The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

On the next to last day I went to the institute to declare that I was leaving it and going to Moscow. I could not even imagine what a surprise awaited me. At the institute, I approached the assistant dean. Seeing me, he heaved a sigh of relief and said that everyone had been looking for me since morning. I understood that, presumably, all was known. I was asked to go to the Komsomol committee. There were already about twenty-five people there. Present at the meeting were the institute’s Komsomol committee, the dean, the union organizer, the rector, and several individuals who, as it later turned out, were KGB officials. I was asked to stand at the end of the table and then it was triumphantly announced that competent agencies had that day made the institute’s administration aware of the fact that this student intended to depart for the state of Israel. So it began! The meeting lasted for more than four hours. Prior to obtaining the visa, similar meetings often took place in other Soviet cities. But this was the first for Irkutsk. And a first in the USSR after a visa had already been obtained. The “court” was headed by the rector, Rybalko. The first to speak were the Komsomol members. They would speak and then question me in turn. It was noticeable that it was difficult for them to speak

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without notes. Some forgot what they were supposed to say and became confused. I replied calmly and confidently. There was nothing special in my answers. When I spoke, there was deathly silence and there was fear and bewilderment in the faces of those assembled.

The rector sat in silence, focusing his gaze on a single spot. He was the last to find out and this drove him crazy. Finally, he took his turn to speak and, as usual, overdid it. When he discovered that my father was a professor, he began to scream that the Soviet government had given him everything and that he could never repay it. I protested, saying that my father had worked for sixteen years without pay. This surprised the rector very much and he demanded an explanation as to where it was in the USSR that people work without pay. When I replied that father spent sixteen years in Stalin’s concentration camps and prisons, he was curious as to which ones. I replied that father had traveled the whole “Archipelago.” Rybalko then asked me if I had read Solzhen-itsyn. I answered in the affirmative and then asked him the same question. An explosion of indignation! However, the culminating point came a bit later when I said that we had exit visas in hand. The rector left for some fifteen minutes. When he returned he announced that I would not be going anywhere except to Kolyma and that he would try to have our visas classified as expired. The rector then asked me to go home with the KGB officials and get my student documents. Until they were placed on his desk, I would not be allowed to go home.

When my mother walked into the judgement room, having waited in the hallway for four hours, the rector fell upon her and demanded that she leave. If not, he would call the police and she would be taken out. When I tried to go out into the hallway, my path was blocked by two KGB agents. At that juncture the Komsomol secretary declared that I would not be held by force, but I stated that it was already being done. The rector promised that he would provide no certificate regarding my two years of study at the institute, and he kept his word! He also ordered that my school diploma not be returned to me.

Toward the end of the meeting, I was questioned as to who my friends were. I did not answer, so they provided names themselves. They tried to elicit whether I told them of my plans. A girl in my class whom I knew well was particularly besmirched. The filthiest rumors were circulated about her, the type that could only be heard at a Komsomol members meeting. She was then brought in for a demeaning confrontation and told to choose her friends more carefully. Our whole class of twenty-five came to see me on the day of departure. They had begged off from their philosophy seminar. They told their instructor that they were seeing off a friend who was leaving for Israel. He was stupefied and advised them not to go. Still, the students came and we parted in friendship.

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Chapter Thirty-Two