The New York Review Abroad

by Robert B. Silvers

  Andrei Dmitrievich replied that he refused to talk to Yakovlev until the latter apologized in writing for slandering Sakharov’s wife—Elena Georgievna Bonner—and her and his own—Andrei Dmitrievich’s—family, as well as Andrei Dmitrievich himself. After this he grabbed the book, CIA Against the USSR, which was lying nearby and feverishly began turning the pages. “How could you write such slander, such horrible slander? How could you have called our children ‘dropouts’ when they all have a university education …?” To which Yakovlev replied, unperturbed, “Yes, I know.”

  To most of Andrei Dmitrievich’s angry questions, Yakovlev replied that he was aware of this or that. And only when asked, “How did you dare to write that my wife beats me?” Yakovlev said, “Well, so I was told in the prosecutor’s office.”2 This man [Yakovlev] is so cynical and so morally degraded that he has no idea of either conscience or shame.

  They talked for a few more minutes. Yakovlev said: “I am not going to write an apology. If you think this is slander, you can refer the matter to court. And, generally speaking, try to understand that we are defending you.” Andrei Dmitrievich said: “I don’t need your defense, and I am not going to go to court—I will just slap your face now.” (It was at this point in the narration that I shuddered. I told Andrei Dmitrievich that this was terrible—that it was a frightful moment. And he said he felt the same way.)

  Upon hearing this, Yakovlev, who was sitting at the table, covered his cheek with his hand. This is the utmost level of degradation, when a person cannot even face up to a slap honorably, openly, like a man. He covered part of his face with one hand, but Andrei Dmitrievich, who is ambidextrous and so has equal command of both hands, slapped him on the unprotected cheek. At that point Yakovlev and his companion ran away from the apartment—in the exact sense of the term: they jumped up, overturning their chairs, and escaped.

  Having finished the story about slapping Yakovlev’s face, Andrei Dmitrievich said to me: “You know, I have seen many different people in my life, including many bad ones. But this is something out of Dostoevsky, this is Smerdyakov. One cannot sink any further.”

  Yakovlev is an expert on America, and they say that his books on historical topics are not bad at all. But those who know him also say that he is cynical in the extreme, that his motto is that the Soviet regime is so abominable that one can and must be a scoundrel, that everybody must become a scoundrel. Such is Yakovlev’s position, and he practices it in real life perfectly well.

  TOLZ: Natalya Viktorovna, could you say something concerning the reaction of Soviet citizens—in Gorky, in particular—to the defamation campaign against Sakharov and his wife, which has now been intensified?

  HESSE: Yes. The letter written by four Academy members against Andrei Dmitrievich has played a certain role, although not a very big one, within the context of the campaign of defamation and slander that has been unleashed against him and particularly against Elena Georgievna. I think that the West is of the opinion that it was the letter from these four academicians that played the principal part. (However, even among Academy members one can find people who would burden their conscience with heavy sins for the sake of their careers. And these four academicians, in particular, are known for being go-getters ready to do anything.)

  But in Gorky itself the campaign—it was unleashed mainly in Gorky—was provoked not by the letter, which was published somewhere in the corner of a newspaper, but by the fact that the Gorky papers reprinted all of Yakovlev’s insinuations concerning Elena Georgievna and, furthermore, added their own commentaries. Since then, at somebody’s command, an extremely vicious campaign has been organized. The Sakharovs were even afraid to go to the bakery because they would be insulted. People would holler at them: “Your Yid-wife must be killed.”

  A neighbor in the Sakharovs’ house had been helped by Elena Georgievna, who is a pediatrician (a very good pediatrician, an excellent physician), when the neighbor’s child was suffering from an allergy which physicians in Gorky were unable to cure. Elena Georgievna did help the child with her advice, and the child was cured. And this same neighbor used to cry: “It would have been better for my child to rot than to be touched by your dirty hands.”

  The Sakharovs’ car would be covered with graffiti: “Warmonger, get away from here, away from our town!” This seemed to them (and I have discussed this at length with both of them) to be a spontaneous wave of wrath on the part of the people. But whenever I asked Elena Georgievna to describe each incident in detail, her story would always expose some “stage director” who was behind each particular horrible act.

  It is very easy to arouse indignation in our country. Indignation is fostered by the hardships of everyday life, by the lines in front of the stores, by the whole drabness and oppressiveness of Soviet reality, which is very hard. Therefore it is sufficient to make just a little hole, to open up the valve just a bit, and one can direct the stream of hate and bitterness any way one wants to. When people are standing in a line, it is enough for someone to shout: “It’s not his turn!” or “Don’t give him two kilos instead of one!” and the crowd will release its anger upon the unfortunate victim. Thus it is a very simple task to orchestrate something like that.

  TOLZ: Natalya Viktorovna, it is known that Elena Georgievna Bonner does not stay in Gorky with her husband all the time and that she is obliged to come regularly to Moscow. What is her situation there? What is her general situation now?

  HESSE: The conditions at their apartment in Moscow became quite terrible after Andropov took over all the positions and jobs that he assumed. Now, in addition to two policemen posted at the entrance to the apartment itself (and it must be noted that whereas in Gorky they are ordinary policemen, in Moscow either senior lieutenants or captains are on duty at the entrance to the apartment upstairs), there is also a police car with flashing lights guarding the downstairs entrance, and the man in charge has the rank of major at least.

  It is amusing that these policemen in turn are watched over by KGB agents in civilian clothes who make sure that the policemen dutifully carry out their mission. They all have portable radio sets on their shoulders, and they communicate with each other. All visitors are checked against a special list. If a stranger tries to pass through and his name is not on the list, he must show his documents, and if he does not have any, he is simply not allowed in. No foreigners and no journalists are allowed to visit the apartment.

  The telephone at the Moscow apartment has been disconnected ever since Andrei Dmitrievich’s illegal exile to Gorky, and whenever Elena Georgievna comes to Moscow they disconnect even the public telephone in the booth downstairs so that in order to call someone she has to walk almost a kilometer up a very steep hill, which is practically impossible because of her heart condition. All in all, Elena Georgievna’s health is in a terrible state. She has not yet recovered from her first heart seizure; she takes up to forty nitroglycerine pills; her lips and fingernails are of a dark blue color. It is upsetting to look at her.

  When she came to Moscow the last time, she wanted to come to Leningrad to see me off, but I went to Moscow myself instead because I learned from friends about the state of her health, and it was clear that no farewell parties were possible. It was at this time that she suffered her second heart seizure, not having been completely cured after the first one.

  In general, both of them are denied medical help. Andrei Dmitrievich himself also has been in need of a medical checkup and treatment for a long time, and this was admitted by the physicians from the Academy of Sciences who visited Sakharov in Gorky that one and only time. We had some hope then that things would improve; but, like all our hopes, this one was also destroyed. Neither she nor he has been admitted to a hospital, although both are seriously ill and in desperate need of medical treatment.

  And they cannot allow themselves to be treated by physicians in Gorky. These physicians displayed their true nature sufficiently during the Sakharovs’ hunger strike. Other physicians at the Arsenal Hospital i
n Leningrad—it’s a prison hospital—once proudly said that they are first and foremost “Chekists”3 and physicians only afterward. Well, those Gorky doctors, not being professional Chekists, nevertheless behaved as if they were, and it is therefore impossible to trust them and to be treated by them.

  Once Andrei Dmitrievich was forced to go to a dentist because he had a toothache (and in such a case a person is willing to go anywhere), and the head of the dental clinic deceived him. She ordered him to leave his briefcase with his precious documents and manuscripts, and then personally turned the briefcase over to KGB agents. I think this incident is known in the West, but it may not be known that she then denied him medical treatment, claiming that he had insulted her—both as a woman and as a citizen. It was naturally very strange to hear such words coming from this particular physician.

  As I have already mentioned, Elena Georgievna is being denied proper medical assistance in Moscow. A young woman who recently graduated from a medical institute visits her at home. I’ve been present during many of her visits. She respectfully and, I would even say, piously listens to advice from Elena Georgievna, who is a physician herself. Elena Georgievna writes her own prescriptions and decides her own treatment. Nevertheless, she urgently needs hospitalization because her condition is becoming ever more serious and her strength is leaving her—the strength that seemed to be inexhaustible. “Constant dripping of water wears away the stone,” as we say in Russia. But in this case there were not drops but heavy blows on the stone and it has begun to break. During our last meeting Andrei Dmitrievich said: “The first thing to be done, the most important thing, is to force the authorities to allow Elena Georgievna to travel abroad for medical treatment. Tell the people you’ll meet in the West that her death would be the end of me also. And being an eyewitness to all that has been happening, I can state that she is on the verge of dying, this is the truth.”

  We must do everything possible. I don’t know, maybe the general public in the West must appeal to their elected deputies so that they, in turn, would raise the question in their respective parliaments. This is very important, especially now that we have a new ruler. He might show his good will and prove to the world that the Soviet Union is really ready to do good and not evil.

  TOLZ: Natalya Georgievna, the campaign against Sakharov has been continuing for a long time, but it was especially intensified during the period that has now come to an end—the “Andropov era.” Tell me, in your opinion, in the opinion of a person who left the Soviet Union only days ago—did the situation in the country change during the Andropov period?

  HESSE: The regime became extremely harsh. It began with mass roundups of people in the streets, and in every city indignant people were told by agitators at meetings that these were only excesses on the local level. But the same thing was going on all over the Soviet Union, just as it was during collectivization. And, in general, the whole moral and spiritual climate in the country became much harsher. It seems that it is difficult to breathe—just as it was in Stalin’s time. This is a frightening feeling and it affects a person’s whole being. The food situation in large cities has improved but the provinces remain hungry. In the large cities—in Leningrad, in particular—one can get meat, not always the kind one wants, of course, but we became accustomed to this long ago. Sometimes one can get butter without standing in line.… So, it is somewhat better in this sense. But, on the other hand, there is complete suppression of everything, and not a gleam of democracy.

  —April 12, 1984

  1. CIA-Target–The USSR was published in English by Progress Publishers (Moscow, 1982).

  2. Interviewer’s note: At another point Hesse said she had been told that the editor who had allegedly been working on Yakovlev’s books asked him once, “Nikolai Nikolaievich, where do you get material for your abominable articles?” And Yakovlev said, “Does one need any sources for this?”

  3. Members of the Cheka, as the secret police was formerly called.

  10

  The Burial of Cambodia

  William Shawcross

  Mao Zedong wanted tracking to be more radical than Stalin, and Pol Pot wanted to be more extreme than Mao. In relative numbers, the Khmer Rouge leader, who picked up his version of Marxist-Leninist ideology as a student in Paris, succeeded. Up to two million Cambodians died in his four years of misrule, by being shot or hacked or worked or starved to death. That was almost 20 percent of the population.

  In the 1980s, few people wanted to know. The truth was unwelcome to the new rulers, Vietnamese and their Cambodian stooges, many of them with fresh blood on their hands, to Thais and other Southeast Asians who continued to support what remained of the Khmer Rouge to thwart the Vietnamese, to the Chinese who had always backed the Khmer Rouge, to the Western nations who didn’t wish to upset their Asian allies, and to the US which had just fought a nasty Asian war of its own.

  Genocide followed by silence and lies; not a unique phenomenon, alas, but yet another illustration of what humans at their worst are capable of.

  —I.B.

  WHEN I WAS in Cambodia in 1980, I told my guide that I wanted to see Tuol Sleng. This was the former Phnom Penh high school that the Khmer Rouge had converted into a prison and interrogation center and the Vietnamese had now made into a museum. He told me I needed the permission of both the Foreign Ministry, which had approved my visa, and the Information Ministry, which ran the museum.

  The Foreign Ministry was housed in what was formerly the Buddhist Institute. I waited in a bare reception room until I was joined by a young man named Chum Bun Rong, the head of the press department. Mr. Bun Rong was charming and helpful. Of course I could visit Tuol Sleng, he said. We drove to the Ministry of Information, where my guide disappeared and came back with written permission.

  We set off down Monivong Boulevard, the broad central avenue designed by Sihanouk and named after one of Cambodia’s kings. People here appeared to have installed themselves only temporarily in the houses and old shops. It was as if after all the forced movement and mayhem of the last ten years no one was now willing to trust any arrangement, any home, to be permanent. In the side roads there were immense piles of rubbish. Cars were rusting where they had been dumped when the Khmer Rouge emptied the city and smashed machinery in April 1975.

  We turned right, off the main road, and then right again, down a pretty, leafy lane. We stopped in front of a complex of three plain buildings, built in the early Sixties by the Sihanouk government as one of the city’s principal high schools. Now over the gate was a sign, TUOL SLENG EXTERMINATION CENTER. We were met by a young student called Dara, who spoke good English and worked as a guide. About sixteen thousand people were brought to Tuol Sleng, and only about a half-dozen escaped alive in the confusion as the Vietnamese army stormed the city in early 1979; one of them, Ung Pech, was now the museum’s curator.

  Most of the people brought to the prison had been Khmer Rouge cadres on whom the party had turned, as communist parties so often do on their own. Whereas straightforward “class enemies” tended to be executed in the fields without ceremony, the party leadership was determined to extract confessions from its own members accused, for whatever cause, of treason—which almost always meant collaboration with Vietnam, with the CIA, or with both.

  The classrooms on the ground floor of the first building had all apparently been used as torture rooms. In each was a metal bed frame to which victims had been strapped, a school desk and chair for the interrogator. In each there was also an old US Army ammunition box, into which prisoners were supposed to defecate, and petrol cans, into which they were to urinate. Each cell also had a large photograph of the room as the Vietnamese had apparently found it after their invasion. The Khmer Rouge had departed with such speed that decaying corpses were found bound to the bed in several cells. These bodies were buried in graves in front of the building.

  In one of the classrooms was a blackboard on which, the guide said, were written instructions to the prisoners on their
behavior under interrogation. Underneath it was a translation into English:

  1. You must answer in conformity with the questions I ask you. Don’t try to turn away my questions.

  2. Don’t try to escape by making pretexts according to your hypocritical ideas.

  3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.

  4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

  5. Don’t tell me about your little incidents committed against the propriety. Don’t tell me either about the essence of the revolution.

  6. During the bastinado or the electrisisation you must not cry loudly.

  7. Do sit down quietly. Wait for the orders. If there are no orders do nothing. If I ask you to do something you must immediately do it without protesting.

  8. Don’t make any pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.1

  9. If you disobey every point of my regulations you will get either ten strokes of the whip or five shocks of electric discharge.

  In the next block the classrooms had been subdivided by crude brick partitions about eight feet high into tiny cells for individual prisoners. Each was shackled by the ankle onto a piece of iron large enough to make a ship’s anchor set in the floor. Each lived here awaiting his interrogation, torture, confession, and death.

  In another room a huge pile of black clothing lay displayed along one wall in direct imitation of the museum at Auschwitz. I was told these were the dead prisoners’ clothes. Also in this room was a heap of typewriters, plates, cooking utensils, and a broken photocopier, which the guide said had been found there.