2. Information about his fellow prisoners, their life-stories, misfortunes, joys.
3. The thoughts and feelings of Mishchenko: what interests or disturbs him; his ideas on science and his work; his opinions on the books sent to him by Svetlana; his reaction to events outside the camp.
The letters from Svetlana Ivanova tell about:
1. Her daily life – her work and studies, her professional, material, intellectual and emotional concerns, her relatives and friends.
2. Events in her life and in the lives of people close to her during the war.
3. Muscovites in the post-war years – their return to the capital from evacuation, their material problems, working conditions and leisure pursuits.
4. Post-war Moscow – new buildings, shops, urban transportation, holidays, theatrical premières, new films, etc.
5. Public events and her participation in them.
Svetlana responds not only to Lev’s needs but also to the needs of his fellow prisoners. From her letters it is clear that many of her friends and relatives were involved in helping Lev. Svetlana lists the contents of the parcels she has sent to the labour camp. She worries that the parcels may have gone missing. From the contents of these parcels we can learn a lot about conditions in the camp. Foot-wraps, underwear, combs, toothbrushes, pillows, clothes, medicines and bandages, needles and thread, pens and pencils, books and newspapers – all these were sent to prisoners. Svetlana sent spectacles, scientific textbooks, cereals and vitamins. Her letters often came with blank sheets of paper, envelopes, postage stamps – and apologies that she had been unable to send a parcel because she didn’t have a box.
Svetlana’s letters also give us a remarkable account of post-war daily life in the Soviet capital. Their intimate descriptions of everyday reality – from Komsomol activities to the long queues at shops and railway offices – allow us to understand the lives of Muscovites and to sense the atmosphere of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Svetlana’s letters were written in the conviction that everything that took place in Moscow was of direct concern and importance to Lev and his fellow prisoners. She asks Lev for his advice, shares her doubts with him and actively involves him in the daily routines of her life, in order to help him feel less isolated from the normal world. It is as if she is living life for the two of them. She tells him her impressions of the latest films and plays, recounts meetings with her friends and writes to him about events in Moscow so that Lev might escape, if only mentally, from the barbed-wire confines of the prison camp and find some diversion from the monotony of his labour.
At the same time the events in the camp become part of her own life. Morally she tries to support Lev, to counteract his pessimism and despair, to stop him from sinking into hopelessness.
The Mishchenko–Ivanova correspondence is thousands of pages, and every page is filled with love, though the word itself is hard to find in the letters. Both Lev and Svetlana wrote sparingly about their romantic emotions. Neither wanted to burden the other by ‘opening up their hearts’. But at times these feelings burst on to the page, and then it becomes clear that these are the letters of a man and woman who love each other passionately.
In 1947 Svetlana decided to travel to Pechora without official permission. She did not think how such a journey – by a member of the Komsomol to visit a convicted ‘enemy of the people’ – might destroy her career and bring her to the attention of the political police. She was not Lev’s wife, nor his relative. She had already been questioned by the police and threatened by them. A journey to the camp was difficult and dangerous: she risked severe punishment and even arrest, and she had no certainty that she would be able to see Lev. Yet she went to Pechora, and an illegal meeting with Lev did take place with the help of those same friends who had smuggled the couple’s letters.
The Mishchenko–Ivanova correspondence spans a decade in the lives of two people who kept their love intact despite the repressive grip of the Stalinist system. They lived apart with only hope in their future together to sustain them. Their letters should be read as a historical drama, as a dialogue between protagonists who listened to each other lovingly and understood each other’s slightest hint. They tell the story of two people who were both extraordinary and yet typical of Soviet society. For a historian the content of those trunks is a unique archival treasure revealing a hidden world of emotions and connections few documents can match.
Irina Ostrovskaya
International Memorial
Sources
Archives
The Mishchenko–Ivanova correspondence is housed in the archive of the Memorial Society in Moscow. The letters of Lev (LM) and Svetlana (SI) between 1946 and 1954 are identified by year and number (for example, SI46-20, the first letter cited in the book, is by Svetlana to Lev, her twentieth to him in 1946). Lev and Svetlana numbered all their letters very carefully, and their numbering has been retained. Letters between them from the period before 1941 are identified by their author and date (e.g. LM39-28.10). Other documents from the Mishchenko–Ivanova archive are cited individually. The Mishchenko–Ivanova correspondence will be opened to researchers in 2013.
APIKM Archive of the Pechora Historical-Regional Museum (Memorial), Pechora
GU RK NARK People’s Archive of the Republic of Komi, Syktykvar
MSP Archive of the Memorial Society, St Petersburg
Interviews
Aleksandrova, Irina Vladimirovna (Moscow, 2008)
Aleksandrovsky, Igor Aleksandrovich (Pechora, 2010)
Ivanov, Boris Borisovich (Pechora, 2010)
Lileev, Nikolai Ivanovich (St Petersburg, 2004)
Mishchenko, Il’ia Nikitich (Moscow, 2008)
Mishchenko, Lev Glebovich (Moscow, 2006, 2008)
Mishchenko, Lida Nikitovna (Moscow, 2008)
Mishchenko, Nikita L’vovich (Moscow, 2008)
Mishchenko, Svetlana Aleksandrovna (Moscow, 2008)
Mishchenko, Vera Nikitovna (Moscow, 2008)
Serditov, Iurii Zotikovich (Pechora, 2010)
Yakhovich, Alla Stepanovna (Pechora, 2010)
Published Works and Dissertations
Applebaum, A., Gulag: A History (London, 2003)
Azarov, O., ‘Po tundre, po zheleznoi doroge’, Martirolog: Pokaianie, 2 vols. (Syktykvar, 1999)
——‘Zheleznodorozhnye lageria NKVD (MVD) na territorii Komi ASSR (1938–1959 gg.)’, Kand. diss. (Syktykvar, 2005)
Begin, M., White Nights: The Story of a Prisoner in Russia (London, 1977)
Braithwaite, R., Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War (London, 2006)
Chivanov, V., ‘Pechora glazami Priezzhego’, in Vygliadyvaias’ v proshloe (Pechora, 2009)
Fizicheskii fakul’tet MGU v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (Moscow, 1975)
Gregory, P., ‘An Introduction to the Economics of the Gulag’, in P. Gregory and V. Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet Gulag (Stanford, 2003)
Herling, G., A World Apart, trans. J. Marek (London, 1986)
Ivanova, G., Labour Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System (Armonk, NY, 2000)
Khochu byt’ liubimoi: Russkaia zhenskaia poeziia ot Zolotogo i Serebriannogo veka do nashikh dnei (Moscow, 2008)
Mayakovsky, V., ‘Unfinished Poems’, trans. Bernard Meares, in Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry, selected with an Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (London, 1993)
Mishchenko, L., Poka ia pomniu (Moscow, 2006)
——‘Poka ia pomniu’, in Vygliadyvaias’ v proshloe (Pechora, 2009)
Mochulsky, F. V., Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir, trans. and ed. D. Kaple (Oxford, 2011)
Morozov, N., Gulag na Komi krae 1929–1956 (Syktykvar, 1997)
Moskva voennaia, 1941–1945: memuary i arkhivnye dokumenty (Moscow, 1995)
Pechorstroi: Istoriia sozdaniia (Pechora, 2000)
Rossii, J., Spravochnik po GULAGu, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1991)
Sakharov, A., Memoirs, trans. R. Lourie (London, 1990)
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Serov, B., ‘V Pechoru pod konvoem’, in Vygliadyvaias’ v proshloe (Pechora, 2009)
Sokolov, A., ‘Forced Labour in Soviet Industry’, in P. Gregory and V. Lazarev (eds.), The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet Gulag (Stanford, 2003)
Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1939 goda: Osnovnye itogi (Moscow, 1992)
Vygliadyvaias’ v proshloe (Pechora, 2009)
Source Notes
Chapter 1
p. 7 First meeting: Interview with Lev and Svetlana, 2008.
p. 7 Sveta’s clothes: SI 46-20.
p. 7 Sveta’s and Lev’s heights: SI 51-37, LM 54-11.
p. 8 ‘student club’: Sakharov, Memoirs, pp. 88–9.
p. 9 ‘Sveta’s such a lovely girl’: Interview with Lev and Svetlana, 2008.
p. 10 ‘Let’s go that way’: Interview with Lev and Svetlana, 2008.
p. 11 ‘A plump, slow-moving woman’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 21.
p. 11 ‘thought his notes were very good’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 11 ‘I took it as a lawful pass’: Poka ia pomniu, pp. 21–2.
p. 11 ‘daughter of a minor provincial official’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 12 ‘a small Siberian town’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 12 ‘Is that uncle a hunter?’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 8.
p. 12 ‘Lev was taken to the hospital’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 9.
p. 13 ‘The funeral’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 13 ‘He’s come to say goodbye’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 9.
p. 13 ‘Lev later visited his mother’s grave’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 9.
p. 13 ‘a second funeral’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 9.
p. 13 ‘his grandmother’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 14 ‘Granovsky Street’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 14 ‘Almost every day’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 10.
p. 14 ‘three of his parents’ closest friends’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 14 ‘Lev went to a mixed-sex school’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 15 ‘It seems to me that I was more grown up’: SI 49-83.
p. 15 Sveta’s strict upbringing: Interview with Irina Alexandrova, 2008.
p. 15 ‘He had to work his way through school’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 14.
p. 16 ‘The man wrote sad poems’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 15.
p. 16 ‘Lev was living with his grandmother’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 16 ‘mainly maths and physics books’: Listed in SI49-86.
p. 17 ‘A strict church-goer’: SI50-11.
p. 17 ‘She’s just my friend’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 17 ‘The one place’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 19 ‘Military training’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 19 ‘We have idiots’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 18.
p. 20 ‘Their relationship had cooled’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 20 ‘black moods’: SI47-3.
p. 20 ‘How many times’: SI46-18.
p. 21 ‘The glow of your cigarette’: LM46-1 (poem translated by Nicky Brown). The original (‘Ogonek tvoei papirosy’) can be found in Khochu byt’ liubimoi, p. 207.
p. 21 ‘Svetka!’: LM39-28.10.
p. 21 ‘Lev’s grandmother died’: LM46-1.
p. 21 ‘Vagankovskoe cemetery’: Communication by Nikita Mishchenko.
p. 22 ‘Sveta would stay late’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 22 ‘We climbed up’: LM40-15.8.
p. 23 ‘Do you know, there’s a lovely square’: SI40-31.7.
p. 23 ‘Levenka, My first impulse’: SI40-3.8.
p. 24 ‘We’re not going anywhere’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 27.
p. 24 ‘Today, at 4 o’clock’: Cited in Braithwaite, Moscow 1941, p. 74.
p. 25 ‘more than a thousand students’: Fizicheskii fakul’tet MGU v gody, p. 12.
p. 25 ‘Lev was shaken’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 27.
p. 26 ‘Svetik, we’re living in the woods’: LM41-13.7.
p. 26 ‘fed and watered’: LM41-14.7.
p. 26 ‘second visit in early September’: LM41-7.9; SI 46-1.
p. 26 ‘a piece of paper’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 27 ‘There was one last visit to Moscow’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
Chapter 2
p. 28 ‘Lev set off from Moscow’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 28 ‘eau de Cologne’: Communication by Nikita Mishchenko.
p. 29 ‘At the end of the third night’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 29 ‘Lev was brought to a transit camp’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 36.
p. 29 ‘In early December’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 30 ‘German captain’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 30 ‘Ich kann diese Aufgabe’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 38.
p. 30 ‘The truck was going very fast’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 40.
p. 31 ‘interrogated by the commandant’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 42.
p. 31 ‘lectured on Nazi ideology’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 43.
p. 32 Hladik episode: Poka ia pomniu, pp. 42–9.
p. 33 Vlasov recruitment episode: Poka ia pomniu, pp. 52–4.
p. 34 ‘The prisoners made their escape’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 35 ‘Lev once wrote to Prague’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 36 ‘Taxi drivers were charging’: Moskva voennaia, 1941–1945, p. 478.
p. 36 ‘Their first stop was Murom’: Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 43.
p. 36 ‘The railway cars’: Sakharov, Memoirs, p. 44.
p. 36 ‘chemistry and oscillation physics’: SI46-1.
p. 37 ‘It wore me out so much’: SI46-4.
p. 37 ‘I was in a strange, unfamiliar laboratory’: SI 46-4.
p. 38 ‘It was very hard for everyone’: SI46-20.
p. 38 ‘ill with brucellosis’: SI46-1.
p. 38 ‘laboratory on the third floor’: SI49-45a.
p. 38 ‘Many times she thought that she should run away’: SI 46-3.
p. 39 ‘summoned her for questioning’: SI46-3.
p. 39 ‘Getting a bit angry’: SI46-13.
p. 39 ‘All my relatives had come for my birthday’: SI46-4.
p. 40 ‘It was what I needed to say to someone’: SI46-21.
p. 40 ‘For a long time I stood on the threshold’: SI46-8.
p. 41 ‘It’s not for me to judge you’: SI46-21.
p. 41 ‘Pittler ammunition factory’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 42 ‘transferred to Buchenwald’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 66.
p. 42 ‘For each of these rooms’: Geoffroy de Clercq, ‘Buchenwald-Wansleben’, www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Witnesses/WanslebenEng.html.
p. 42 ‘For any misdemeanour’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 73.
p. 43 ‘I remember that at 8 p.m.’: Geoffroy de Clercq, ‘Buchenwald-Wansleben’.
p. 43 Escape from convoy episode: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 44 ‘Ahead of us on the road’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 76.
p. 44 ‘the only time during the entire war’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 44 ‘Throw away your weapons!’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 44 ‘tasted as good as restaurant food’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 44 ‘In Russia you have Communism’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 77.
p. 44 ‘Sveta and her family’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 45 ‘Even if I had only one small chance’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
p. 45 ‘We ate twelve times a day!’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 78.
p. 45 ‘Happy Return!’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 79.
p. 46 SMERSH interrogation: Poka ia pomniu, pp. 80–83.
p. 46 ‘I was not afraid of dying’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 84.
p. 46 ‘say goodbye’: LM46-1.
p. 46 ‘I was dozing after an interrogation’: Interview with Lev, 2008.
Chapter 3
p. 48 ‘The convoy travelled’: Details from APIKM, f. 31, op. 14 (Mishchenko); MSP, f. 3, op. 15, d. 3, APIKM
, f. 31, op. 50 (Lileev).
p. 48 ‘The prisoners were fed’: Mishchenko, ‘Poka ia pomniu’, p. 31.
p. 48 ‘The most likely explanation’: See Applebaum, Gulag, pp. 170–72.
pp. 48–9 ‘The guards employed’, ‘no longer human beings’: Interview with Lev, 2006.
p. 49 ‘Lev was badly hurt’: Poka ia pomniu, p. 92.
p. 49 ‘jogging pace’: APIKM, f. 31, op. 50 (Lileev).
p. 49 ‘All along the line’: APIKM, f. 23, op. 7 (Serditov).
p. 49 ‘sanitary point’: MSP, f. 3, op. 15, d. 3; interview with Iurii Serditov, 2010.
p. 49 ‘Many of the prisoners were so frail’: APIKM, f. 31, op. 50 (Lileev).
p. 49 ‘transit camp’: B. Serov, ‘V Pechoru pod konvoem’, p. 13.
p. 50 ‘131,930 prisoners’: Vsesoiuznaia perepis’, p. 229.
p. 50 ‘All the work was done by hand’: Azarov, ‘Po tundre, po zheleznoi doroge’, Martirolog, vol. 2, p. 159.
p. 51 ‘55 per cent’: GU RK NARK, f. 1, op. 2, d. 844. l. 43.
p. 51 ‘157,000 prisoners’: Azarov, ‘Zheleznodorozhnye lageria’, p. 111.
p. 51 ‘put the rails directly on the ground’: Details from Mochusky, Gulag Boss, pp. 77–83, 91–3.
p. 51 ‘The crucial bridge’: Details from Morozov, Gulag na Komi krae, pp. 87ff.
p. 51 ‘5 kilometres an hour’: Statistics in Azarov, ‘Zheleznodorozhnye lageria’, p. 191.
p. 51 ‘200,000 tons of it a month’: GU RK NARK, f. 1, op. 3, d. 67, l. 37.
p. 51 ‘ramshackle town’: Details from GU RK NARK, f. 623, op. 1, d. 76; V. Chivanov, ‘Pechora glazami priezzhego’, pp. 52–66; APIKM, f. 23, op. 7 (Serditov); interviews with Boris Ivanov, 2010.
p. 52 ‘52 hectares’: GU RK NARK, f. 173, op. 1, d. 1, l. 9.
p. 52 ‘fifty buildings’, ‘temporary wooden structures’: GU RK NARK, f. 173, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 29, 155.
p. 53 ‘There were ten barracks’: Mishchenko, ‘Poka ia pomniu’, p. 32.
p. 53 ‘Terletsky’: Mishchenko, ‘Poka in pomniu’, pp. 39–40.
p. 54 ‘Anisimov’: LM46-26; LM47-28.
Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag Page 31