The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

S.E. Solov’ev, chair of the Leningrad Municipal Court (and currently Leningrad’s chief prosecutor), holding sheets of paper in hand—the verdict— looked in my direction. His calmness, his irony during the course of the proceedings seemed to be saying: “What is all the fuss about, brothers? What nonsense are you speaking? Everything has been decided long ago. And not even by me . . .”

“In the name of the Russian Soviet Federal . . .”

He suddenly stopped and looked at the door. Soundlessly, bending slightly as if somebody would suddenly shoot at them, Joseph Brodsky and Anatolii Naiman were stealing into the hall [a brave act, considering the era].

“What is it you want here?” asked Solov’ev just as calmly as he had spoken of everything prior. “Were you summoned?”

“No, but we . . .” began Brodsky.

“Leave here.”

“In the name of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist . . .”

. . . I came to my senses out of the blessed, soothing darkness. I was lying on the floor between the benches. One of the guards was sticking a vial of ammonia into my nose (what foresight!). I had lost consciousness. A weakling, egghead intellectual, in the words of the great leader.

I felt hurt and ashamed, the more so in that I had not yet heard what they had decided. Perhaps . . .

“In the name of the Russian Soviet . . .” began Solov’ev for the third time. Grabbing onto the railing and trying to look as calm as possible, I listened attentively. No, old buddy, the preamble bodes nothing good . . .

“. . . to be deprived of freedom for five years.” A strange buzz was heard in the hall. It was Pavlovskii fainting. This time Solov’ev did not stop and continued in the same even voice. “The sentence is to commence from . . .”

Kirill Kostsinskii [K.V. Uspenskii], A Dissident’s Trial289

“You were nailed with a good one,” said one of the soldiers sitting across from me on a bench in the black mariah as I was being driven “home.”

“I’ve been serving here three years, seen a lot go through here, all kinds of low-life, but nothing like this!” added a second.

“After all, they don’t imprison anyone for such stuff these days,” the first one said, shaking his head.

Chapter Thirty-One

Iurii Krotkov, The KGB in Action

Krotkov’s colorful narrative moves one to think of a film plot. KGB secrets, sex and spying, blackmail, compromising a foreign ambassador, a picturesque cast of characters. It is easy to lose sight of the pernicious intent of these activities. The KGB did have clear purpose and a defined goal. Krotkov’s story is punctuated by remarkably cogent and revealing observations. He speaks of an occasional desire to forget where he was, what he was doing, to forget politics and ideology, all the reasons for the task at hand.

Taken from Iurii Krotkov, “KGB v deistvii” [The KGB in Action]. New York: The New Review, No.111, June, 1973.

The painstaking preparatory work began anew. For Kunavin it was the labor of Sisyphus. First he met with Georgii Mdivani, one of the leading Soviet playwrights and screenwriters (a one-hundred-percent “patriot,” a pillar of the Soviet establishment). I personally knew him quite well and had included him on the list, certain that this one would let himself be “co-opted” easily and even eagerly. I wasn’t mistaken. Kunavin had a conversation with him on the subject, and after that Zhorzh [diminutive for Georgii] came to be at my disposal. It’s interesting that, while moving in the same artistic circles, having taken up the same craft of producing party plays and screenplays, he and I never touched on our other “personae” in private conversations. A strict line of demarcation separated the two realms.

Zhorzh had a wife, Taisiia Savva, formerly a famous artist of the popular stage (her act was called “artistic whistling”—that is, she whistled). In my youth, I must confess, I was in love with her. But by now she was already past her prime and had gone into retirement, though she remained an endearing conversationalist. Furthermore, she knew French reasonably well. Taichik

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Iurii Krotkov, The KGB in Action

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[Taisiia] had also been made a participant. And Kunavin had the same conversation with Nadia Cherednichenko and Larisa Kronberg-Sobolevskaia. They too agreed without objection to be “co-opted” as KGB workers, and became members of my team.

On the eve of the appointed day, Kunavin and I went to the Praga Restaurant to see the director, who had been made a direct subordinate of the KGB. In the director’s office, with the doors closed, we discussed all practical concerns. He assigned two waiters to us, also KGB subordinates, and gave us the best private room in the restaurant, the “Rotonda,” specially equipped for our use.