Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag (14 page)

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Authors: Orlando Figes

BOOK: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag
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This was the first time Sveta had really touched on the subject of her depression, though she did not identify it as such. She could describe her symptoms accurately enough, her tendency to ‘snap and then withdraw’, but could not put a name to them. There was no public recognition or discussion of depression in the Soviet Union, the ‘happiest country in the world’.
The next morning she continued the letter:
About my coming to see you, Levi. I am very worried about my ignorance of where I should go and whom I should apply to. Would you tell Gleb to ask his mother to get in touch with me when she gets back? (That is, get in touch with me first rather than with O. B. [Aunt Olga], whom she is bound to call on anyway.) She’s meant to return at some point in early or mid-July, and I could then, if need be, even go out of town to see her, although I have no right to leave at the moment. I don’t want to ask for a holiday in July (the first half at any rate), since I need to prepare myself both emotionally and financially for the trip, and I’d like to try to get permission here. Although Gleb’s mother says it isn’t necessary, it really would set my mind at rest, and in any case it can’t do any harm. As for how much time it would take, that I don’t know. If I am held up here, Mikhail Aleksandrovich [Tsydzik, Sveta’s boss] may well want to go on leave himself. I would then have to wait until he returns before I go. So don’t count on my coming soon. In the sense of taking a break, I would even prefer it to be later (in that respect I am unlike everyone else), since an early holiday is soon forgotten and it’s as if one hadn’t had a rest at all. However, Mikhail Aleksandrovich also likes taking his holidays late, for the same reasons … O. B. is here now, so I’ll have to stop …
We have asked Gleb’s mother to take with her the treats that have been trying to reach you since April: sweets from O. B., chocolate from Irina, naturally, and sugar from me, also naturally, because Irina can’t stand sugar, whereas I am indifferent to sweets. Since who knows what can happen, I am also sending you (and don’t get angry, or you’ll burst your liver) some money. That’s always useful to have, if not to buy something for yourself, then for your comrades. Another thing I have asked Gleb’s mother to take with her is a pair of spectacles for you. It’s a second pair which Shurka was able to get (a 3.5 prescription exactly). Papa has got his pair back now. And that’s all for now. Take care, my darling. I kiss you very, very warmly.
Gleb’s mother was more successful than the Litvinenkos. Once again, she managed to see her son for several hours over consecutive days, this time monitored by the guards but in the smaller guard-house between the industrial zone and the 2nd Colony barracks rather than in the bigger and busier one at the main gate. Lev warned Sveta not to attach too much importance to Natalia Arkadevna’s success. Gleb’s article was less serious than his; and his mother had been fortunate (or just very good at paying bribes). Sveta would be lucky to see Lev ‘for a few minutes’ and might even be met with a ‘blank refusal’ from the MVD. But Sveta was buoyed by what she heard from Gleb’s mother. ‘Natalia Arkadevna came to see me on Monday,’ she wrote to Lev on 16 July. ‘She spoke in detail about the material-financial side [bribes] and completely calmed my nerves on that matter. She supported my desire to travel. She is a charming person, that’s for sure, and I’m very grateful to her.’
What Sveta had learned from Natalia Arkadevna had not only strengthened her determination to travel to Pechora, whatever the cost, but also reinforced her idea that she could find some other means of getting to see Lev if she was refused permission by the Gulag administration. If not through bribery, she would find a way of smuggling herself into the industrial prison zone.
By 16 July, time was running out for Sveta to make the necessary arrangements for a journey to Pechora before the end of the summer.
She had to wait for her boss, Tsydzik, to agree when she could take her holiday, not least because she would depend on him to cover for her while she was in Pechora. In the last week of July, Tsydzik went into hospital. On 1 August he had been due to go away on holiday to Kislovodsk in the Caucasus, not returning to Moscow until 12 September at the earliest, but his trip was now delayed. ‘Levenka, my darling, once again we will have to summon all our patience and forbearance – my leave has been postponed,’ Sveta wrote on 28 July. ‘I am meowing. But I would be willing to wait until December, if I knew that virtue will get its reward (in which case it would not be virtue at all?). Again, I am meowing.’
All through August, with much of Moscow away on holiday, Sveta went on working at the institute, where she took over Tsydzik’s administrative duties. ‘It’s 28 degrees here and everything is covered with a smokey haze from all the factory fumes and dust,’ she wrote to Lev on 12 August. ‘They’re hurrying to decorate the city for its 800th anniversary [on 7 September] and half the streets have been blocked off.’ While the city prepared for the festivities, Sveta made her own preparations for the journey to Pechora, which she now anticipated would happen at the end of September. She spent a lot of time finding out how best to obtain photographic materials for Lev Izrailevich, who would put her up in Kozhva and help her get into the wood-combine. ‘I asked about the photographic equipment,’ Sveta wrote on 12 August. ‘There’s no shortage at the moment, and it should be easy for anyone to purchase in a shop … I’ll get hold of everything and, if the trip goes wrong, it will still be possible to send it in a parcel to his address – yes? There’d be one for two – film for him and books for you.’
By this time, Sveta knew that she would be travelling illegally. She had given up on getting permission from the MVD in Moscow and, without that, she had no business going to Pechora, a secret Gulag settlement unmarked on the map. If and when she got there, Sveta planned to enter the wood-combine with Lev Izrailevich and hide in the house of one of the free workers inside the industrial zone. Lev would be able to see her there during his shift at the power station,
if he managed to get past the guards at the entrance to the settlement. It was a rash and dangerous plan, involving enormous risks for Sveta. Entering a labour camp without the approval of the MVD was a serious crime against the state. Because her research had military significance, she would be sent to a labour camp herself if she was caught trying to contact a convicted ‘spy’. Anyone who helped her would be in trouble too.
To conceal the true purpose of her journey, Sveta planned to make it at the end of a work trip to Kirov near the Urals to inspect a tyre factory connected to her institute. Tsydzik would do the necessary paper work to cover her tracks when, as planned, Sveta sent a telegram from Kirov informing him that she would be delayed on her return to Moscow. From Kirov it would take her only a night and a day by train to travel via Kotlas to Kozhva, where she would be met by Lev Izrailevich. On 20 August she wrote to Lev:
Since there are local trains from Kirov and they’re completely accessible, I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone. If Mik. Al. [Tsydzik] returns on the 12th, then by the 15th I’ll formalize my working trip to the factory for about 10 days. From there I’ll go on, as if still on the work trip, only without a ticket but plenty of vitamin D [bribe money]. I’ll save on the cost of the ticket, but the most important thing is that the days spent travelling to Kirov and back won’t be included in my holiday leave, so it will be even better for me. I have about 2 to 3 days work in Kirov (I’ll need to have a look at the factory, write a report, and give some sort of advice to them). I must confess that I feel a little nervous about the journey. I’ll send a telegraph to your namesake (or somebody else?) as soon as I’ve set out from Moscow, and then again from Kirov – it will all happen in just a month. I don’t think I’ll get rid of the extra luggage, Levi. Some of the books (the ones difficult to get, like the latest English textbook and nuclear-related books) P. has promised to find for me. Nat[alia] Ark[adevna] is definitely going to send something, some sort of clothing, bread for the journey and so on. As I think I have said already, I want to
send a parcel to your namesake, but at the moment I still haven’t got any photo equipment … O. B. [Aunt Olga] doesn’t understand why I don’t send the books to you, as I did the suit, but, Levi, I am scared of you. You would be cross with me. I swear on my father’s beard that after this I won’t poke my nose into a bookshop before the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution [7 November 1947] … This letter won’t reach you until around about the 5th [of September]. So if you need to tell me something urgently, ask Lev Izrailevich to send a telegram, bearing in mind that my return letter won’t arrive in time. Also, you can send a letter to the Kirov poste restante. To be on the safe side, I’ll check in at the post office and the telegraph office while I’m in Kirov.
Ten days later, Sveta wrote again to confirm her travel plans:
All my plans remain in place, that is, on the 15th to travel to Kirov, and on the 21st to be with you. If there is an emergency, write on carbon paper to both M[oscow] and the Kirov poste restante or ask the namesake to send a telegram.
Meanwhile the summer was coming to an end in Pechora. ‘Autumn has drawn near,’ Lev wrote to Sveta on 4 September.
The day before yesterday was the first early-morning frost, which froze all the potatoes in the local vegetable patches except for ours, because half of it was covered at night and the other half escaped because it’s near the dryers where there is no frost. All the same, they’ll be of little use. Summer was really too short. The nights have already become quite real, there’s darkness from 9 till 2.30.
Lev received Sveta’s letter of 20 August on 5 September, just as she had predicted. Now that he knew that she was definitely coming, he needed to make plans for her to be received and smuggled in and out of the wood-combine. By 7 September, he had made sufficient progress to write to her:
Svet, your letter, as you supposed, arrived on 5 September … but I didn’t reply straight away because I needed to clarify something here about your plan. This letter might not get to you before you leave. I’m still unable to write anything concrete, at least not before this evening, but I need to write now to have any chance of reaching you. You will get the exact address of your cousin
21
 – whom you’ll be able to stay with for a couple of days – in a telegram in Kirov (at the telegraph office, poste restante). Send a telegram with the details of your departure to my namesake. You will need to go to his house to get further directions and leave surplus baggage. Keep that in mind as your basic objective. We’ll worry about what happens next nearer the time. I’m angry with myself about the books. I fear that I’ve created extra difficulties for you – it would be best to send them to me in a parcel or, if he’ll accept it, to my namesake, as you had originally wanted, together with the photography materials.
The day he wrote that letter, 7 September, Sveta was at home as Moscow celebrated its 800th anniversary. She wrote to Lev from her room:
The salute has just taken place. Mama has gone out to have a walk around town but Papa and I already took a long walk yesterday.  We can see everything really well from our windows – there are two large, radiant portraits [of Stalin and Lenin] suspended from balloons over Red Square, the sky over the whole city is full of bright red flags (also suspended from balloons), there are floodlights along the A. and B. rings [the Boulevard and Garden ring roads], and giant nets in shades of blue and lilac are moving through the sky (more balloons) with colourful explosions of fireworks from them. I adore the salute … The bridges have all been outlined in white lights and covered with lanterns and colourful garlands. The entire river flotilla … has been decorated. The Moscow power station is completely illuminated … Yesterday Papa and I
went out at 10 o’clock … We had to fight our way through the packed crowd in the centre. There are orchestras in all the squares on open-air concert platforms, 120 portable searchlights, markets with gingerbread houses everywhere … I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like it anywhere … The whole of Moscow was on the streets.
Three days later, on 10 September, it was Sveta’s thirtieth birthday. Lev had no more news. He was worried about her impending trip and felt confused and frustrated, powerless to help her meet the many dangers on her way. He hardly dared to hope that she would come at all.
Nothing ever turns out quite as you expect. I won’t be able to find out anything for a while yet. I haven’t even managed to see I[zrailevich]. I’ll send a telegram when I do – in about two days. Today is your birthday. On this day, I always like to spend some time by myself, so at the moment I’m sitting on my own at work … And I think of you. My thoughts are not always clear or happy, sometimes they are confusing – well, as they should be, I suppose. Only one thing is clear – that these thoughts are all that matters in my life, and it’s bad that I can’t make them lead to anything useful or put them into action.

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