Dancing on Thin Ice

by Arkady Polishchuk

  Goretoi invited them to sit down at the unpainted table under the cherry tree. As it turned out, they came to see him, not me, but I joined them. The already familiar strange procedure repeated itself—they totally ignored my presence. It seemed that Moscow would not be dealing with me for as long as I did not shoot a cannon at the KGB headquarters.

  One of the guests said, “Nikolai Petrovich, we’re here to remind all of you to take part in tomorrow’s local elections.”

  “You know,” Goretoi quietly said, “that all members of our church renounced their Soviet citizenship, so we cannot take part in this event.”

  “We’re all adults,” said a guest, whom I took for a KGB officer, “and you still remain Soviet citizens. If you don’t participate in the elections, your neighbors are going to be very angry at you.”

  I thought of my failed attempt to leave the Party.

  “We cannot do that,” repeated Goretoi. “You know that we’re asking the authorities to let us emigrate.”

  “You forbade the members of your group to participate in the elections,” the Party official said, raising his chin.

  “No, no one in our church has the power to deprive its members of their human rights,” was Goretoi’s nuanced reply. “Their behavior is predetermined by their faith in Jesus Christ. And His guidance is the only voice they trust. You follow Communist Party directives, we follow His directives.”

  The KGB man said amiably, “We don’t want you to be accused of organizing a boycott.”

  “We’re here to talk only about your civic duty,” said the Party man, furrowing his brow.

  “In your group there are old and sick people, and we want to act humanely,” the KGB officer said politely. “Your folks don’t need to go to the polling station tomorrow, the members of the election commission will visit all of you with ballot boxes. They need just to put their ballots in the boxes.”

  “We’re not a group. We are a church.”

  I desperately wanted to repeat the historical statement of the witness Feodor Sidenko at the trial in Nakhodka, but instead of saying “All of this is gross bullshit!” I caught myself beating a drum roll on the table with my fingers. Everyone looked at me. I got up. “If you don’t have questions for me,” I said, “I’ll go inside and play with the kids.”

  When they left, Goretoi said, “At parting, I gave them an argument from Revelation, ‘Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins.’”

  The handwriting on the photograph of this small house with three windows says, “Built by the hands of two sons-in-law.” It belonged to Pentecostals and was demolished by authorities. Located on the outskirts of the small town Dneprovsk, near the Dnieper River, Ukraine, this house was likely constructed by members of a Ukrainian family with young children and built with the same kind of homemade bricks that I witnessed being made by the Goretoi family and their fellow church members in Starotitarovskaya.

  This team of construction workers in Ukraine is comprised of relatives belonging to the same church. Photo from 1986. Photographer unknown.

  The very next day I found myself unlawfully partaking in the electoral sins. Two festively dressed women had not expected to see some unknown citizen in the home of sectarians. They could not tear their eyes away from me and ignored the three old women, whose house they solemnly entered with a ballot box and a bundle of ballots. The authorities clearly did not deem it necessary to notify the activists of my subversive endeavors in the village. Perhaps it was a state secret. At the moment, I was most worried about the suspicious bus on which the two arrived. Such a bus could be used for transporting a police squadron kept somewhere nearby. Maybe these idiots have become victims of their own propaganda, I thought, and dreamt of a violent Christian demonstration.

  A hard life clearly had not deprived the old ladies of their sense of humor.

  “My nephew doesn’t want to vote either,” said one of them, nodding in my direction. The “nephew” nodded gloomily two times.

  “Why?” asked one of the state’s goodwill ambassadors.

  “I’m not a local,” I said. “Came here to visit my kin.”

  “As an educated man, you should explain to these not very literate women that every citizen should vote.”

  “Shouldn’t I first explain to you why they don’t want to vote?”

  “We know why,” she said. “Because someone with connections to the CIA brainwashed them, and now they want to move to the fascist state of Israel. They don’t even know that they will endure hunger and poverty there. Their sect is banned there, and they will be forced to pray in a synagogue of the Jewish God.”

  “How awful!” I said. “And for this reason they must participate in local elections?”

  The activists started to get nervous. After I asked, “How many candidates are on your ballot?” they looked bewildered. Then one of them said, “We don’t need many; we trust our candidate.”

  “I don’t know this godless candidate,” said the old woman, who was breathing heavily and spoke at intervals. “I want to die where my church won’t be penalized for my funeral. The Lord said to me that in Israel my church wouldn’t be fined.”

  She was the one whom Goretoi suggested get some fresh air during the service.

  The activists started to get angry. “I don’t know what your god tells you,” said one of them, “but here the government tells us that you have to participate in elections.”

  And again, I saw it firsthand. When it came to their faith, these people, even the sick and old, did not frighten.

  “Here we’re not allowed to pray.” The old woman continued speaking, breaking off after every sentence while her gray hair was quivering. “If I help a sick neighbor, I’m fined. If I teach the Bible to my grandchild, I’m fined. If I talk at the well with a neighbor about Christ, I’m fined.”

  I was getting tired of the intrusion in the life of these women and said, “I’ll interpret for you what she just said: Soviet law strictly prohibits charitable activities, religious instruction of children, and missionary activities.”

  Then I asked them why they came on a bus. The ambassadors called me a dangerous sectarian, and as they were leaving, I said, “Next time, include Jesus Christ—in the list of candidates.”

  “Troublemaker!” shouted the perturbed activist.

  To my surprise, a quiet old woman, silent during the visit, now spoke, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

  The pale and hunched women all went limp and kept mum: their strength had left them, and I did not ask about the bullet hole in their ceiling.

  Some months earlier, authorities had decided to engage a couple of local ruffians in the fight against sectarians. Goretoi had been sure that they were paid for their cultural-educational work—to intimidate his church. And these drunken pedagogues found a weak link in the community to terrorize, the three old women in poor health. When two men with a hunting rifle had opened the ramshackle door of their house with one kick, the women recognized both as well-known local rowdies and thieves. They ordered the women to stand up against the wall; one of the ruffians aimed the rifle at them and barked, “Give up your damn god, or we’ll shoot you down like old dogs.”

  He lifted the rifle, shot at the ceiling, and ordered, “Give me all the money you received from America.”

  It was the end of winter and the old ladies brought from the cellar four heads of cabbage and a small sack with potatoes.

  He said, “We aren’t beggars,” and asked in a conciliatory tone if they happened to have some vodka. The women said that they drank only water.

  The authorities did not bestir themselves until after Nikolai Petrovich Goretoi had written a statement to the police, naming the two bandits. Thereafter, the same KGB officer who had just visited us stopped by Goretoi’s house to say that the delinquents were arrested and would soon be brought before the court. No one ever talked to the old women who were ready to testify, but the pair disappeared from the village for a couple of mont
hs.

  UPON MY UNEVENTFUL return home to Moscow, I went to see Andrei Sakharov with a draft of my document on the Christian emigration movement. His wife Elena Bonner was one of the three still-free members of the Helsinki Human Rights Group. In their small kitchen, we were busily writing on and passing between us a piece of paper. I suggested that if I said that I had visited the Pentecostals on behalf of the Group, it would show that it was still alive and kicking.

  Moscow-Helsinki Group Document #23, written by Arkady Polishchuk, page 1. Scan by Google Books.

  At the conclusion of our silent conversation, I moved our secret correspondence to the side and said, “Nowadays this thousands-strong list could easily become a roster of those sentenced to ten years of prison; that is, if they are not accused of organizing a revolt.” After that I hesitated for a second or two and added, “They have authorized me to be the official representative of the Christian Emigration Movement in the West.”

  “These walls have big ears,” said Elena Bonner.

  “That’s why I am saying this,” I said.

  It took me several days to cram all the facts into the Moscow Helsinki Group’s Document #23 on the Christian Emigration Movement. It rested upon the testimonies of people living thousands of miles apart—stories of imprisonment, discrimination, and humiliation—told to me and to several Russian political prisoners who got to know these Evangelicals in hard labor camps and prisons. Frequently recorded on tape, these witness accounts were supported by copies and originals of court sentences and orders, decisions of local authorities, receipts of countless fines, and defamatory newspaper articles.

  When I returned home from the Sakharovs, the same police major with grey stubble on his tired face waited for me at my entrance. Again, I signed for a notice from the Visa Office. And again something was holding me back from going there, from this crucial step.

  In fact, while the Visa Office formally was a branch of Ministry of Internal Affairs (eg. the Police Ministry), it was actually a KGB hand. When I finally showed up for an exit visa, the official greeting me coldly said, “Your visa has expired.”

  For some reason I said, “thank you” and moved toward the door. But she interrupted my movement and interjected, “Do not hurry, our boss wants to talk to you.”

  And we went to the second floor. I never found out who he was, the head of the Office, or his deputy for that matter, who introduced me matter-of-factly.

  “This is Polishchuk.”

  A tall, heavy-set man stood up gracefully from behind his desk and held out a green rectangle in my direction. “This is your expired visa,” he said. “Take it to the embassy of Holland.” The man looked at me skeptically and in conclusion said, “You keep traveling somewhere.”

  It was clear to me that he meant my visits with the Pentecostals. Nonetheless, even this revealing remark was nothing in comparison to their treatment of my expired visa. It wasn’t until I was already in the street that I looked at it. It was valid from July 1 to July 10, 1977. Today was the 11th of July.

  The high level bureaucrat in the Visa Office did not intend to punish me for such a serious violation of the law. All of a sudden, I was above the law. What an unintended achievement!

  My invalid Soviet exit visa which I brought to the Netherlands Embassy. The central page pictured here carries the seals of the embassy inside this already worthless Soviet document.

  The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Moscow was in charge of Israel interests in the USSR, and their officials were not at all worried that my visa was invalid. The decision to let me leave the country had been made by the KGB. A beautiful lady with an even more beautiful accent asked me when I wanted to depart.

  “In August,” I replied.

  SEVENTEEN

  Send-Offs of Various Kinds

  BEFORE MY DEPARTURE to the West I lived in a sticky fog, did not think much of the unpredictable future, and thought more of whom and what I was leaving behind. Nonetheless, I wrapped my pessimism in cheerfulness, repeating to myself and others that at the age of forty-seven I had an opportunity to live a second life and make it from scratch.

  The noise of the farewell gathering in my overcrowded apartment was heard on all six floors of the Moskovsky Compositor, the “Moscow Composer” co-op. None of the neighbors dared to come say goodbye.

  Among battle-hardened human rights activists, Christian dissidents, and Jewish refuseniks there were some people I never knew; they came to ask me to pass their names to Jewish organizations, to request an invitation from nonexistent Israeli relatives, and to smuggle their letters to someone in the West. A couple of newcomers were whispering, although nobody, including the wired ceiling of my top floor apartment, was able to hear about their sensitive problems.

  One of them produced a children’s “etch-a-sketch” delivered by a foreign sympathizer and began etching a list of his requests. The toy was considered to be sophisticated spy equipment. I refused to take letters, anticipating a thorough search at the airport. Through the noise I yelled that from now on they could speak out loud because they were already photographed by KGB agents sitting in two cars right in front of the entrance. Experienced Alexander Podrabinek told me that a nervous blond man with a mustache sitting on the bench in front of those cars wanted to talk with me.

  I ran downstairs to meet Nahl Zlobin. I had not seen my friend for several years and heard that he was already a philosophy professor. Friendship with me automatically could lead to expulsion from any citadel of Soviet ideology.

  I greeted him with the words, “They took pictures of you talking to Podrabinek, our main fighter against the use of psychiatry for persecuting dissidents.”

  “To hell with them!” said Nahl out loud. “Why so many?” he asked, nodding toward the cars.

  “They’re afraid that we might attack them.”

  Nahl tossed his head back and began laughing very loudly; I knew this process of freeing yourself from fear.

  “Don’t forget your friends,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

  I could only guess how Nahl managed to learn about my departure.

  When I returned to my guests, Nikolai Kunitsa was explaining to my mother how important it was at her age of seventy-eight to accept Jesus as her personal Savior. She was smiling and looked lost, as this was the first time in her life that she had met an Evangelical Christian. She did not want to offend this “villager,” but the subject probably was ridiculous to her. At the moment her only concern was that she was going to lose her son. Mama looked disapprovingly on two bright-eyed teenaged sons of a BBC correspondent, obviously brought here for educational purposes. The boys were impressed by two glossy jackdaws scared by the presence of noisy humans in close proximity to their cage. I made a promise to Yuri Mnyukh from the Helsinki Group to bring his birds to Vienna, although I was not sure that customs would allow me. He and his wife did not have enough time to overcome all the multi-stage procedures required for birds to emigrate from Mother Russia.

  In the morning hours of August 8, 1977, my mom and I, my sister and her husband, along with Goretoi, Kunitsa, and my university bosom buddy Fred Solyanov, were riding in two taxis to Sheremetyevo Airport. In my pocket lay the one hundred dollars I was allowed to buy in the Central Bank, on my knees stood a cage with two birds, and I sang a song about youths on their way to faraway places where they, as new settlers, would help to build Communism.

  The taxi driver asked, “Aren’t you afraid to go to Israel?”

  “Aren’t you afraid to remain here?” I asked him.

  At the airport, I had to run with two unhappy birds trying to stay balanced in their cage as they were sped toward the customs office dealing with pets. I held in my hand an official permission for them to migrate to the West, with notarized signatures of both Mnyukhs, and a similar permission for me to represent Yuri, Nelly, and their birds. A woman in a bluish-gray uniform, covered by a white doctor’s smock thrown over her shoulders, smiled sincerely while I told her how my friends found tw
o dying birds on asphalt pavement, one of which already had recovered by now but the other still had a broken wing. She gave me a form with a stamp allowing the birds to travel, then looked at the door, lowered her voice, and warned me, “Be careful during the inspection!”

  A sympathizer in such an unlikely place? I walked away, thunderstruck.

  I came out to find my little Mama, who clasped me tightly with both arms. She did not look at me, just pressed her cheek against my chest and stood still in silence. She let me go only when my turn came to go through inspection. “Sonny,” Mama said, “we put a vodka bottle in your suitcase. Give it to your friends.”

  I had lied that I had many influential friends abroad; my only friend Irmi Bloch, an exchange student from Vienna University, was studying Russian language in Moscow, and she hated vodka. My priceless documents remained in Moscow with her. Among them were originals of fines for Christian funerals, weddings, worship at homes and in forests, protocols of court sentences, and photographs of imprisoned Christians. Irmi and I had become acquainted at the home of a mutual friend, Irina Kaploon. Years before, in 1966, Irina, then a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl and her friend Vjacheslav Bakhmin, twenty-two, were arrested for passing handwritten anti-Stalinist leaflets to terrified Muscovites. Both were released after ten months’ imprisonment, without trial or apologies. A couple of days before my departure, I asked her to reflect back on that time: “Were you two crazy?”

  A.D. Sakharov and E.G. Bonner at their Moscow apartment with Yuri Mnukh (left), who almost two months later met me and his beloved birds at the Vienna airport. Taken no later than June 14, 1977. Photographer unknown. (Sakharov Archive)