Stalin's Daughter (59 page)

Dear George,

I am definitely not a stone wall, neither a block of concrete. Nor do I possess those nerves of steel, famous
enough, which have made a name for my father. Rather from my mother’s side comes oversensitivity and capacity to react to minor things….
⁷

I respond TOO EASILY, George, to the ideas, wishes, suggestions, and desires of other people: instead of PRESSING MY OWN instinctive wish, which IS very often the most right one. My father noticed this in me, when I was a teenager, and used to say angrily: “Don’t you repeat to me what others want you to say, like an empty drum! Say what you really want: Yes or No!” I am afraid he noticed that weak point in me. The GOOD things to see was not HIS talent. But he was pretty smart about human weaknesses, and despised those.
⁸

Her self-contempt is obvious, still filtered through her father’s voice.

Finally, in March Svetlana consulted her family doctor and, through him, found a psychiatrist. What precipitated this desperate gesture was her sudden realization that her undigested bitterness at Wes was affecting her relationship with Olga. She told Joan Kennan that if Olga was stubborn or bossy, she saw her child as “a copy of Wes.” That was “unhealthy (I knew that!) and wrong.” She was panicked. “Olga is my dearest child (no matter who is the father).”
⁹

She began to visit the psychiatrist once a week. She never identified him, calling him simply Peter, but it was important to her that Peter had once been a Jesuit. He did not judge her or rush to conclusions. One can imagine the shock to the West Coast psychiatrist of finding Stalin’s daughter on his couch, but she told Joan Kennan she was able to speak to this kind, gentle man about her “whole life.” He gave her the simple acceptance she craved.

It may have been her psychiatrist who helped her to see that
the bedrock of her current despair was located in her broken marriage. It was not Soviet experiments in mind control that were paralyzing her. It was grief. After her defection, the disaster of Taliesin had been the second total break in her life, and it had been a brutal betrayal. She had to find a way to exorcise the rage that resulted from the death of what she’d thought had been love from Wes, from the litany of betrayals during her father’s murderous attacks on her family, and from that terrifying moment in 1932 when her mother had abandoned her and she was psychologically orphaned.

Because of Wes, she had lost money, of course, and money is freedom, especially in the West, and is the only route to physical security. But more important than this, she had lost herself. Wes had totally shattered her self-confidence. It had taken her a long time to see and admit this. Now she had to reconstruct herself from scratch. It was a brutal fate, but she assured Joan Kennan that she was recovering the courage and pride she had felt in her act of defection in 1967 and was beginning to imagine again that maturity and tranquillity would be hers.
¹⁰
She started attending meetings of Christian Scientists. Though she wasn’t convinced by their ideology, their methods of self-discipline allowed her to control her drinking.

In February 1977, a scandal erupted in the international press. The Soviets expelled the journalist George Krimsky (the man who had attempted to help Joseph to defect in the spring of 1975) on charges of spying for the CIA.
Time
magazine’s Moscow bureau chief Mark Clark claimed, “The real reason for Krimsky’s expulsion was his coverage of dissidents.”
¹¹
The Carter administration retaliated by expelling a Soviet reporter. However, mysteriously and to Svetlana’s relief, her son’s effort to defect was not mentioned.

Then, in March, just around the time she began to see her psychiatrist, she received a letter from Alexander Kurpel, the
Russian who had taken George Krimsky to meet Joseph in Moscow. Kurpel had somehow discovered her California address.

In his fourteen-page handwritten letter, Kurpel ranted in incoherent English in a scrambled, frightening way. He began, “I’m belling the cat not to consider you to be an indifferent person in my destiny. Since the end of January, 1977 everything has gone upside-down and that very comforting so-called ‘steel curtain’ has flown away in nowhere.” He stated that after George Krimsky was expelled as a CIA agent, he, Kurpel, had been hauled in for a seven-hour grilling by a KGB officer named Sevastianov,

whose sincere intimidations and sincere feelings to collaborate with his organization—“choose yourself right now: either a labor camp or deep heart confession and guaranteed liberty” … How much blood have they spilt me and finally had a nerve to say: “We have a failure that we could succeed in coming true and convincing your US instigators that you’re a harem-scarem stool pigeon of KGB.” …

I was dishonorable to play these merely doggish tricks in order to blacken and discredit intentionally such bona fide people as Mr. Krimsky and let alone a most high-skilled journalist, but not a CIA agent and so on.
¹²

Kurpel spoke intimately of her life and of her children. He described meeting Katya, who’d “grown thin and has a well-built figure.” He suggested that Svetlana write to the White House on Joseph’s behalf. He said he was trying to emigrate. Could she help? He had seventeenth-century icons to exchange for hard currency.

Who was this terrifying man? His ranting letter was absurd and sinister. Panicked, she wrote to George Krimsky. In early May, she received a reply on the letterhead of the Associated Press in Nicosia, Cyprus. George Krimsky wrote back:

MAY
2, 1977

Dear Mrs. Peters,

It was a great pleasure to hear from you again. I must confess I have felt a bit guilty for not writing…. Frankly, I didn’t have much news for you. I felt that, under the circumstances, it was best to “let the dust settle” regarding your son.

Yes, Alexander Kurpel was the one who introduced me to Joseph, and I will tell you what I know about him. First, let me caution you to be very wary of establishing any contact with him. Although I have no proof about his motives, he is a very questionable character, and I regret ever having met him. I do not believe Joseph is served well by him, as you correctly surmised in your letter.

In my opinion Kurpel is quite mixed up and/or is working for the KGB. As to the former I have no doubt; as to the latter, much circumstantial evidence points in this direction but, of course, one seldom can be sure.

Kurpel … introduced me to Joseph in the spring of 1975…. Your son was rightly suspicious of him because of the young man’s loose tongue and his rather unbelievable and conflicting tales. He is also, I might add, an admitted homosexual and extremely effeminate in appearance and actions. I mention this because we both know what that means in the USSR, and it raises questions as to how and why such a person can operate as openly and widely as this fellow did (does) without problems from authorities.

Joseph and I decided to meet privately, without Kurpel’s knowledge, to discuss his situation but somehow Kurpel seemed to know this. He was very upset….

After I returned from the US in October 1975, … I was unable to see Joseph. As a matter of fact I never saw
him again, except briefly in front of his apartment when he refused to talk with me. It was obvious that he was under tight surveillance; Joseph signaled to me silently that he was being watched and did not want to see me….

There were two themes always put forth by Kurpel in his reports to me about your son: (1) How dejected and embittered Joseph was …; and (2) how if only his mother could be informed of this, Joseph could somehow be helped.

I strongly suspected (paranoia?) a trap was being prepared for you, possibly to reap some propaganda windfall. (“Traitor Svetlana tries to get son to defect”), and perhaps I would also be a victim (“Journalist-CIA man in league with Traitor Svetlana to get son to defect”)….

Kurpel always had an almost morbid fascination with your history. He knows your birthday and follows any news of you that he can find, over VOA, snippets he comes across in the western press etc. His access to information most Soviet citizens are not privy to always amazed me.

Krimsky believed that Kurpel was behind his expulsion from Moscow. The Soviets didn’t mention Joseph’s effort to defect and the role that Kurpel had played as a reason for Krimsky’s expulsion. “Why?” Krimsky asked Svetlana. “I can only think that the reason was to allow this fellow to continue operating freely and not be exposed in a formal manner by being named as a conspirator in the official press.”

Krimsky added in caps:

HOWEVER, IF THEY COULD GET YOU TO INITIATE SOME MOVE TO HELP JOSEPH, THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO CLAIM THAT YOU LAUNCHED A CAMPAIGN TO HELP THIS LOYAL SOVIET CITIZEN WHO HAS DENOUNCED HIS
MOTHER’S TRAITOROUS ACTIVITIES TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY HE LOVES.

Do you get my point? I doubt they will raise this issue unless they can show you are trying to get Joseph to leave.

Now this puts you in a very difficult position. Naturally, you have Joseph’s best interests at heart. They are undoubtedly hoping that your renewed concern over Joseph’s situation (sparked by Kurpel’s letter) will prompt you to act. This is a decision only you can make, but, again, I would be very cautious.

Although I have no way of knowing, I guess that Joseph is probably nervous but physically alright. I think he believes his tentative campaign to see you had backfired before it could really get started.
¹³

What would Svetlana have noted from Krimsky’s letter? The most important thing was that Joseph had initiated the effort to contact her. He missed her and longed to see her as much as she longed to see him. The next thing was that Krimsky believed Kurpel
was
a tool of the KGB. His March letter had been a provocation. She had been right to remain silent. Any response from her would have harmed Joseph irreparably. The final thing was that Kurpel was exceedingly dangerous. His obsession with her was worse than creepy. One can imagine Svetlana’s disgust and fear.

The KGB was still up to the same old dirty tricks, but who in the West would believe it would go to such lengths to get at the Traitor Svetlana after almost a decade? Non-Soviets did not understand! She was Stalin’s daughter. Like Kurpel, the KGB was obsessed with her. She was a living symbol of the failure of the Soviet system and the KGB was determined to make her pay.

After Svetlana received George Krimsky’s letter, her first impulse
was to protect Joseph from Kurpel by writing to his father, Grigori Morozov, who was now an eminent professor of international law. He was also high up in the Party, close to Georgy Arbatov, a Russian political scientist known in the United States as a spokesman for Soviet policies in the Cold War standoff. Grigori could shield their son. Knowing that her letter would, of course, be read, she wrote to him via the Soviet Embassy, to assure him that she wasn’t trying to lure Joseph to the West.

Her ex-husband had grounds for being angry with Svetlana. When she defected in 1967, his pending three-year assignment at the United Nations had been canceled. But he was kind and genuinely fond of her. He was also very anxious for their son. He wrote back immediately, mailing his letter in New York, where he’d stopped en route to Moscow after attending a conference in Mexico.

NYC: 6-29-77

Dear Svetlana,

I have received your letter. I want to tell you frankly I was overjoyed; it has clarified a very serious situation, created by people, who, without any authority from you, have been using your name in their own purposes.

Characters, whom you call “bastards,” have already done a lot to confuse Joseph and to mess up his life here—and I have been very worried about that; he is just as dear to me as he is to you.

I am in total agreement with you that a trip to the USA at the present time is impossible for Joe for many reasons—including those which you have mentioned. I must say that I am glad, that in a very complicated situation, which real provocateurs have created for him, he showed himself being mature enough a person. Your letter to me has helped him a
lot and he is in agreement with [our] opinion, which I could call yours and mine.

Right before my leaving Moscow for Mexico, after I have received your letter, one of those “bastards” already mentioned, tried to approach Joe again—as if on your behalf. And not only Joe, but he tried also to approach Katherine the same way. He tried to arrange that she would go with him to meet one of the most important dissidents, one of the most outspoken anti-soviets. Katherine has just thrown that fellow out, without much talking with him.

I am convinced that all these activities are being performed by people who would do anything possible to create a “noisy” affair, especially when it is sensational enough to attract the foreign press. Now I am convinced that you were really worried about Joe, who could easily have become the object of these provocations; those characters would love to use Joe and Kate—and your name—for their own purposes. It is just unbelievable how far human meanness can go….

Finally, let me tell you … I was glad to hear from you. There have been many difficult things during all these years, but I do not want to dwell on that. There have been good things in the past too, and your letter, your worry about Joe, has reminded me about that very strongly.

Thank you so much for Olga’s photograph. I have passed it to Joe….

Take care,

Gregory
¹⁴

Svetlana felt extraordinary relief that Joseph was safe. Her ex-husband had given her his own address, which meant that he was inviting her to contact him for news about Joseph and
Katya. Svetlana thought that one day Grigori might possibly be permitted to visit the United States on some scientific mission, and she might be able to see him again. In fact, however, their correspondence ended here. Though she wrote to him several times, she never received another letter.