by Israel Kipen
Those of us who held the Russian visas were advised by the Intourist office that we would have to pay for our tickets in American dollars at the exchange rate of five roubles to the dollar. While the possession of, and dealing in, United States currency was officially forbidden, the fact did not deter the Intourist agency from capitalising on its benevolent gesture, taking into account that some 2000 Polish refugees were estimated to have obtained the requisite visa and that the cost of passage across Russia amounted to the equivalent of U.S. $275 – Intourist thereby pumping a half million American dollars out of private hands into its coffers. The cost of the ticket left me almost without funds, but that was a secondary consideration and I paid the money very cheerfully indeed.
The set date for departure was early February 1941.
6
Russia and Japan
The train was due to leave Vilna at four o’clock in the afternoon. Our immediate destination was Moscow via Minsk. Most passengers came to the station early. We had to undergo customs inspection as our nearest stop would be within Russia proper. Where most customary inspections revolved around a search for dutiable items, here every item of personal belonging was thoroughly examined. I was calm throughout the procedure, having no reason for apprehension. But when I saw the official get hold of a bundle of personal papers, looking at each piece separately, I became afraid. I realised suddenly that I was in grave danger, for the next document in his hands was an extract of my birth certificate obtained shortly before from the Bialystok municipal records by post and which was in Russian with the Soviet sickle and hammer insignia on it instead of being in the original Polish. That document could well have made me appear a Russian citizen. Terrified, I watched the official as he took the green-grey paper folded in four and partly unfolded it, then, after momentary hesitation, put it down again. I had slipped out of danger and passed the rest of the inspection without a hitch. I then proceeded to the train, which was already there, settled into the coupe and, with plenty of time on hand, awaited the departure. I used the time available to me for reflection. I walked out into the Pullman carriage corridor and looked through the window at the Vilna railway station. On the one hand – I thought – Father was imprisoned somewhere not far from there; on the other, my forthcoming journey would take me through a region not far from where Mother, my brothers and my sister presently found themselves in circumstances beyond my imagination. The realisation that I was about to leave Europe for good brought back images of happier times and a nostalgia for a world that was at that very moment undergoing destruction. I was farewelling not only a place but a whole way of life. Turning away, I saw a fellow passenger nearby and was moved to say, “Take a good look at it all for there will not be a stone of it left to come back to.” The other answered me with no little anger, saying, “How can you say such a thing?” But I replied that this was how I felt and that many changes were to take place. In those moments, I released myself from a thousand emotional ties connected with birthplace, family, friends, youth and dreams, and though I came close to outward tears, inwardly I wept.
Finally the train moved out. I stood as if riveted before the window, glanced out a last time, waved one more time in my imagination to the now-empty platform and took a last look back as the locomotive gathered speed and we were on the way. I returned to the coupe as did everybody else. A silence enveloped us. Each was involved with his own thoughts; each recognised the momentousness of the occasion in the forging of each one’s individual destiny; each, I assumed, must have been feeling emotions parallel to my own. After a while, we snapped out of our separate privacies and began to talk, permitting that which had been internalised to be released and shared. We grew calmer, we ate, we dozed. The sound of the speeding train and the rhythm of its wheels had a double effect on me. On the one hand, it lulled me to repose with its rocking motion; on the other, it provided something of the background music that film-makers used to enhance the drama of an evolving situation heading towards a climactic denouement. Throughout the passage, I discerned meaning in everything around me and invested it all with my thoughts and feelings. As we neared Minsk which we were expecting to reach at about midnight, we were notified of a two-hour respite before resuming the journey, during which time we were permitted to move about the station. We were also assured that our carriages would be locked and guarded, so that no anxiety need be felt about our belongings. As the train stopped and before we had time to disembark, our attention was drawn to a scuffle on the platform punctuated by some very explicitly colourful expressions in which the Russian language is particularly rich. It turned out that two prospective thieves had been awaiting the train and were caught boarding it. I made a mental note of the incident.
The Minsk railway station was a vast and impressive building in the style of the 19th Century clearly built in the time of railway supremacy, but nonetheless seemingly out of proportion to the size of the town it served. On arriving passengers, it made a strong and favourable impression which was all the more enhanced by its recent freshly painted appearance and the tastefulness of its decorations. And yet those very decorations troubled me. The gold leaf of its facades was more suited to an opera house than to a railway station and I found myself contemplating the reasons for such out-of-place opulence. And then it occurred to me. The station was something of a showcase. It was the first major station to greet a Western traveller coming to Russia and had been so designed to impress. I entertained an image of travellers in Czarist times dressed in all their finery, their appearance harmonising with the elegance of the station’s decor. The actual scene which greeted us, however, when we entered the building was decidedly post-Revolutionary and the magnificent structural backdrop only accentuated now the opposite of what it had originally been designed to achieve. The place was packed with people. Some moved about, many were stretched out on benches, or occupied whatever inch of floor space was available. These folk were poorly dressed and had pitiful bundles beside them. I had already had considerable experience of travel but never had I seen anything like this. And that while Russia was still at peace with its internal life proceeding normally. But this raised the question: in the Soviet Union, what was normal? Falling into conversation with a number of them, I learned that those who slept there had to wait for up to two days at a time to catch their connections and hence had no option but to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances allowed. At the first sign of a ticket office being opened, they would queue until all tickets for the next train were sold out, those who missed out having to resume their wait in the hope that the next issue of tickets would favour them.
I paced the station from one end to the other, continually observing the changing scenes, watching the people, trying to read their faces and gain insight into their natures. At one particular spot, ice-cream was being sold. In the middle of a wintry Russian February, it was scarcely a much sought-after commodity. But, as I heard one local remark, that was why it was available. Then I saw three men walking together. They looked Jewish, so I approached them. They were indeed Jews, carpenters returning from a carpenters’ trade meeting and waiting for a connection. In telling of life in Russia, one of them said with unexpected openness that times there were changing. After the Revolution, almost everything was available except the money to buy it with. Now the situation was reversed: everyone had money but there was little to buy with it. In that man’s statement, I saw the mutual criticisms of communist and capitalist theoreticians revealed in action.
The stipulated two hours’ respite at the station passed. I had gained a number of impressions which left me, I felt, enriched and enlightened. We returned to the train. It was 2 a.m. We were weary and made ready to get as much sleep as the sitting position allowed. As far as we knew, we were joining the same train which had brought us from Vilna and had Moscow as its destination. I soon learnt otherwise. As the train moved off with the lights dimmed, we slept. I woke at about seven in the morning feeling very dry after eating whatever food
I had left and made for the restaurant carriage for a cup of tea. It was a long train composed of modern Pullman carriages with the corridor to one side. I walked from carriage to carriage when, suddenly, as I opened the door at my end the door at the other opened simultaneously and to my horror recognised a man approaching who was the last I would have wished to meet. He was the husband of one of our former factory workers and had himself sometimes worked overtime for us. He had risen quickly in the hierarchy after the Russian takeover and was the man who had accompanied the Russian who had sequestered our household. As we passed one another I chose to look him directly in the eye with the curiosity of one who sees another for the first time. His own look, one of clear recognition, suggested the question: what are you doing on this train to Moscow? Yet my direct, detached look seemed to confuse him. He appeared momentarily unsure of himself. I maintained my pace unchanged until I closed the opposite door behind me and then ran to the restaurant car. But it occurred to me that if I sat down at a table, I was making myself ready quarry for his inquisitiveness. I decided therefore to return to my carriage, walking back very slowly with every cautiousness, lest he intercept me. When finally I reached my seat, I felt an acute exhaustion come over me and fell into a deep sleep lasting about four hours. On waking, I discovered a Russian army officer in my compartment and my first reaction was that he was there waiting for me. It subsequently turned out not to be so. How he came to be in the cabin I did not know but he proved both friendly and talkative and pointed out the flat table-land we were passing through, the historical fields of Borodino where Napoleon’s army suffered its most devastating defeat. A remark he made especially intrigued me, when he likened people in those days to radishes: red on the outside and white on the inside. It gave me an inkling of the split in the Russian character.
We reached Moscow’s central station at about one o’clock in the afternoon and were taken by Intourist buses to the Novo Rosyiski Hotel, one of five hotels reserved for overseas visitors, located on the far side of the Red Square that faced the Kremlin. It was a 19th-Century solid building, on each floor of which a middle-aged woman at a desk observed the comings and goings of the guests.
The four-hours’ sleep I had had earlier that morning must have had some therapeutic benefit, for by the time I reached the hotel I was in a tranquil frame of mind. I showered, changed, went down to the dining-room to learn I had missed the midday meal, and stepped out to see the city. Another young fellow joined me on a long walk. We walked back into the centre of Red Square and past the enormous famous Gostorg emporium where I was startled to see in its window a display of bread, not of the real thing, but made out of wood. A little further on a corner stands the Hotel Moskva with its 1000 rooms and beneath it was one of the more ornamental metro underground stations. I had heard about the Moscow underground and together my companion and I went down the escalator to see it. What I saw exceeded my expectations. The beautiful murals, chandeliers and surrounding luxuriance made me stop in my tracks to absorb it all. But as had happened in Minsk the night before, after the first impact and the excitement subsided, I became aware again of the dichotomy between the backdrop and the people who used it. Here too the people wore drab dress and carried sticks of bread under their arms. Not only were the two – the station and the people – disparate elements; they actually negated one another.
On emerging again into the street, we came face to face with the famous church outside the Kremlin wall with its gold-covered onion-shaped roofs, and parallel with the Kremlin walls with a line of buildings which, among others, included the American Embassy, the Moscow University and the Palace of Culture. We turned right into Gorki Street where I sent a cable to Uncle Avrom Ber simply to keep in touch. On the return journey, we detoured via the Bolshoi Opera House where Evgeni Onegin was being staged and I resolved to attend the performance the following night.
By the time I returned to the hotel, dinner was well under way and the dining-room was packed. A string trio was playing and the mood within was as jovial as one might have expected in any comparable place elsewhere. Although all tables were taken, I was given a seat at a small table at which a Russian couple were dining. We confined ourselves to very basic customary conversation. The man, who seemed to be in his mid-thirties, had come to Moscow on official business from a southern city, that business entitling him to two dinner tickets at this most exclusive hotel. The young woman in her early twenties was an acquaintance of his who had the good fortune of being invited for the treat. After a while, our conversation broadened and I felt with discomfort that the woman was looking at me with quite extraordinary intensity, which made me feel uncomfortable. She responded progressively less to her companion’s attentions, the one topic that had grabbed her imagination being that of life in the West. If I had thought I had been deliberately set up as a foreigner at the table of native Russians, these fears were soon dispelled. They seemed genuinely moved and affected by their novel and unexpected experience of meeting with a foreigner, and, what was more, in such a congenial setting. The woman commented on my suit, a light grey double-breasted flannel. Then the man took up the theme and asked about the availability of clothes in the West. He went on to ask whether I would consider selling him any item of clothing I could spare. I tried to sidestep the question, but he kept at me until I agreed to have them come up to my room. Stepping out of the lift, I saw the floor attendant shoot me an inquisitive look from her desk. We entered my room where the man examined every item of clothes with a covetous eye. Not that my luggage contained anything of substance or value, either in terms of quantity or quality. All I had to show was in fact a most modest array of underwear, shirts, another suit and slacks, and my fur coat given me by Father. Having also looked over the contents, the woman could contain herself no longer and with tears in her eyes said, “Now I see that we truly have nothing”. I became apprehensive; not because I feared a provocation – I knew by then that they were genuine – but rather on their account for having so dropped their guard, particularly the young woman. Then the man began to plead with me to sell him my slacks. As he did not desist, I let him try them on, knowing that they would not fit him. He went into the bathroom and while he was there, the woman became somewhat sentimental. I knew that her companion was returning home the next morning, so I suggested that as I was planning to attend the opera the following evening, I should be pleased to have her join me. She instantly accepted the invitation. As I had expected, the slacks did not fit the man. I finally let him have one of my ties and some other item and it was nearly midnight when they left.
That encounter kept me awake. I was less troubled now by the matter of Soviet living standards which I had come to know about long before through my experiences with the Russian soldiers in Bialystok and Vilna, but by the intensity of the emotions of those two young folk touched off by a few mere items of clothing and displayed so openly before a total stranger. I was haunted by the way they bared their very souls to me. And they had not been ordinary working people in whom deprivation might have been expected. The man was a manager of sorts attended by some considerable status whose responsibilities brought him to the capital to deal with high authorities, and yet when I saw the fond way this stranger handled a mere handkerchief my heart went out to him. I felt sorry for them both, as much for their material deprivation as for the other restrictions of a non-material nature which Soviet society imposed on them. I recalled so vividly the enthusiasm with which the Russian army had been greeted in Bialystok. I recalled too the staunchness and readiness for sacrifice of communist idealists back home. And I recalled the face of our young neighbour after his release for raising a red flag and found myself asking: “In what lay the reward?” Though young myself and often in the company of just such young folk who pinned their hopes on Communism, I had never followed those inclinations. I now found myself vindicated in my belief in the axiom that stated the strength of an ideal was inversely proportional to the distance from its enactment in practice.
The next morning was dull and cold. The skies were grey and light snow was falling. The first thing I wanted to see was Lenin’s tomb and, together with a multitude of others, I joined a long queue in Red Square and shuffled along slowly but steadily through the snow. Most of those in front and behind me were women, heavily clad for their long wait in the open air and as uniformly drab as the grey sky overhead. No-one spoke. They all seemed well-versed in the art of queueing and the long meandering line added a surreal element to the reality. At last I came to the steps leading down to Lenin’s tomb. The black granite tomb itself is larger than any picture of it conveys. Soldiers with grim expressions and fixed bayonets stood positioned around the glass casket intently watching every person. The queue was not permitted to halt. It moved in a line that enabled the people to view Lenin’s body first from one side, then face on, and again from the other side on the way out. Lenin’s face was intact. His body was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie. His presence conveyed a sense of continuity, as if he were still among his people, not dead but a sublimely active force. There was also an unmistakable glow of reverence in the expressions of every viewer that moved me profoundly.
From Lenin’s tomb, I went on to the Lenin museum nearby where his full life history was on display. The last item was an overcoat he had worn showing the bullet hole in the sleeve where he was shot.
I recall little else of that first whole day in Moscow, except that it passed quickly, that I repeatedly feared meeting again the man who had been on the train, and that I had a date with the young woman I had met the night before. Towards evening, we met as arranged outside the metro station at the Hotel Moskva. She was already waiting when I arrived and together we made our way to the Opera House close by. I obtained two tickets without difficulty. The place was filled with people. The restaurant was overflowing. The atmosphere was gay. As I handed over my fur coat to the coat attendant, I felt all eyes upon me. The coat, along with my double-breasted suit, clearly gave me away as a foreigner and I became particularly aware of the material gap between those Russians, some patently high-ranking men among them, and myself. I tried as quickly as possible to escape such public scrutiny and led my young companion to our box.