I heard nothing definite about my petition for three months. Then one day I was called to MVD headquarters in Abakan and read an answer from Moscow to my petition; it was negative. I asked for a reason; the agent said none had been given. So I signed the slip indicating I had received an answer, and that was that—except that I wrote to the American Embassy telling them of the answer to my application.
During the three months I had waited for that answer, though, I made a visit to the Passport Bureau for my semi-annual renewal. In the midst of all the routine proceedings, the agent suddenly suggested I ought to change my “short-term” passport for a permanent one, instead of coming every six months and going through all this.
“All you have to do,” he said, “is choose one of the two names in your passport here (Lypinski-Ciszek), add an explanation of how this happened and a short biography, and send it along with a petition to the Central Passport Bureau in Moscow. In a year or so, you’ll get a permanent passport.” I stared at him for a moment, then thanked him for his “suggestion.” I didn’t bother to ask why he suddenly brought it up now, after two years “of all this.” Nor did I bother to take his suggestion; I told him I didn’t want a Russian passport.
At the garage, things went on about as usual. We fell steadily behind our monthly quotas, but nobody seemed to care much. Then, one day, a meeting was announced for 5:15 in the garage hall; everyone was expected to attend. It was announced that the City Council would meet with us on a matter of the highest importance. There was a lot of talk in the shop that day about the announcement, and much speculation about what it meant. Just out of curiosity, attendance that night was excellent.
One of the first speakers was a member of the City Council. His opening statement electrified the crowd. He announced he was here to change things, and added that in the U.S.S.R. there was no such thing as an indispensable man. “Everyone,” he said, “can be replaced, no matter what position he holds.” He paused for effect; the tension mounted. “Therefore,” he went on, “since it is necessary to change conditions here at the garage, and since Superintendent Kruglov, though a Party man and a very responsible administrator, has not done the job we expected of him, it has been decided to replace him.”
The councilman then went on to enumerate Kruglov’s failings in detail. Poor Kruglov just sat there, head down, through the cataloguing of his faults—which seemed to go on forever. When the councilman had finished, there was an embarrassed pause. “And now,” resumed the speaker, “I want you to meet your new director.” His name was Sofronov, and he strode to the platform and stood alongside the councilman while his qualifications were explained and his virtues extolled. Then the “prompters” began to clap.
Sofronov was a man of about fifty-five, of medium height, heavyset and strong. His black hair had receded somewhat, but he was tanned and broad-shouldered, with a firm jaw and tight mouth, a Roman nose, and darting eyes. He was also, of course, a Party man. When the “applause” died down, Sofronov acknowledged his introduction. He had a strong voice and spoke decisively. He began by repeating again all the troubles of ATK-50—he had obviously been well briefed—then he began to outline his plans to change the picture radically. After that, the councilman went to work on Petruchin.
Petruchin, too, was called up to the front and sat there with his head hanging while his faults were chronicled, chapter and verse. He was red as a beet, so red, in fact, I began to think he might burst a blood vessel. After his faults had been read out at length, and he had been told he was fired, Petruchin was asked to get up and reply. He admitted his faults and the problems in the garage in a voice so weak and thin he could hardly be heard. The wags in the audience, who were used to hearing Petruchin bark orders in the garage, began to cry out: “Louder! Louder!”
When Petruchin had finally crept from the platform, the councilman asked the workers themselves to get up and speak. Some of the Party men, obviously prompted, got up to criticize Kruglov, made a few passing remarks about Petruchin (he was popular among the workers), but said very little about the violations of which we had been hearing so much. After a while, Sofronov broke in to suggest that perhaps everyone was defending his fellow workers. At the end of the meeting, Pavel, the old dispatcher and the man who had gotten me the job at ATK-50, was also asked to turn in his resignation.
As a result of Sofronov’s shake-up, I was given another job. I was assigned to a small wooden shed outside the garage proper, along with another mechanic named Vassily. He was a specialist in transmissions and rear axles; I was made responsible for the shock absorbers and steering gears. The shock absorbers were of the latest telescoping, hydraulic type; the only problem was, we had almost no spare parts.
Since necessity is the mother of invention, I soon grew adept at making replacements out of scrap. I was under terrific pressure, though, because no car could be out of service more than twenty-four hours. Moreover, I knew these same cars would be back out on country roads where the best shocks in the world wouldn’t last two weeks. To make a hectic situation even worse, officials from the city government, the army, and the airport used to bring their shock-absorber troubles to ATK-50, and it all piled up on me. It was just too much for one man, and I told Sofronov so.
In an attempt to lick the problem, I even made dies by hand to stamp out the replacement parts. For this I got an award, a governmental grammota (diploma) signed by the garage and city officials for “outstanding service.” I also got the Zvanie Udarnika Kommunisticheskogo Truda (Shock Troop of Communist Labor) Award, one of the highest worker awards in the country. That was presented to me at a solemn meeting of all the workers, with the head of the union on hand to present it personally, then my name was added to the framed list of Udarniki on the wall of the workers’ hall. Naturally, I took quite a ribbing about it all.
More important, I also got a pair of handsome bonuses—and a helper at last! Friends in the garage told me that the helper had been picked out by the Party as much to watch me as to help me, but he did the job. The union also brought students out from town to learn from me, and an apprentice was sent from the garage at Chernogorka to learn the technique. The crowning irony of the whole episode, however, was when the MVD sent a mechanic to learn from me.
Afterward, Sofronov called me out one day and began to ask me in a friendly way about the job, and whether I was satisfied with the pay. From there he went on to ask all sorts of questions, including a seemingly innocent one about whether I, as an American, listened to the Voice of America. I told him I had no radio at all where I lived. “Oh, good,” he said, somewhat taken aback, “yes, that’s better. Don’t listen to it.”
After an awkward pause, Sofronov asked whether there was anything at all he could do for me. He seemed to be taking such an interest in my life that I felt something was up. I told him, though, that if he could get me an apartment somewhere I would certainly appreciate it. He looked momentarily startled, then explained that the garage barracks were full and he couldn’t do much for me at present. He suggested that perhaps the City Council could help. “I’ve been going there for over a year,” I said. That stopped him. “But,” he ended magnanimously, “if there is anything else you need, don’t hesitate to ask me.”
I was concerned about another apartment because all during the winter Iosip had been asking me to try to find another room. He was ashamed to tell me the reason, but finally he admitted it: the City Council had “suggested” that it looked bad for him, as a leading Party member, to have me—a foreigner and a possible spy—in his house. At the beginning of spring, Iosip had again begun to talk seriously of my getting another place to live; they were pressuring him at the City Council. He told me as far as he was concerned I could stay forever, but “perhaps it might be better if you could find a room elsewhere.”
Finally, our next-door neighbor, Dmitri, offered me a room in his house. His mother, the old babushka who had met me the day I first came to Iosip’s, lived with them and slept in a room similar to t
he one I had at Iosip’s, next to the kitchen. The babushka wanted me to have her room; she would sleep in the kitchen. I accepted eagerly, for in many ways it was an ideal solution. I knew Dmitri and Ilyena, his wife—and the old babushka—quite well, for they were always dropping over to Iosip’s. Moreover, I would still be close to Iosip, Valya, and all the friends I had made there.
The move had other advantages, too. For one thing, it would give me a chance to say Mass every day without waiting until everyone had gone to bed. Dmitri and Ilyena never got home from work before 6:30, I was generally home by 4:30, and I could say Mass then. There would be fewer visitors, and a quieter house in general—a place to read and relax, or even to watch television if I wished, for Dmitri and Ilyena had one of the few sets in the neighborhood.
I paid the babushka about 3 rubles a month, and in return she would have hot soup or kasha for me, plus three or four slices of rye bread, when I came home at night. That was my daily fare. I used to make a big pot of soup, or borscht, a couple times a week, which would last me for three or even four days. The soup was made of potatoes, cabbage, beets, onions, and lamb bones—or anything else I could get to thicken the pot—then enough lard so the grease on top would be as thick as my little finger. I’d have a bowl of soup in the morning before I went to work, and the babushka would have another ready when I came home at night.
For lunch at the factory, I took a piece of fatback as big as my hand, or a herring, or perhaps an onion or pickled tomatoes, with a thick chunk of rye bread. That, too, was standard. It was normal to see a man at the garage pull an onion and a piece of bread from his pocket for lunch; nothing else. I still drank hot water (kipiatok) rather than tea or coffee, and if I had meat once or twice a week, it was all to the good.
Sunday was our weekly holiday, but of course it has lost much of its religious significance in the U.S.S.R. Sunday today is the main shopping day, and the streets are crowded with people hurrying not to church, but to the stores to stand in line. For me, though, Sunday was an opportunity to be alone with God. Dmitri and his wife used to leave early in the morning to go shopping or visiting, and the babushka would spend the day with neighbors. I had the house to myself, so I could say my Mass without fear of interruption and read the Bible for as long as I wanted. And beside the spiritual satisfaction of Sunday, I enjoyed a complete rest.
The strain of work, frankly, was again beginning to tell on me. My legs and knees, especially, were getting tired from standing seven hours each day on the cold concrete; my hands were stiff and tired from the constant pulling and pushing required in repairing the shock absorbers, the immersion in gasoline. I was honestly beginning to feel old age catching up with me. I tired easily; at the end of a day, my arms and legs felt heavy, and my breath was short. Perhaps it was as much the steady diet of fat and rye bread, with no fruit or fresh vegetables or milk, but it was becoming increasingly noticeable. Every morning, except Sunday, I did a half hour of gymnastics in the courtyard before breakfast to keep my muscles toned.
More than my physical condition was bothering me, though. I was increasingly annoyed at the way the MVD kept checking up on me. Iosip’s frank admission of his reason for asking me to move was just one indication. Shortly after I moved in with Dmitri, I got an anonymous letter warning me not to go to certain houses or visit certain people—“or you will land in the same place you came from.” I also received a letter from a former prisoner with whom I’d been corresponding for a long time, asking me to please stop writing “because I’ve been warned.”
Then, at work one day, another mechanic came to me and told me he had been questioned not long ago by the MVD about his association with me. Not only that, he said, but he had been asked to collaborate with them and watch me. He told me quite frankly about the incident, because he liked me, and warned me to be on my guard. Ironically, shortly after he walked away, someone who had seen us talking sidled up to warn me that he thought the fellow was spying on me.
There was no doubt but that, for some reason or other, the surveillance was being tightened on me again. Perhaps my letters to the Embassy, or the regular letters I was now getting from my sisters at home, had something to do with it. No doubt, though, the MVD just couldn’t believe I was simply one of the “Shock Troops of Soviet Labor”; they had warned me not to work as a priest, and they were watching me closely.
One morning, as I entered the garage, I was stopped by an old man in his seventies. He was of medium height, with a military bearing and stride, a wind-burnt face, broad forehead, and wavy white hair. He asked me for a mechanic; I referred him to the chief. As I spoke he noticed an accent and asked if I would mind if he asked me a few questions. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Aren’t you a Pole?” he asked, first of all. I hesitated, then nodded my head. “My parents were Polish,” he said, “but I’ve forgotten the language. In any event, I’m very glad to meet you. My name is Dutov.” I introduced myself in return. “Do you work here?” he continued. I said I did. “Well, then, perhaps you can help me out. You see, I work at the Abakan Museum and I lost the key to one of the display cases. I wonder if someone here could make me another?”
I told him that I could do it, but not at the moment. (If I was caught doing outside work, I’d have been docked the rest of the day’s pay under Sofronov’s new rules.) We talked for a while longer, and before he left he told me that he would like to meet me again, so I gave him my address. From that chance meeting, we became good friends.
As I got to know him, I found out he was an archeologist who had been working here in the Far East for more than fifty years, excavating the burial grounds of the primitive inhabitants. In Abakan, he told me, he had found interesting relics of the people, the Khakassians, which went back as far as 3,000 years. I also learned he was considered the leading authority on archeological questions concerning Siberia; every year he gave a series of lecturers in Moscow, Leningrad, or the other big university cities about his most recent findings.
Some of those findings, he said, bore striking resemblances to findings in China and Japan. Occasionally, then, I was able to help him by translating his Russian articles into English for publication in various international journals. He was also in frequent correspondence with a Chinese professor of archeology at Cambridge. The Chinese knew English, but not Russian, so I used to write Professor Dutov’s letters for him and translate the English answers which came from Cambridge.
I was also able to do him one very special favor, thanks to the Jesuits at Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C. The professor often came across references in his work to Müller’s Handbuch der Archaologie, but he told me there were only a few copies of the book in all Russia, at the big university libraries. I wrote to the Jesuits at Gonzaga, who had already sent me other packages, and they were able to get a copy of the book. Professor Dutov thought it was almost a miracle, and he never forgot it.
In the months I knew him, we became quite close. He knew I was a priest, but he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t get married. He had even picked out the ideal wife for me, a lady friend of his, about forty-five, who had her own apartment and a nice job. “You should have someone to come home to,” he used to say, “someone to take care of you now, as well as when you get old. You may be all right now; you’re strong, you have a good job. But in ten or fifteen years what are you going to do?”
I used to just laugh at him. “Oh,” I’d say, “I’ll take care of myself.” “But what if you can’t?” “Then God will have to do His share.” “Ah! You and your God!” (The professor always claimed he was an atheist.) Then he would forget about the question of marriage and launch into an argument about religion; he loved a good argument. We had many good times together, including the arguments, and he told me I was the one really true friend he had ever made. He even invited me along on some of his archeological trips around Abakan, but I was never able to make it.
Sometime in April 1963, I came home from work one evening to find a letter fro
m my sister Helen telling me she had at last received a visa to make a tour of Russia—Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Lvov. The tour would begin in Moscow on June 19th, and she asked if I could meet her there on that date. Since it was suppertime, I read the letter to the babushka, then to Dmitri and his wife when they came home. The babushka was overjoyed. She alternated between asking a lot of questions (most of which I couldn’t answer) and exclamations like “Oh, the Lord is good to let you see your sister before you die!”
I was continually distracted at Mass that night, thinking about the news. I went to bed much later than usual, but I couldn’t sleep. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a problem—this getting to Moscow. The idea of walking into a hotel in broad daylight and joining a group of American tourists—how would I ever get permission for that, and from whom? I tossed and turned all night, and got up the next morning more tired than when I had gone to bed.
The next day at work, I went to see Sofronov. “Ah, Wladimir Martinovich,” he said when I walked into his office. “What’s the matter? You don’t look well.” “I’m all right, Tovarisch Nachzalnik (Superintendent),” I answered, “but I have a problem.” “Nu, nu, what is it?” “I got a letter yesterday from Washington . . .” “Where?” “From my sister in America. She has a visa to visit me here in Russia, in Moscow. But you know that my vacation time, according to the schedule, is already finished. Can I get a second period of leave?”
Tovarisch Sofronov, as a matter of fact, was badly disturbed by the whole situation. He hardly knew what to do. We discussed the problem a little, and he finally told me he couldn’t make the decision. He promised, though, to take it up with the “committee” and let me have a definite answer soon. For the next month, I asked him almost every morning about the decision. He kept putting me off. There was nothing to do but wait; I couldn’t answer Helen until I knew definitely.
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