The Prince of the Soviets

25. THE HOUSING PROBLEM

Alov was woken by the rattle of the lid on the coffee pot.

“Dunya, my dear,” he heard Valakhov saying on the other side of the dresser, “do you know why it is that only twenty-five percent of the overall membership of the Young Communist League are women? It’s because they have to stop taking part in public life after they’re married. Look at you, for instance. What are you doing now? Making breakfast for your husband. But you could be using that time to go to a party meeting.”

Dunya said nothing. The only sound that came from behind the dresser was the measured tapping of her knife against the breadboard as she cut something.

“Everyday domestic chores will turn even the most principled women into empty-headed housewives,” Valakhov continued. “With your talent, you should be acting in movies, and you’re wasting the best years making sandwiches and washing dishes.”

Alov sat up in bed. I’ll smash his face one of these days, I swear! he thought for the thousandth time. But he knew it was impossible. Valakhov was the star of the OGPU wrestling team while Alov was unable to manage even a single pull-up on the crossbar.

“Get some portraits done by a photographer and give them to me,” Valakhov said eagerly. “One of my friends is a director, and as it happens, he’s looking for a girl just like you.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Alov barked, poking his head around the side of the dresser. “It’s all lies!”

Dunya was bustling about in their “kitchen,” a small area next to the window sill. On the sill stood two primus stoves and a breadboard with shelves underneath for storing food. The top shelf was for Dunya and Alov, and the bottom shelf for Valakhov.

Dunya thrust a sandwich and an enamel mug of ersatz coffee under her husband’s nose. “Here’s your breakfast.”

Valakhov was lying on the sofa, his muscular white arms flung behind his head. Alov stared at Valakhov’s faded underpants with disgust. What kind of man walked about in his underwear in front of another man’s wife?

“Good morning to you!” Valakhov waved cheerily to him. “What’s the health forecast today then? You were coughing so loudly last night you just about deafened me. Seriously, it was louder than artillery training.”

“Knock it off,” spat Alov, seething with impotent rage.

Dunya fastened a white headscarf around her head, planted a kiss on Alov’s unshaven cheek, and ran off.

Every day, she went out to a theatrical agency looking for work. Sometimes, she would land a role and bring back a fee of five rubles. For children’s matinees, she would get three rubles, and for pageants, no more than one and a half.

Valakhov knew that Dunya would do anything for a genuine role and exploited the fact shamelessly. And if Alov made any objection, he would just mock him.

“Dunya, my dear, it looks as if your husband wants to keep you locked away between these four walls—or should I say two walls?”

The dresser between the Alovs’ corner and the rest of the room did not count as a genuine wall.

Alov dreamed of one thing above all else—a room of his own. One day, he had been present during the interrogation of a biology professor who had come out with a comment that had left a deep impression on Alov. The professor had argued that the surest way to make people unhappy was to cramp them together and leave them no way out.

“You’ve packed us into crowded trams and communal apartments,” the professor had harangued his interrogators. “And you know what will happen now, don’t you? All-out war when neighbor fights against neighbor for living space—the same way as animals fight for their territory.”

He’s right. That’s exactly how it is, Alov had thought. Though it had not stopped him leafing through the professor’s personal file, which contained a note of his address. Alov had known that this counter-revolutionary would be sent off to the camps and was wondering who would get their hands on the professor’s accommodation.

Alov often dreamed that he and Dunya had got a permit for a room of their own, and he told her of these dreams in which they would pack their belongings into pillowcases, say goodbye to Valakhov, and set off by tram to their new house.

He imagined having a place of his own with tall windows, a stove, and an extra big windowsill. And underneath it, three shelves, every one of them belonging to the Alovs.

Listening to him, Dunya always laughed. “Stop your nonsense! It’ll never happen.”

But Alov’s idea to send Galina with Seibert had borne fruit: she had got hold of information that might win him not only a room but also a promotion. Alov was sure his chief would snap up the story and make something big of it.

Once, when they had been drinking, Drachenblut had told Alov about Stalin whom he frequently visited in the Kremlin.

Stalin had never been sociable, but he had now become a complete hermit, surrounded by “courtiers” who brought him information about ill-wishers both within and without his circle. He was obsessed with coded messages and secret files and demanded absolute vigilance from his subordinates.

The craze for exposing enemies had spread like wildfire through the whole of Soviet society. For anyone wishing to gain promotion at work, it was essential to display vigilance. This was what lay behind the mass purges and political repressions—bureaucrats were doing their best to advance through the ranks while at the same time seizing the chance to remove competitors.

As might be expected, these workplace battles were most brutal inside the OGPU. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the chairman of the organization, Menzhinsky, was constantly ill, and his two deputies, Drachenblut and Yagoda, were engaged in a deadly struggle for the place of his successor.

Yagoda had staked his efforts on unmasking conspiracies within the USSR—he had personally masterminded the Shakhty Trial. Drachenblut, on the other hand, was trying to curry favor through operations abroad, which allowed him to procure not only valuable information but also foreign currency. But he was also obliged to expose opponents to the regime—those who did not report on counter-revolutionary plots could be accused either of trying to cover up for the enemies of the state or simply failing to carry out their work properly.

Alov thought he held a trump card in his hands. But when, on the previous day, he had presented his supervisor with Galina’s denunciation (altered slightly so that it would read more convincingly), Drachenblut merely gave it a cursory glance and told Alov to come in again the following day.

Though surprised, Alov decided to think nothing of it. Drachenblut was flesh and blood after all, and he too needed to rest from his duties occasionally.

As for the question of whether Seibert was actually guilty of conspiracy, this did not bother Alov in the slightest. Guilt was determined not by the actions of a given “customer” but by the potential threat he represented. If foreign journalists were given free rein, they would not hesitate to harm the USSR in word and deed. There was no sense in going too soft on them.

Drachenblut took off his glasses and looked sharply at Alov.

“You claim that Seibert set up an espionage ring to intercept radio communications?” he asked.

Alov nodded readily. “That’s right.”

“Nonsense. Any radio enthusiast can ‘intercept’ messages in just the way you suggest. What else do we have?”

Drachenblut bent his head over the paper, found the place he was looking for, and began to read aloud:

“In order to discredit the USSR, Seibert arranged the dispatch of warships from Murmansk, charging them with the mission of destroying the icebreaker Krasin and the Soviet Arctic heroes on board as well as the Italian airmen.”

Alov felt an unpleasant gnawing sensation in his chest. Drachenblut did not seem very happy with the report at all. But why not? He had instructed all his subordinates to sniff out some serious case for him in whatever way they could.

“We have been in contact with Murmansk,” Alov said hoarsely. “The duty officer received a telegram from Moscow and thought it came from the Central Committee rather than the Central Telegraph Office. He reported to his superiors, and the port was put on a state of alert—”

“There are no warships in Murmansk,” said Drachenblut in an expressionless voice. “During the war, it was used for delivering supplies from the Allies, but now, it is a small commercial port. Who could even be put on a state of alert in Murmansk? The local fishermen?”

Alov began to cough as he always did when agitated. His lungs almost burst with the effort.

Drachenblut poured him some water from a decanter on his desk.

“I understand perfectly what you mean,” said Alov as soon as he got his breath back. “But if we don’t act on this information, there could be serious consequences for us.”

“What consequences?” Drachenblut demanded. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

“The duty officer from Murmansk will be frightened out of his wits by now. Like as not, he’ll go to the local OGPU office to make a confession of guilt. Then they’ll question him about the telephone conversations, there will be an investigation, and the case will be sent straight to the top—to Yagoda. When he finds out that Seibert was under our jurisdiction, he will almost certainly ask, ‘Why did Comrade Drachenblut not show sufficient vigilance?’”

“Do you think anyone will listen to him?” Drachenblut asked, raising his voice. “Yagoda’s a liar! He writes on all his forms that he joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. It’s not true! He’s nothing more than a common criminal! He only joined us to rob and kill with impunity!”

Alov’s shot had hit home. Drachenblut, an idealist prepared to sacrifice his own and everybody else’s life for the world revolution, now felt that the old Bolshevik guard was giving way to pressure from cynical careerists like Yagoda.

“We can’t arrest Seibert,” said Drachenblut with a frown. “He’s almost a national hero in Germany, and we have to organize timber shipments to the West.”

Alov was still hoping to profit from Galina’s report. “We can’t let this affair with Seibert go unpunished!”

But Drachenblut was no longer listening to him.

“If we so much as touch a hair on Seibert’s head,” he said, “there’ll be a press scandal, and that might jeopardize our deal. I think we should deport him. As long as he’s out of the country, we won’t have a problem. And we’ll punish those blockheads in Murmansk to show that we were not keeping our powder dry.”

Alov drooped. The deportation of a German citizen was not enough to get him an apartment.

“Comrade Drachenblut,” he began, “I’ve already talked to you several times about the situation with my accommodation—”

“It’s good for OGPU agents to be cold and hungry,” said Drachenblut with a smirk. “It keeps them on their toes. Bring me something worthwhile, and then you’ll get a room.”

It was chaos in the former Neapolitan Café—Seibert was packing together all his Moscow belongings. Lieschen’s wails issued from the bedroom. The news that her employer was going and leaving her behind boded no good for her whatsoever.

Seibert was standing on a chair, taking the pictures down from the wall.

“Please, Lieschen, calm down!” he yelled. “Or I’ll do something I regret, so help me, God!”

Klim was sitting in an armchair opposite the window, which was already being stripped of its curtains.

“So, you still haven’t worked out why they’re deporting you?” he asked.

Seibert jumped to the floor and yanked out a drawer from the chest so hard that it came loose from its runners, scattering letters, scissors, and broken pencils all over the carpet.

“In this country, they can deport whomever they like for whatever they like,” Seibert said. “I simply had a call from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs instructing me very politely to leave the Soviet Union.” He pointed a finger toward the bedroom. “It’s her I feel sorry for!”

Seibert picked up a piece of notepaper from the floor and handed it to Klim.

“I didn’t ask you to come here for nothing, you know. These people are in trouble. If you don’t help them, they’re done for.”

“Who?” asked Klim.

“Have you ever heard of the Volga Germans?” Seibert asked. “Back in her day, Catherine the Great invited German peasants who had suffered from the Seven Years’ War to come and settle in Russia. In the course of a hundred and fifty years, they grew wealthy, built up a number of villages near Saratov, and even started their own companies.”

Seibert told Klim that recently, a group of bearded men in peasants’ clothing had come to him and asked in a strange, antiquated German dialect if it was true that this was the house of a famous journalist.

Their priest, who spoke good Russian, had composed a letter, which they wished to be passed to Stalin.

“Just take a look at what they wrote!” said Seibert with a bitter laugh.

Klim began to read:

Beneath the first name were dozens of crooked German signatures.

Klim looked up at Seibert. “They’ll all be sent to prison for a letter like this.”

“That’s exactly what I told them. But they have nowhere to go back to, you see. I wanted to ask the Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Comrade Babloyan, to help them. He owes me a favor—he has a liver disease, and I organized for him to get treatment in Berlin. But he won’t be back in Moscow for another couple of days, and I’m being deported. So, we won’t have a chance to meet.”

“Would you like me to speak to him?” asked Klim.

Seibert clasped his hands together beseechingly. “Please, speak to him! If you do this for me, you won’t regret it.”

Seibert’s forehead puckered, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been chasing after this Babloyan,” Seibert said with a sigh. “He’s a member of the Central Executive Committee and a personal friend of Stalin. I was hoping to arrange an interview through him.”

“And you’d pass that connection on to me?” Klim asked, astonished.

“I would die of envy if you pull it off, of course. But you can consider it payment for helping my fellow Germans.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Then I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. A couple of days from now, you can go to see Babloyan in the sanatorium for the All-Union Organization of Prerevolutionary Political Convicts and Deportees. Babloyan will continue treatment there for his liver complaint.”

Klim wrote down the address. “What will you do in Berlin?” he asked.

“I’ll get a job with a newspaper,” Seibert said. “After all, I have made a name for myself, and I’ve got plenty of experience. If we manage to get the Volga Germans out of the country, I’ll try my hand at politics. It would be a good start for my career.”

The caste system within the USSR had its untouchables—lishentsy—but it also had its Brahmins—members of the All-Union Organization of Prerevolutionary Political Convicts and Deportees. These people were lionized. They enjoyed enormous pensions, private apartments, and countless other privileges.

There were around three thousand members of the organization—several generations of anarchists, nihilists, and revolutionaries. It was calculated that between them, they had spent sixteen thousand years in labor camps and still longer in exile.

These former convicts had their own publishing house, bookshop, and a museum, which displayed documents testifying to the political repression that had taken place in the Russian Empire. But the jewel in the crown of the organization was the former mansion of Count Sheremetev, which had been transformed into a wonderful hospital and sanatorium. As well as former political convicts, members of the Party elite also went there often for treatment.

Klim used his connections with his downstairs neighbors, the Proletkult workers, to get himself a place on an excursion to this sanatorium. The other participants were a group of Young Communist League members.

They left Moscow by bus. The group leader, Vasya, a muscular bronzed young man in a striped shirt and baggy canvas trousers had brought a concertina with him, and all the way he roared out chastushkas, humorous folk songs consisting of one couplet.

The girls around him all howled with laughter.

After a long and bumpy ride over country roads, the bus drove into an old-fashioned park with artificial lakes and shady avenues of trees.

The Young Communists were glued to the windows.

“Oh! Just look at those statues!” gasped the girls, pointing to the marble figures in the fountains.

“And look at all the flowers! More than on a May Day Parade!”

They got off the bus and stood, hesitating next to a large building of white stone with pillars and a broad staircase leading up to the porch.

“This is the good life, all right!” said Vasya. In his astonishment, he dropped his concertina, which let out a loud bellow as it fell to the ground.

A small, plump man with dark hair and a bushy mustache came out to meet them.

“Good to see all you fine, young people!” he said, heartily. “Come along, and I’ll show you around.”

Klim was the only one of the group who recognized Babloyan, although his picture was always in the papers, and his portrait was sold widely in sets of postcards. It would not have occurred to any of the younger people that such an important man could talk to ordinary workers so simply and easily and even show them around.

But Babloyan was clearly fond of consorting with the Young Communists. He laughed together with the young men and jokingly put his arm around the girls’ waists.

“Shh—quiet now!” he ordered when they came up to a terrace where old men and women in smart bathrobes were lying about, dozing in comfortable deckchairs.

“This place is like a living museum,” breathed Babloyan in awe. “These people sacrificed everything so that you, young people, could witness the dawn of socialism.”

The Young Communists tiptoed onto the terrace and, blushing awkwardly, began to thank the old men and women and shake their wrinkled hands, which still bore the scars of shackles.

Babloyan gave them a blow-by-blow account of the activities of the political convicts—which of them had attempted to assassinate generals and which had planted bombs in the official residences of city governors.

The Young Communists had grown up under Soviet rule, and as far as they were concerned, all this had taken place long ago in ancient times. They could hardly believe that the heroes of these historical events were still alive.

They were particularly amazed to be introduced to an eighty-year-old man called Frolenko. He had been one of the ringleaders in the assassination of Alexander II.

“Why did you try to kill the Tsar?” asked Raia, a tiny, dark-eyed girl with a snub nose covered in large freckles. “The country wasn’t ready for revolution at that time.”

Frolenko sucked in his false teeth. “We didn’t have a choice back then,” he said. “We had to rouse the Russian people from their hundred-year sleep. We wanted to give a signal that revolutionary forces were alive and well and that all those who oppressed the working people would pay for it.”

The Young Communists all applauded.

Babloyan pointed to an old lady with a cane who was standing in the doorway. “And this is the famous Vera Figner. Do you know what her comrades used to say about her? ‘There are some natures that will never yield. They can be broken but never bent to the ground.’”

The old lady fixed him with a malign stare. “You’d do better to hold your tongue. We wanted to achieve freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, but your lot have destroyed everything. Russia needs another revolution!”

A nurse came running up to her. “Comrade Figner, it’s time for your treatment!” She took the old lady gently by the elbow and led her away.

“Her age is beginning to tell, I’m afraid,” Babloyan sighed. “Sometimes, Comrade Figner even forgets that the revolution has happened already.”

Next, Babloyan handed the young people over to the director of the sanatorium who took them to see the old hothouses and the poultry yard.

Klim approached Babloyan. “Seibert sent me,” he said. “He asked me to give you this letter.”

Babloyan’s expression changed. “Come with me,” he said quietly and gestured for Klim to follow him.

They sat down on a bench surrounded by flowering rose bushes. Babloyan read the letter from Seibert and then took a box of matches out of his pocket and burned the paper immediately.

“It’s a shame they’ve sent Seibert out of the country,” Babloyan said. “He was a useful man to know.”

“So, what about these Volga Germans?” asked Klim. “They’re being told that in order to get passports, they need to bring in permission documents that they can’t get ahold of. They would have to go back to Saratov, and they have no money.”

Babloyan shrugged. “It’s not in our interests to let them out. If the whole village goes over to Germany, the story is bound to leak out to the press, and then we’ll see the usual malicious reports about the Soviet Union.”

“But you can do something about it,” urged Klim.

Babloyan looked Klim up and down quizzically. “Fifty rubles a head,” he mouthed, barely audible. “If you care so much about the Germans, you can raise the money needed to pay the ‘state duty.’ But only in foreign currency, please.”

Klim smiled sardonically. Babloyan had full board and lodging, and all his needs were supplied. Why did he want foreign currency? There could be only one answer: he, like many of the Kremlin elite, considered emigration and looked for a way of amassing foreign currency just in case things began to fall apart.

Now and then, the papers would carry an article on the traitors who went abroad on work assignments and refused to return to the USSR. Among them were Stalin’s personal secretary and prominent OGPU agents. People were running away like rats from a sinking ship.

All the Party members knew that, at any moment, they could be brought to account not only for their own crimes but also for friendships with people who had fallen out of favor. And there was no knowing who would be on the blacklist from one day to the next.

“Could you please help me to arrange an interview with Stalin?” asked Klim. “I’m sure that in return for copy like that, United Press would help us solve the problem of the Volga Germans.”

“The Germans aren’t my problem; they’re yours,” said Babloyan. “I wish you all the best.”

In the hierarchy of Bolshevik values, access to Comrade Stalin was worth a lot more than a bunch of Germans. In any case, Babloyan was not willing to enter into any bargain on the subject.