Letter from Vladimir Gershovich to Andrey Grigorenko, February 12, 2005
Dear Andrey!
The bright orange theme of the current Grigorenko Readings brought back vivid memories for me.
I’ll be talking about the “Great Petition-signing” in Ukraine in 1968. Of course, collective epistles in Ukraine had been composed before. For example, the letter to the Turkish Sultan from Zaporizhzhia. But here we are talking about the Great Petition-signing. Here too, Ukraine was in the vanguard. I am going to reveal a few unknown pages from the unforgettable year of 1968. (Unforgettable, as is well known, across the entire planet.) Moreover, without any exaggeration, these memories feature Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko, in the finest hours of his, and therefore our, life.
As we all remember, in early January 1968, the famous trial of Ginzburg, Galanskov, Dashkova, and Dobrovolsky concluded. Without exaggeration, this trial was called the “chain reaction trial.” About a day before the verdict, on January 10, 1968, outside the Moscow City Court building, Pavel Litvinov and Larisa Bogoraz committed an unprecedented act—they distributed their “Appeal to World Public Opinion” to everyone gathered at the courthouse. That is—to foreign correspondents, the GB-niks, the cops, and “a handful of sick intellectuals who came to say out loud what the healthy million think” (Yu. Ch. Kim.). By evening, all the Western radio stations were broadcasting this appeal.
At that time, I was a lecturer at the “Zavod-VTUZ at ZIL” and was heading to the city of Drohobych, where a “winter school on mathematical programming” was to take place. The route there from Moscow went through Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Lviv (where Slava Chornovil had recently been convicted). On the night of the twentieth or twenty-first of January (I was supposed to be in Drohobych on the twenty-third), on my way to the station, I stopped by the Gabays’ place on Novolistnaya Street, where a typewriter was clattering away at full speed. Another text was being drafted, which began with the words: “We, having acquainted ourselves with the letter of Larisa Bogoraz and Pavel Litvinov concerning the trial of Yu. Galanskov and A. Ginzburg, etc., etc....”
This letter was later signed by 224 people, and it was the first of the giant epistles of 1968. However, that evening, no one had signed it yet. Taking a couple of copies of the text with me for the road and leaving my signature in Moscow on this “fresh” appeal, I recall quoting V. Jabotinsky: “The Jews are once again the leaven of the Russian revolution...” to which Galka Gabay said, “But you’re doing this for yourself!” On the train, I decided to get off in Kyiv. The first call was unsuccessful—Viktor Nekrasov was not at home, and the main hopes for drafting the future Ukrainian letter rested on him. However, a call to the mathematician Misha Beletsky turned out to be very successful, as a short time later, he, Viktor Bodnarchuk (also a mathematician from the Glushkov Institute), and I were visiting Ivan Svitlychny. Ivan immediately pointed out the window at the “Volgas” which, he said, were stationed outside his house around the clock. I gave them the texts from Larisa and Pavel, which they had already heard about, as well as the new text, which at that moment was just beginning to circulate through a waking Moscow, while in Kyiv a constructive conversation about a similar Ukrainian epistle was already underway. Everyone agreed (there were five or six people there) that it was time to stop stewing in their own intellectual juices (there is a funny story about this by M. Gorky, “Russian Tales”) and time to reach out to the workers. Everyone agreed with this too, but without much optimism. Realizing that the Kyivans were taking the idea seriously, I decided it wasn't wise to show my face in Kyiv anymore, and, without getting my ticket stamped, I chatted up the train conductress and continued on my way.
Two weeks later, on my way back, I visited Kyiv a second time. Work on the text seemed to be progressing, with references to the principle of Glasnost and quotes from Lenin. So to speak, “the people must know everything.” There was also a faint hope of attracting the “proletarion” (as they say in Hebrew) to the petition-signing. This letter appeared in “samizdat,” and then in the West, a couple of months later. It was signed by 139 people; the list was headed by Sergei Parajanov, and in addition to mathematicians and members of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, there were 25 workers (!!!). What professions they had!!! Riabokon, a sewage cleaner; Chizhevsky, a bet-montazhnik. I myself soon became a machine adjuster, but to this day I still don't know what a bet-montazh is.
In Kyiv, I stocked up on some very valuable samizdat—for example, I brought a typewritten manuscript of Bulgakov's “Heart of a Dog” to Moscow. Gabay confiscated it immediately, and soon after, in that same year of 1968, it was published in Paris. In long-suffering Russia, however, it was published about twenty years later; they even made a movie with songs by Kim. In general, Bulgakov was lucky back then—two or three years earlier, I had taken Suren Gazaryan’s memoirs to Ye. Popovkin at the journal “Moskva,” and there, in the editorial office, lay The Master and Margarita. Zhenya chose the lesser of two evils, thereby enriching the vocabulary of the Soviet intelligent. After all, before, when trying to sweet-talk a train conductress or some other girl, he would quote no one but Ostap Bender, but now Woland had appeared. This was later played upon (“In the Land of Unflustered Idiots”). At Kyiv University, for the first time, I registered my business trip and stopover, very proud of my professional conspiratorial skills. The guys at the university got me a 1909 dossier from the archive on two mathematics students: Otto Schmidt and B. N. Delaunay. O. Yu. Schmidt’s son, V. O. Schmidt, was the vice-rector of the Zavod-VTUZ where I worked; he was the one who signed my travel papers, and the grandson of the Dean of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, B. N. Delaunay, was our beloved Vadik Delaunay. This story had a continuation 37 years later, that is, three weeks ago, but more on that below.
In the Moscow of February 1968, reprisals against the signatories had already begun. Gabay was compiling lists of these people; later these texts were included in “Chronicle No. 2.” I should remind you that “Chronicle No. 1” was dated by Gorbanevskaya on April 30, 1968. This is important to know, as the Moscow “Memorial” doesn't know this, or perhaps doesn't want to know.
Then, as you remember, came the “Prague Spring,” A. Marchenko, the “Lobnoye Mesto” demonstration, and the trial of the demonstrators on October 9–11, 1968. It seems that's where I first saw Pyotr Grigoryevich and in the same instant came to his defense. P. G. was collecting signatures to get people admitted into the courtroom. Suddenly I saw some guy aggressively approaching the general. I was a split second too late, as he was already tearing up the papers with the signatures. But I did manage to knock the pince-nez and a bit of skin off his face... For me, this incident had no consequences. The fact is, the trial was being serviced, both inside and outside the courthouse, by workers from ZIL. Many knew me by sight, and many were simply my students who were studying at the VTUZ for free. Of course, at first, when they saw me, they had no doubt that we were on the same side of the barricades, but after this incident, it turned out that we were, alas, on opposite sides. On the glorious day of October 30, I was already being kicked out of my job. They organized a VTUZ council meeting, with representatives from the three factories our VTUZ served: ZIL, Moskvich, and Sharikopodshipnik [the state ball bearing plant]. I was kicked out with a “yellow ticket”: “dismissed as unqualified for the position held.” At that time, this was code for “Czechoslovakia.” This operation was led by the ZIL party organizer, Arkady Volsky. His mug is sometimes shown on television. He became a major fartsovshchik, or, as they say now, an oligarch. This whole story leads to this: of course, Vladimir Ottovich Schmidt, the vice-rector, also spoke there. After arriving from Kyiv, I gave him the documents from the Tsarist secret police regarding his father's case, which I wrote about above. He suddenly burst into tears and said, “Look, this is my father's handwriting from his youth! It’s exactly like my handwriting now! Later on, my father’s handwriting was completely different!” Of course, he knew the whole Delaunay family, and now, seven months later, the grandson, Vadik Delaunay, delivers his final statement at the trial: “For five minutes of freedom on Red Square, I am willing to pay with my freedom.” It seems that V. O. Schmidt did not want to denounce me of his own free will, but his connection to the Delaunay family was obvious, so he had no choice. In his speech, he said that “Vladimir Gershovich is a conscientious and good lecturer, but that is not enough...” and spouted some other nonsense that didn't constitute a crime. Before my departure, I was chronically unemployed for four years.
About three weeks ago, I saw him on television. And although 37 years had passed, he was recognizable. He was talking about his father, the leader of the steamship “Chelyuskin” expedition, which opened up the “Northern Sea Route.” But to this day, there's a rumor that a caravan was following the “Chelyuskin,” carrying zeks who were drowned (so his handwriting could have changed over time). I immediately called Yu. Kim in Moscow and told him the whole story, which he already knew since they lived in a ZIL apartment building, and the “workers” mentioned above were watching over Petya Yakir. Soon Kim called back—it turned out he had gotten through to V. O. Schmidt and told him he was a close friend of V. Gershovich, who had just seen him on TV. Vladimir Ottovich immediately said that he remembered me well, that I had been a good, conscientious lecturer, and that he was very happy that my life had turned out so well.
Two weeks after my expulsion, on November 14, 1968, I had the privilege of hearing your father's stunning speech at Kosterin's funeral in the Moscow crematorium. I was squeezed into the crowd at the entrance, next to four majors and colonels. They were in camouflage, that is, dressed in new police overcoats, but their well-groomed mugs smelled of salmon and betrayed access to special distributors of all-Union importance, not a cop's salary. At some point, the General, speaking of Kosterin, said: “He was hated by those who believe one must applaud the leaders with shouts of ‘HURRAH,’ blindly believe in them, pray to them, endure all their abuses, and grunt with pleasure if the trough is filled with a bit more and better slop than what others get.” It sounded like a sentence from the Last Judgment. The faces of these “cops” contorted with rage and fear. But I stared right at them and smirked, because the fear was theirs, not mine. Thank you for that, Pyotr Grigoryevich! When, a year later, Andrey Amalrik wrote “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” I remembered this story and thought: “Will they really last that long?”
The Ukrainian cases flared up with new force in 1972. Of those who signed that letter, Ivan Svitlychny, Vasyl Stus, Ivan Dziuba, Yevhen Sverstiuk, and others were imprisoned. During Nixon's visit, a worried Yura Gastev came and said that he had spoken with the Kyiv mathematician Viktor Bodnarchuk. Viktor said that during the shmons [searches], they had found a ton of samizdat, and the investigator kept tormenting him during interrogations: “Where did you get all this?” And so he found a way out! It turns out the BBC had reported that the correspondent for the London “Times,” David Bonavia, had been expelled from Moscow, along with five authors of a letter to the “Times”: Glazov, Titov, Yesenin-Volpin, Shteyn, and Gershovich. “It was a godsend!” said the mathematician. “I blamed everything on Gershovich!” It was then that I recalled my “professional conspiratorialism,” of which I had been so proud. But Gastev told him: “That's all fine, Vitya. But for Gershovich it's no salvation, since only four of the mentioned five have left, and Gershovich is still in Moscow.” Vitya, in a fit of nobility, without consulting anyone, goes to Kyiv, to the “d-d-dumb” investigator, to say that his testimony from such-and-such a date should be considered invalid, because he was ill. He had doctor's notes prepared for all the interrogations. I hold no grudge against him, but I will note that it's not for nothing they say: “To be a stupid person, one does not have to be a great mathematician.” To my “bouquet”—anti-Soviet, Crimean Tatar, Zionist—was added the orange hue of a samostiinyk (for brightness). We sounded the SOS. My buddies in America didn't let me down; they reached out to Richard Nixon (for which I love him), and soon I had an invitation to the States signed by Secretary of State William Rogers. With this invitation, to the surprise of the Zionists, I came to live in Jerusalem on the day of Yura Galanskov’s death.
Shortly before my departure, during the Munich Olympics, I had a couple of conversations with a certain Sokolov in a large office on Lubyanka. This Sokolov also once passed for a police colonel. During our conversation, he suddenly said that “with all the desire in the world, he would never go abroad, because he knows secrets that have no statute of limitations.” He was being cunning. It turned out he wasn't a colonel, but at least a colonel-general, and his name was not Sokolov, but Bobkov, and he was a big KGB honcho. After perestroika, he was a bodyguard for some Jewish oligarch, which means he was allowed to travel abroad after all. He wrote a memoir, “KGB and Power.” He forgave Sakharov for his naivety, but he did not forgive Grigorenko. That’s why I think he was at the crematorium back then.
The last time I saw Pyotr Grigoryevich was, again, in January 1986 in New York, in Queens. He spoke very slowly but did not lose his train of thought. At the end, he said: “Remember! I was the one who introduced the term ‘human rights defense.’”
And we haven't forgotten.
Jerusalem.
Vladimir Gershovich
P.S.: Dear Andrey. I'm sending you, as a souvenir, a copy of the original of a well-known leaflet. What do you think of the text? Could you read it in part or in full? Write back. If it's to be published, it needs to be edited and, in principle, much could be added...
Get back to me quickly (now).
I will come later, but you will come to us first.
Agreed?
Yours, V. G.
February 12, 2005