“Don’t make an irrevocable decision, Alex. The G.P.U. knows how valuable your work is here, and once the station starts up you will be more important than ever. There’s no one who could guide it all better than you.”
We were driving together to the building site, and suddenly she took my hand and pressed it. I was unused to such emotion on her part. I changed the subject.
It was Sunday and when we arrived the site was empty except for one or two watchmen. The great glass windows of the main hall sparkled in the winter sunlight as we tramped through the snow to where the houses for the scientific workers were being built. The work was already far advanced. Doors and windows had already been painted. By Soviet standards the work had been done well. The flats were excellently planned. There were two blocks of three-and four-room flats, a block of two-room flats, and a number of one-room flats. They all had kitchens and bathrooms. Finally there was a block of single rooms with a number of bathrooms. Three bigger flats were intended for the Director of the station, the chief scientist and the chief engineer. Further blocks contained club rooms, a restaurant, a laundry, a hairdresser’s and various other shops. In addition there were lawns, tennis courts, a football field and a swimming pool.
We crossed the road to the big Institute building. It was much better and more spaciously planned than the old Institute. By a careful arrangement of each story the architect had obtained the maximum amount of daylight in each room. Communication between the laboratories, the workshops and the offices had been made as short as possible and unnecessary journeys through long corridors had been obviated. We entered the library, which was on the second floor. That was a joy. It was a corner room, and from every table you could see out of large windows on to a wide landscape with the river in the middle distance and the town visible in haze in the background.
Barbara made one or two suggestions.
“It’s no use making suggestions for improvement to me, Barbara,” I reminded her. “You must talk to Komarov.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” she said confidently.
I spent a few minutes in the great hall to see how far they had got with the assembly, and then we walked back through the long corridor from the works to the Institute building itself, and left by the main entrance. Barbara had gone on a few paces ahead and I paused for a moment at the top of the steps and looked around. I could see over the whole site and 1 observed with satisfaction that things were very near completion. I pictured how wonderful it would be when everything was finally ready to be handed over. And then I remembered that I should no longer be there, and for the first time I was overwhelmed with a longing to stay on. Despite all the difficulties, this place had been my second home. I was really not quite sure what it was about this country that attracted me so much. Was it the character of the Russian people, who were different, more interesting, more vital and more likable than the people I had lived and worked with in Germany? Was it the Russian Revolution and the idea of socialism? Or was it just the scale of the work which was going on here and in which I had been able to take a part I could never have taken in any other country?
Barbara came back up the steps. She seemed to realize what was going through my mind.
“Alex, you ought to come here often. Perhaps you would change your mind then. You’re needed here, you know. Even when it’s all finished, that’s only half the work done.”
I sighed.
That week I moved out of the building department and had my desk put into Komarov’s office. After that we went through everything together and took every decision jointly. All I had to do now was to hand over to him. This year things had been much easier on the whole. Piatakov had been a hard taskmaster and he had used the funds of the state with a parsimonious hand, so much so that our work had often been hampered. Now we were being treated more generously precisely because “the saboteur Piatakov” had kept us short. Komarov no longer protested against my decision to go. He knew I had no alternative and he did his best to make the parting easier for me.
He had originally been a miner in the Donetz Basin. He had attended a Workers’ Faculty and joined the Party. He hadn’t much talent for scientific and technical work, but he had a pleasant and friendly way with people, and in his appearance he was more like a young student than a bureaucrat. He was well suited to the Party work and he had won general confidence at the Institute. Both the workers and the officials felt they could talk openly to him. However, his character was not hard enough for the times and after I left he was placed under brutal pressure by the G.P.U. and forced to make statements compromising me.
I had tried several times unsuccessfully to get in touch with Leipunsky to find out whether he had actually spoken to Maso and I had the impression that he was avoiding me, but one day I bearded him in his laboratory.
“Alexander Ilyitch,” I said uncompromisingly, “I want to talk to you, but not here.”
“Come to my office in half an hour,” he said.
I went to his office and sat down opposite him at his desk.
“Alexander Ilyitch,” I began, “I’ve had the impression that you’ve been avoiding me lately. I can quite understand that, but there are things I must discuss with you.”
“No, that’s not true, Alex. I couldn’t have kept out of your way even if I’d wanted to. I’ve worked with you so long that I just must help you whether I want to or not. In any case, I do want to help you.”
“You promised to speak to Maso. That was two weeks ago. Have you?”
“Yes, but for the moment I can’t tell you anything about it. I think I shall be able to let you know more in a day or so. By the way, bring me your notice. I must get it filed before the fifteenth.”
The next morning I handed in my formal notice. He read it and looked at me.
“Listen, Alex, when a man like you leaves it’s usual to express the thanks of the Institute in the prikaz. But in the circumstances, that’s difficult. I don’t want to hurt you, but would you mind if the prikaz didn’t express the usual thanks?”
At first I was inclined to agree in order to make the situation easier, but then I decided to talk it over with Marcel and Martin first.
“Let me think it over,” I said.
In the afternoon I went back to him.
“Alexander Ilyitch, if it’s not going to make things too difficult for you I think I would like some expression of recognition to go into the prikaz. I do attach some value to it.”
“Why, Alexander Semyonovitch?” he asked thoughtfully.
“It’s true that I want to leave the Soviet Union,” I said, “but I’m not leaving the revolutionary movement. Despite what’s happened to me here I want to remain a member of the Party abroad. I don’t know where I’m going, but I should find it difficult to live outside the revolutionary working-class movement. My seven years here represent a big break in my political activity, and the prikaz would make it easier for me to take my proper place in the Party again. It’s difficult enough for me in any case: leaving without specific instructions from the Party or the Comintern looks very much like flight. And isn’t it perhaps a flight, after all, Alexander Ilyitch?”
“I see your point, Alex. Very well, I’ll do my best; it would be unjust not to, I see that. Leave the notice here.”
On February 15th, Leipunsky sent me the prikaz. It was in two parts. The first was brief and merely confirmed that the Institute had accepted my resignation, which would operate as from March 1st. In the second part Leipunsky expressed warm appreciation of my work as a member of the Institute. It concluded with the words: “And I therefore express my thanks to him both in the name of the Institute and in my own.”
My friends were astonished at the warmth and generosity of the tribute, and I must confess that I had not expected so much courage from Leipunsky, who was fully informed about my situation. But Leipunsky was not only courageous, he was also prudent. The prikaz was not published; it remained in the files of the Director and I was given a
n authenticated copy. The Accounting Department, which had to settle up with me, received a copy of the first part only. Thus I had what I needed for the Comintern and the Austrian Communist Party, and yet at the same time Leipunsky had avoided provoking the G.P.U. by making the prikaz public.
On February 17, 1937, Ordzhonnikidze suddenly died. It was a blow for all of us. We had the feeling that the people had lost their one advocate at the court of the tyrant. There were very few people in the Commissariat for Heavy Industry who had not liked him. Most of them still referred to him as “Sergo,” a nickname he had received during the civil war. At the memorial meeting which took place the next day I sat next to Leipunsky. We chatted in lowered tones.
“Have you been summoned again, Alex?”
“No.”
“I think it’s all over and you’ll be able to leave.”
“Did Maso say that?”
“He said it was a minor affair and there was no reason to get excited about it. You will be able to leave.”
“Are you in a position to give me that information officially?”
“You’re asking a bit too much, Alex. Such things are never as clear as all that. But I really believe it is a minor matter.”
The meeting rose and sang the impressive “Revolutionary Funeral March.” We broke off our talk and joined in the singing.
That short talk with Leipunsky greatly improved my spirits. I knew how cautious he was by nature, and Maso must have assured him that my affairs would be settled favorably. In the three weeks that remained to me—I wanted to leave on March 6th—I put my financial affairs in order and settled accounts with the Institute. I had about four thousand rubles to come for holiday pay, salary and bonuses, and I had another ten thousand rubles at the bank. In addition there were the state loans I had taken up and which I should now be allowed to realize as I was leaving the country, though foreign-exchange regulations prevented a transfer. I decided to give Marcel and Martin Ruhemann power of attorney over it. I also had a sum in foreign currency to my credit at the Kharkov State Bank and half of this belonged to Ruhemann. Before I left I would have to withdraw it and give him his share.
In the meantime Ruhemann had returned from his visit to Moscow, and the news he brought from my brother-in-law was not very encouraging. My wife was still in prison and there was no immediate hope of her release. The Prosecutor General had withdrawn the charges of espionage, sabotage and diversion, but the G.P.U. was unwilling to acknowledge that it had arrested an innocent person and so a new charge had been lodged, that of anti-Soviet agitation. In practice the G.P.U. could make this charge against anyone because there was certainly not a soul who had not at some time or other complained bitterly about the high prices of foodstuffs, or the state of transport, or housing conditions. That constituted anti-Soviet agitation. I feared complications for her if news of my affair went from Kharkov to Leningrad. Ruhemann declared that my brother-in-law was determined to leave the country as soon as my wife was released. The situation in Moscow was becoming more and more intolerable. Every day a few more people disappeared from the circle of one’s colleagues. At first those who were spared did not realize the G.P.U. technique but it soon became only too clear that an arrested man quickly dragged his friends into the net after him. Instinctively people began to realize that it was dangerous in such times to have any friends at all. One of them might be arrested through some of his friends, and then all his other friends would find themselves involved. People began to drop their friends, to avoid all discussions and to devote themselves entirely to their work and to their families. But even that saved them only for a while.
I suggested to Ruhemann that he should open an account with the Kharkov State Bank so that I could transfer the foreign exchange I owed him, but he refused.
“You’ll need the money once you’re abroad,” he said, “and I don’t need it here.”
“That’s true enough, Martin, but it’s too big a sum for me to accept just like that.”
“Alex, you’ll find things abroad have changed a great deal since you were last there. Germany is closed to you, and France and England are flooded with political emigrants. I don’t think you’ll find it easy to get work. Take the money. You’ll be able to keep yourself above water with it for about a year. Once you’ve settled down, as you certainly will, then you can regard it as a debt and pay it back to me one day.”
The news that I was going had quickly spread at the Institute and I had to pay and receive a number of farewell calls. I let those with whom I had been intimate realize that my departure was not entirely my own decision. Fritz Lange was the only one who tried to make me change my mind.
“I quite understand you don’t want to stay in Kharkov any longer, Alex, or that perhaps you can’t even if you want to, but why don’t you go to the Far Eastern district? They need people like you, and you’d be secure from persecution there.”
It seemed pointless to argue with him. What made him think that the writ of the G.P.U. didn’t run in Siberia? And yet now when I look back I realize that he may have been right. Very many people in my position have saved themselves by emigrating to Siberia or the Arctic Circle. There were two reasons for this. First of all, as Fritz had said, skilled men of all kinds were urgently needed there, and owing to the terrible climatic conditions it was almost impossible to persuade anyone to go there voluntarily. The authorities were therefore inclined to be more tolerant and to treat everyone who came there, whether voluntarily or not, as banished men whom it was not necessary to persecute any longer. Second, every Soviet district had its own G.P.U. The Kharkov G.P.U., for example, was interested in discovering and arresting as many enemies of the people as it possibly could, but it was not in the least interested in supplying enemies of the people for the benefit of, say, the Novo-Sibirsk G.P.U., because arrests in Novo-Sibirsk went to the credit of the Novo-Sibirsk G.P.U., were entered into its statistics and helped to fulfill, and perhaps overfulfill, its arrests plan. If a man changed his domicile within the Ukraine the Kharkov G.P.U. could bring him back again by saying that he belonged to a group whose activities were being investigated in Kharkov. But where an isolated enemy of the people cleared off to the wastes of Siberia it was too much trouble to bring him back, unless of course his case was particularly important.
I didn’t realize all this until later, but the Russians felt it instinctively. How Fritz Lange was able to give me such good advice I don’t know. He was a German and he possessed the best qualities of his countrymen. He was a very fine engineer, and one of the first to turn his attention to the building of high-tension apparatus for splitting the atom. With a friend he had climbed Mont Blanc to fly a kite and trap lightning into his experimental tubes. In this way he hoped to obtain tensions of over a million volts—which would have been impossible with ordinary apparatus—for splitting the atom. Later he had worked in the laboratories of the A.E.G. in Germany, building generators for very high tensions and developing and perfecting new apparatus for atomic research. He was full of ideas and he had the advantage of our experimental physicists in that he was a first-class technician and able to construct his own apparatus. He was an anti-Nazi and when Hitler came to power he left Germany. After a short stay in England he emigrated to the Soviet Union through the good offices of Houtermanns and Leipunsky, who were both in England at the time. He was a very valuable man for the Soviet Union. He not only did his work with the utmost reliability but he felt great sympathy for the cause of socialist construction. On its part the Soviet Government did its utmost to facilitate his work and the Soviet Academy of Science took him under its special protection.
I got to know him very well and we had often discussed technical and economic questions. Through me he began to grasp the general principles of Soviet economic construction. During the conflict with Davidovitch I had always carefully kept him out of it and I had never mentioned the injustice which had been done to me. However, he learned about it from others and he came out openly on my side.
When I now told him that I was leaving the Soviet Union he was anxious to help me.
“What are you going to do abroad, Alex? Where are you going, for instance?”
“Probably from here to Stockholm and there I can get in touch with friends in England and America.”
“Have you got money?”
“Not a great deal, but enough, I think.”
“I can help you out if necessary. The G.E.C. in New York has licenses on some of my patents and the royalties are paid annually. A friend of mine named Brasch is administering them for me. I’ll give you a letter authorizing him to pay out to you whatever you may need.”
“Thanks very much, Fritz. It’s very kind of you. I’ll take the letter, but I promise you I won’t use it except in urgent need.”
“Promise me rather that you’ll use it the moment you need it. I don’t need it here. I’ve applied for Soviet citizenship, which means I shall never leave the country again, and I don’t know how better I could use my money abroad than in helping friends.”
That evening he came to see me again and brought me the letter to Brasch and a check made out on the Landsmann Bank in Copenhagen.
“I have a credit of a few hundred crowns in Denmark,” he said. “You might as well have them to be getting on with.”
Viktor Weisskopf had come to Moscow. Nils Bohr had asked him and the physicist Georg Platschek to let him have a report on Soviet science, and to find out whether it would be possible to send many prominent German physicists to the Soviet Union, men who were now unable to work in Germany because they were anti-Nazis. I had met Weisskopf in Moscow, and now he came to see me for a few days. When he went I asked him to take some flowers to a friend of mine in Stockholm and tell her I should arrive on March 7th. I had packed my books and the things I needed, and distributed the rest among my friends. The flat and the furniture I had handed over to Marcel. I was quite optimistic, and already I could feel the freer air of Europe around me and I looked forward with joy to being able to express my opinions freely once again. I had even started making plans for the future. Toward the end of January I stopped going to the building site. I didn’t want to see the station any more. Komarov and the Chief Engineer Zickermann had completely taken over. I had decided to ask for my exit visa on March 2nd for March 6th, and thus provoke a quick decision on the part of the G.P.U. I really no longer doubted that they would let me go.
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