by Erika Holzer
Kiril refused to give his aunt the satisfaction of bursting into tears even as he bit his lip until it bled. Only after he was alone in his own room did he allow himself to cry. For weeks he cried himself to sleep every night.
But he got the message.
“There, but for the grace of State and Party, go I.”
While Aleksei thrived—not academically, but in contact sports and extracurricular activities—Kiril learned as much as he could about as many subjects as possible. He had never forgotten his visit to the orphanage. He vowed he never would. Someday, somehow, he would liberate himself from the Soviet Union.
From 1936 to 1938, there were four major show trials in the Soviet Union as Josef Stalin rid himself of his enemies, real and imagined. Three of every five marshals were eliminated, along with 90 percent of the generals, 80 percent of the colonels, and every regimental commander—a total of some 30,000 military officers. The entire Politburo was purged, as was most of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and countless intellectuals, bureaucrats, factory managers, and foreign communists who lived in the Soviet Union. Mass arrests, torture, imprisonment, execution without trial, and an absence of authentic judicial process was the rule, not the exception. The NKVD’s own estimate was two-fold: roughly 700,000 men, women, and children shot in 1937-1938 alone and hundreds of thousands more shipped to the Gulag work camps.
The charges against these political prisoners ran the gamut from sabotage, spying, and counterrevolution, to conspiring with foreign powers. Most of the accused confessed under torture. As to those who steadfastly refused, they too were guilty because Stalin said they were.
Aleksei was eighteen years old when the trials began. He followed the proceedings with morbid interest, identifying with the prosecutors. He was convinced the charges were legitimate, the confessions and proof conclusive, the convictions and sentences just. In the Young Pioneers, the Young Communist League, and then as an observer of the Stalin show trials, Aleksei Andreyev was learning two important lessons. That fear was a powerful weapon. And that to induce fear one had to possess power. Wielding both would bring even strong men to their knees.
Kiril, who had just turned fifteen when the show trials began, instinctively recognized they were a sham. Stalin was murdering innocent people so he could consolidate his power and feed off the slogan popularized by Karl Marx in 1875: “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs.”
From that time on, not a day passed when Kiril did not feel the weight of collectivism and statism pressing down on his soul.
Chapter 3
Living with Sofia Andreyev, a die-hard Communist since 1922, had by 1938 driven thoughts of Anna and Kolya, and even of his father, from Aleksei Andreyev’s mind. Under his aunt’s tutelage, and after a decade in communist youth groups, nineteen-year-old Aleksei had become a dedicated Communist. Ordinarily, as the son of an Enemy of the People, he would have had no chance to enter training for any of the Soviet intelligence or security services. But proud of what she had turned the boy into, his aunt got him admitted to training for the secret police—by then known as the NKVD. The organization had a huge jurisdiction. Performing mass extrajudicial executions. Operating the Gulag’s forced labor camps. Deporting Russians and other nationalities to unpopulated regions of the U.S.S.R. Guarding Soviet borders. Conducting espionage. Assassinating political opponents. Influencing foreign governments. Enforcing Stalinist policies in other countries’ Communist movements. Recruiting foreign spies. Interrogating arrestees. Coercing confessions. As befitting such an organization, NKVD training was physically arduous, mentally challenging, morally ambiguous, and often brutal. Aleksei loved every minute of it.
Having raised the two brothers during their most formative years, Sofia Andreyev knew that because Kiril so hated the State, he would have to be channeled into adult work that was largely divorced from politics. And because he’d always excelled in math and science and shown an interest in anatomy, his aunt had convinced him to try for medical school. Being admitted wasn’t hard. Kiril had finished the nine-year school with honors. He possessed a rudimentary knowledge of English and German, and his Aunt Sofia was a formidable presence in the Novogorod Communist Party. What also worked to his advantage was how the State, in the 1920s, had made a special effort to increase the number of doctors—partly in anticipation of a coming war with Germany. New medical schools were opened. One year was cut from the course of study and Latin was eliminated as an entrance requirement. All of which shifted the emphasis away from written examinations and increased the number of social and political subjects in the curriculum. Ever since his frightening experience at the orphanage, Kiril had avoided political problems. By the time he entered medical school, his early childhood taint, neutralized by his aunt, was over a decade old. Ironically, having a brother in the NKVD didn’t hurt either. But no matter how comfortable he was in the apolitical cocoon of medical school, Kiril continued to feel isolated and alone.
On September 1, 1939, forces were set in motion which would fundamentally impact the lives of both brothers. On that day Nazi Germany—and, sixteen days later, the Soviet Union—launched a pre-planned joint attack on Poland. The combined onslaught against an essentially defenseless sovereign country would be prelude to a war between the two aggressors at a time in the not entirely unforeseen future. Indeed, Stalin knew Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. He just didn’t know when. In anticipation of this falling out between partners, the NKVD rushed Aleksei through his final training and into the field. As for the medical school Kiril was enrolled in, it accelerated his final course, dispensed with exams, and graduated him months ahead of time.
On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. A miscalculation, as it turned out. While the Red Army outnumbered the Finns two-and-a-half to one, the Soviet troops were ill-equipped for the freezing, snowbound, winter weather. And thanks to Stalin’s 1936-1938 purges of the Red Army’s officer corps, there were no competent commanders. Despite fierce Finnish resistance and substantial support from the Allies, nature proved determinative. Not until the spring of 1940, after the snow had melted, were more able commanders available to lead a new Red Army offensive. The Finns finally capitulated, relinquished territory that the Soviets coveted, and Dr. Kiril Andreyev got to spend a few months mostly treating frostbite cases.
In mid-1940, the Soviets took over Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Aleksei was posted there to suppress anti-Soviet sentiments. But the tide turned on June 22, 1941 when the formidable Nazi war machine attacked the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Aleksei, by then a lieutenant in the NKVD, was recalled to Moscow to hunt Nazi agents.
Kiril, already in Finland, spoke some English. He was sent to the Eastern Front—to Murmansk—where Soviet doctors were needed, and where the Germans were already experiencing huge casualties. Murmansk, not far from Russia’s borders with Norway and Finland, was the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Being a port city—a crucial link to the Western World—it was expected to play a large role in the Soviet Union’s receipt of American and other allied Lend Lease. By September 1941, three months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Lend Lease war materiel began to flow by Arctic convoys into Murmansk—tanks, artillery, ammunition, airplanes, trucks, and jeeps. As grateful as Stalin was for American and allied assistance, and as much as he understood how necessary it was for Americans to be stationed in Murmansk—how else to manage the countless tons of materiel flooding the port?—his paranoia dictated there be as few Americans as possible.
Even so, there were enough Americans for Kiril to hone not only his English, but a lot of American slang as well. Over time, he realized his NKVD watchers had lost minute-by-minute interest in him. Having settled into a routine, they were satisfied he was somewhere on the base; after all, there was nowhere for him to go. Taking full advantage of this sliver of independence, Kiril made it a practice whenever he was treating his American patients for relatively minor ailm
ents—frostbite, alcohol poisoning, pneumonia, broken limbs, and accidental gunshots—to learn everything the GIs were willing to share with him about their country. Its culture and geography. Its economic system and how the free market actually worked. Fascinating accounts of individual rights. And most important, America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Kiril took a kind of defiant pleasure in this last, knowing that it would be treasonous for him to possess a copy of either document!
One day, as he set the broken arm of an American GI with a legal background, Kiril and the GI were so deeply engaged in discussion that he barely noticed how new patients were lining up just outside the clinic door. Until he realized that the first man in line wore the uniform of a Soviet Air Force officer who was pressing a bloody rag against a gash just under his hairline. Quickly finishing up with the American GI, he gestured for the officer to step forward.
“Your English is excellent,” the officer said.
Kiril’s jaw tightened.
How much did you overhear?
“My name is Stepan Brodsky,” the Soviet Air Force officer said with a smile, then added sotto voce, “You have nothing to fear from me, doctor.”
Kiril studied the man. They were about the same height, though the Russian officer was a bit more muscular. His blond hair was closely cropped, his eyes hazel. But what impressed Kiril was Stepan Brodsky’s ability to turn his inquiring eyes into blank unreadable discs depending on whom he was talking to.
What made them fast friends over time was the discovery that they both lived and breathed the same dream—defecting from the Soviet Union to the United States of America.
When Stepan was reassigned to Moscow, he and Kiril vowed to keep in touch.
The war went on. As materiel continued to flow from Arctic convoys into Murmansk American servicemen remained, giving Kiril the chance to become more and more fluent in American English and the opportunity to learn more and more about his devoutly-wished-for destination: the United States of America.
* * *
When the war ended in 1945 and the Murmansk pipeline was shut down, Kiril was ordered back to Moscow. He looked up his brother Aleksei, now a captain in the NKVD, hoping to enlist his assistance in finding their Aunt Marissa. Aleksei offered to help, but either the war or the NKVD had buried all traces of her. As for his inquiries about Stepan Brodsky, Kiril learned his friend had been drafted by the NKVD to be a translator in the Soviet zone of Berlin. Although Brodsky had been admonished not to fraternize with anyone outside the NKVD, the two were soon in contact.
Kiril began looking for work as a physician. Although his medical education had not been of the best quality and not nearly long enough, his practical experience in Finland and Murmansk had turned him into a more than capable generalist. But with so many war veterans returning home, there was a surfeit of doctors. For the next few years Kiril took whatever medical work he could find. Drawing blood at laboratories. Filling in at emergency rooms. Assisting physicians at public health clinics. Taking x-rays at special Communist Party hospitals.
One day, about six years after he’d left Murmansk, Kiril was working as a nurse in a private Kremlin hospital reserved for top officials. During an operation, an anesthesiologist—a high-ranking Politburo member—collapsed from what later proved to be a heart attack. While attendants prepared to operate, the chief surgeon instantly turned to Kiril and asked if he knew anything about the IV anesthesia drip in the patient’s arm.
“I do,” Kiril replied.
The surgeon—muttering that if the patient died, all of them would no doubt suffer the same fate—handed Kiril the instructions. Kiril kept the anesthesia flowing, the surgeon removed an about-to-rupture appendix, and there were smiles and handshakes all around. The appreciative and renowned surgeon, Dr. Mikhail Yanin, took Kiril under his wing, taught him how to operate a heart-lung machine—its purpose to bypass the heart during open-heart surgery—and used Kiril in so many operations that he became one of Moscow’s leading heart-lung physicians. As such, he was invited to join Yanin’s heart surgery team.
Chapter 4
New Year’s Day, 1960—a national holiday in the Soviet Union that traditionally begins with a late dinner on New Year’s Eve. Smoked fish, sliced sausage, steaming borscht, black bread—and non-stop vodka toasts that undoubtedly had caused last night’s twelve-car pileup on an ice-covered highway leading to the hospital. Dr. Kiril Andreyev sighed inwardly. “What time is it?” he asked a technician.
“Twenty past eight, doctor.”
Kiril didn’t bother to mask his frustration. His eyes, a deeper brown than his hair, were somber. The habitual set of his mouth was firm, masking tight control. And endurance. Occasionally, one corner of his mouth slipped down, suggesting a touch of melancholy.
He sat on a low stool, monitoring the control panel of a boxlike machine on wheels. After examining the pump-heads on top, he followed the downward flow of colorless liquid through clear plastic tubing. The flow was unimpeded.
The nurses had prepped the patient. An anesthesiologist paced back and forth, and Kiril was on the thin edge of following him.
The operating room doors finally swung open. A man with curly gray hair confined under a green surgical cap strode in. “I have just learned of a catastrophe,” Dr. Mikhail Yanin growled. “For the surgical department of this hospital that bears my name. For Soviet medicine!” Yanin announced with characteristic melodrama. “Our trip to Canada was cancelled last night. No funding, they say.”
Dr. Yanin glanced at Kiril, aware that his protégé was gripping the sides of his chair even as he managed to keep his face expressionless. Kiril was even better at subterfuge than he was, Yanin realized with a touch of pride.
He knew what Kiril had to be feeling right now: a sense of loss and longing as piercing as his own. A Canadian medical-device company had developed a new heart-lung machine that was faster, more reliable, and much less expensive than anything on the market. In an effort to spur sales, CanMedEquip had invited hundreds of cardiac specialists from the developed nations for a weekend of dining, entertainment, and live demonstrations of their superior new machine.
And like Yanin, Kiril was no doubt thinking back to September 1945 and the notorious defection to Toronto, Canada of Soviet Embassy cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko…
“The State giveth and the State taketh away,” Yanin said gently with a sympathetic glance in Kiril’s direction.
“Any chance they’ll change their minds?” one of the techs asked.
“Why should they?” Yanin snapped. “They’re in charge. The government has money for space stations but not for me to immerse myself in the latest surgical technology, courtesy of my Canadian colleagues. In spite of faulty equipment and seemingly endless shortages, I am expected to accomplish miracles. Worst of all, I am being robbed of a rare opportunity to observe Dr. Kurt Brenner, a world-class heart surgeon, at work!”
The doors swung open again, this time admitting two stone-faced men in dark suits.
Yanin stared at them, momentarily speechless. “How dare you enter my operating room unannounced? Get out. Get out at once!”
One of the men impaled Yanin with a laser-like glance and looked around the operating theater. “Dr. Kiril Andreyev?”
Kiril rose to his feet. “At your service,” he said flatly.
“Come,” said the man with a curt nod of his head.
“Please,” Yanin intervened in a subdued voice. He knew, now, who the men were. “We have a grueling schedule this morning. I need Dr. Andreyev to—”
“Get someone else.”
“You don’t understand.” Yanin’s voice was deferential. “Dr. Andreyev anticipates every move I make. He can hook up a heart-lung machine with his eyes closed. Dozens of things can go wrong in cardiac surgery. My plastic tubing is not of the best quality,” he said. “If it springs a leak during an operation, it would need immediate repair. Should the blood in the oxygenator drop below a certain level, air could be pum
ped into the patient’s blood stream. If the heart won’t start once the operation is over, we have only five minutes to get the patient back on the machine—five minutes or the patient will die.”
No answer this time. Stone-face motioned for Kiril to leave.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Yanin,” Kiril said… and deliberately took his time following the two men out.
A black limousine waited at the curb. Kiril slid in the back seat with the two goons. As he slipped his hands into the pockets of the hospital gown he’d had no time to remove, the limousine shot forward. He didn’t need to ask where he was going, or why. Glancing out the window, he saw a familiar banner. Gigantic, it swayed gently in the breeze.
GLORY TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY
THE GUIDING FORCE OF THE NEW SOCIETY!
He eyed a passing parade of faces, early risers on their way to work. People quick to grumble, he mused—but at what? The scarcity of oranges in December? The fact that caviar was available only to foreigners and government officials? He saw women in babushkas lined up for their tedious daily shopping queues. But did they ever direct their anger at the apparatchiks who had a stranglehold on the economy? Unlikely.