MIKHAIL RUVIMOVICH KHEYFETS

Listen to the audio files

An interview with Mikhail Ruvimovich KHEYFETS

V.V. Ovsienko: On December 9, 2000, in Kyiv, in Vasyl Ovsienkos apartment at 30 Kikvidze Street, apartment 60, we are recording a conversation with Mikhail Kheyfets.

M.R. Kheyfets: Today we will talk about how I technically wrote my books—everything else seems to have been written about already, but I havent written about this anywhere.

The very idea of writing books came to me while I was still under investigation—not in the camp, by the way—when they were closing the case under Article 206. The KGB agents gathered—joyful, content, some papers scattered about as they tidied up. The prosecutor sat there reading the case file, I was reading the case file, and I made a joke. I told them: “Guys, are you out of your minds, sending a writer to the zone? I promise you, for every year of the sentence you give me at the trial, I’ll write you a book.” They found it hilarious. I now realize what a mistake I made by warning them, but at the time, I didnt take any of it seriously it seemed like some kind of comedy was unfolding around me. They were amused and said: “Oh, there was already one like that! In the hijackers’ case, there was this Eduard Kuznetsov he got a sentence and there, in the zone, he somehow managed to write a book, got it out, and it was published in the West. He described our prosecutor there so snidely.” What was the prosecutor’s name? Something like Boris Nikolayevich—I’m afraid I might be mixing it up, it could have been another name. “What was the book called?” He grimly tore himself away from reading the file and said: “The Diaries.” And he buried his head in the file again.

And then I thought—I had, of course, thought about writing before, but I thought I would finish my sentence and write about all this then—but here I thought: hey, if one man could do it, another can too. That means it would be possible to write books in the zone.

But, of course, they took my foolish warning into account and watched my every move very carefully. Whenever I picked up a pen—to write a letter, an application—Pyotr Petrovich Lomakin from 17-A would instantly appear, run to the guardhouse, and a guard would show up immediately. So at 17-A I composed the book, but I composed it in my head. I used only various conventional signs, some thoughts, usually disguised as notes from books—as if I were reading a book and writing down some thoughts about it or quotes from it. Thats how I wrote.

And I continued to compose it in the 19th zone. I was sitting there at a drill press, and I taught myself to work in such a way that my hands moved on their own, automatically, and my brain was completely disengaged. And for all eight hours that I sat there, I was composing a book. Next to me was also an informant, who watched me very carefully to see if I was writing anything. I’ve forgotten his name—he was on my right.

V.V. Ovsienko: Which workshop was that?

M.R. Kheyfets: The one for watch cases, for the ChG-11. And here’s a little digression. When I later ended up in Israel and met Tolya Partashnikov there, who was already [unintelligible] in Israel, he is now the editor-in-chief of the Concise Jewish Encyclopedia. In our 19th zone, he had been imprisoned about 15 years before me, earlier. I asked him: “And what did you do in the zone?” He said: “The ChG-11—what else?” That shows the conservatism of their industry decades passed, and they were still making the same watch model. I don’t understand who they sold it to, but never mind.

So, I was sitting there, and eventually, I even got skilled at writing some things down. What I did was, I would place the blanks on the side, in a column, and they would shield me from the informant, and here I would quickly jot down some thoughts. And he couldnt see—he saw that I was standing, my hands on the machine, so he sort of didn’t see it.

Then Borya Penson—one of the prisoners from the hijackers case in the 19th zone, a very good guy—came up to me and said: “Misha, an opportunity has come up in a few weeks to send a package abroad.” I said: “What size? And what?” He said: “Write as much as you want, there’s space. Think of something.” I thought I shouldn’t miss this chance. The package wasnt just for me, of course. He told me I could ask whomever I wanted and invite them too. I went over to Vasyl Stus, and he gave me several statements he wanted to make. I think, besides me and Penson, Vasyl was the only one who knew about the package—I don’t think I told anyone else.

So, I had to write it and hide it. And then I figured it out: I just got lucky. It must have been October or November.

V.V. Ovsienko: And the year?

M.R. Kheyfets: 1976.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, Stus was there then.

M.R. Kheyfets: And I realized. At that time, fortunately for me, we were put on the night shift—I dont remember if we worked in the workshop until one or two in the morning. Our brigade was very good we worked on a team contract. We met the entire quota in 6 hours, and the last two hours were free, and no one worked because no one was eager to over-fulfill the quota, as they would immediately raise it—whats the point? We didnt want to produce less either, or wed lose our store privileges or something. And we produced 101% in 6 hours—and that was it, we would stop and rest. It was good for the administration too—we met the quota, so what more did they need, more hassle?

And at that time, I would leave the workshop. There was a smoking area under the workshop window with a table where people usually played checkers during the break on the day shift. But at night it was dark, no one went out—it was cold, freezing. Not yet snowing, but already cold, although I think some snow had already fallen. Why do I remember this—I was most afraid of snow, because on snow, everything is visible. When there’s no snow, you are dark, and the building is dark, and no one will notice you. I had to constantly consider whether there was snow or not, and where to sit.

I would take a pen, take a notebook. The light from the window fell on the table, but I wasnt visible—I sat closer to the window and blended in with the wall. That’s how I wrote what I had thought up during the day. Of course, I had to be very alert, because the guards sometimes made their rounds. But they came from the other entrance to the workshop, passed through the workshop, and then they would come out. I was listening all the time. It was a bit difficult because I had to both write and listen. And when they came out, they would inspect something in the entryway—also looking to see if there was anything there—I would quickly hide everything and pretend I was smoking, even though I dont smoke. But no one remembered that, no one paid attention, and the informant—why would he go out in the cold after me? He stayed in the workshop. The hardest part for me was hiding it. Where to hide these pages? Because they did a strip search on the way back. There was a search going in, and a search coming back, from the residential zone to the industrial zone and back. So I made a hiding place right there—there was a piece of water pipe lying around, a small one. I would take a polyethylene bag, put the papers inside, wrap it up, and stick it into this pipe. So, a pipe is just lying on the ground—who would ever think it’s a hiding place?

V.V. Ovsienko: What if they had taken it?

M.R. Kheyfets: Exactly, that’s what I’m getting at. And one day I arrive, and the pipe is gone. It was taken along with everything I had written. I’ve described this already, it’s in “Place and Time,” how I was at a loss, and that’s when I first told Mishka Korenblit that I was writing. And he tells me what you just told me, that they found the hiding place. I said: “They’ll probably take me away now.” I started giving him some instructions in case I was arrested. He said: “Misha, maybe they just took the pipe? You were a fool to choose a pipe for this purpose, but maybe they just carried it off. Where was it lying—right here? Well, lets go have a look.” We walked along the path and saw my polyethylene bag lying there.

V.V. Ovsienko: It fell out?

M.R. Kheyfets: It fell out of the pipe—they took the pipe, and it fell out. And thus it was saved.

V.V. Ovsienko: And how far away was it?

M.R. Kheyfets: It was about fifty meters away. So I survived that time. All sorts of adventures happened. And then I came up with a hiding place that Im proud of to this day and I think Im very smart.

V.V. Ovsienko: And youre not afraid to talk about it?

M.R. Kheyfets: Well, whats there to be afraid of, I thought, almost 25 years have passed, its unlikely Ill ever need it again. The hiding place was this. I borrowed it from Edgar Allan Poe, from his story “The Purloined Letter.” You see, Im no conspirator. Unlike real underground activists, dissidents, and so on, I wasnt involved in any conspiracy on the outside my knowledge in this area was nil. But I did read books. And in Edgar Allan Poes story “The Purloined Letter,” the plot is that a minister stole a letter from his queen and was blackmailing her, and thanks to this, all the power in the state was in his hands. But the king and queen were trying to get rid of his influence, to retrieve the compromising material that was dangerous to them. So they asked the chief of police. The police hunted him down: they searched his office, they staged a personal search in his carriage under the pretense of not recognizing him, supposedly mistaking him for someone else. They did everything—pried up floorboards, drilled into walls—but nothing, nowhere. And then they turned to a private detective, a predecessor of Sherlock Holmes, whom Edgar Allan Poe described—I dont remember his name anymore, I read the story a long time ago—and he showed up and gave them the letter. He had found it. It turned out the minister had done the simplest thing. He had a basket under his desk for discarded papers, for letters, and this letter, just placed in an old, shabby, nasty envelope from some petitioner, was lying there right in plain sight. They had searched everywhere, but they didn’t pay attention to what was lying open and in plain view.

I remembered this incident and used the very same method. What did I do? I took socks, woolen socks, had to cut off the big toes of the socks, because a whole sock might get stolen—you never know what kind of people there are. (Laughs). And I had already been through the 17th zone, I was a tailor by then—the hole was sort of visible, but it was actually sewn up and the sock was whole, there was no hole in it. I would just hang it there, where the laundry was drying, in the middle of the camp.

V.V. Ovsienko: No wa-a-ay...

M.R. Kheyfets: I would hang it in the middle of the camp. (Laughs). Why was this hiding place convenient? First, you could approach it at any time, because youre hanging laundry—you come, hang it, go, do laundry, wash your socks. No one paid much attention—a prisoner approaching the place where washed laundry is hanging. I would tuck it in there and there it would lie. Once, much later, with the second book—the KGB agents found out I was writing a second book, they found a page from it on me. And they conducted a gigantic search in the zone, something fantastic, the zone had never seen or remembered anything like it. Everything was turned upside down, they brought in a lot of people, the KGB agents themselves personally supervised, they no longer trusted the MVD operational staff, they supervised it themselves. And they searched everywhere—in the storage rooms, everything, everything, but that place—it just hung there. It didnt occur to them to search the laundry hanging on the lines.

So, that’s how it was. And I also had temporary hiding spots. In the storage room, I had my boots, high boots, and I made insoles for my boots, and under the insoles was a temporary little hiding spot for a few sheets. Well, the boots are just standing there, they look, peek into the boots—boots are boots, but it didnt occur to them to lift the insoles. I never walked in them, they just stood there.

V.V. Ovsienko: Next to your things?

M.R. Kheyfets: Next to my things. I always preferred for everything to be in plain sight, because since I put these boots next to my things, it means theres nothing in them. They seemed to think that if I were to hide something, I would hide it somewhere on the side, secretly. But all this is standing right here, with my things, these boots. They didnt pay attention, at most they would search my backpack or whatever I had—they searched those things. But the boots, standing right there next to them, they missed. The calculation was precisely that everything was out in the open—well, there are boots, unlaced, open—and it wouldnt enter their heads (unlaced was necessary to quickly stuff something in and take it out), everything was open, and they didn’t pay attention to what was open. The very same principle.

I wrote that book rather quickly—in about three or four weeks. I wrote it because it had been composed before that, it was all already there in my head, lying there, and there were some little notes, of course, conditional ones, but still, notes. In fact, all I had to do was put it all down on paper, there was no more composing to be done. Well, I gave it to Borya Penson, and then that story happened...

V.V. Ovsienko: Im curious, what kind of paper did you write on?

M.R. Kheyfets: On notebook paper. In ordinary notebooks.

V.V. Ovsienko: And with a regular-sized handwriting, not miniaturized?

M.R. Kheyfets: Regular handwriting, no, nothing like that. It was all just like that, head-on, banking on them being fools—and it worked!—banking on complete openness, on the absence of any conspiracy—and it worked. And I wasnt a conspirator, I didnt know how. It worked. Well, here, of course, God saved me, protected me—I’ll say this shamelessly, but that’s how it was, because, of course, I got into trouble with this manuscript...

When it was finally ready, the main difficulty was that I couldnt re-read it. When you write a manuscript, youre constantly re-reading, correcting, fixing things, refining the style. But here, I couldnt even re-read what I had written that day, let alone what I had written yesterday, the day before, and so on. I never read it in my life—I first read what I had written there in its printed form, after I was released, having served my term. And so I had no idea if I had managed to anything, if a book had come out of it, if a book hadnt come out, what had ultimately resulted.

V.V. Ovsienko: You had to be a genius to write a final draft right away.

M.R. Kheyfets: A final draft. And so, of course, I was tempted to read it. But how? To take it out and read—that would immediately... the informants, well, they were watching me quite closely, I must say. An informant lay on the bed next to me...

V.V. Ovsienko: Do you remember his name?

M.R. Kheyfets: Why wouldnt I—Grisha Topuria.

V.V. Ovsienko: Ah, Topuria—yes, yes, there was one.

M.R. Kheyfets: He watched me very carefully, and brazenly poked his nose in when I started to read something. I remember Kostiantyn Skrypchuk gave me, I think, a chapter from the Bible, about [unintelligible], I remember it clearly, about how they rebuilt the temple—he gave it to me to read. So Grisha ran over—he was a Seventh-day Adventist—and almost tore it out of my hands to see what I was reading. In general, these informants were completely shameless people.

V.V. Ovsienko: They had to earn their keep.

M.R. Kheyfets: Well, of course. No, and they were not bad people, but one has to live. He has children at home—that’s what Vitaliy Lysenko told me: he has children, but what about others, dont they have children at home? Anyway, he was watching me. Then the orderly—I don’t remember his last name anymore—was also watching, very keenly, what I was doing.

V.V. Ovsienko: Which unit were you in then? Where was it located?

M.R. Kheyfets: Ive forgotten the unit number, of course.

V.V. Ovsienko: Was the building two-story or one-story?

M.R. Kheyfets: It was a two-story building, but we were only on the first floor. I only remember one thing about that building: once there was an old guard there who remembered the old days, and I asked him: “Who was imprisoned here in our zone?” “Well, big people were imprisoned here.” I said: “Well, in my spot, right where I sleep—who slept there?” “It seems,” he says, “Malkov, the commandant of the Kremlin.” Well, what I paid is what Im selling it for, I can’t verify that.

And so I told Borya: “Tomorrow we send it.” And I had already started doing this: by that time, I had quietly moved the entire manuscript to the residential zone. This all happens in the residential zone. I had already written and moved it.

V.V. Ovsienko: And how did you move it? That too...

M.R. Kheyfets: It was risky, but in reality, when they took us at night, late—well, the search was superficial then.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, yes, it was known that the search for the night shift was lighter.

M.R. Kheyfets: Lighter. And I carried the whole manuscript over, because I was already afraid to keep it there, searches were sometimes conducted in the industrial zone when we weren’t there. So I brought everything here, and now I had to carry the manuscript back. I took it all and prepared it, decided, ah, I’ll sneak it through, carry it on my body through the search. I had gotten a bit bold, I was feeling lucky. I took it to my bed, tucked it into the pocket of my pea coat, and covered myself with that pea coat for the night. And suddenly, it was as if something pushed me: I could read it now—its night, I’ll go to the toilet. There was one Western-style toilet—we squatted over all the others, but this one was a toilet bowl, only the foremen, the camp elite, sat there, they kept this comfortable spot for themselves. But at night, you could sit there. If anything happened, I’d have paper in my hands—for hygienic purposes. And I could finally read it, what would happen?

I got up and went to the toilet. There was a terrible, awful storm, I don’t remember such a storm in all my years in the camp—a terrible wind, a hurricane. Finally, I get to the spot—I had to fight my way, like a tank, through the snow. I sit on the toilet, take out the manuscript, and suddenly I see—the last three pages are gone. I understand that the wind tore them out, blew them from my pocket and carried them away. I quickly shoved it back, ran, I see the wind is blowing towards the “forbidden zone.” Well, I think, alright, tomorrow I’ll break all the prisoner rules, I’ll go clean the forbidden zone. I had considerable authority in the zone, if I tell the guys: don’t judge me, this is necessary—they’ll understand, they’ll believe that if I went to clean the forbidden zone, then something extraordinary has happened, I need this.

The next day, I remember, Im standing with Borya Penson in his tool room—he was cleaning something there, I dont remember, anyway, he had a separate little room, he was tuning up instruments, I dont remember his job in the workshop—and I see through the window, soldiers are coming with big shovels to clean the forbidden zone. That’s it, I understand theyre coming for me. I didnt tell anyone that those pages were missing, not even Penson, he was such a nervous guy, hed say the manuscript must be destroyed, you never know, so it doesnt fall into their hands, it must be destroyed. But I felt sorry for it—ah, the hell with them. I didn’t tell anyone, and I had to carry it back to the industrial zone, because in the industrial zone, Penson was going to seal it in the mask. I was actually already afraid of a search, because what if they found something there, they could search me thoroughly. And next to me is Father Stepanyuk...

V.V. Ovsienko: Ah, I remember him, I remember, a weak, weak old man he was.

M.R. Kheyfets: I tell him: “Didu (Grandpa), I need to carry this into the zone.” “And what is this?” I say: “It’s necessary.” He felt it with his hand: “Ah, paper? A-a-ah... An automatic rifle is whats needed!”

V.V. Ovsienko: He would have more eagerly smuggled in an automatic rifle. (Laughs).

M.R. Kheyfets: And he got through. I let him go first, he passed, they searched me. I caught up with him in the zone, took the paper from him and gave it to Penson. There was another side story with a cover letter. Of course, I was very nervous. And suddenly I was summoned. You see, Im standing there and suddenly they tell me: “To the oper!” Im thinking, why am I being called to the oper—Ive never been called to the oper in my life?

V.V. Ovsienko: Is this the orderly speaking?

M.R. Kheyfets: The orderly, the “voronok” (stool pigeon). I’m walking and suddenly I remember that I still have the cover letter with me. I think, what if I’m being called to the oper for a search? Well, alright, I quickly hid it there, lagged behind and hid it. It turned out to be a mistake.

V.V. Ovsienko: And where did you hide it?

M.R. Kheyfets: In the snow.

V.V. Ovsienko: In the snow?

M.R. Kheyfets: Yes. He was calling Topuria Matishvili, but the “voronok” confused the complex non-Russian names and called Kheyfets instead of Topuria. Well, he was summoning the informants for a chat. And when he saw me, he was genuinely scared. He was frightened: “What are you doing here?” He thought I was spying on his informants or something. I said: “What? You summoned me.” “I did not summon you, what are you talking about. Off you go!” I went out, but the letter was gone, no letter. Well, then I told Borya Penson...

V.V. Ovsienko: And where was that oper, in which zone?

M.R. Kheyfets: In the 19th.

V.V. Ovsienko: In the industrial zone?

M.R. Kheyfets: Industrial, yes. Vorobyov, or something like that.

V.V. Ovsienko: And where was he located there?

M.R. Kheyfets: It was some, I dont remember, some separate room, that “voronok” led us to for a long time, I dont remember, and I wasnt in the mood for it. Anyway, I told Borya Penson, he took a broom, said, tell them I was assigned to clean the snow. Who’s going to check if he was assigned or not? He took a broom, scattered the snow, and found the letter—it had been blown away by the wind. And he put it inside the mask.

V.V. Ovsienko: You really came up with some clever moves!

M.R. Kheyfets: Such adventures there were. And he did it. And what was the mask? That was also Borya’s idea. Well, they already had an established channel. I had photographs of my children. A thick board, a photograph on the board, they cover it with varnish, put a veneer frame around it—a prisoner sends photos of his children home. The craftsman—I didnt know who he was then, later they told me it was some craftsman in the workshop—he would have never sent any conspiratorial messages from the prisoners, he would have been too scared. But photos of children—thats not scary: well, if they catch him, they’ll give him a reprimand and so on. He would take that on—for a reward, of course. And we just happened to have a reward then. I had a visit not long before that. My wife received help from abroad and was given a very beautiful scarf. For some reason, she was allowed to pass this scarf to me in the zone. They said it was okay, a scarf is fine. The scarf was very beautiful, and his wife liked that scarf. And for that scarf, he took these few boards of this size, this thick. The inside was all filled up, and on top was a photo of the children, veneer, varnish—beautiful. I still have that photograph itself, the top part, at home, my wife kept it.

I, of course, used my common sense—the simplest things—I understood that if I sent it to my familys address, it would surely all be monitored, kept under control, they aren’t idiots either. And I did the simplest thing: on those photos of my children, I wrote the address of the neighboring apartment. And indeed, when it arrived at the neighbors, she came to my wife and said, listen, your husband has completely lost his mind—he’s forgotten his own address and sent a photo of his children to my address! Here, take it—and she gave it to my wife. The difficulty was that my wife knew nothing, naturally. She decided that he had also “lost his mind,” perhaps. My wife sometimes got the feeling that I had gone a little crazy, doing some strange things in the zone. She probably thought, the poor guy couldnt take the suffering and went a little nuts. They gave him photos of his children in the zone, and hes sending them back on some boards, such bad taste. But then, after a while, we had... When did we send it? In November, it arrived in December, and in April, I had a visit. And during the visit, I told her what was inside. That was also complicated, as I understood there was a listening device in the visiting room, that was clear. But, firstly, we had also developed tactics for passing on information so that no one would know anything. Well, I think it was Igor Kravtsov, from Kharkiv, who told me that in such-and-such a place in the visiting room theres a pencil lead, the prisoners brought it in and hid it. But theres no paper. And then I figured it out, that was my invention. There’s no paper there, but there is a notebook for suggestions and commendations.

V.V. Ovsienko: Oh!

M.R. Kheyfets: Yes!

V.V. Ovsienko: What other suggestions could there be?

M.R. Kheyfets: So that the prisoners would write thank-you notes to the authorities.

V.V. Ovsienko: And their wives too?

M.R. Kheyfets: And their wives too. I would carefully remove a sheet from it—I would bend the staples and take it out, then bend the staples back. I had two sheets, I had a pencil lead, and calmly, without saying a single word to be overheard, I could write to my wife everything that was necessary, and she would memorize it. That was one way. Another way was... Again, everything was kept in plain sight. For example, my wifes comb. I would scratch, say, the name Shabatourа—in the PKT (punishment cell) or in prison—on the comb. All the information about what was happening in the zone, for example, a hunger strike on such-and-such a date, I would scratch on the comb, just right on the surface. They search for hiding places somewhere... She would look at it, a scratched, old comb lying there, pick it up—clearly no hiding place in it, and put it aside. Things like that, so that everything was in plain sight, then they dont see it. And thats how information from me got out.

I told my wife about this one as follows. I thought, where is their listening device? They have one in the room and surely one in the kitchen, where the prisoners eat. Where isnt there one? Not in the corridor that leads from the room to the kitchen, because it would be too much of a luxury to put a microphone at every point. A microphone is placed where people talk. So when we were walking down the corridor, I whispered to my wife: “Did you get the photo?” She nodded. I said: “Theres a book inside.” She said: “There isn’t.” I said: “Inside, inside.” She nodded. And indeed, when she got home, she called my friend, Kolya Vakhtin, and said… And she had already given away half of the photographs to friends, saying Misha sent them. She collected them again, called Kolya and said: “Misha says theres a book inside.” He took a small knife, carefully opened it, and took out the manuscript. When it got out and was published as a book, Kolya said: “I rejoice—my labor is merging with the labor of my republic!”

V.V. Ovsienko: And which book is this? “Place and Time”?

M.R. Kheyfets: “Place and Time.” And the second book didn’t get through then, because Borya decided to show some initiative. Im generally an inert person by nature, and if something goes through, it goes through, I dont look for someone to blame. But Borya said: “Why should we send him photos of the children twice, he might get suspicious. Lets,” he said, “make pictures.” He glued some pictures onto these boards and sent them. This was just before my departure from the zone. Well, not right before. I was supposed to have written it, to finish it, on the day we went on status. That was in 1977.

V.V. Ovsienko: 1977, that would be around March-April—I wasnt there anymore. I was taken from there on February 9.

M.R. Kheyfets: Ah, yes—no, this was definitely later. The day we went on status... Naturally, being on status meant I would be in punishment cells, I wouldnt be able to write anything, so I finished it before that. And Borya sent it later because that craftsman said: “You know, Im kind of afraid to send it now. Everyone around the zone is on high alert, talking about anti-Soviet activities, telling everyone to be very careful, Im afraid to send anything now.” By the way, he didn’t send it from the settlement he was often sent on business trips.

V.V. Ovsienko: Ah, so he didn’t mail it from there.

M.R. Kheyfets: Not from there. When he went somewhere, he would mail it from that place.

V.V. Ovsienko: Well, did he know what he was doing?

M.R. Kheyfets: He knew he was mailing a prisoners photos of his children.

V.V. Ovsienko: He wasnt doing it consciously?

M.R. Kheyfets: No, no, no, he had no idea what it was about. They didnt send that manuscript for a very long time. And it was sent sometime in the winter—either at the very end of 1977 or the beginning of 1978. On February 23, I received a message that it had not arrived. I had already arranged with my wife that if something went wrong, she would send me a congratulatory telegram on some idiotic Soviet holiday. So on February 23, she congratulated me on Soviet Army Day.

V.V. Ovsienko: The one that stands on every guard tower with an automatic rifle against us?

M.R. Kheyfets: Of course, I understood what it meant, that the manuscript had not arrived. At the end of April, I was sent on transit. I was in transit for 53 or 54 days, I don’t remember exactly, something like that. So I only reached my destination around June 7th or 8th. So, April, May, and then at the beginning of June, I...

V.V. Ovsienko: Yermak—Aktobe Oblast?

M.R. Kheyfets: Pavlodar. My term was ending on April 22, but they sent me out early, on April 18, from the zone. 12 days in April, 31 in May, and some more days in June, I don’t remember anymore. I remember I was in second place after Stus, Chornovil, and Serhiyenko—only those three prisoners surpassed me in the length of their transit by a day or two.

V.V. Ovsienko: Stus was in transit from January 11 to March 5, 1977. But Serhiyenkos mother, Oksana Meshko, was in transit for 108 days—from Kyiv to Ayan in Khabarovsk Krai, on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk.

M.R. Kheyfets: Anyway, as soon as I got to my destination, I could finally be alone, in exile. Ive already described how, thanks to my cunning, I managed to get a 27-day leave from work. I had 27 work-free days in exile. I used them—I would go to the bank of the Irtysh River, it was deserted, no one around, a place where I could review everything.

V.V. Ovsienko: Is the Irtysh there?

M.R. Kheyfets: The Irtysh is there, yes. Yermak is the place where Ataman Yermak drowned, thats why its named that. It used to be called Voskresenskaya Pristan, of course, but under Soviet rule, it was first renamed after Kaganovich, a very glorious settlement, and after 1957, Kaganovich became Yermak. But its the very place where the ataman drowned. I used to go to the river there, supposedly to sunbathe and swim, I would hide in the bushes so that I could see everything, but no one could see me, and there I very quickly restored the book from memory, because it had been written relatively recently, I already knew it was lost, so I was constantly re-creating all the episodes in my memory...

V.V. Ovsienko: Which book are we talking about?

M.R. Kheyfets: “The Russian Field.”

V.V. Ovsienko: It’s still not entirely clear to me. So, you sent the book, it disappeared—but how did your wife determine that it hadnt arrived?

M.R. Kheyfets: My mother knew it was supposed to arrive.

V.V. Ovsienko: And so, have no traces of it been found to this day?

M.R. Kheyfets: Nothing. I think that craftsman stole the package—he saw pictures there, not photos. Nobody needs photos, so he sent them: other peoples children—who cares about them? But he probably liked the pictures, and I think they are still hanging in his house to this day, and he doesnt even suspect that my book is hidden inside.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, if only it could be found...

M.R. Kheyfets: But why? I restored it from memory and have now even published it.

V.V. Ovsienko: But maybe that first version is more interesting?

M.R. Kheyfets: The main thing for a prisoner is to learn how to lose things without it spoiling your mood. Thats how it should be: if its lost, it means it didnt deserve to be published, which means you have to do even better. That should be the attitude, and then everything will be fine. Nothing happens without Gods will: if God wanted it to be lost, then it was right for it to be lost, and a new one should be made in its place. This means the new one must be better.

Of course, the real loss wasn’t my own stuff, because my things were in my head, I remembered them well, and everything of value that I had recorded in the interviews with Osipov and Soldatov, I of course kept in my head, and if something was lost, it was some nonsense, some trifles that weren’t worth attention, which is why they vanished from memory. But the hardest part was with the manuscript about Serkov-Siryk, because I wasn’t the one who did the interview. I, naturally, didn’t know how it all happened, Borya Penson helped me restore some of it from memory back in the zone, I wrote it down and took it out in some form, as an outline, but of course, it wasn’t as vivid as what Siryk had told. And generally, the first version of this story... Why, although I wrote that Penson had done the interview, did I now include it in my own book? Because the first, Pensons version, was written in the first person. Just as Siryk had told him, so he wrote it down. But I, naturally, couldn’t write it that way—I hadn’t heard Siryk, I didn’t remember what was there. So I rewrote it entirely.

V.V. Ovsienko: And you consistently refer to Penson as the intermediary?

M.R. Kheyfets: For me, it was important not to appear as a thief who had stolen someone elses material. I immediately named Penson, but I called him “the author” because he was still in prison, and I couldnt reveal who my, so to speak, co-author was, because he could have been punished in the zone. It was fine for me, I had already served my term, but he still had time to do.

And then, in exile, without any particular problems, I wrote my third book, “A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak.” In exile, the tactic was this: I got a job as an inspector at a training center, checking the knowledge of rural machinery operators and upgrading their qualifications. This is piquant, considering I can’t even drive a car, let alone a tractor—and I was an inspector! (Laughs). So, I was testing their knowledge. Everything was based on this. Rural machinery operators are people who know absolutely nothing about the theory of their trade. They put him on a tractor, he drove it and ruined it. They put him on a second tractor. He drove the second tractor—and ruined that one too. On the third one, he sort of knows how to operate it.

Such was the system of Soviet agriculture, so Im not at all surprised that it collapsed, because with such treatment of machinery as they had there, its generally strange that anything worked at all. Can you imagine if a farmer ruined his own tractor, any farm would go bankrupt, immediately. But in a collective farm, break one tractor—they issue a second one, and its even good for everyone that industry can increase production volumes every year, tractors are always needed, and no matter how many tractors, combines, seeders, or winnowers you produce—it will all be ruined within a year by these aspiring drunks, and theyll be given new ones.

But they knew absolutely no theory—they are taught theory. And the theory, excuse me, I could learn, that I knew. That is, I tested their theory, I was like a guru to them, a knower of everything under the sun, on whom their salary, qualification, pay grade, and so on, depended. My job consisted of traveling to the districts state farms and checking how the classes were organized—were there classrooms, were lessons being held, what new material was being taught, what knowledge the students had during lessons—well, an inspector!

So, I would come to my job, there was an informant there, naturally. The authorities, to their credit, never left me unattended, especially after my release from the zone. Over time, they began to guess what a scoundrel they had warmed on their hairy chest—a girl, so pretty, she flirted with me a little, as I understand, on assignment, but I played the role of a faithful husband and was impregnable. And I would tell her: “Lidochka, today Im going to the state farm.” And I take a travel directive. Lidochka would write down that today I am at the state farm. And at home, another informant was watching me—the chief of the local fire department, Uncle Vasya. Uncle Vasya boasted to me that during the war he was a battalion commander in the [unintelligible] polizei. I think hes lying—he could have been a private sergeant, I dont believe the Germans would entrust a man like that with commanding a battalion. Well, it doesnt matter. Here he was no longer working for Comrade Himmler, but for Comrade Andropov—whats the difference? He also watched me very attentively and brazenly. Uncle Vasya saw that I left for work in the morning—so his watch was over, someone else was supposed to watch me there—and he would go off to drink or to his service, I dont know where he went. Lidochka would record that I had gone to the state farm.

V.V. Ovsienko: She handed over her post too?

M.R. Kheyfets: She handed it over too. And I would return home, and for eight hours I could peacefully write whatever I wanted, and I would go to the state farm in the evening, after work.

Or I would do this. I would take a directive from Lidochka and go to the state farm the next day at 6 a.m. In the morning at the state farm, the whole board—if there were any problems—the whole board sits together. Then they disperse to the fields, you can’t find anyone. To get some decision made, I would have to travel all over the fields, to all the locations—it would really take me a whole day. But I figured it out: I went out in the morning, at 6 a.m., while they were all sitting together in the office, I would quickly get all my business done—and return by the start of the working day to my service, tell Lidochka: here, Ive come from the state farm, here are the decisions, here are such-and-such matters—all done. It never occurred to anyone that I had spent the whole day at home, and did everything in an hour or an hour and a half in the morning. And thus, I had whole days when I could sit and write.

But thats a separate topic, I described it, in the second part of “A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak,” I described the story of that book, because what actually happened there was: that manuscript never reached me. It was in two parts. The first part did get out, the first half—it was written during the first year of my exile, and I sent it to the West, and it arrived. But the second part I finished literally in the last days of my exile. I was just finishing it up—and then they came to my place with a search.

V.V. Ovsienko: And the grounds for the search?

M.R. Kheyfets: The grounds were very simple. I was corresponding with Viktor Nekipelov. He had read “Place and Time,” and he liked it very much. He wrote me such an enthusiastic readers letter, I replied, and we started corresponding. And on that day, Viktor Nekipelov was arrested. So they came to me as a person connected to Viktor Nekipelov, but in fact, they already knew that I had a manuscript. They knew this, and they were counting on catching me with the manuscript, with the evidence, so to speak—catching me with a finished manuscript. And that would be a new sentence for sure. They really wanted to imprison me again. But I described this story in “A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak,” in the second part. Because back then, of course, I couldnt describe it—I was a participant in it. But God saved me. It was exactly as I wrote: they sat me on the bed, searched everything, I sat on the bed the whole time, got up, signed, they left. And I had been sitting on that manuscript. They didnt realize that the manuscript was under my backside—they searched everywhere!

V.V. Ovsienko: What amazing stories!

M.R. Kheyfets: You should read it, this “Journey…”

V.V. Ovsienko: I havent read that one yet.

M.R. Kheyfets: Yes, yes, you havent read it yet. And so I was taking it to Leningrad, and they knew it existed. They had, naturally, already conducted a preliminary operational search on me, as they always do in such cases, they knew it existed, and they showed up just to take me with it—and they didnt find it. They knew it was there, they looked for it, they conducted so many secret searches along the way! Finally, in Leningrad itself, they took me off the plane as a hijacker.

V.V. Ovsienko: You were planning to hijack a plane?

M.R. Kheyfets: Yes, I wanted to hijack the plane. Because, as I understand it, when a person hijacks a plane, they have the right to detain and search them without a prosecutor’s warrant. And they didn’t want to ask the prosecutor for a warrant because they had already failed to find the manuscript once, and the next time the prosecutor would ask: “What grounds do you have to think you’ll find anything this time?” And they had no grounds, they were just fumbling around in the dark. But in this case—no grounds needed. I’m hijacking a plane, they grab me—and they don’t find it either.

V.V. Ovsienko: And where was this—on the plane?

M.R. Kheyfets: This was in Leningrad, upon landing.

V.V. Ovsienko: Already on the ground?

M.R. Kheyfets: On the ground, yes. The plane landed, everyone gets off, they keep me on the plane and take me away separately for a search. They hadnt considered that I was traveling with my wife. I simply gave it to my wife, my wife got off with the manuscript, and I was detained separately. It was a fantastic story.

And so it happened that I managed to safely deliver it to its destination, and right there in Leningrad I find out that my channel to the West has been “burned.” The person who was passing it on to the West had a falling out with his Western friend who was transporting it—there was a girl there, a student, some romantic connection my friend had with this girl, and she was bringing things out for him—but then they had a fight. A lovers’ quarrel—and thats it, I have no channels of communication to the West. Of course, one could try the Moscow dissident connections, but just in those days, Sakharov was exiled to Gorky. And they were all being tailed very closely, so any contact of mine was dangerous—especially since they knew I was carrying a manuscript, that I had it.

And then I used a certain contact: I went, as I was advised, to Mishka Meilakh—theres such a dissident in Leningrad, son of Professor Meilakh. I hadn’t known him before. I went to him—they set it up for me, told me he had a channel. He took the manuscript, the second part of “A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak,” and said: “Ill forward it.” Well, I waited, and waited, and it never came. I got a letter from him saying Id receive it in the fall—I received nothing. And then I learned that Mishka himself had been arrested, he got five years. I decided the manuscript had fallen into their hands and was “burned” along with him. I even worried: here I am, I got a man into trouble, gave him a manuscript—maybe that’s why they imprisoned him. But many years later, I met Meilakh, he came to Israel, I asked him—he said: “No, the person who was taking your manuscript to the West got scared, and he burned it at the border.” So with such adventures, I got it to Leningrad, but it didnt go any further.

But I still had the first part, and I published pieces of it somewhere a few years later. It seemed to me then that interest in the camp theme was lost, and nobody cared about it. But then, when Yevhen Zakharov showed up last year—no, this year, at the beginning of this year, around spring—and offered to publish a book for me at his publishing house, “Folio,” I proposed it to him. “A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak,” because it had never been published before. But I see that I dont have the second half. What to do? Try to restore it from memory—but that would be a new work, thats not interesting. Instead, I wrote a new second part—a memoir about how the book was lost, that is, the story I am telling now—I wrote in this form about what happened to this book, what its fate was. Since it wasn’t actually very interesting, because “A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak” was primarily dedicated to “bytoviki” (common criminals). When I was in transit, the only interesting encounter was with Balys Gajauskas. I met him in Ruzayevka, we spent a week together in a cell, because from May 1 to 9, as is known, there are no prisoner transports—it’s two holidays.

V.V. Ovsienko: This was 1978, right?

M.R. Kheyfets: 1978. Balys was in transit to the special regime in Mordovia, to us, and they brought him, I think, from Kazan to our cell. From May 1 to 9, there were no transports, and we spent more than a week together. That was the only interesting encounter. I didn’t meet any other political prisoners on the transport I mostly described the common criminals. So I felt losing something from there wasn’t a big deal—they were just everyday life sketches. Who is a common criminal? As a rule, a common criminal is not a professional criminal, but an ordinary guy who either got into a fight or, while drunk, robbed a kiosk, so to speak. Not a professional at all. A kiosk came his way, he wanted a drink of vodka—he broke the lock, took out a bottle of vodka—and got his three years. I was kind of describing a life I hadnt seen. I was gone for four years, I was removed from life for four years. So I start learning about Soviet life, and what’s there—well, I met Vasya Korupkin (?)—we had such a war criminal, I met him at Potma—so I described war criminals through him. There were encounters like that, but otherwise, nothing particularly interesting. That’s why I didn’t regret much that the second part was lost, and instead, in the second part, I described the adventures of this book.

And I wrote it, finished it for Zhenya, and now it has been published, thanks to his efforts. If he hadnt come up with it, it wouldnt have appeared. He generally did a lot for me in this sense, that he was the initiator. I am a person who is rather indifferent to the fates of my books. Its very important to me when a book is being written—then I am truly all in the book, I think about it, compose it. But the moment the book is written, I lose all interest in it—Ive finished it, and I actually even forget whats written there, I dont remember at all, for me this topic is closed, as if I had never thought or written about it. It’s written—it’s done. And it would have probably remained that way, maybe for my heirs, for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to read about the life of their grandfather and great-grandfather. But Zhenya appeared—and he brought it to light, because I remembered: I have unpublished books lying around.

The same thing happened with “The Russian Field.” “The Russian Field” was first abandoned by my father. My parents came to visit me in exile in Yermak. I had managed to write “The Russian Field” over the summer. My parents came right away—my wife with the children and my parents. My wife and children returned to Leningrad—I demanded it. I said: “You know, if youre gone for half a year, they will unregister you, youll never be registered in Leningrad again. If a person is not at their registered address for six months, they are subject to being removed from the Leningrad registry. So go back, so I have somewhere to return to you.” But my mom and dad said no—mom was resolute—we will stay with Misha. Well, there was no arguing with my mother, that is, you could argue, but it was absolutely useless. My father never argued, but he said: “We need warm clothes.” “Youll go and get them,” she said. So he prepared to go to Leningrad, and I gave him the manuscript of “The Russian Field,” and he carried it out on his body. We also conspired so they wouldn’t know he was leaving, so they wouldn’t search him on the way. Uncle Vasya was so angry that I didnt tell him my father was leaving—he left suddenly, and they didnt have time to check him. I gave him an address, one belonging to Natalia Vladimirovna Gesse—she lived on Pushkinskaya, number 18, apartment 61—I remembered it because I remembered the year 1861—the year of the peasant emancipation, the peasant reform. And she was connected to Yelena Bonner.

And so, apparently, through these channels “The Russian Field” reached the West. Well, it was a book like any other, I wasnt there, you have to push for these things. Apparently, Vladimir Maramzin, my co-defendant to whom I sent it, didnt have enough connections then to publish it as a separate edition—perhaps the special interest in prisoners had already faded—in short, the book was dismantled chapter by chapter. One chapter, about Soldatov, was taken by Glezer for the almanac “The Third Wave,” and he fit in as much as he could. He cut off the beginning and the end. Osipov appeared in “Kontinent,” and Serkov was taken by Maramzin himself for his journal—his journal “Echo” was being published then. So it was scattered across journals, and no one knew it was a separate book.

V.V. Ovsienko: So it was first collected in Kharkiv?

M.R. Kheyfets: First in Kharkiv. In essence, in this three-volume set, two books have been collected for the first time, which had not previously appeared in print. (Mikhail Kheyfets. Selected Works. In three volumes. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.—Kharkiv: Folio, 2000.—Vol. 1: Place and Time. The Russian Field.—272 pp. Vol. 2: A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak, 1979-1987.—228 pp. Vol. 3: Ukrainian Silhouettes. The POW Secretary.—296 pp.). In fact, there is indeed a lot of new material here, not to mention my new article here, for which I was imprisoned and which was also never published. This is entirely to Yevhen Zakharovs credit—he insisted, I resisted as much as I could, saying: I dont need it, whats the point… “I want to!” Well, you know Zhenya. “I want to—and thats it!” Its hard to argue with him—he might even get offended. So I decided not to offend him, gave him power of attorney and thought: well, its just some junk—what could I have written there? And when I read the article, I was stunned myself—it turns out, I wrote well! What a great guy Zhenya is for making me pull this article out of the KGB archives! Apparently, I underestimated myself in my youth.

Actually, when I think about my generation, I think that the main tragedy of our lives was this—that we didnt live in such terrible conditions as those who came before us, those inhabitants of Solovki, the dwellers of Solovki. But in our time, there was nothing of the sort, and it was quite possible to live peacefully and be wealthy. At least, for me—that’s for sure. I know this because I could write adventure books, historical-adventure books. The demand for that was enormous, and Pikul is proof of that. To write such books, be published in large print runs, hold various Soviet positions… For example, six months before my arrest, I was invited to head a department at the magazine “Znanie—Sila” (“Knowledge is Power”) in Moscow. That is, I could have been a department head at a very popular all- magazine in Moscow. I could have easily exchanged my apartment for a Moscow one, become a Moscow comrade with connections in publishing houses, with my own status, and I could well have had money, vodka, women, and all the other Soviet pleasures.

But there is something in a human being that desires not to be just an animal. An animal, no matter how good it is—it dies, and it disappears, its gone, nothing remains of it. That’s all. But a human wants to have a way into the eternal, into time. And that is what distinguishes him from the best of animals. What distinguishes a person from the most remarkable animal is the desire to live not only for their earthly needs—for the stomach to be satisfied, for sexual feelings to be satisfied, and what have you—but he wants to enter the eternal, so that his life lasts not only in time, so that he enters that sphere which is preserved. This is how he differs from animals. And we were at the level of animals—we could fully satisfy all our worldly desires, it was within our power, nothing terrible or special, but it was not a human life.

And that’s why there were constant attempts to renounce the temptations that the Soviet government offered us, and to remain human. In the end, I was surrounded by very talented people. For example, Brodsky managed to break through, Shemyakin managed, Strugatsky managed to break through. But how many talented people were around them who didn’t manage to break through? I don’t know—perhaps they were no less talented, but they lacked the character.

V.V. Ovsienko: Yes, thats very important.

M.R. Kheyfets: The character to refuse the pleasures of ones flesh in order to receive a reward, I would say, the joy of public life, the joy of social life, of entering into something that, at the expense of your flesh, gives you an entrance into some kind of social life.

My point was that we didnt believe in ourselves, we didnt value ourselves. Living in such a society as it was then, we didnt know if we were writing badly or well, if we were creating badly or well. We were just defending ourselves, expressing ourselves for the future in the hope that maybe, someday... Basically, why were we bothering with this Brodsky, with these writings? We understood: these are the poems that will remain of us, of all of us—that we lived, and we will be remembered, because this man told about us in his poems, and they must be preserved. We didnt know then that Brodsky would become a Nobel laureate in his lifetime, receive all the regalia—we knew it was for future generations. When we defended Misha Shemyakin, it again never occurred to any of us that he was such a great talent—we knew one thing: that these were good paintings, and they needed to survive, to be preserved, to be saved. But that this had some great significance—it never occurred to anyone. And I myself—it never occurred to me that I had written a good article! We didnt value ourselves at all.

V.V. Ovsienko: In your book about Vasyl Stus, there is also this point that those around him supposedly didnt understand the value of his poems, the value of Stuss personality. You know, I don’t agree that they didn’t understand—I think they did. When Zoryan Popadiuk brought a few poems from the punishment cell—perhaps he wrote them down from memory, and before that, before his imprisonment, I had maybe read only two or three of Stus’s poems in samizdat. But when I read what Zoryan brought from the cell—he had been imprisoned with Stus—there was “Sto rokiv, yak skonala Sich” (“A Hundred Years Since the Sich Perished”) and a few others, I immediately understood what it was.

M.R. Kheyfets: Of course. But you know, when I wrote my essay on Stus, I don’t remember who, some Ukrainian researcher, a very intelligent man, wrote that I would be very surprised to learn that Stus’s poems were read by no more than a hundred people. That is, those who read them—they, of course, valued them, they understood. But a hundred people! And so Vasyl himself, of course, guessed—when a person has such talent, he guessed, but he didn’t know it for sure. You see, it’s a guess, a hope. And I saw that he gave me his poems to read with some timidity, because… well, they are not, as it were, political poems, even in his eyes, in his own!

V.V. Ovsienko: But political ones were needed then.

M.R. Kheyfets: You see, it was as if he was asking my forgiveness for them being—pure lyrics.

V.V. Ovsienko: I also copied them then—he had such a white notebook, there were about 60 or a few more poems in it, I copied them all. By the way, I also copied them with soda solution between the lines of a journal. But I didnt need to do that, I didnt have to transcribe it—I took out two notebooks of poems, graph-paper ones, ordinary, and somehow they didnt confiscate them from me. It was very strange.

M.R. Kheyfets: No, its not strange. You know, in this, Im still grateful to Colonel Drotenko, despite all his sins. I must have tricked him somehow—I convinced him that these were not political poems, that they had nothing to do with politics, that this was love lyric poetry. This was during a visit. Since it was operational information—I was saying this to my wife, and they were listening—and there could be a big scandal and a lot of noise, but what was the prize? Big deal—lyrical poems, about love for his wife and so on. Well, and about love for Ukraine—so what, loving Ukraine wasnt forbidden, in principle. One could write that I love Ukraine… [interference, phone rings].

V.V. Ovsienko: At 12 o’clock, Yaroslav Tynchenko arrived.

V.V. Ovsienko: And when did you leave?

M.R. Kheyfets: I finished my term on January 18, 1980—I remember it well because it was my birthday.

V.V. Ovsienko: Thats when you finished your exile?

M.R. Kheyfets: Exile, yes. It was my birthday. I specially timed my transports to my birthday. On that day I finished my exile and left. Around January 21 or 22, I was in Leningrad. And they immediately started expelling me, instantly, with terrible pressure, because German Ushakov was about to be released, and they didn’t want me to meet him, so I wouldn’t get any new information about the zone. And they were expelling me brazenly, I didn’t have time to pack. I had nothing against leaving, really, but I just couldn’t manage to get my things together—belongings, this and that, it requires a lot of documents…

Oh, I’ll tell you that story too, which isn’t in the books—you asked for this. A certain person betrayed me in my time, an informant in our literary circle. Here, for you, Ill name him, but it shouldnt be published—I feel sorry for him, let him live. His name is Valeriy Voskoboynikov, hes a fairly well-known writer. I just saw one of his detective novels on the shelves, for sale—Marina Semyonova, Valeriy Voskoboynikov, some kind of detective story. He lived in our building, was my neighbor and one of my friends. I gave him my article to read, which he immediately reported. During the investigation, I figured him out pretty quickly. Actually, the success of my investigation was that I managed, frankly speaking, I won’t be modest, to outplay the security services. I attribute this to the fact that the investigator accidentally let something slip—he gave me one piece of information that only I and Voskoboynikov knew, and no one else. And so, I understood that it was he who had given them the information.

Consequently, I already knew exactly what they knew and what they didnt know, and therefore I always started the conversations myself—as if I were a talkative guy, well, an intellectual, a good-natured simpleton who doesnt understand the danger and babbles on his own. They love that, because when you babble yourself, he doesnt have to ask you questions, doesnt have to reveal his knowledge. The investigator understands that any interrogation is an interrogation of two people: he asks me what I know, and I, from the system of his questions, understand what he knows and extract information from him. Therefore, he really likes it when I speak myself, as if not understanding that its an interrogation. And I, within the limits of what Valerka knew about the case, told the truth, and within the limits of what he didnt know, I, accordingly, spun the version I wanted to sell him, and it automatically passed for the truth. And thus I managed to fend them off and, so to speak, win the investigation. But I identified him and, moreover, I managed to warn our building—he was in our writers’ building, you see—about who our informant was.

This was at a confrontation. They arranged a confrontation for me with Masha Etkind, Etkinds daughter, and when the confrontation ended, the investigator said: “Well, now Ill write down everything youve said here, and you can talk.” And he buried himself in his typing—while, of course, his ears were perked up, listening to what we were talking about: now these intellectuals will start chattering, and hell pick up new information. Well, I ask her: “How are things at home?” She says: “Everything’s fine.” I ask about so-and-so—everythings good. And how about so-and-so—theyre also fine. I say: “How’s Valera?” She says he went to Paris. I ask: “Got his honorarium?” “Yes.” Just a normal conversation, the investigator isnt paying attention—he doesnt see that at that moment, when I say, got his honorarium, I’m pointing my finger at myself, and she nods and says: “Yes.” Meaning she understood what I wanted to say. Thus, on the same day, it became known in the building who had sold me out. Naturally, I understood that they might not believe it, you never know, but I know writers—at the very least, no one would be shooting their mouth off around him anymore: God helps those who help themselves, and there’s no need to blab if theres such information about a person. That is, I was sort of protecting people.

V.V. Ovsienko: Did he receive a fee for you?

M.R. Heifetz: Well, of course. No, I understood, first of all—and this was already proof for me—the investigator had just told me that Borya Strugatsky hadn’t gone on a planned trip to Poland. He said, “How can he go? What if your trial takes place? He’s a witness at the trial. If he leaves, he won’t be able to testify, so we didnt let him go.” So one witness couldnt travel to Poland, but another witness could travel to Paris—that’s pretty clear, isn’t it!

V.V. Ovsienko: And was Strugatsky involved in your case?

M.R. Heifetz: He was a witness in my case. He was my closest friend. By the way, he has a novel, whats it called... Published under the pseudonym Vititsky—_The Ethics of Predestination_ or something like that. My case is described in it. If you come across that novel... or _Spinozas Thirty-Seventh Theorem_—I think thats what its called, _The Ethics of Predestination, or Spinozas Thirty-Seventh Theorem_. Im portrayed there under the pseudonym Semyon Mirlin, you can read about it.

So, the one person who didnt believe this news was my wife. My wife said, “You’ll see—when you come home, you’ll be ashamed, and you’ll ask for his forgiveness.” I told her, “Raika, when I get home, Valerka won’t be in the house—he’ll be too ashamed to look me in the eye!”

And indeed, I returned home six years later and asked where Voskoboynikov was. “Oh, they took him to Afghanistan yesterday!” I nearly died laughing and said, “Listen, I was his close friend, and I know hes exempt from military service—what Afghanistan?! Not to mention his age.” All right. And sure enough, after some time—there were some other maneuvers, it would take too long to explain on a tape recorder—I forced them to let him out of their pocket, and he returned home. He rushes up to me: “Hello, Misha!” I hid my hand and said, “Hello, Valera.”

That was it, it was over. Then one day, my wife went to the store or somewhere, and I was sitting at home—the phone rings: “Misha, it’s Valera Voskoboynikov. I need to talk to you.” “Come over.” He comes over and says, “Misha, I heard you’re telling people that I informed on you—is that true?” I say, “It’s true, Valera.” “You’re mistaken.” “No, I don’t think I’m mistaken.” “Then I’d like to know your reasons—on what grounds are you accusing me?” I say, “Valera, you have to understand me. On one hand, I see you’re right: when you accuse a man of something so serious, you have to back it up. But on the other hand, you have to understand my position. Three investigators gave you away. If I tell you how they slipped up, I’ll be giving a lesson to the state security organs on where they make mistakes. And it’s not part of my official duties to train KGB investigators in their work. So I dont want to do that. Let’s agree on this. Three investigators gave you away. I’ll tell you about their first slip-up, and you’ll give me your version. If I think its a good, credible version, that youve exonerated yourself, I’ll tell you about the second incident. If you come up with a version for that one too, I’ll tell you about the third. And if you exonerate yourself in that case as well, I’ll gather all our mutual acquaintances and publicly apologize to you in front of everyone, saying that I was wrong and accused you unfairly. Deal?” “Deal.”

I tell him: “Valera, do you remember after they searched my place, but before my arrest, we met over there, outside the window, by that tree? And you told me you had some woman, the wife of a high-ranking KGB officer, who told you how disappointed they were with the results of the search at my place—that it was all old samizdat, nothing new, and that they would gladly close the case but couldnt because it would cause a huge commotion and they couldnt back down. Ill be honest with you, Valera: I didn’t believe it was that simple. Maybe you did have some mistress who told you that—fine. But I told you then that I personally wasnt interested in any uproar, that I was against any noise being made about it abroad. Do you remember that?” “Of course, I remember. Do you doubt that such a woman exists? I can introduce you to her.” “No, Valera, I dont doubt it—I just have to confess to you. I deceived you back then—I had actually asked Volodya Maramzin to raise as much noise as possible abroad about this case. But I told you I was against any uproar, since that was advantageous for me in their eyes. And when I was arrested, one of my interrogations was with the head of the investigative department, Colonel Barkov.” He repeated, “Barkov.” “Yes, I said, Leonid Ivanovich Barkov. And so Leonid Ivanovich Barkov, in my presence, mentioned the word ‘abroad’ in some context. And I decided: let me test you, Valera. And I say: ‘Leonid Ivanovich, you must know that I was against any uproar abroad.’ And Leonid Ivanovich nodded gravely and said: ‘Yes, we are aware of that.’ So, please explain to me, Valera, how did Leonid Ivanovich Barkov find out about that bullshit, that lie, which I told you for his benefit? I could believe they might have figured it out—anything’s possible. But that they would figure out something in my favor and against their own interests—they’re unlikely to do that its completely out of character for them.” He says: “You know, when we were talking, cars were driving by, and one of them stopped—maybe there were long-range microphones in it?” I say: “Valera, when you write a screenplay for Lenfilm, please put a scene like that in it, but a long-range microphone has no effect on me. I consider your explanation unsatisfactory, especially since this is just one case, and theres a second and a third in which no long-range microphones could have been involved, but I won’t be revealing those to you.”

So what really happened? A key investigator of mine, while compiling a list of people I showed my article to, said: “Ivanov, then Yemelyanov, then Voskoboynikov.” I thought: how does he know that—I never told him that I had shown the manuscript to Lyonka Yemelyanov before Valera Voskoboynikov. Only I knew that. And suddenly I remembered that when Voskoboynikov told me he didnt like the article, I told him that Lyonka Yemelyanov had also said that all the politics should be cut out. So, only the two of us knew that Yemelyanov had read it before Voskoboynikov. That conversation happened on a stairwell landing, and there clearly couldn’t have been any long-range microphones there.

There was a third incident, Ryabchuk let it slip—that was a different matter: they were checking on the conscientiousness of Voskoboynikov’s own work.

In short, I told him: “As for the rest, Valera, let’s consider this conversation to have not taken place, and you remain under accusation. Moreover,” I say, “Valera, I’ve been sold out in the zone so many times, at least ten, so I know the whole method. I can tell you how you were recruited—want me to?” He says, “Well, Im listening.” I say, “Remember that time you went to Sweden with a delegation of writers? And on the way back, you were caught at customs with pornographic magazines, and there was a huge scandal, but you got off with a severe reprimand from the Writers . Valera, Im a zek now, Ive read the Criminal Code, and Ive read the Commentaries. They were given to me by mistake in the prison library—they werent supposed to, but the bosses were on vacation, so I asked, and the guard, who doesnt know about these things, brought them to me. I read the Commentary to the Law: smuggling pornography gets you three to ten years. You should have gotten a sentence. So I understand—you were caught with that stuff, and then they talked to you like this: Valery Mikhailovich, we didnt force you to commit a crime, you did it yourself, you brought it in yourself—and you fall under ordinary Soviet law, we wont interfere, whatever the law decides is your own fault we can help you, we wont hide it—but then you have to help us. And you were faced with a choice. You were supposed to get about five years, and you understood that. To go to a criminal camp for smuggling pornographic magazines, where no one would stand up for you, with your ulcerated stomach and your father who was imprisoned—since childhood you remember what a family is like when the father is in prison. On the other hand, you had such opportunities, and they told you that of course, no one would be arrested, that the organs are just gathering information, that you see—who among the writers have we arrested? No one, we are simply an organ for collecting political information, we have to give it to our superiors so they can make the right decisions—what do you have against that? In short, either go to the zone for five years, or, on the other hand, it seems you wont be doing anything particularly bad. And I don’t really blame you for being a weak person, I know that. So, you agreed. And I even believe it was a huge shock for you when I was arrested. They sort of deceived you, too—but what can you do, such is your fate.”

He sighs, gets up and says, “Well, thanks, Misha, for not being angry with me, but you’re mistaken.” “No, Valera, I still dont think Im mistaken.” “So what are you going to do now?” “Well, I’m planning to go to Israel, but you know the procedure, collecting a ton of documents... A huge number of documents had to be collected. And just now I sent a request to Rayas parents in Sverdlovsk for their permission. It takes a week for the letter to get there, a week to come back, and its not just about writing it, it has to be certified at the housing office. And when her parents will go to that housing office—it’ll probably take a month, and I have to sit here and wait for that month.”

He says, “Well, goodbye.” He leaves. My wife comes home, and I say, “Valera Voskoboynikov was here.” “And how did it go?” I tell her what I’ve just told you now. Shes so astonished, she says, “So it’s true?” “What’s true?” “That he’s an informer.” You know, guys, that was the first time I understood the difference between a mans and a womans perception of life. I tell her, “Well, Ive explained all this logical reasoning to you a hundred times before.” Which Ive also told you. It turns out she didn’t believe me. She says, “Misha, if he were innocent, after finding out what you accused him of, he should have punched your lights out! I’d be looking at you now with a broken nose and bruises. If he didnt do that, it means he really is an informer.”

V.V. Ovsienko: That would have been proof, yes?

M.R. Heifetz: A woman starts from a real-life situation. Logic doesnt convince her, but the fact that a man accused of being an informer didnt punch my face in—that means he really is an informer.

Alright. We went to the movies. I remember it like it was yesterday, we watched Ryazanov’s _The Garage_. We come back from the movies and my older daughter says, “Dad, the police called for you. They said you should come to the OVIR with whatever documents you have, you don’t need any others.” But me, being the devious creature I am—of course, I called the police the next morning to check, saying: “You called me yesterday and said I could come to the OVIR with the documents I have, without collecting the others?” They say, “Oh no, what are you talking about, how could that be? The OVIR is the OVIR, you have to meet all their conditions.” Fine, I go to the OVIR, I walk in—“Yes, no other documents are needed, you’re leaving immediately.” So he must have gone to them, asked them to get me out of the house as soon as possible, and they gave permission right away. The only thing they demanded was that I immediately hand over my certificate of release, because it had my zek photograph on it. But they didnt take into account: I had saved a second copy of the photo.

Ya. Tynchenko: A zek photograph?

M.R. Heifetz: Yes, a zek photograph. It’s in this three-volume set. I kept one copy for myself anyway.

Ya. Tynchenko: And did they give you some time to get out? What form did this take?

M.R. Heifetz: It was in a form where they were constantly pressuring me at the OVIR: pack up and leave immediately! This was at a time when they had already shut down all emigration. And they were telling me that if I didn’t leave right now, I would never leave again. And my wife was in a wild panic, saying, “Mishka, everything, why do we need this junk, why do we need these things, we’ll get more—lets go while theyre still letting people out!” And I say, “Raya, who has had dealings with the state security organs—you or me? I know them—to expel me, theres a visa from a high-ranking boss: expel Heifetz abroad. And to cancel that visa, an extraordinary event is needed, meaning Id have to commit a new crime, so someone could go and report that you ordered Heifetz to be expelled, but he has already committed a new crime—is there a new decision? And then he can make a new decision, but as long as nothing like that happens, the old decision remains in force, no matter what. So, since the boss gave the order, as long as I don’t commit a new crime...” “Mishka, but do you hear what theyre saying—they wont let you out!” I say, “Alright, fine, to calm you down, I’ll do it.” I went to the KGB and dropped off a statement saying that since the KGB organs insist I leave, I am leaving. But I want to leave with the property that I earned. There is nothing anti-Soviet in my wish, so I will leave when I am ready, and not before. I ask not to be hindered. I dropped off this statement and was calm. The only thing I found out later—someone heard them giving orders to all departments to speed up the shipment of my luggage and everything else as much as possible, just to get rid of me faster.

But they were terrified that I would take my manuscript out—they searched me so thoroughly on my way out! But I always won against them, because there was a huge line of people leaving, the very last one, everyone waiting, standing for hours while they get strip-searched at customs, everything. And then for me: “Is Heifetz here?” “Here.” “Come out.” I come out with my whole family, and we’re taken for a search out of turn. That way, I didn’t have to stand, or wait, or be nervous, or anything. They searched me. Most importantly, they searched my little girls very carefully—stripped them and ran all sorts of gadgets over their bodies.

V.V. Ovsienko: What kind?

M.R. Heifetz: A device started beeping, and the kids were delighted—it was such an amusement! He told me straight: “Where are the papers, hand them over now.” I would have said something, but I was no longer the little fool who discussed such topics, I said, “You search.”

Ya. Tynchenko: And how did you get them through?

M.R. Heifetz: I didnt, unfortunately, as I was just telling Vasyl. I found a person who was supposed to transport them, but that person—or rather, his man—got scared at the border and burned the manuscript. So I didn’t get the manuscript, and I restored it from memory in Jerusalem. Or rather, I didn’t restore it from memory, that’s not true. I simply wrote—it’s in _A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak_, the second volume of this three-volume set—it’s described there, that I this manuscript... I simply wrote that the manuscript was lost, and when Yevheniy Zakharov appeared and offered to publish this book for me, I thought that instead of restoring that manuscript, I just wrote a new story of the manuscript itself—the story of how it was lost, how it was burned and all the rest.

V.V. Ovsienko: I see. Let’s have your questions.

Ya. Tynchenko: “Easy Exile”—why was it easy?

M.R. Heifetz: My easy exile wasnt a coincidence. It arose from a certain debate with Vasyl Stus. As you know, Stus’s exile was very harsh, much harsher than the camp, than the zone. And he wrote to me about it—he wrote to me and to my wife. I write somewhere that he began a letter to Raya like this: “I am that same Vasyl who matchmade your daughter to my Mytryk.” He wrote me very good letters, it’s a shame they were lost, since they let me out without my papers. Letters with a detailed description of the transport, the exile, what he might expect. And I already understood: of course, I didnt want such an exile, I wanted to live a little and take care of my health. So, knowing that I was facing enemies and that an enemy can’t do anything good for you, an enemy must only do bad things to you—I walked around the zone, gathering informers—known informers—and telling them that, you know, I’ve written a book about the zone. And everythings fine, now I have a different task: now I need to get into a harsh exile, to make a good book about how people are tortured in exile. The main thing is for it to be harsh. I’m very afraid they might give me an easy exile, and all my literary plans will be ruined. And they gave me the easiest exile possible. Because the enemy, he...

Ya. Tynchenko: And where was the exile?

M.R. Heifetz: In Yermak, in the Pavlodar region.

Ya. Tynchenko: Kazakhstan?

M.R. Heifetz: Kazakhstan. First of all, it’s a good climate, sharply continental: a harsh winter, but a warm, hot summer. On the bank of the Irtysh River—you could swim. A good place, what can I say. My girls came to see me, my family, and the girls had such a summer that when they returned to Leningrad, people would come to my wife and say, “Listen, what a nice dacha you had! Tell us where it is, we’d love to go there for a vacation.” Indeed, it was all good: the place, my job was good—everything was good.

Ya. Tynchenko: What did you do for work?

M.R. Heifetz: And the job, you see? I arrived. The hardest thing in exile is the transport. The transport is a very difficult thing, a truly exhausting business. Vasyl can confirm. And Stus wrote to me about what the transport was like, the terrible transit prisons and all that. So I arrived, of course, very tired. I was dispatched on April 18, and I think it was on June 7 or 8, I don’t remember exactly, that I arrived at my destination. That’s 12 days in April, 31 days in May, and some more—all in all, I was in transit for over 50 days. Tired. You have to go to work right away. The worst day of my camp life was the day I was released. Because you’re let out of prison in an unfamiliar city. You dont have a kopek to your name, all your money is left in your camp account. You have to inform the camp where you are, and they’ll wire you the money. But with what money will I inform them where I am—I dont even have money for a postcard, not to mention that the postcard has to get there, the transfer has to go through. I cant inform my family where I am. I tried to place a collect call—they told me they dont know of such a service here.

And so—thats how it was for Vasyl—you are at the complete mercy of the authorities. They send you to a job, they send you to a dormitory, and you have to live there, and you know how Vasyl lived—the whole company there was criminal. They send you to whatever job they need, that is, one thats already equipped with informers from all sides and all that, and you have to do what they want.

V.V. Ovsienko: You know what the zeks did? They would buy stamped envelopes or just stamps, and at the post office, theyd make a deal to send a telegram for stamps. It was the only currency you could send a telegram with.

M.R. Heifetz: Maybe so, but actually, for the first time in my life, I humiliated myself—I asked them for something, I asked the policewoman in charge of me to send a telegram to my family at her own expense, telling them where I was, so they could wire money. Indeed, the money arrived the next day, I paid her back immediately, and that was that. The first time I used the services of the MVD.

But it was very hard at first, on the first day. You cant rent an apartment—you have no money. For the first night, I asked to be let back into the holding cell—where else was I to go?

But what happens next with work? Everything, I figured it out. As soon as I had money, I was more or less free, so I immediately submit an application to the city party committee. The application stated that I had arrived in Yermak not of my own free will, I didn’t decide this matter myself, so, since I didnt decide my own fate, it is the duty of the authorities to find me a job here I ask the district party committee to find me a job in the city of Yermak.

Whats the logic here? First: the city party committee knows Im doing the right thing. They are the authorities, and I am appealing to the authorities with a request to resolve a political issue. In principle, if I hadn’t written this application, it would have been a police matter, and no one would interfere in police affairs. But since I appealed to a political body with a request to resolve a political issue, from their point of view, I am acting correctly—I am appealing to those who are supposed to deal with it. This means they cannot refuse me.

Furthermore. The city party committee is not the police, its not used to resolving matters quickly. On the other hand, the police won’t bother me anymore: the matter is with the city committee, and its not their damn business to decide for the city party committee where I should work. In addition, I started going to various places, looking for jobs matching my diploma, to get a job as a person with higher education. Everywhere they told me: yes, we need people, but we need a recommendation. And I wrote to the city committee that I have a higher education, I have a diploma, and they wont hire me without your recommendation—I ask for your assistance. They were also flattered that I was asking for the assistance of the city party committee.

And so the secretary of the city party committee receives me—I described this in _A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak_. And I played this one pretty well. I’m talking to the secretary of the city party committee. He says, “What were you...” He was searching for the word: “What were you... taken in for?” I prompted him: “Removed from society?” He was delighted that I helped him. “Well. How can I put it? I wont lie—Ill tell you honestly: I believe Russia shouldnt interfere in other countries affairs. Thats what I was taken in for.” “Ah, you believe we dont need Cuba, we dont need Angola?” I can see that he thinks so himself, so I immediately become a good guy in his eyes. And here I press my advantage. I tell him: “No, I’m going to lower your opinion of me, citizen chief.” Hes immediately offended: “Why citizen—comrade chief!”

V.V. Ovsienko: He immediately became a comrade?

M.R. Heifetz: No, he didn’t know this—he just thought it was some kind of insult, that I didnt want to address him in a human way. I tell him: “Ill tell you honestly: I believe Russia has no business in Kazakhstan either. You see, I’m not some principled enemy of imperialism—I know that empires have played their role in the history of mankind, that they brought a lot of civilizational achievements to many colonies, in particular, to Kazakhstan, that they brought a lot of culture here. But it’s over—a new generation has grown up, the Kazakhs are cultured, you can now manage your own affairs. Why should Russia send its personnel, its people, and invest its money here? I walked around Yermak, I saw a huge ferroalloy plant—you’re not going to say this plant was built with funds from the republican budget, are you? The plant was built with funds from the budget, Russia invested its money in you. You had roads built here—that wasnt Kazakhstan either, was it? I understand that these are strategic roads—they werent built by Kazakhstan either? Why should Russia spend its money, its people, its cadres on you? People come here to you—why do they come from Moscow, from Leningrad? Because they are paid more here than in Moscow or Leningrad, otherwise they wouldnt stay. Why should Russia lose its resources on Kazakhstan? Live on your own, citizen chief, and stop fleecing Russia.”

I’m talking like some dissident, but I understand it’s like music to his ears—he dreams of living on his own, without Russian bosses over him! So he says, “Mikhail Ruvimovich, I won’t hide it from you: we knew you had arrived in our city. Our goal is for you to blend into the population of our city as inconspicuously as possible. Our conditions: you dont tell anyone why you were sent here. That you are a political exile, no one should know except you and me. And then we will help you. Go, find a job—we will support you.”

I leave him and go straight to the head of the city education department. I go in and say that I’m a teacher with a higher education and want to work in a school. “Higher education?” “Yes.” “Diploma?” “Yes.” “I dont have an apartment.” “I dont need an apartment.” “How many years of teaching experience?” I tell him how many I had—11 or 15, I dont remember. It was 1980—so, 14 years. He says, “Then I’ll send you to advanced training courses in Pavlodar.” “Okay, fine.” But Im thinking to myself: am I even allowed to go to Pavlodar from exile? Well, fine, I think, why should I argue? And I can’t explain it to him—I was just forbidden to at the city committee. He tells the woman sitting opposite him: “Write him down in the order. This is your future director,” he explains. But, apparently, he had also been told something, and suddenly he said, “And why do you have such a big gap in your work experience?” “Well, alright, citizen chief, I’ll tell you, although I’m not allowed to: I am a political exile. But I didnt just come to you out of the blue—I came from the city party committee. They told me they would support me there. I had a meeting with Kekembetov.” He turns to her and says, “Write him into the order.” So I was enlisted as a secondary school teacher. Unlike Vasyl, who was sent to the mines, I got a job in my field, if you please.

It’s another matter that I never did work in my specialty, because just at that time the trial of Alik Ginzburg was taking place, and I wrote to his wife Arina, that, Arina, if any statements are needed in Aliks defense or anything else—the Solzhenitsyn Fund had helped my family all those years—then I give you the right: use my signature on any documents as you wish. Well, of course, after that they forbade me from working in my specialty—I had, as it were, violated my good relations with the authorities.

What else was I counting on? The city party committee would be finding me a job. The city party committee is a nomenklatura organization, they wouldnt place me as a worker at a fish factory, say, cleaning fish—they don’t have such positions. The police could put me there, but the city party committee has its own nomenklatura, they would look for a position. Besides, that position would have to be equipped—with an informer nearby and all that. The city party committee is a bureaucratic structure, it doesn’t act quickly.

Ya. Tynchenko: May I ask you the questions I have?

M.R. Heifetz: Yes.

Ya. Tynchenko: Basically, as I understand it, you were imprisoned for the article about Brodsky?

M.R. Heifetz: Yes.

Ya. Tynchenko: What was your relationship with Brodsky like at the time, how well did you know him? And why the absurdity of imprisoning you for an article that only a few people had seen?

M.R. Heifetz: Actually, my relationship with Brodsky was quite distant. I wasnt his friend—I was, so to speak, an acquaintance, or more precisely, an admirer. Because now we all seem to be of the same age, but I was six years older than Brodsky, and to him, I was from a different generation, I was an “old man.” I was hanging around the editorial office of _Zvezda_ back then and getting published. And there was this magnificent organizer of literary talent, a journalist named Vladimir Travinsky, who died very young. He introduced me to literally everyone interesting I later got to know. In particular, he brought Brodskys poems. I have a feeling they were autographs. I read them and immediately said that this was a great poet, I fell in love with his work very deeply right away. And so I became his admirer.

Ya. Tynchenko: And were the poems published?

M.R. Heifetz: No, Brodsky was generally not published in the —they were samizdat poems.

Ya. Tynchenko: So he didnt bring them as a _Zvezda_ staff member?

M.R. Heifetz: No, just like that. There were always people circling around him.

Ya. Tynchenko: Yes, I see.

M.R. Heifetz: No, there wasn’t even a thought that they could be published: these were poems without any mention of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin—who would publish them? But I understood right away. There were even some childish poems, but they also struck me. I still remember a poem that Brodsky never published anywhere—a sort of childrens poem, but I liked it so much that I still remember it:

Прощай, позабудь и не обессудь,

А письма сожги, как мост.

Да будет мужественным твой путь,

Да будет он прям и прост!

Да будет во мгле для тебя гореть

Зведная мишура!

Да будет надежда ладони греть

У твоего костра!

Да будет жесток и прекрасен бой,

Гремящий в твоей груди!

Я счастлив за тех, которым с тобой,

Может быть, по пути.

As you can see, its a completely childish poem of some sort, but it was immediately... “and the letters—burn them like a bridge”—completely unusual comparisons, unfamiliar to us. And an unfamiliar attitude—usually a lover who is parting either curses his beloved or hopes for a reunion, i.e., he only talks about himself, but here “I am happy for those who might be on the path with you.” He is thinking about her and her future path. That is, he was immediately not like all the other poets, although it was clear that it was a childish poem.

And I fell deeply in love with his poems, but I met with him rarely—I was afraid of him.

Ya. Tynchenko: And when did you first meet him?

M.R. Heifetz: Around that time, he must have been about 20, I think. It was probably 1960. I was a bit afraid of him—I have to tell you, I somehow immediately understood that this was a great man, a great personality. And I have a complex—I’m afraid of meeting famous people. Im afraid because I have the feeling that when someone approaches them, they start thinking: what does this person want from me? And I have never needed anything from anyone. And so, fearing being misunderstood, I... Now if I was invited—thats another matter, then I would come with pleasure. But to impose myself on someone for a meeting, I was afraid. And I was a bit afraid of Joseph because I felt an inner tension and a certain aloofness. I just really loved his poems and immediately understood that he was a great man and a great poet.

And there was one situation when, as it seems to me, I frightened him away. My first film came out then at Lennauchfilm, for which I was the screenwriter, naturally—_Nikolai Kibalchich_, about the Narodnaya Volya members. That was my theme back then—the Narodniks, Narodnaya Volya, I was engaged in that. The film received good press, a first-category rating, and so on, and I was kind of a big shot at Lennauchfilm.

And so my editor, a certain Viktor Ternarsky, invites me to the studio and says: “Misha, there’s an old veteran director here, he says he’s tired of working with old screenwriters—he wants to work with new names. And he wants you to tell him about interesting people in Leningrad with whom one could work.” I meet with this old man, and I start telling him that so-and-so is talented and working on this, so-and-so is talented and working on that. And I finish each time with: address, phone number, address, and phone number. And at the very end, I say: “But the most talented person in Leningrad today is Joseph Brodsky. If you managed to help him, you would be doing a holy deed. Because the guy didn’t even finish high school, you understand, what its like—a Jewish family, the boy didn’t even finish high school, doesn’t want to think about college, they consider him a lost cause, a good-for-nothing kid, a prodigal son. But the man is incredibly talented. If you could manage to bring him to the studio in some capacity, it would be a sign to his family that everything is okay with him. It would help him a lot.” He says: “Are you sure about this?” I say: “Completely sure.” He says: “You know what—you dont need to give me his address and phone number. The thing is, he’s my nephew. And you have indeed characterized the situation in our family perfectly—indeed, we thought we had a lost child, a prodigal son. And if a man like you talks about him like that, then perhaps we really did not appreciate our Joseph. Well,” he says, “all right.”

We parted, and I completely forgot this story. And I only noticed that Joseph began to distance himself from me a bit, you can always feel these things. But I am also proud and dont bother people when Im not needed. And only many years later, when I came across that five-volume edition, I saw that text in there, the screenplay for the film _The Gardens of Pavlovsk_ or something like that. Moreover, it was described in the commentaries (its a collection of works with commentaries, as is proper), it was written there that Brodsky wrote the text, the film was shot, the film received a first-category rating and was recognized as outstanding in Moscow at the head office, but on one condition: change the text. What talented people there were, how they felt that this wasn’t one of them! After all, they didnt know him, nobody knew Joseph back then, to them it was a name that said nothing. They sensed it was something alien. Some Pavlovsk Park—whats in there, no politics, nothing. They sensed it was talented, and they didnt need it.

Ya. Tynchenko: So, essentially, before your article appeared, you had known each other for almost 13 years?

M.R. Heifetz: Yes. And here’s something else—I have to say, I have a certain mystical notion about why I ended up in prison. The thing is, in reality, I am a person—as I see it now, though I didn’t understand it before—who is, it seems, physiologically devoid of the feeling of fear. I dont have it, and I dont say this as a compliment to myself, but rather as a flaw, because it means I have no sense of danger.

Twice in my life I chickened out. The first time was when Joseph was imprisoned for the first time—sometime in March 1963, I think, or April was his trial, and I had gotten married in February. I love my wife very much, and back then, even more so, I was a newlywed, I was absolutely crazy about her. I understood that if I went to Joseph’s trial, I wouldnt return from that trial—I didnt know what would happen to Joseph, but I would certainly end up there. So I didnt go to Josephs trial, and I knew for a fact that I had chickened out. Although no one even noticed I wasn’t there—I wasn’t a close friend, I was one of many acquaintances. Big deal—one of the acquaintances didnt come to the trial, whats the problem. Thats the first thing.

And the second time I chickened out, of course, was in 1968, when troops were sent into Czechoslovakia. Of course, I said out loud everywhere and to everyone what I thought about it—I wasnt shy about that. But a normal person, of course, should have done what those who went to the Lobnoye Mesto with an open public protest did. I didnt do that and felt it as a certain cowardice of mine.

And the fact that I chickened out twice—because of Brodsky and because of Czechoslovakia—was in some way compensated for in this article of mine. What I didnt do then, I did now. And I received the reward I should have received for it back then—I received it this time and sort of settled my score with fate.

So we had known each other for a long time, but we werent very close. And I wrote the article not because he was an acquaintance, but because I already understood his role and significance. I must tell you that when he was exiled, we were sure that Brodsky the poet was finished. I mean, how can a Russian poet exist in the West, when theres no element of the language, no readers? Because a poet is, after all, a poet, not a publicist. There must be people who understand all the cultural associations—and who in the West will understand all the subtleties of poetic associations? So that’s it, the poet was ruined. And we, in fact, when we were collecting his works, were working for eternity—we thought that, well, we will be gone, but this will remain from our generation. And I, in fact, was working for eternity: you know, there was a man from our generation who told posterity who we were and what could have become of us if we hadn’t been locked in this cage.

Ya. Tynchenko: And what was this project of a samizdat collection of Brodskys works, for which you wrote your article?

M.R. Heifetz: It came about like this. Brodsky was exiled without a single line of his work. He, like me when I was leaving, was also exiled without a single line. And we understood that everything would be lost, the poems would be lost. And since we understood that we were dealing with a great poet, we had to preserve him for the future. And so a group of people, led by Vladimir Maramzin, a Leningrad prose writer, decided to save it. They went to all of Brodsky’s acquaintances who had autographs and collected them. And from them, they found out who else had them—people are connected to each other. And indeed, they collected practically everything. I was told that now, in all collections of Brodsky’s works, Brodsky himself relies on that five-volume set. Because all the variants were collected, all the commentaries deciphered, i.e., to whom it was dedicated, on what date and for what occasion—a full academic commentary was made. This was for the future, and in samizdat. Well, a Regimer makes four copies—and thats it, that’s enough. Five copies.

Ya. Tynchenko: Five copies, with your article?

M.R. Heifetz: No. No one would take on the article. And, as Maramzin told me, not because they were afraid, but because they were afraid of the responsibility. Indeed, we had no idea that Joseph was already known seriously abroad. We knew that he sent his poems there and that they were published—that much we had heard. But that he had gained such fame, that he wasnt just a poet whose poems we passed on, but that Auden, the great English poet, had taken an interest in him, that he had already agreed to write an introduction to a collection of Brodsky’s work—we knew nothing of this. For us, he was a samizdat poet, our guy in our circle, whom we appreciated and knew, and no one else knew. And we just wanted to preserve this for the future. But at the same time, everyone understood that it was a major phenomenon, and no one took it on. And I, out of my light-mindedness and my audacity, which I apparently have, when they offered... They didnt offer, actually—Maramzin said that no one was taking it on, and looked at me so expectantly. And I said, “Yes, I’ll take it. Ill do it.”

And I wrote the article, brought it to Maramzin. He read it and said, “Mishka, but they’ll jail everyone for this. A cultural enterprise will be ruined! Rewrite it.” So I started to rewrite it and... Actually, I won’t lie to you—I didnt rewrite it. I reread it, started thinking about how and what, but nothing was working out. I wrote it as best I could. And then I started showing the article to acquaintances. Well, a dual purpose. Of course, the organs were right about one thing: that I was showing it not only to get advice. Formally, it all looked exactly like that: look, Maramzin refused to publish it, says there’s too much politics—see what can be done here. But, of course, in my heart, I understand that I also wanted to boast that I had written an article I won’t lie about it now—why would I. But I didnt end up doing anything with it.

And suddenly I was told that Maramzin had commissioned another article—apparently, having lost hope that I would do anything, he commissioned another, purely literary-critical, article.

Ya. Tynchenko: From you?

M.R. Heifetz: No, no, from another person—I forgot his name, a Leningrad poet. And he wrote it for him. And among those I showed it to was Voskoboynikov, and so it became known to the organs. They realized they had material. But here, the main thing wasnt about me—here I come to the answer to your question. The thing is, among those I showed the article to was Yefim Grigorievich Etkind—a professor, a famous literary scholar, who liked my article so much that he didnt just express his opinion, but wrote a review, a professorial review. Clearly, I was provoking him to write his own article about Brodsky, I understand that. Rereading it now, I understood it. And I couldn’t resist—I called Maramzin. After all, people are people—it also stung me a little that my work had been rejected. I called Maramzin and told him: “Volodya, Masha’s father read the article, and he liked it!”

And Maramzins phone at that time was apparently already bugged, and they already knew that Etkind had read the article and liked it. And Etkind—now he was a very valuable catch! Because the Solzhenitsyn case with _The Gulag Archipelago_ had just happened, and Etkind had helped, he had found a typist for Solzhenitsyn, the manuscript was passed to the typist through him, and he himself took the manuscript back to Solzhenitsyn, i.e., he participated in this affair. And they didnt imprison Solzhenitsyn—they didnt imprison that bastard, but they wanted to imprison all those who helped him. And suddenly they get such a set-up! They wanted to imprison me for my article, and Etkind was going down for them as... “your intellectual co-author,” as they called it.

V.V. Ovsienko: Interesting!

M.R. Heifetz: And that’s why this case was given such great importance. They had been watching me for many years by then, but that’s a separate story, I wont tell it.

Ya. Tynchenko: Alright. One more of my mandatory questions: while you were already in Israel, did you have any contact with Brodsky?

M.R. Heifetz: You know, once. That is, I had some phone numbers, and in 1988 I was in America, I came to New York, and called Joseph. He says, “Misha, Im so glad you came, but we cant meet—youve caught me on my way out. I’m leaving home—Im working, and I work not in New York, but at Amherst University, up north. Im leaving today to give lectures, right now. You caught me by a miracle.” Well, no means no, nothing came of it. It happens, I didnt warn him that I was coming.

And then I went north to a university. I had friends living there—there was Lyosha Losev at Dartmouth University, and Yuz Aleshkovsky at Wesleyan University [name garbled]. And so Im sitting with Yuz, and he also asks me, “Did you see Joseph?” I say no. “Oh, you have to see him!” Yuz is a very decisive, energetic person, he immediately dials a number: “Joseph, I have Misha sitting here. Can we come over to your place this evening?” “Of course, with pleasure.” He tells me, “I have a car—Ill do this for you, you have to see Joseph!” We got in the car, it was over an hour’s drive to that university from Yuz’s place. And we spent the evening.

What do I remember from that evening? I remember two moments. First, Joseph settled the score with me for my unsolicited interference in his life with that screenplay. He asked me, “Misha, did you bring anything, any manuscript, to America?” I say I did—it was that same _A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak_. He says, “Dont you want to offer it to a publisher?” “Why not.” “To my publisher, I’ll give a recommendation.” Thats how he settled the score with me, and that was it, he was satisfied. I had the feeling that Joseph belonged to the kind of people who disliked those who did them favors—there is such a complex, I call it the “Wagner complex.” Richard Wagner, as is known, painfully disliked, hated those people who did him favors. Apparently, it seemed to him that they were somehow humiliating him with patronage, help of some kind, etc.

Ya. Tynchenko: Are you familiar with this last, supposedly last, poem of Brodsky about Ukraine? We now have...

M.R. Heifetz: No, I havent read it, I dont even know what you’re talking about.

V.V. Ovsienko: I don’t know the text, but there’s something insulting towards Ukraine and even, you know, a sort of disdain, that, you know, those khokhols want independence—something like that.

M.R. Heifetz: Well, he wrote something stupid.

Ya. Tynchenko: Sounds like it, yes?

M.R. Heifetz: I dont know, I won’t lie. I simply don’t know. I’ll tell you honestly: the later Brodsky is an alien poet to me. That’s not my poetry. I understand: Brodsky wanted to a kind of, how can I say it, an English graft onto Russian poetry, that is, a non-emotional poetry, a poetry of pure logic, of pure reflection. That’s how, in any case, all modern English poetry is constructed, American too, and he wanted to make such a graft onto Russian poetry, which actually grew out of French poetry, i.e., emotional, passionate poetry and so on. I understand that this is some new word, a new direction, but its not close to me. I even understand it, but its not close to me. In the end, poetry should, perhaps, be consonant with you or not. I understand that this is the work of a master, over which I must work—but I dont want to work on poetry, I want to feel it.

As for Brodsky’s “imperialness”—thats also very strange. He is, indeed, an imperial poet, and not a Russian-imperial one, but an imperial poet in general. At the same time, it’s very interesting: he is a poet of empire in any case, even if he curses it, even if he hates it, like the Roman Empire. He is a poet of empire—that is his domain, his sphere. Whether he likes it or not, he moves in that circle.

I think thats why, for example, he didn’t go to Israel. The second thing we talked about then—I was strongly inviting him to Israel.

Ya. Tynchenko: This was in 1988?

M.R. Heifetz: In 1988, yes. That was our meeting, and I was saying (I didnt understand his situation, I was a foolish man): “Joseph, just for a ticket—theres a room, theres a refrigerator, Ill feed you. Come on—my God, youll see such a country!” He told me, “Misha, Im not a free man—you see, I work in the winter, and all academic year Im giving lectures. And in the summer its hot at your place, and I have a bad heart, Im afraid.” I understood he wasn’t telling the truth, but you can’t argue with that—the man is afraid, and he’s working. In fact, I think he didnt go to Israel because he was afraid of some kind of explosion, one that would undermine his imperial detachment.

Ya. Tynchenko: So, he was afraid of being Jewish, in other words?

M.R. Heifetz: I wouldnt say he was afraid of being Jewish. He was afraid of being, how to put it more precisely, a rooted person—I would say that. After all, imperial culture is always supranational, it always consists of flows. Moreover, it can be hostile to these flows. For example, Im convinced that Russian imperial culture and ethnic Russian culture are hostile to each other. For instance, Yesenin is an ethnic Russian poet, and Mandelstam is a Russian imperial poet, Koltsov is an ethnic Russian poet, and Pushkin is a Russian imperial poet. And these are different cultures. Imperial culture consists of all the streams that flow into it from all the peoples that are part of the empire. And Joseph was, of course, an imperial poet, and imperial in the sense that while being part of Russian culture, he was simultaneously pouring into it a stream of English and American poetry, and Black poetry in English. He was truly making these grafts. A certain rootedness in the local culture—and at the same time, I think, he understood the power of the local—and he was afraid. This is my personal opinion, my personal assessment—perhaps I am mistaken.

Ya. Tynchenko: You saw him for the last time in 1988—when did you last hear from him?

M.R. Heifetz: When I worked at the newspaper, I called him several times at the newspapers request. And I did an interview with him. He always treated me very friendly, to be honest, i.e., never refused anything, always gave any permissions, was very simple in his manner, actually, which was very pleasant—after all, a Nobel laureate could have gotten a big head. But there was nothing of the sort—he was the same simple, good guy I knew in Piter. The last conversation was when we heard a rumor that he had published some historical essay in New York—about Sidney Reilly or something like that, or about Savinkov. And I asked him for permission to take that text, translate it into Russian and publish it. He said, “Well, find it yourself—I give you permission.” I looked through the _New Yorker_ that we had, and didn’t find it. And in fact, by that time my attitude towards the newspaper was already quite cool, and I didnt want to make a special effort, to call him again, to find out again—they could do without it.

Ya. Tynchenko: This was _Vesti_?

M.R. Heifetz: _Vesti_, yes.

Ya. Tynchenko: Are you still there? What other newspapers do you contribute to there?

M.R. Heifetz: I am a contributor—there is a newspaper there called _Russkiy Izrailtyanin_ [The Russian Israeli]. This newspaper belongs to _Moskovsky Komsomolets_. They bought this newspaper, they bought a controlling stake. And I contribute to it, it’s a weekly, a bit more literary and more Russophone, I would say. The difference from _Vesti_ and any other newspaper is that they try to be a purely Hebrew, local newspaper, a Jewish newspaper, if you will. And all the others—I am not a supporter of this principle—readily reprint from Moscow and Leningrad newspapers.

Ya. Tynchenko: We know all that very well. [Dictaphone is turned off].

M.R. Heifetz: _A Shot from Hell_—that’s about the Narodnik Karakozov, who shot at Alexander II from the Summer Garden, and “Hell” was the name of his organization. So _A Shot from Hell_ is a very curious story, truly amazing, in fact. But it’s a long story to tell. I wrote these two novellas. I was then working on a novella about Nechaev, I had started, but I had only just begun. And I saw that nothing was coming out, it wasnt flowing at all. For four years I lived a very strange life—I would write a novella, a play, a screenplay, deliver it to the client, under contract. They would pay me a 100% fee—and nothing went anywhere. I lived like that for four years. I couldnt understand what was going on, what kind of nonsense this was. Being fed at the expense of the workers and peasants.

And then I decided to sort of dodge around [several words unintelligible] were forbidden. I then wrote, on the one hand, a novella from the era of Peter I, its new title is _The Passion of Menshikov: A Chronicle of Love and Power_. Its the story of Prince Menshikovs daughter. This is also a very amusing story, I dug it up in the archives. I dont know if its true or not, but the plot itself was such that it was impossible to refuse. Menshikovs eldest daughter, Maria, whom he wanted to marry off to Tsar Peter II, had a lover—it was the eldest son of the Dolgoruky princes, Fyodor. And they decided to flee abroad. The father caught them, put the guy in Shlisselburg fortress and told his daughter: “The very day you marry the Tsar, your beloved will be released from prison.”

What I dug up—it turns out, according to local legends, excavations, and so on, Fyodor fled to Beryozov, married her there, and she died in childbirth, giving birth to his twins. And he, according to local legends, died on her grave a month later. Its a pure “Romeo and Juliet” in the Russian tradition, i.e., searches, arrests, Siberia, exile, a secret marriage and all that. That’s the kind of novella I wrote—it didn’t work out.

Then I started writing about Alexander Ulyanov—the Lenin theme. Because the guy turned out to be exceptionally interesting when I started to study him seriously. But that was completely going nowhere, because, for example, I found a phrase he said about his brother Volodya: “Volodya is a very capable person, but we have nothing in common.” A very curious story, this one with Alexander Ulyanov, it’s a long story.

Ya. Tynchenko: And did you publish it?

M.R. Heifetz: No, no, it went nowhere!

Ya. Tynchenko: And later?

M.R. Heifetz: No, it was all lost there. I managed to publish only one chapter in full—it was a chapter called “The Black Cabinet,” about how postal censorship works, how they open letters, what the technique of all this is. The whole organization was exposed because one of the members wrote openly in a letter what they were going to do. The letter was opened, and they were caught at the last moment, they had already gone out for the assassination attempt, and at that moment the information came through, and they were detained on the street. If they had been a day late—and perhaps they would have killed Alexander III. But, you see, this technique of opening letters in postal censorship—it hasn’t changed. Thats what I was writing then, and I was arrested with that.

Then came the camp books, because I promised the KGB guys a book for every year of my sentence. I fulfilled my promise: _Place and Time_ for the first year, _Ukrainian Silhouettes_ for the second year, _The Prisoner-of-War Secretary_ for the third year, _A Journey from Dubrovlag to Yermak_ for the fourth. And for exile—I figured, honestly, one day should count for three, as is proper—_The Russian Field_. I wrote five books. I considered that I had paid my debt, I promised you—I kept my word, I am an honest man, you dont interest me anymore.

V.V. Ovsienko: Interesting, and were the KGB agents delighted when they found out that there was also something written about them in there?

M.R. Heifetz: Well, that I dont know. It was such a wall—I tried to break through to the GB. Usually, they summon everyone for a conversation before sending them abroad, but with me it was the opposite—I tried to break through to them, and they already understood that I wanted to describe them, and it was such a wall! Everyone had either left, or quit, or gone on vacation, nobody was there.

Ya. Tynchenko: Before your departure?

M.R. Heifetz: Before my departure, yes. I called them on all phones, tried to meet, to talk, to sum things up—no way! Thats how it was. And a deathly silence to this day. They understood they had lost, and they don’t like to lose.

Then I wrote a book about Israel, called _Looking from Jerusalem_. Of course, I was parodying “Looking from London”—the BBC broadcasts. It seemed interesting to me to show how Israel looks, on the one hand, through the eyes of a person who came from Russia, and on the other hand, a person who has already lived there for quite a long time and understands some things that outsiders dont understand. Seeing this country from the inside, as it were, but also from the outside. It was quite successful, all copies were already sold out, and they were still looking for more.

Next I wrote the book _The Regicide of 1918_—that’s a kind of unfortunate child of mine, I invested a lot in it. The thing is, I came across the materials of the investigative case—they are stored in America—and I tried to reconstruct the history of that massacre based on them, but not only that. In fact, I was mainly interested in the Jewish situation in the revolution—how it happened that Jews went with the Bolsheviks. Actually, the book is really about that. I finished it in 1991, and then the putsch happened—and everyone completely lost interest in history, of any kind, for 2-3 years Russians were only concerned with the present, and what happened with the tsar—no one was interested in that anymore. A few years later interest revived, but the book was already... Radzinsky had already come out, the real materials they found in their archives had already appeared. Of course, I am proud that everything I deduced from the investigative case, relying on my experience as a zek—all turned out to be correct: all the facts I deduced were confirmed by documents. But, of course, the book became outdated, because why would anyone need my hypotheses and conjectures when there are already documents. Well, it seemed interesting to me because... You know, I’ll say this: 11 people were shot, among them was one Jew, Yurovsky. But everyone knows that Jews killed the royal family—the other ten are not counted at all, they as if dont exist. Moreover, Yurovsky was there because he was baptized. I’m saying I have no doubt that if the tsar were being shot in Kyiv—all the Jews would have rushed in, there would have been no others. But in Yekaterinburg, there were simply no Jews, it was a city outside the Pale of Settlement and not even a large city—a district center of the Perm province. They just werent there—so they managed without them, for Gods sake.

And why did the Jews get into the [unintelligible]? Because the investigation was led by a man who was given an directive: the Russian people did not participate in this vile deed. The minister said this, and he had to find non-Russian people, that was the directive of the investigation. He could find Austrians, he could find Hungarians, they looked for everyone, but above all, he looked for Jews. Therefore, of all the executioners, only Yurovsky is known to everyone, although in fact, not only was he a baptized Jew, but he was also a believer. A very amusing figure—he was a religious man.

Ya. Tynchenko: Returning once more to your expulsion...

M.R. Heifetz: Exile?

Ya. Tynchenko: No, your expulsion from the ...

M.R. Heifetz: That was a deportation.

Ya. Tynchenko: And couldnt they have just left you in the ? Why did they have to deport you?

M.R. Heifetz: Of course, they could have. Didnt I tell you Im clever? I went around to the informers and said that the one thing I dont want is deportation: what would I, a Russian writer, do in Israel? My life would be ruined, I’m only afraid of one thing—that they might deport me. No, really, it’s not hard to deal with them once you understand that they are the enemy. The minute you know they are the enemy, that they will do nothing good for you, that the enemy will only do bad things to you, it becomes very easy to play. “Im afraid—what will I do, my life will be over there, where will I go, to whom?.. By education, Im a teacher of Russian language and literature, my whole life Ive been involved with Russian literature—what am I, who am I?” “A-ha-ha, hes afraid? Then well kick him out!”

Ya. Tynchenko: By the way, did you try to send invitations to many people from Israel?

M.R. Heifetz: I recently found a piece of paper with a long list of names—I had forgotten myself. At some point, in order to go to that... forgot what the organization is called, something like Sokhnut, the OVIR over there, so to speak... I compiled a list for myself [unintelligible].

Ya. Tynchenko: And how did Sokhnut react to the fact that there were practically no Jews on the list?

M.R. Heifetz: Well, I made things up. In the end, if you know how to deceive the Soviet government, then deceiving Jews...

Ya. Tynchenko: So your attempts were never successful?

M.R. Heifetz: No, they were, very many people left.

Ya. Tynchenko: And who did you get out?

M.R. Heifetz: I’ve forgotten the names. Some family of religious people, like sectarians, left from somewhere in Siberia—such strong, healthy guys, they sent me a photo later—real titans! I was terribly pleased that they got out. Sometimes I couldnt. For instance, I didnt manage to get Viktor Ivanovich Beskrovnykh... Or Vail...

V.V. Ovsienko: Petro Saranchuk didnt make it either.

M.R. Heifetz: Yes, Saranchuk didnt make it, no way. I went to Kuznetsov to ask. He says, “Misha, well, you do something, and Ill support it.” I started looking for ways, I had to come up with something. And I ran out of time—he was already taken...

V.V. Ovsienko: Please, about the book _The Trial of Jesus_…

M.R. Heifetz: Then I wrote the book _The Trial of Jesus: Jewish Versions and Hypotheses_. It was a very interesting work for me, because in fact I was looking at this case through the eyes of a zek. That is, my zek experience helped me to understand the subtleties of the behavior of both Jesus and his judges, and his accusers, which were previously completely incomprehensible and, perhaps, incomprehensible to other people who look at this case purely legally, even to legal specialists. We have a special view—we know, and then these are familiar themes for us, because they demand of us the same thing as from him—they demanded repentance from us. And he refused to repent. And all of us, in fact, could well have received much shorter sentences if we had agreed to repent. This was interesting to me. Of course, the impetus here was the millennium, and in fact it was the idea of a long-held plan of mine. It was conceived as a television series, with a table, and people of different religions sitting around it, with case files in front of them. They open a file—a case, there’s some phrase from the Gospel. And immediately on screen, because all the Gospels have been filmed—they show this episode, and people start to discuss how it looks from the perspective of different religions [unintelligible]. They reach a verdict, and then it goes to the viewer, and the viewer is the jury. These are the lawyers, and the viewers are the jurors. But the TV series didnt happen, a book did.

And now Im going to write a new book, it will be called _Hannah Arendt for Dummies_.

V.V. Ovsienko: What is that?

M.R. Heifetz: There is such a female philosopher in the West—Hannah Arendt. She is little known in Russia for one simple reason—back in 1950 she published a book called _The Origins of Totalitarianism_, where she proved that structurally, Nazism and Communism are one and the same. And not by criticizing or denouncing, but simply by identifying the common structures, the common properties of one regime or the other. Therefore, they didn’t talk about her in Russia because under no circumstances did they want to admit this kinship, naturally. But in the West, she is, generally, a cult figure—everyone knows her, but few read her, because she is a German philosopher. She was the favorite student of Jaspers and the lover of Heidegger. She writes as German philosophers are supposed to, that is, obscurely and turgidly. Reading each sentence—you have to wade through it... Like reading Hegel, like reading Kant. That is, it’s impossible to read.

In the West, people are not used to reading such books. It is we, raised in the Marxist-Leninist school, who can wade through all that. But, in fact, she is an unusually interesting philosopher, very important for our time, because she wonderfully understood the essence of the totalitarian system, but not only that—the essence of the processes that are taking place in humanity in the 20th century. Almost no one has read it in the West because its written in a complex way, and in Russia because she was simply stubbornly silenced. And I read her, and it seemed to me that this is a very important discovery for all of humanity, in fact, which they just dont know because it is written too complexly. In its time, in the 18th century, everyone read Hegel, but now no one would read Hegel. And Hannah Arendt writes in this spirit of classical German philosophy [unintelligible]. I decided to present her thoughts in such a way that any normal person could read and appreciate them. Hence the title, _Hannah Arendt for Dummies_.

V.V. Ovsienko: Good, we’ll read it if it comes out.

M.R. Heifetz: I will definitely write it next year.

Listened to and proofread by Vasyl Ovsiienko on January 31 – February 1, 2010. Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.

In the photo by V. Ovsiienko: Yaroslav Tynchenko, Vasyl Ovsiienko and Mykhailo Heifetz, December 9, 2000.