people. Acting on our own initiative we decided to help him.

In the course of two or three weeks several of our active women organized the evacuation of women with small children as well as of the ill and aged family members of our co-workers. They launched a furious attack on the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences until they received the necessary evacuation authorizations and destination. Then the institute received a directive

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Chapter Twenty-Five

mobilizing everyone, as many as possible, into work brigades for the building of fortifications outside of Moscow. I readily joined this brigade along with Liza Glatman, Olga Kuznetsova, Vera Bezuglova and other co-workers who were capable of handling a shovel. We were sent off with great pomp and speechifying, but no sooner did we get to the outskirts of the city than we were sent back. It was too late, all the approaches had been seized by the Germans. There was no place nor purpose for digging or erecting fortifications.

And on the next day—this was 16 October 1941, the notorious day of wholesale Moscow panic—our institute among many others was ordered to leave the city on foot, since there was no transportation and no point in waiting for any. Thousands of people in silent concentration, having taken with them whatever they could, marched along roads away from what seemed to be a doomed Moscow.

That was a cold autumnal day. The wind whipped pieces of burnt personal and official documents along the streets. The Institute of World Literature column, or what was left of the IWL, presented a sorry sight. Most of the men had been called into the army or had gone into the people’s volunteer corps. Several of them, specifically Mark Serebrianskii, head of the Soviet Literature sector, and Misha Zabludovskii, a specialist in Western Literature, had already been killed. Some of the older scholars declined to leave Moscow (A.K. Dzhivelegov among them). Others, members of the Writer’s Union, managed to leave on the 14th or 15th of October with the Writer’s Union convoy. There were others who could not walk at all due to poor health. Our column, therefore, was made up primarily of women with children or aged parents who had not been evacuated earlier. Anna Arkad’evna Elistratova, even then a renowned specialist on Anglo-American literature, trudged along, short of breath, painfully moving her edematous legs. Her mother and totally decrepit father trudged along with her. Old Leonid Ippolitovich walked with difficulty in the column of the institute which had been entrusted to him. Evgenii Emil’evich Leitneker, the middle-aged and ill co-worker of the Gorky sector also marched with difficulty, carrying a heavy rucksack totally filled with his unfinished manuscript: The Chronicle of Gorky’s Life and Art. Varvara Niko-laevna Lanina, from the same sector, walked along with her thirteen-year-old daughter, Tania. Among the hastily snatched items from their home they were carrying a new, glistening electric iron. Soon it tired their arms so much that they began dragging it by the cord. Later, of course, they had to part with it entirely.

People quickly began to tire and our younger members began putting the old and infirm on military vehicles which kept passing us. Then they found places for everybody else and by the end of the day all of us were taken care of, including the director who had refused to get on a vehicle until everybody

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