Dancing on Thin Ice

by Arkady Polishchuk

  Dancing on Thin Ice: Travails of a Russian Dissenter

  By Arkady Polishchuk

  © 2018 DoppelHouse Press, Los Angeles

  Photographs and documents from the archives of Arkady Polishchuk, unless otherwise noted.

  COVER IMAGE: Arkady Polishchuk with background image of his clandestine publication Why a Physician Was Tried, written following the show trial of Dr. Mikhail Stern. Moscow, 1975.

  COVER DESIGN: Kourosh Biegpour

  TYPESETTING: Jody Zellen and Carrie Paterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  PUBLISHER’S CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Polishchuk, Arkady, author.

  Title: Dancing on thin ice: travails of a Russian dissenter / Arkady Polishchuk.

  Description: Includes index. | Los Angeles, CA: DoppelHouse Press, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9780998777047 (ebook) | LCCN 2018937174

  Subjects: LCSH Polishchuk, Arkady. | Dissenters--Soviet Union--Biography. | Journalists--Soviet Union--Biography. | Journalists--Soviet Union--Social conditions. | Soviet Union--Politics and government. | Human rights workers--Soviet Union--Biography. | Freedom of religion--Soviet Union. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Editors, Journalists, Publishers | HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union

  Classification: LCC DK510.763 .P65 2018 | DDC 070.92--dc23

  Dedicated to Soviet human rights activists

  Vladimir Bukovsky and Alexander (Alik) Ginsburg,

  both imprisoned and exchanged —

  Vladimir, for the first secretary of the Chilean communist party,

  Alexander, as one of five political prisoners exchanged for five

  Soviet spies

  The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

  William Faulkner

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  A Prison for Hedonists

  ONE

  The Cliff Edge Where It All Began

  TWO

  The Life of the Blind

  THREE

  How to Become an Expert on Africa

  FOUR

  What to Do If You Know Many Russian Spies

  FIVE

  My Good Friends in the KGB

  SIX

  The Struggle for Purity in the Party Ranks

  SEVEN

  On the Horns of a Dilemma

  EIGHT

  The Unpredictable World of Dissent

  NINE

  The First Trial, December 1974

  TEN

  Different Courts Without a Difference

  ELEVEN

  The Sweet Taste of Freedom

  TWELVE

  More Dangerous Than Jews

  THIRTEEN

  A Jewish Invasion of the Communist Sanctum

  FOURTEEN

  How to Catch an American Spy

  FIFTEEN

  The Assault on the American Embassy

  SIXTEEN

  In the Cultist’s Lair

  SEVENTEEN

  Send-Offs of Various Kinds

  EIGHTEEN

  New Life, Old Stars

  NINETEEN

  Russian Jews, a Russian Tiger, and Some Other Russians

  TWENTY

  Phantoms of the Past in the Shadow of Skyscrapers

  TWENTY-ONE

  A Jew Who Spoke in Tongues

  TWENTY-TWO

  My Russian Habitat in California

  APPENDICES

  Photographs and Documents

  Index

  Author Biography

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  A Prison For Hedonists

  LOOK, BOYS! A JEW! were the first words I heard after two policemen opened the cell door to bring me in. The jailers smirked and left me facing my cellmates. Thirty-five pairs of eyes looked at me. I knew that my first reaction would determine my upcoming treatment.

  “Oh, Yisrael, is that you?!” I cried into the dim light. “It feels so good to find a cousin among these Russian thugs!”

  Raucous laughter flooded the stinky cell. A shaggy guy, outraged to the depths of his Slavic soul that I dared to call him a Jew, was climbing down from the upper berth to punish me. I turned back toward the peephole and affably waved my hand to the guards. I knew they stood there, in anticipation. To my horror, another inmate crawled out of his roomy den under the lower berth. He flicked a speck of dust from his battered jacket and, with a lazy gesture, stopped the swearing cellmate halfway to me. After that he shook my hand. The word “mama” was tattooed on his fleshy fingers. The bold exclamation mark on his thumb pointed to his strong filial attachment.

  “Political?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but only in Russia. Name me a country where the wish to move to a warmer land is a crime.”

  My wiry guardian angel did not react and on the path back to his wooden platform said to his cellmate, “Crawl back into your fucking nest, Birdie.”

  Judging by the dignity with which he carried himself, my angel had a criminal record that inspired respect. Only he and three other men had the privilege of occupying platforms under the lower bunks. From the center of the cell, about one and a half yards from the bunks on either side, I could see their unshaven faces only when they wanted me to; mostly, I saw their dirty shoes.

  It was evening, and the prisoners were resting after a working day, sitting with their legs dangling down, smoking incessantly. The population of the lower planks was not happy about seven pairs of muddy boots and filthy pants caressing their faces. After a lively exchange in persuasive language, a compromise was reached, and the men on the upper wall-to-wall rows lay on their stomachs facing the newcomer.

  It was time for some explaining. I said with undue solemnity: “Thirteen Jews took part in a two day sit-in demonstration inside the Reception Room of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. They were denied exit visas, some for many years.”

  A hurricane of questions rained down on me:

  “Brezhnev’s Reception Room?!”

  “Are you Jews fuckin’ kidding me?”

  “What did you want?”

  “Why did they bring you here? Not to The Land of No Return?”

  “You’re lucky!”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Why is Israel using poison gas against Palestinians?” I recognized the lisping voice of the swearing bird.

  “Did they clobber you?”

  I said, “Two broken ribs.”

  I was in the midst of my narrative about the Jewish invasion of the Leader’s Reception Room, when a tall cellmate attempted to reach an opening in the broken corner of the window’s lower right pane. He put his right foot on the lower plank bed, placed the very tip of his left boot on an inch-wide ledge jutting out of the wall, and clung to the wall, his penis at the ready. I stopped talking, and with a sinking heart, waited for him to crash onto the floor or even worse, step on the cast-iron ribs of the heating radiator under the window, breaking it free from the rotten wall. The tragedy didn’t happen. My listeners continued looking at me and smoking; the jailers simply ignored this direct violation of prison regulations.

  Most of the prisoners had arrived at this lockup on the outskirts of Moscow for drunken brawls or just for being at the wrong place when they’d had a few too many. All of them were determined to get out in ten or fifteen days, in accordance with the Russian Criminal Code article on disorderly behavior called “minor hooliganism.” Here, they behaved nicely. What fool would do something to turn fifteen days into a much longer
term, in a camp, doing life-threatening work? In fact, they considered themselves lucky.

  The inmates decided that, in all fairness, my place was next to Nikolai, a burly fellow also with two broken ribs. I quickly discovered that the worst air was here, under the ceiling, on the upmost stone-hard plank. Like acid in my eyes.

  Peals of laughter deadened our groaning when I tried to squeeze myself between Nikolai and a puny boy.

  “It hurts,” I said, apologetically.

  “My ribs are broken on the same side.” Nik smiled like a five-star Hotel National manager greeting an American billionaire in Moscow.

  We tried to laugh, but our ribs did not like such disrespectful shaking. Massive Nikolai at the moment enjoyed relaxing on his back. “I could sleep like this, except that the cellies don’t allow me,” he confided. “We all are like sardines in a can.”

  I was the seventh sardine.

  “They hammered me more than two weeks ago,” he said.

  “Here?” I asked.

  “No, at a police station in downtown.”

  “What for?”

  “I hit a plainclothes chief of the station.”

  “So, you’re a lucky devil. Just like us Jews. You could get no less than three years, maybe more.”

  “Yeah, but they saw I was completely plastered,” he explained. “Oh boy, he and his goons beat me hard! They left me unconscious in their basement. I was recovering on the cement floor for ten days and had to pay for the food they were delivering. The men pocketed some of the money, but I didn’t mind.” He whispered, “I always carry it under my insole.… After a couple of days, I apologized and the major forgave me. He said, ‘It’s okay, we all drink too much sometimes.’ He was good. After my mug looked normal, they took me to a court, and the judge sent me here.”

  “Yes, the major acted in accordance with his clear conscience,” I said.

  “Exactly!” said Nik.

  “It’s a pity,” I said, “Your fancy coat has been ruined.”

  “I’m no hooligan and no drunkard, never swear in my wife’s presence. I’m a serious man, feed a lot of important people, and manage the best furniture store in Moscow.”

  “Which means, in the country,” I inserted.

  He nodded. It was clear; soon this man would be telling me the secrets of his trade.

  “Why did you hit him?” I asked.

  “I was trying to stop a taxi or any car.”

  “Were you drunk out of your mind?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “I was dashing around like mad right in the middle of Gorky Street with widespread arms—a cop told me the next morning that I stopped a bus.”

  “You could’ve been killed.”

  “Yeah, and here, all of a sudden, this guy! It was my wife’s birthday; I was late for the party. I brought a crate of vodka to treat my boys in the store, a bottle for every man; they envy me—she’s a very good wife.” He sighed deeply like a remorseful child who had not listened to his mother. “I hit him a couple of times with these shovels.” He brought his open hands, fingers spread out, to his face. “You see, I load furniture.”

  Looking at his face between these thick sausages with dirt under the nails, I shook my head. “Yes, that police chief is a very good man!”

  That first night, my ribs bothered me more than the rotten air, coughing, snoring, wheezing, squabbling over space, and the noisy, poisonous farting. The men did not seem to be bothered. They even made the farting into a sporting event and competed, for a cigarette, in duration and volume. By morning, the cocktail of tobacco, urine, and lethal sweat mostly faded away. At 6 a.m., the turnkeys accompanied by the national anthem on the radio woke us up, and we were rushed to the toilet—four stinky holes in the concrete ground, a long sloping cement trough for urination next to four rusty sinks. An eager line watched your every move as you squatted over that hole, commenting on your wasteful treatment of priceless newspaper—“A reader!” “Cultured!” “It’s your asshole, use your fingers,” “Leave some paper for others,” and other snippets of wisdom to similar effect.

  A policeman at the door kept encouraging us: “Hurry up! The mess hall will be closed in five minutes!”

  No, I don’t want to write about grievous events in that prison. I am determined to forget a vomiting young epileptic on the slippery floor of that shithouse, and an old man sitting next to me in the mess hall, who spat blood on the freshly painted red floor and said, “I’m from a sanatorium for consumptives.”

  The nurse—yes, we had a nurse—did not come.

  “She doesn’t have medication, anyway,” said the skinny old man.

  I want to forget the savage hatred in the eyes of a handsome guard wearing a gray apron over his zealously ironed uniform; he flopped three tablespoons of watery cement into an aluminum plate and pushed it toward me. But I remember the funny part of our brief exchange. I want to remember only the funny parts. He said, “If I were in charge, I’d deprive you of this kasha.”

  I was amused. “What a loss! Your cook can make kasha out of cement and candies out of shit.”

  “I’ll report you to the lieutenant,” he said. “In the punishment cell you’ll dream of this shit.”

  But I ate it. A man has to eat. My cellmates surprised me. They had to come to the mess hall, but did not eat at all. They were up to something, but I didn’t know what. They only drank the hot water called tea from overheated aluminum cups.

  As for the punishment cell, I’m sure the kitchen cop made his report. And the warden was obviously not in charge either. It was the KGB headquarters that wanted to keep things nice and quiet. I was not deprived of my kasha. I had this kasha every fucking day. Much later, in my own apartment, in my nightmares, I ate it again and again, and a soup, for some enigmatic reason called fish soup, of the same dirty color and taste, only more watery. But at that time it was not their fault. It was my problem.

  A few minutes later, a young jailer brought me back to the empty cell from the mess hall. It was nearly dawn. The iron-barred small window did not have the usual iron peak over it, and I enjoyed the morning charm of the outside world—the patch of leaden sky over the huge gray wall covered from bottom to top by generous layers of barbed wire. I pressed my cheek to the glass, sticky like flypaper. The beauty of a stunted, now leafless, tree struck me, and I realized why my cellmates called this suburban outpost of the old Moscow Butyrka prison, “Crooked Birch Tree Inn.” Behind and above the tree stood a deserted watchtower with a searchlight. It was also heartwarming to view that little hole in the window, as it served as a ventilator and a chimney. Winter was at the door and free designs of urine and the yellowish hoarfrost decorated the outside of that opening. Usually the outlet was used when you knew that a policeman wouldn’t take you to the toilet beyond the designated time; one could read a sign of misfortune on a framed piece of paper nailed to the dark brown door. The prison administration was right—we had a nice metal pail, half filled with water, thoughtfully placed in the cells in case of fire.

  So, when at first a newcomer felt that his entire urinary infrastructure was on fire, he usually knocked at the door and yelled, “Hey! Boss! I’m about to pee all over myself!”

  After that he used the pail. The second day he would prefer to ask someone to block the peep hole and go for the hole in the window. I thought of freedom of choice and its relationship to happiness. What’s the difference between the pail reeking of urine and the same stink coming from the window and your own spattered pants?

  Only sometimes would one jailer, the oldest of them, unlock the door and take the guy to the toilet. For his kindness he was given cigarettes.

  The young turnkey soon entered the cell again, smiling amicably. “In an hour the air here will be much better.”

  “So, are none of the arrested Jews going to work?”

  “No,” he said. “The drunks and riffraff love it there. They guzzle vegetables and fruit over there; there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a huge vegetable and fru
it warehouse.”

  “What if they run away?”

  “They’re not stupid,” he said. “A couple of years for a runaway.”

  “Freedom is sweet,” I said.

  “Then why”—he paused, searching for a neutral word, trying to avoid the word “Jews”—“... are you and your friends here?”

  “It was our free choice.”

  “You’re interesting people, probably had a nice job, cultured, educated. Why?”

  I asked, “Are you allowed to talk with me like that?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  “What if I convince you to move to Israel?”

  We chuckled.

  “So, are you going to search me and the cell?” I asked. My coat and pants were loaded with cigarettes, matches, and some money.

  “Will you trust me more,” he said, “if I tell you that we were ordered not to search you guys? All I want is your advice on how to make a better living.”

  “Did you get this job after military service?”

  “Yes, and a place in the dormitory.”

  “The only way out of this corner is school.”

  “I’m attending an evening high school now. Can you help me with a couple of math problems?”

  “We can give it a try. I am a journalist, not a math teacher.”

  “Interesting! I’d like to become a journalist, too.”

  “Any law school would be delighted to have someone with your professional background.”

  “Our job is difficult,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “Here you’re kind of imprisoned, no matter which side of the door you’re on.”

  “Do you have relatives in Israel?”

  This question was dangerous. I shrugged it off. He did not insist. Maybe he was instructed to ask it, maybe not. How could this villager know that in order to apply for an exit visa, Jews were required to have invitations from Israeli relatives? After sixty years of isolation, almost nobody had relatives abroad, especially in Israel. During the war, in 1944, my parents received a letter and a photograph from America. That was how I learned that my mother had a stepsister and I had a cousin named Michael. They destroyed the letter and hid the photo of the Baybusky family in the attic of our apartment house. I said to the jailer, “My aunt emigrated soon after Russia was defeated in World War I and the tsar abdicated.”