by Lev Golinkin
Most dissidents were arrested on the spot. Those who didn’t vanish into the gulags found themselves trapped in a purgatory, a newly created subclass of people who existed neither inside the Communist society nor outside it. All lost their jobs. All were banned from ever working in their fields again. The lucky ones became janitors and night watchmen. The rest found their job applications summarily rejected, and after a period of several months they were imprisoned on charges of “social parasitism”: shunning one’s duty to Communist society by neglecting to work.
In a country where everything was owned and operated by the government—getting to a hospital, getting into a university, getting a driver’s license, getting help from the police—the refuseniks had the entire social safety net ripped out from under them. Sometimes, unfortunate accidents happened to their friends and family. Such was the case with one of Mom’s coworkers, who was shipped off to Siberia without a trial. The following week, his fourteen-year-old son was snatched off the street as he was walking home from school. The son reemerged several days later, beaten to a pulp. Afterward, the boy and his mother never left their apartment.
Mid-November, 6 weeks to deadline.
Everyone in the family clears KGB background checks, to the enormous relief of my parents. Now we need photographs for the exit visas. Nobody knows what format the photos need to be in, except that the format in which we submit is not the right one. Typical USSR. Impossible to tell whether this is another nasty little obstacle or simple Soviet incompetence, both possibilities equally valid. We take profile, full face, ¾ view. All of the above with lots of space around head. All of the above with no space around head. Mom and I have to be on the same visa, so I’m on Mom’s left knee facing right, on Mom’s right knee facing left, sprawled on Mom’s lap facing forward. We see old, crotchety photographers with shaky hands, newer avant-garde photographers obsessed with umbrellas and lighting effects, nyet, nyet, not the right format, and what began as an annoyance develops into a serious problem.
Given the overwhelming deterrence against leaving, Mom and Dad (whose professions made them prime candidates for refusal) didn’t consider applying for an exit visa until 1979, when the government was undergoing one of its more tolerant lulls. In the fall of that year, Dad approached his boss, Vassily Bonesco, with the paperwork for an exit visa. “We’ll talk about this later,” Bonesco said, and stashed the application in his desk. “I just got a call that the Kurgan plant is down; you’re leaving tonight.” Dad, who had spent two years working up the courage to go through the exit visa process, suggested that perhaps someone else on the team could assist the good comrades of Kurgan with their turbomachinery woes, but Bonesco was having none of it. Several hours later Dad was off to one of the worst jobs of his career.
The breakdown of Kurgan’s hot-water plant turbine left the city with not only no hot water, but also no heat, since everything was heated by radiators. (Now is probably a good time to mention that Kurgan is in Siberia, and winter was around the corner.) Dad spent the rest of November and most of December on the job. When he wasn’t working he would huddle with the rest of the town in the local movie theater, the only building besides the hospital with a separate generator. Six weeks later, after getting the plant back on line and catching up on a decade of Soviet cinema, Dad returned to Kharkov, just in time to learn that the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan and the border was closed.
“You screwed me real good,” was the first thing he said after storming into Bonesco’s office. “If you didn’t send me to Kurgan I would’ve had my exit visa application submitted! Now I’m stuck here!”
“Idiot!” Bonesco stepped up to Dad, his voice furious but low. “If I had submitted your application, you would’ve been refused, and then I would’ve been firing you, not to mention possible imprisonment and other … unpleasantries. You think those bastards care if you applied before the invasion?”
Dad’s anger was quickly eclipsed by comprehension, then terror. “I apologize, I didn’t—”
“You didn’t is right.” Bonesco pulled Dad’s application out of his drawer, carefully ripping it up. “You never asked me to fill this out. This conversation never happened. Do you understand?”
Dad stared past Bonesco’s face and to the back wall of his office, at the plaques and Lenins and proclamations of loyal service to the Union. Dad had worked under the man for years. He knew his story. He knew that when Bonesco was still a boy, his father had been executed in one of Stalin’s purges, and the young Bonesco, along with his mother, was exiled to a kolkhoz, a communal farm in Siberia. Bonesco spent the rest of his childhood operating a tractor; he had to carry a little stool with him to and from the fields, otherwise he couldn’t see over the tractor’s steering wheel. Years later, after Stalin’s death, his father was posthumously pardoned, and Bonesco and his mother were allowed to leave the kolkhoz. The first thing he did upon returning to Kharkov was join the Party, the same one that had killed his father—he’d had enough of being on the wrong end of the Soviet Union.
“For now, get back to work. But one day, this Afghanistan shit will be over, and they’ll reopen the border, and then I’ll be honored to fill this out and help you get out of this blasted country,” Bonesco continued in a whisper. “And one more thing: when that time comes, you’ll bring me a bottle of cognac for Kurgan, because Kurgan just saved your ass.”
Bonesco’s prediction was right; shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, détente was over, relations with the West froze, and everyone who had applied for an exit visa was rejected automatically. The refusenik population exploded overnight. There wasn’t much hope that the border would open soon, so Mom and Dad decided it would be safest to let Isaak Pevzner’s summons expire and not attract undue attention.
But by September 1989, almost ten years after Dad’s (thankfully) aborted attempt, our circumstances had changed. There was Gorbachev, who had drastically slashed the numbers of refuseniks. There was also the rumor of the U.S. Congress closing the gate on Soviet refugees at the end of the year. And if that wasn’t enough, another, more sinister rash of phone calls late in the fall gave Soviet Jews all the impetus they needed to get out of the country.
Glasnost wasn’t just about singing in Estonia and peaceful demonstrations in the Caucasus. Gorbachev’s reforms unleashed a wave of anger among those who felt the Motherland losing the Cold War, and many who took advantage of the new freedoms of speech and assembly weren’t liberals. The anti-Semitic reactionary group Pamyat (“memory”) was hard at work planning pogroms to cast off the zhid yoke and reclaim Mother Russia’s glory. Pogroms. With recent massacres and expulsions against Meskhetian Turks, Georgians, and others, the word shook Soviet Jews to the core. My beatings at school had escalated, and the extended-absence notes were no longer accepted. “We are leaving now,” Mom kept repeating, and every time I trembled at the thought.
Dad went straight to Moscow to renew the expired Isaak Pevzner summons, which was now permitted, thanks to Gorbachev. The USSR had terminated all official relations with Jerusalem since the Six-Day War of 1967 (when the Kremlin labeled Israel a terrorist-sponsoring state), so Israeli interests in Russia were represented by a neutral third party, the Netherlands. Dad spent the next few days standing in line at the Dutch embassy with nervous Jews from Bukhara, St. Petersburg, and every place in between, hustling to squeak through before the gate got shut.
“If you make it out, there’s help at the west train station in Vienna,” instructed the clerk who renewed our summons.
“But then what?” pressed Dad. “And how will they, whoever they are, know who we are?”
“They’ll know,” said the clerk. “Next person, please.”
Late November, 5 weeks to deadline.
Mom, Dad, and Lina finally hunt down a photographer with a good track record. We meet with the regional emigration official, who says our photos are acceptable but warns that there are exactly three secretaries who are responsible for typing up exit visas for
the entire Kharkov region. Every Jew in the area is trying to get their visas processed, and the secretaries have other duties. The officer assures us the visas will be ready, but not before late January or early February. Our chances of going to America are hanging on a fucking secretary. Mom and Dad spend the night thinking.
Why Vienna? What did Vienna have to do with receiving Jews fleeing Soviet Russia? There was nothing special about the city. In fact, I have a strong suspicion it didn’t volunteer to become the refugee capital of Western Europe. The role was bestowed upon it by basic geography. Refugees fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans traveled west, toward freedom. International aid agencies consulted a map, located the nearest metropolis to Eastern Europe, set up their processing bureaus, and just like that, Vienna became the gateway to the West. Word spread quickly; those who got out did their best to funnel information to friends and relatives left behind, and the moment the first migrant found shelter in the City of Music, the system propagated itself.
A tougher question is Why America? My family’s summons, just like the summons of every other Russian Jew, was issued for relocation to Israel. So why did we accept Israel’s invitation to leave the USSR, knowing full well that the moment we crossed the Soviet border we, just like the majority of our fellow emigrants, would immediately reject it and ask for asylum in the States? One would think that persecuted Jews would want to live in a country of, by, and for Jews. We would get together, spin dreidels, eat matzah, become doctors and lawyers, and everyone’s happy. But that didn’t happen.
Why?
In order to understand the desired destination, one must first consider the reason for departure. What exactly were we, Soviet Jews, fleeing from? The answer isn’t as obvious as it appears, because the word “Jew” can mean one of two things. First, it can denote a follower of Judaism, which is a religion. In that sense, anyone can become a Jew and anyone can stop being a Jew, just as anyone can become Catholic or stop being Catholic. However, “Jew” can also refer to an ethnicity, a hereditary genetic makeup that’s as immutable as the rest of the genome. In that case, a person either is a Jew or is not a Jew, just as one either is an Eskimo or is not an Eskimo. There’s no way to convert in. More important, there is no way to opt out. To use the example of Italians, most ethnic Italians are Roman Catholic, but while an Italian can stop being Catholic, he can’t stop being Italian.
We, Russian Jews, were persecuted not because of our religion but because of our ethnicity. We had no religion, spoke no prayers, and, aside from a few old superstitions and vestigial snippets of Yiddish, had little religious tradition. The existence of God or lack thereof never concerned me. Throughout my childhood I had never talked to God, or thought of God, or wanted a god, and the only prayer I ever had was a vague desperate wish to not be myself and shed the horrible, unalterable ethnic zhid features I spied in the mirror.
What my family and many families like mine desired was peace of mind, not a synagogue. We wanted freedom, the freedom to live our lives without trembling, and naturally we, like our innumerable predecessors, cast our gaze across the Atlantic. Israel may be a Western nation, but, as the Russian Jews who did immigrate there found out, it’s also flavored with a bit of theocracy—if not governmental, then certainly cultural. Consider ham. A Russian couldn’t imagine kicking ham off the menu. We were raised on boiled pelmeni, jellied kholodets, baked zharkoye, and buzhenina slathered with horseradish. We wanted ham, we craved ham, we wanted to live in a land where bacon flowed like wine, a land brimming with pork chops served in stores open on the Sabbath, and we didn’t want anyone wagging their finger and informing us we were sinning. We’d paid our dues to our ethnicity; the Soviet Union had made sure of that.
Numerous reasons for declining Israel’s invitation were provided: we couldn’t tolerate the arid climate; we had a friend in America who could land us a job; we’d already started learning English and didn’t want to waste it. Some of the blunter individuals said they did not want to reside in a land engaged in unremitting conflict, didn’t want their sons and daughters in the army. But the one shadowy reason was that we didn’t want to embrace an identity; we needed to cast off a stigma.
Early December, 1 month to deadline.
Mom uses her last resort. Thirty years of treating patients without taking bribes means there are many people in the city who feel that they owe her. Mom feels it cheapens her profession, but she puts out the call. Everywhere in Kharkov, from intelligentsia parlors to seedy living rooms in neighborhoods where other doctors wouldn’t go, word spreads that Dr. Golinkin needs help. Assistance arrives in the form of an unsavory gentleman who shows up at the apartment claiming some sort of connection to one of the secretaries. The next day Mom walks into the visa bureau. The office is under audio surveillance, so Mom had been warned to say nothing. The secretary slides open her desk drawer and Mom drops in an envelope stuffed with more rubles than the secretary will make in two years. The secretary thanks Mom for her visit. During the ride home, the young Jewish cabbie puts on a tape by an ex-Soviet musician who is singing about life in Brooklyn. The song has been around for a few years, but it was recently removed from the list of forbidden materials. “America, America, you’re so far away,” goes the chorus, effectively summarizing Mom’s mood, and both Mom and the cabbie hum along to the words.
During one of his trips to the Kharkov visa bureau, Dad ran into Sergei Kantler, a neighbor of ours who was leaving the USSR on a chartered bus from Kharkov straight to Bratislava on the western edge of Slovakia. Private bus companies hadn’t even existed a few years earlier, but thanks to Gorbachev and perestroika, they were gaining popularity, and a handful of enterprising drivers had even obtained passes to cross the Soviet border into Eastern Europe. Sergei was looking for another family to split the fee, and Dad immediately agreed. The bus was extraordinarily expensive but money no longer mattered, because it was here that the final hurdle in the exit process came into effect. Because the Soviet Union was a Communist land, all of one’s possessions technically belonged to the USSR and almost nothing would be permitted out of the country. Money didn’t matter, because the rules were clear. Each migrant was allowed $130, two suitcases, one piece of jewelry, nothing of value.
Second week of December, 3 weeks to deadline.
“You lucked out. Your visas are ready,” says the emigration officer as he hands the documents to Dad. He glances down at me, peeking out from Dad’s leg. I know the visas mean leaving and he must’ve caught the expression on my face. He crouches down under the obligatory portrait of Lenin hanging in his office and extends his hand. “Good luck, bandit.” (“Bandit” is a slang term, like “homeboy,” often used by criminals.) The man doesn’t switch his voice to the obnoxious joyful squeak most adults use with children; he speaks in the same bored monotone as he does with my parents, which impresses me enough to venture out from behind Dad and shake his hand. He’s one of them, but he’s still human, thinks Mom, and we hurry home to pack.
Over the past several months Mom had been a hurricane, driving the family through every obstacle to getting out of Kharkov, and by this point she was spent. The Lina fiasco, the threat of pogroms, the desperate search for the secretary, the strain of severing herself from her world, the uncertain fate waiting beyond the border—a thousand things jostled and clashed in Mom’s mind, and yet the image of me and the officer shaking hands, Lenin preaching to the masses overhead, took hold. Unbidden and inconsequential, that one moment has remained a vivid memory of her last days in Russia.
INTO THE STEPPE
Kharkov, Ukraine, USSR, December 21, 1989, 10 Days to the December 31 Deadline
The books vanished in droves. Eighteen bookshelves had lined our small apartment, filled to the brim with fat collectors’ editions, rows upon rows of hardbound tomes, square little poetry anthologies, colorful travel guides, drab engineering manuals, and scraggly samizdat copies of forbidden works. Dad had waited in line for hours for some
of those books. He hunted down volumes on the black market, paid through the nose for them, and once (as Lina told me in one of her scary stories) was detained by the KGB and almost wound up in prison for having banned material. My memory of the books stretched beyond consciousness. They were there when I first opened my eyes and began to identify things like “warm,” and “house,” and “bed,” and while I didn’t know about or understand the byzantine game of passports, imaginary relatives, summonses, and exit visas, it was the breakup of Dad’s library that made leaving a reality. The books were the background of my little world, and seeing them carted away by friends and relatives was like watching someone dismantle the sky.
All the adults—Mom, Dad, Lina, and Grandma—were constantly hustling, saying goodbye to good friends, reconciling with old friends they hadn’t kept up with, eating at their favorite places for the last time, and agonizing over what to pack. We were only allowed one piece of jewelry per person. Not that we had much treasure—a gold watch from one grandfather and a fat Austro-Hungarian coin from the other—but neither heirloom would be permitted to cross the border, so Mom brought them to a jeweler, the husband of one of her old patients. “Make something meaningful out of them,” she asked the man. Two days later, she came home with a pair of necklaces, thin gold bands bearing intricately wrought Mogen Dovidi (Stars of David), a large pendant for me and a smaller one for Lina. A Mogen Dovid was not desirable in the Soviet Union and thus less likely to catch a greedy guard’s eye; the symbol was also an apt reminder of the reason for our journey. The jewelry had to be worn by the emigrant who claimed it, and since Mom, Dad, and Grandma would be wearing their wedding bands, the Mogen Dovidi would have to be conveyed by Lina and me. I winced at the thought of having to wear a zhid nametag, if only for one night.