I couldn’t find the place and had to inquire at the market for further directions. It was after three o’clock before I found number 44, the first house on the left beyond the railroad crossing on Schevichenko Street. I rapped and rapped on the gate in the yard, which was locked from the inside. Nobody answered. I didn’t want to leave for fear of losing my chance at the room, so I waited around. After what must have been twenty minutes, I heard someone timidly approach the gate from inside. A woman’s voice asked, “Who’s there?” I asked for Svetlov, and the woman replied, “He’s not home.” “Would you open the gate?” I asked. “What for?” was the answer. “I have a notice here,” I replied, “and I’m looking for a room to rent.”
There was a pause, then finally she opened the gate. A very pleasant old woman of seventy-two, with gray hair and a wrinkled face, she told me the landlord was out and wouldn’t be back for a while. But she invited me into the kitchen of her own house. At 5 P.M., we were still waiting and chatting. There seemed no end to the number of questions she could ask.
Shortly after five, the old woman jumped up from the table and looked out the window. “Here they come,” she said. Through the window I saw a big, tall man of perhaps fifty, with chunky features and gray hair, crossing the yard with two women. The old lady and I hurried to meet them. She told them I’d come to rent a room, and I pulled out the notice which had been posted on the board in the marketplace. The man’s name was Iosip. His wife, the older of the two women, dark-haired and with a full face and regular features, was named Valya. The younger woman was her sister, Maria. They invited me into the house to tell them something about myself.
I told them the whole story, rather sketchily. When I had finished, they seemed cautious, but agreed to show me the house. It was also four rooms: a small bedroom next to the kitchen in back, a large dining room–living room, and a bedroom in the front. The flooring was of wide planks, and the walls were plastered with a clay, sand, and binder combination, then simply whitewashed. The stove in the kitchen was built of brick, in such a way that its corners jutted into each of the rooms to heat the house.
We talked for almost an hour. I was satisfied with the house, but they didn’t seem too eager to give me a definite answer. Iosip was an invalid, living on a pension, and Valya herself was sick—in fact, they had just come from the polyclinic—so they admitted they could use the money which a boarder would pay. At last, they asked if I could pay 100 rubles ($10) a month for lodging and another 50 rubles for meals, laundry, and so forth. It was pretty steep, but I agreed. The next morning I moved into the little room next to the kitchen. It was such a tiny room that if I sat on the bed my knees would touch the kitchen stove. But at least I had a room of my own in Abakan.
Iosip was a great conversationalist. He was a farm boy, who had gone only as far as the third grade in school, but he was a Party man, a staunch Communist, and before his illness had been the secretary of the City Council. He and his wife, Valya, were very good to me—but also quite reserved at first. It was only after nearly a month had gone by and we had become good friends, that they told me they had at first suspected I was a thief who was hiding out in Abakan. We laughed at the notion then, but Iosip explained that my story had seemed so sketchy, and my willingness to pay whatever price they asked, as if money were no object, had really frightened them.
By this time, they knew I was an American, and I had also told them about the years I had spent in the prison camps, but they didn’t know I was a priest. For that matter, knowing who Iosip was, I didn’t think it would be particularly prudent to mention it. I used to say Mass daily after everyone else went to bed, and I sometimes stayed up into the night making my spiritual reading and other spiritual exercises.
I had decided, when I came to Abakan, to take a year’s vacation. I’d worked in the prison camps for almost ten years, and I had worked practically ever since my release from prison. Moreover, both in Norilsk and Krasnoyarsk, I had worked long hours as a priest, sometimes going around the clock and getting no sleep at all for more than seventy-two hours. Now that the government had forbidden me to work as a priest, I decided I’d get a good rest. I had saved most of my salary at BOF, so I felt I could manage it.
When the weather was good, I spent most of my time in the garden behind the house, getting a good suntan and doing exercises. I was worried especially about my knees, which had been frozen in the camps and still occasionally bothered me. I read a lot, and two or three times a week Iosip and Valya would take a walk with me about town. I came to know Abakan pretty well.
The town itself isn’t large—its population while I was there was only about 56,000—but it is still growing. Since it’s the terminus of the branch railroad from Achinsk, and the capital of the Khakass Autonomous Oblast within the Krasnoyarski Krai, it assumes an importance much beyond its size. With the completion in 1962 of a modern bridge across the Yenisei, and the completion of the Abakan-Taishet railroad line, Abakan became more and more a railroad center for the region. Before the new bridge, though, all traffic across the river was by pontoon bridge, and the railroad ended at Abakan.
Since Abakan is the oblast center, all the governmental offices are located in the town, as well as the major educational and medical facilities. The Teachers College for the area is located on Pushkina Street at the corner of Schetinkina Street, not more than a block from the MVD headquarters I’d visited the first night. The big hospital is also on Pushkina Street near the corner of Karl Marx Street, while the surgical hospital and TB clinic is only a few blocks down Tarassa Schevichenko, near Chertegasova.
Warehouses to supply the regions around Abakan are also located in the city, so it’s a busy place. The streets are full of ZIS trucks carrying food, produce, and manufactured goods to the surrounding countryside. Because the area is so hilly, trucks are the only practical method of transport and supply for the other towns in the area. Consequently, there is also a big government garage, ATK-50, to service the taxis, trucks, and buses which provide the transportation in the city itself and to the outlying areas.
Fortunately, the new bridge across the river has also affected transportation for the better. In the old days it was possible to wait in traffic over half a day just to cross the Abakan River by pontoon bridge. And crossing the river, somewhere, sometime, is essential in Abakan; the city lies in a deep bend of the Yenisei which almost surrounds it on three sides, very much like New Orleans. The city is like New Orleans, too, in that it lies below the river level and is protected by levees 15 to 20 feet high all around the bend to prevent the city from flooding.
As a man of leisure during that winter of 1958, I got to know not only the city, but a great number of people as well. I was home most of the time, and Iosip’s house was always full of company. Because of his former position, he knew just about everyone in Abakan—and everybody was always welcome. Since most of them wound up talking to me in my little room, while Iosip discoursed at length in the living room, I made many friends.
In a way, the constant going and coming was a big help to me. Despite the fact that I had been warned by the MVD not to do any priestly work, or even let it be known that I was a priest, by the end of my first month in Abakan there were people coming to me in secret. They were hardly noticed at Iosip’s. Not only did people feel free to drop in there, but they might wind up staying overnight or as long as a week. Iosip never seemed to mind, and was always a genial host; the guests would sleep right on the living room floor in blankets or bearskins for as long as they cared to stay.
By spring of 1959, though, the militia was beginning to wonder why I had no job. Possibly they had hesitated to make a move because of Iosip’s reputation, but now they began to pester me. For the first time in years, I felt well-rested and in excellent condition, so I decided the time had come to look for a job.
On one of the first warm days of spring, however, I received a letter asking me to come to Krasnoyarsk for a few days. It might be my last chance to go before I b
ecame tied down to a job, so I told Iosip I thought I’d make a visit there for a few days. Nothing was done to prevent my making the trip, but I was no sooner off the train in Krasnoyarsk than I was followed by the militia.
I spent the night at Rosa’s, where a crowd of my old parishioners was waiting to welcome me. We talked far into the night. The next morning, I said Mass, baptized the children, began hearing confessions, and kept it up steadily for the next three days. I finished up those rather hectic but happy days of spiritual labor with a missionary swing across the river to the Right Bank, where I planned to spend the night with Pranas.
I got to his house early in the evening. It was a warm spring dusk, so I told him I thought I’d visit Father Honofri, the Ukrainian priest who lived a few blocks away. When I asked for Father Honofri at his apartment house, though, his neighbors looked at me strangely. I rapped on the door. There was no answer. I rapped again several times before I heard someone approach the door very softly. Then the door opened slowly and quietly, just enough for someone to peer out.
“Who do you want?” said a voice from behind the door. “Does Father Honofri live here?” I asked. The door closed, leaving me without an answer. Suddenly, it was opened again and the voice said, “Yes, come in.” I stepped in, the door was locked quickly behind me and I found myself face to face with two young KGB men.
One of them asked to see my passport. I told him I had left it in my room about four blocks away; I would be happy to get it. I made a move to go, but was abruptly grabbed. They told me to sit down at a table on the other side of the room, away from the door. Two other men, whom I hadn’t noticed, were sitting by the door. They were people who lived here in the apartment building and had been dragooned into “witnessing” the search.
The agents were going through everything, examining things thoroughly, then replacing them carefully. The search dragged on until almost 1 A.M., with one very curious incident: among the bookshelves, they found a missal and a prayer book; one of the young agents was afraid even to touch them.
When they had finished their search, they wrote down an inventory of everything in the room which they asked us to sign. I refused, unless they added a clause to the paper specifying I wasn’t a “witness,” but had simply happened into the room during the search. When they agreed to that, I felt they weren’t interested in me, and I relaxed somewhat. Then they dismissed the two elderly men from the building who had served as official “witnesses”—but told me to come along.
As we passed through the darkened courtyard of the apartment, I remembered I had a note in my pocket from a friend of Honofri’s. I slipped my hand in my pocket, crumpled the note into a ball, and in one quick motion flipped it away into the blackness. They noticed the movement, though; immediately, they ordered me to stop. They looked at my hands and in my pocket, then asked me what I had done. “Well, it’s late,” I said, “and I was checking to see if I had my key.” They said nothing, but began to probe the ground around us with their flashlight beams. Luckily, they didn’t find the paper.
We walked down to the Yenisei Station, when one of them made a phone call while the other stayed with me on the platform. The man on the phone didn’t seem to be having much luck; he was still phoning when the train for Krasnoyarsk came in. They were in a hurry to catch the train, so they told me to report to the MVD office the next morning in Krasnoyarsk at eleven o’clock, and left me standing there on the platform.
When the train left, I retraced my steps to Pranas’ apartment. It was now almost 3 A.M., but he was still waiting up for me. He knew I must have been in some sort of trouble, so he was worried. I told him the whole story, and neither of us got much sleep that night. After Mass the next morning, I deliberately stayed at Pranas’ and caught the eleven o’clock train. Consequently, I arrived at MVD headquarters about 11:30.
I asked the girl at the switchboard for the two men with whom I had my “appointment.” She said they had been called out about 11:15, but had left a number for me to call. I called, but I couldn’t reach them. I decided to settle the matter once and for all, so I told the girl I wanted to speak to the chief. I told him the story of the previous evening and asked if there was any report on me. I added that I was due to catch a train back to Abakan that day. “Go ahead,” he said when he had heard me out, “and if anything does come up, I’ll know you were here to see them about it. It’s not your fault.” I was glad to get on the train for Abakan that night without further incident.
Back in Abakan, I said nothing to Iosip about my experiences. I told him, though, that I thought it was time I found a job, so he got in touch with a friend named Pavel who was the main dispatcher at ATK-50, the city garage out on Schetinkina Street, along the road to the airport. About a week later, Pavel came to tell me he had made arrangements for me to have an interview the next morning with his supervisor. I was there ahead of time next day, waiting for Pavel. He took me to meet the superintendent, a man named Kruglov, tall, well-built, affable, and quite handsome. He seemed happy to meet me, looked over my passport, then suggested that I work temporarily as a mechanic repairing the cabs until a better job was available.
Once I agreed to the job, however, I had to go to the head of maintenance to find out if he needed men. The head of maintenance was a medium-sized, stout, red-faced man named Petruchin, perhaps fifty years old and growing bald, with a deep voice and a rolling walk—very talkative. Pavel explained things to him, including Kruglov’s decision. He agreed to try me, so I wrote out an application for the job, he signed it, the superintendent okayed it, and at last I was told to report for work the next day.
That was June 13, 1959. Sedov, the head mechanic, a heavyset man of about fifty, with a fair complexion and a miniature Roman nose, assigned me to help the driver of Car 69, a little four-cylinder Pobeda which was far from new. The driver asked me how much I knew about the job; I told him frankly I was just a novice. “Well,” he said, “the first thing you have to learn here is to take only the tools you need and keep the others locked up. Never leave a tool in the car, or under the car. If you do, you’re sure to lose it. They vanish like smoke!”
The car was standing over a pit. He told me we had to take off the fenders and the radiator in order to get the motor out of the car. He went to work on the transmission and wiring under the hood, then noticed me struggling with the bolts which connected the engine to the frame. “Here,” he said, “you can’t waste time on that.” He came over and knocked off the bolts with a chisel! Then we attached a U-shaped yoke to the motor block, shoved a long pipe through the collar of the yoke, and whistled for two other mechanics, who came over and gave us a hand lifting the motor out of the car.
At ATK-50, everything was done by hand that way. If welding or patching was needed on the bottom of the car, six mechanics simply turned it over on its side (“Who cares about fenders?”) and propped it up with a beam while the welder dove in to do a crude—but fast—job. At that time, everything was paid for by piecework, so no one had time to bother with the niceties; the idea was to get the job done as fast as possible.
The first month, under this system, I earned only 150 rubles ($15). Others were earning 1,200 or even as much as 5,000 rubles. Petruchin was surprised when he saw my pay envelope. “Wladimir Martinovich,” he said to me, “what happened?” “I don’t know,” I said, “I even worked overtime a couple of days to finish a job.” The second month, I earned 253 rubles. Finally, the accountant called me into his office and showed me how to make out a job slip. “Put down everything you do,” he said, “and that means everything! Write ‘I took off the wheel, cleaned the axle, greased the axle, put the wheel back on, tightened the nuts, pumped the tire’—every move you make. Don’t just say ‘I greased the axle,’ because every phase of the operation counts as a piece of the work.” Gradually, I had to learn from the people in the shop to work the way they did, knocking things apart and slapping them together again.
As a result, the garage never managed to fulfi
ll its “quota” according to the “monthly plan.” City Council members used to come to the regular Monday morning workers’ meetings to exhort us, but they never made much of an impression. Spare parts, taxis, buses, fares—everything was government owned; the men were interested only in making money. It was obvious the city authorities weren’t satisfied with the management of the garage. Investigations were made, meetings were held. Eventually, we began to hear rumors that changes would be made, and a new staff brought in to help the garage “make its quota.”
MY SISTER PROPOSES A VISIT
DURING THIS SUMMER of 1959, I received another letter from the American Embassy. They enclosed a verification of an agreement between the Embassy and the Soviet Foreign Office with regard to my release, if I requested it. The Embassy told me, if I wished to go to the United States, to write a petition to the Soviet Foreign Office, and supplied me with the name of the official in charge and the exact address.
I was curious to see what would happen, so I decided to write to the Foreign Office, asking them to grant me a visa for a return to the United States. I listed as reasons for the request: my age, a consideration of my family at home and their constant efforts to have me returned, and the fact that, because of my limited rehabilitation after the prison camps, I would get only a small pension when I reached the age of retirement in a few years.
I sent the letter off, along with another letter to the Embassy acknowledging receipt of their letter and a notice that I had written to the Foreign Office requesting a visa. For a while I heard nothing. Then the Soviet Foreign Office wrote to say they had received my letter, but since they were not authorized to deal with the question directly, they had sent the letter under file number such-and-such to the Office of the Interior (KGB). So I wrote in turn to the KGB, saying I had heard from the Foreign Office that my petition had been forwarded to them, and asking them to consider it and give me an answer.
With God in Russia Page 36