But would they let me go? I rather thought they would, and with that comforting idea I fell asleep.
Lena woke me the next morning. The car was already waiting for me; I washed and dressed hurriedly, swallowed my breakfast and rushed downstairs. I tried not to think of the coming interview with the G.P.U., and when we arrived at the building site I immediately plunged into the work. I went through the final proposals which were to go through to Moscow for approval. At eight o’clock the accountant arrived and I was closeted with him for two hours. To my surprise and delight I found I could concentrate well. Not a detail escaped me and we thoroughly discussed the question of whether we could manage on our grant of eight and a half million rubles. We checked up the expenditure on every item, compared the excess expenditure with the savings we had been able to make, and made a calculation for the work still to be done. In the end we decided that we should just about manage it.
My secretary announced a deputation from the families living on the site. We had had to shift their houses, and compensation had already been agreed on. Only one or two matters of detail were now outstanding.
“Comrades, you’ll have to go to Komarov,” I said. “He’s in charge now.”
“But, Alexander Semyonovitch,” one of the women objected, “you began it and you ought to see it through. We can’t negotiate with someone else now.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” I replied. “Komarov will help you.”
They went rather unwillingly and I hurried out to the site. I inspected everything, talked to the foremen and to the storekeeper, made a note of what materials were required and handed it to the supplies manager, then I went to the workers’ houses. The first block was almost completed. The work had been well done. On the second floor I went out onto the balcony. It was a sunny winter’s day. An avenue of old trees with their branches carrying a burden of snow stretched out before me and in the background was a wood. It will be beautiful here in summer, I thought. We couldn’t have chosen a pleasanter spot. Even the thought that I should no longer see its completion did not altogether spoil my pleasure. Everyone here would know that it was my work, the great ambition of my life. And sometime or other—many years ahead, perhaps—I would come back and see it all.
At midday I went into the canteen, where I met Komarov. He came up and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Tell me, Alex,” he said. “Is it true you’re thinking of leaving us?” “You’ve known for at least a year that I shouldn’t be able to stay on, and now the time’s arrived.”
“Yes, that’s true, but I had begun to think you’d thought better of it. If you’d only become a Soviet citizen no one would interfere with you.”
“But, Petya, what difference would that make? They distrust us because we lived twenty-five years of our lives abroad, and they’ll always distrust us for the same reason.”
“Alexander Semyonovitch, you don’t understand. They can’t have people in leading positions who aren’t absolutely responsible to them. If one of us does something wrong they can arrest him and bring him to trial. It’s different with foreigners.”
“You’re wrong, Petya. They’ve arrested hundreds of foreigners in Moscow and Leningrad, and even in Kharkov.”
“But they were spies.”
“I’m not so sure about that, my friend. My wife wasn’t a spy, but she has been in prison now for nine months.”
“That was a mistake. You’ve said yourself that they’ll soon release her.”
“Petya, there’s really no point in going through it all again. The idea of leaving all this depresses me, but there you are, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Incidentally, I may have to give up in a very few days now, so I’d like to discuss everything with you this afternoon.”
“It will be difficult for me without you, Alexander Semyonovitch.” “Sorry, Petya, but there it is.”
I went to Komarov’s office after lunch and he told his secretary that we were not to be interrupted. We went through all the plans together and drew up a general program for starting up the station. Our discussion lasted three hours and took my whole attention. Temporarily I forgot what awaited me in the night. But when I arose, rather tired at the end of it, all my suppressed fears returned. We went together. I was unable to talk; my mind was too occupied with the one thing. When we parted Komarov gave my hand an extra pressure as though he sensed what was going on in my mind.
From the moment I entered the house my stoicism seemed to desert me. I could do nothing systematically. I went from one room to the other vaguely; started looking for papers and then gave it up; bolted down my food and then tried to escape from the world back into Tolstoy. But this time I found myself reading without taking in a word and finally I gave it up. I left the house and walked up the Tchaikovskaya past the German cemetery. It was open country there and I hoped that would calm me. I tramped along the road to Byelogorod for a couple of miles at a good pace, then I turned back and walked to the Institute. The whole time my thoughts were on the coming interrogation. What would they do? Would they torture me? Would they keep me there?
I went into the Institute, but I was just as restless, so I went home. I lay down on the couch, but sleep was out of the question. I decided to put my financial affairs in order and to give Marcel power of attorney over my money, but I found myself unable to concentrate on that either. Anxiety had taken hold of me. I couldn’t think straight, come to any decision or do anything sensible. I began to look for the prikaz of the People’s Commissariat which had praised my work in 1933, and for every other commendation I had ever received. I had a vague feeling that if they realized how well I had worked it might make them more conciliatory. My feverish searchings were not lost on Marcel and Lena.
Finally Lena came up to me and embraced me.
“What’s going to become of us all?” she asked. “I like you very much, Alexander Semyonovitch.”
“I don’t know, my dear,” I replied. “I’m just at the end of my tether.”
She began to cry.
But as the time came nearer I grew calmer. It had to be faced, whatever it was. And, after all, I was innocent, and that was all there was for me to say.
Polevedsky crushed out the stub of a cigarette as I came in. He seemed to be in a good mood.
“Ah, there you are, Alexander Semyonovitch! Sit down. Well, I hope you’ve thought it all over?”
“There was really nothing for me to think over.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just that I’ve nothing whatever to add to what I’ve already said.”
“Hm, Alexander Semyonovitch, I don’t think you altogether appreciate the situation. We’re not your enemies; we want to help you. We already have sufficient evidence to justify an arrest but we don’t want to arrest you because we don’t think you’re really a sworn enemy of the Soviet power. You’ve been misled, that’s all. But, of course, it’s entirely up to you whether you want to retrace your steps or not.”
“Citizen Polevedsky, from the first moment on, everything you’ve said has been a mystery to me. I simply don’t know what you want. If you think there’s any evidence against me let me know what it is. Ask me about anything that seems unclear and I’ll give you plain answers. I’m sure that I can remove all grounds for suspicion, because I have never at any time committed any hostile act against the Soviet power.”
“Listen, Alexander Semyonovitch, do you really think that anyone would have dared to talk to a respected citizen, a valued engineer and scientific worker, in the way we had to talk to you if there were not already absolute proofs against him?”
“Then tell me finally what those proofs are. What concrete accusations are there against me?”
“You were in contact with our enemies, you took their orders and you carried them out, and you recruited others to help you.”
“But that’s too general. Tell me concretely what I am supposed to have done. Show me the proofs.”
“The docume
nts which prove your guilt are confidential as long as you are still free. If you are arrested they will be shown to you. However, I hope before it gets as far as that you will have confessed everything and then it won’t be necessary to arrest you at all.”
“Citizen Polevedsky, for the tenth time, perhaps, I am completely innocent. You don’t believe me; very well, give me an opportunity of proving it. Obviously I can’t refute accusations which are vague and not concrete.”
“Alexander Semyonovitch, listen: go home again and come back the day after tomorrow. In the meantime think over the whole of your life. Then come back here and tell me when you first got into touch with the enemy and what ideas caused you to go over to his side. If you freely confess and show us you want to be a loyal Soviet supporter again we’ll do all we can to help you.”
He rang a bell and signed my propusk. Before the guard came in he spoke again:
“Alexander Semyonovitch, this is really your last chance. If you don’t take it you will destroy yourself.”
I made no reply. At least I was still free for another couple of days, and that was something. I hurried home through a cold, dry winter’s night. It was no use thinking about what would happen in two days’ time, and instead I looked forward to my comfortable room, my books and my friends Marcel and Lena.
They were both still up and they were delighted to see me back so soon. Marcel was even optimistic.
“How do you see things, Alex?”
“Not so bad, I think. I’ve got to go back again the day after tomorrow, but I hope it will be all right.”
Lena brought in tea. I was quite calm now. The nervous tension of the past two days had gone. I chatted for a while with the two of them and then I went to bed.
The following day passed quickly. I had a very great deal of work to do and I hardly had time to think of the G.P.U. It was only in the evening that I recalled Polevedsky’s final words: “Think over the whole of your life.” What did he mean? Did he really think I was a spy in the service of a foreign power, or did the word “counterrevolutionary” mean something else in his language? I remembered discussing Trotskyism with Komarov a few years back. I had described it as “an ultra-left deviation.” “Oh, no,” Komarov had replied, “it’s the advance guard of the counter-revolution.” Any continuation of the discussion would have been dangerous. I had never been in agreement with Trotsky but to call the founder of the Red Army a counterrevolutionary was just fantastic. Perhaps when Polevedsky talked about my being a counterrevolutionary he was thinking along the same lines, because if Trotsky was a counterrevolutionary to them, I might well be an enemy of the Soviet state, meaning that I held unorthodox views about Stalin, which was certainly true. “Tell me when you first got into touch with the enemy,” he had said. If he regarded all people with independent minds as enemies of the people then he might well mean whoever it was who had first guided my ideas in that direction. Obviously he was incapable of recognizing that any man of intelligence who had not been corrupted must think like that. But supposing he really did think me a foreign spy after all? What could have given the G.P.U. such an idea? Was there anything in my life which looked suspicious? I hardly knew a soul who had any relations with official Germany. I had often been abroad, but the people I had met had been chiefly my old friends, Communists or Social Democrats, with perhaps one or two who were not members of any party. But there certainly wasn’t a Fascist among them.
I did go over my whole life as he had advised me. I gave up thinking of the charge that I was “an enemy of the state.” I hardly thought they would want to proceed against a foreigner because he was not completely in agreement with the official doctrine. After all, there were plenty of foreign experts working in the Soviet Union, and some of them really were fascists. The Soviet Government paid for their technical services and ignored their political opinions.
I found no peace. They couldn’t know what I thought about Stalin. They couldn’t even guess. For the past six months we had not spoken freely about such matters, and even before that we had been careful. I had never expressed any opinion contrary to the official line to any Russian, and my non-Russian friends were all completely reliable. No, it really couldn’t be my views about Stalin. But if they really did think I was a foreign spy, why didn’t they arrest me? Why did they give me the opportunity to escape or, at the very least, to get into touch with my supposed accomplices?
I went over the events of the last ten years in my mind. I considered everyone with whom I had been in personal contact, or with whom I had corresponded. And in the end I found nothing at all which could reasonably offer grounds for suspicion.
Late that night I went to the Institute library. It was in darkness and I switched on the light and casually looked through a few technical journals. Then I took a book on low-temperature technique and began to read it. Suddenly a long-forgotten incident which had taken place in 1933 came to my mind, and what calmness I had left was utterly destroyed. My God! I thought, that must be it.
The Germans had built us a plant at Gorlovka for the separation of coking-oven gases by low-temperature technique. It had cost a lot of hard currency and the Soviet Government wanted ten or twelve of them, and all much bigger than the one in Gorlovka. Soviet engineers were ignorant of the basis of the calculations and the plans, so orders were given that blueprints should be drawn up of the German plant. During the day German engineers and technicians assembled the plant, and at night after they had left Russian engineers and technicians came along, dismantled it and made detailed drawings. The result was a mass of technical blueprints. Our Institute was instructed to measure the physical constants of the gases and gas mixtures and to work out methods for calculating the separation process. I was personally entrusted with the latter task. I asked for the mechanical drawings from Gorlovka, but they had been declared state secrets, and so I had to apply for them through the secret department of our Institute. In the end I got them, but I had to sign an undertaking that I would show them to no one. On going through them there were many points which were obscure to me. In July, 1933, I was going on a couple of months’ holiday to Vienna and Prague, and I decided I would consult engineer friends of mine who were employed by the Lindegesellschaft. Naturally, in Europe such technical questions are not regarded as state secrets, and technical and scientific questions are discussed quite openly.
By July when the time came for my holiday I had worked through only about one third of the Gorlovka drawings so I decided to take them with me, particularly as that would facilitate my inquiries. I applied for permission and my application naturally went to the G.P.U. Leipunsky happened to be in Moscow at the time and he promised to attend to the matter. At first the G.P.U. refused, but in the end, and under pressure, they agreed that the blueprints should be sent by special courier to the Soviet Embassy in Vienna, where I should be allowed to receive them.
As I had feared, they arrived so late that there was no time for me to study them or discuss them with my friends. All I could do was to take them back with me. So far so good, but now a horrible doubt arose: to whom had I handed them over? Our secret department? No, I would certainly have remembered that, because the procedure was extremely complicated. In addition I should have received some formal confirmation. Perhaps I had given them to Yuri Ryabinin, who was also working on them. That was very likely, but I couldn’t remember it. Or had I left the damned things abroad? Perhaps in the house of my parents? In that case our secret department had probably denounced me to the G.P.U. for stealing important documents. I decided to ask Ryabinin the very next day whether he had them.
Pull yourself together, I thought. This is perfect nonsense. What sort of state secrets do those wretched drawings represent? The Lindegesellschaft has much more accurate drawings of its own. So what the devil is there to be so secret about? But the Soviet authorities wouldn’t like it known that they had made drawings of the German plant. That might have been an infringement of the Lindegesellschaft’s patent rights o
r of the agreement between them and the Soviet Government. But if I had wanted to inform the Germans about that all I need have done as a real spy was to take photostat copies of the drawings and then return the originals obediently to our secret department. If I had actually left the drawings in Vienna it was only because I had forgotten them in the last-minute rush. But what would the G.P.U. make of such an innocent explanation? Should I mention the matter? Perhaps they knew nothing about it after all, and if I told them it would give them the only handle they had against me.
I left the Institute and went home in a state of great unrest. I went to bed and tried unsuccessfully to go to sleep. If I had really left those drawings abroad it was a serious matter.
The next morning I went to the laboratory of the Institute to find Yuri Ryabinin. He wasn’t there. I went into the library and began glancing through the latest technical journals. Should I mention the matter after all? During the past few days, whether with reason or not, I had felt myself so much under surveillance that I feared that the least thing I said would be passed on to the G.P.U. And Ryabinin was not one of my intimates; in fact, during the conflict with Davidovitch he had been on the other side. He might well be in touch with the G.P.U. No, I thought, I won’t mention it to him at all.
I was due to see Polevedsky again at eleven o’clock. The time passed slowly and I became more and more restless. I went into Leipunsky’s laboratory. Leipunsky himself was very rarely there during the day; his work as Director of the Institute took up too much of his time, but Fritz Houtermanns was there making a series of measurements. The Geiger counter ticked irregularly, and, curiously enough, it soothed my nerves. Houtermanns chattered away about modern physical problems. He always talked well and amusingly as though the discovery of new physical laws were a sort of parlor game specially designed for him and his friends. To listen to him you might have thought that the world’s physicists formed a little family of bright people occupying themselves with the problems of the universe as a sort of hobby. There was no trace of sentiment in his approach and at the idea that he was serving the cause of human progress he would have smiled tolerantly. I left him just before eleven and arrived at the G.P.U. rather too early.
The Accused Page 7