The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Polytechnic Institute and journalism majors form the University of Irkutsk. It was the same picture—an absence of enthusiasm and interests. They got together to drink, tell the latest jokes and leave—no, crawl away. Young women drinking on an equal footing with the men was especially unsightly. Obviously, there were exceptions. There were students at the institute who had a passion for music, books, and sports. Maybe this was the case only in Siberia but it seems to me that only in Moscow, Leningrad, and some other large cities was the youth different from that of Irkutsk. Upon graduating from the institutes, people became better educated but not better mannered. This was particularly applicable to those graduating from the higher educational institutions of Irkutsk.

So passed my two years of voluntary Siberian exile. I was torn away from all the events occurring in Moscow. I learned of them through telephone conversations, occasionally over the radio. Only the radio station Voice of America was heard in Irkutsk. Many members of the local intelligentsia listened to it. They spoke of what they heard in whispers or behind closed doors. If one listens to foreign radio broadcasts, he styles himself a freethinker.

Irkutsk Jews (and there are many Jews in Siberia) viewed our decision to leave the USSR with surprise and sometimes with negativity. Even though there were people in Irkutsk who would have liked to go to Israel, they would never mention this aloud for fear of losing their job and means of livelihood. They would say: it’s nice for you in Moscow; there are many of you; there are foreign correspondents around; and you organize demonstrations. What do we have? The taiga is the law, the bear is the prosecutor (Siberian proverb). Even complaints to courts of appeal in Moscow never get there. On several occasions I was asked to mail letters in Moscow in order to avoid the district censorship. People were afraid of becoming victims of the arbitrariness of local rulers.

I experienced this arbitrariness myself. During the winter, evidently, when there aren’t many foreign tourists in Irkutsk, there weren’t too many people whom the local KGB could spy on. I noticed that I was being tailed in October of 1973 during an exhibition in Irkutsk titled “Tourism and Relaxation in the USA.”

There was a young American woman of Jewish heritage at the exhibition— A.W. While in Moscow, she met with activists of the Jewish movement and knew our family. She wore a large six-pointed star which drew the attention of local Jews, but especially the KGB. When I first arrived in Irkutsk with a Star of David around my neck, my relatives and acquaintances begged me to remove it. To wear such an item in Siberia was considered very dangerous. My mother was visiting me that October and together we went to see the

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Chapter Thirty-Two

American exhibition and talked to her. She visited one of our friends several times. At each meeting, we sensed that we were being watched. Several days after attending the exhibition, a man came to our relatives’ residence, where we were then living, and presented the credentials of a KGB officer. He asked if we lived there. He then asked for our last names and addresses in Moscow and where I was studying. My frightened relatives did not know what to think. The agent came several times but could not catch us at home. Once he waited for a long time, telling us he wanted to talk. Unable to wait that long, he left and returned no more. Half a year later, I found out that there was a move to accuse me of forming, allegedly at my father’s instigation, a Zionist organization and of meeting with an American spy. In the city there was talk that one of the guides was a spy, but at the institute this subject was not discussed with me.

However, provocations were attempted. A young man named Tatarinov, who introduced himself as a student, came to our apartment in Moscow during vacation. He asked if he could leave some ancient icons for two days. Then in Irkutsk, he asked me to sell a watch, jeans, a record player, and other items. He offered me incredible sums of money. I immediately understood the approach used by the luckless KGB employee—the attempt was to build a case of black marketeering against me. Toward the end, three KGB agents followed me. They tailed me constantly by car and waited near my home. I thought they might provoke me into a fight. One never left the apartment building. The people “guarding me” rang the doorbell, and would burst into the apartment.