Through Dark Days and White Nights: Four Decades Observing a Changing Russia. Naomi F. Collins

are not unusual since stairways, like lights and elevators, are used sparingly, apparently to avoid wearing them out. We heeded the sign posted there and went down to the fifth floor and up the only active elevator to discover our own sixth floor in turmoil of swarming people. Somebody said this was a surprise random bed check. All exits to the floor had been locked or guarded while some sort of police were bursting into room after room, banging and opening doors, searching closets and johns for—we knew not what. Someone yelled out to the “inspectors” that we were Americans, and so we passed a most cursory inspection of our room. The authorities demanded everyone’s documents—the university passes and domestic passports that everyone carries. Some of the stowaways that normally took shelter in the dormitory quickly hid on the kitchen balcony, spending the night locked outdoors in the dead of winter.

      The raid was probably inspired by more than its rumored purpose, a search for people occupying the dormitory without permission. That day, a large demonstration in Pushkin Square on behalf of the censored writers, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, impelled the authorities to root out anyone who participated in the event. While the commission proceeded from room to room, forcing all students out into the hallway, they searched for placards, signs, and papers that might implicate people. No search warrants or permission were needed, no reason given. Sleepy, shaken, undressed and confused, people were also afraid. A lot was at stake.

      And that’s how we met the student from India who lived down the hall. In the midst of this upsetting scene, Previr came up to us for the first time, hugging his arms around himself in shame at being thrown from his bed into the hall in his pajamas.

      “How appalling!” he said, looking a mix of anger and embarrassment. “How undignified to be unclothed in public.”

      I was too shaken to care that most people were in underwear or nightclothes, but never forgot the power of commanding officials armed with legal and government authority on their side, and nothing on ours.

      We enjoyed coming to know Russian friends. But we also discovered that they often were not forthcoming about their families. Even when we talked about ours, they limited what they said about theirs. Most probably had unremarkable pasts, but some had reason to avoid revealing their roots, as we learned at the end of our stay. If during much of our time in Moscow I felt irritated or insulted by the students whose job it was to spy on us and report back to the authorities what they learned about us, by the end of our stay I was more pained and saddened than irked by their plight.

      Right before we left, some friends told us their stories. They revealed their nightmare lives. They knew they lived in the shadows, because their mother or father, grandmother or grandfather had been incarcerated in a prison or labor camp for reasons either known or unclear to them, but without a real trial or possibility of parole. Dark family secrets. The parents, for whose sins they were paying, had been punished not for murder, theft, rape, or fraud, but for political views or expression deemed unacceptable to the authorities; or for simply being in the wrong class or wrong place at the wrong time. The children were marked for life with this disability, the sins of the father visited now not only on the sons but also on the mother and daughters.

      As young students,they had tried to walk a careful path. They had hidden their political liability from strangers, but were still stalked by their history in files and records. At some point, a reasonable- looking official had approached them unexpectedly with a lifetime choice: to terminate their education and get employment in a coal mine far from a major city (or other unpalatable opportunity), or to attend a highly selective national university in a major city, receive a stipend, master foreign languages, sciences, or other fields, and look forward to a promising professional career. The price of choosing the university path was to report back regularly the activities, relationships, character flaws, and vulnerabilities of foreign students whom they must befriend.

      We never knew how many people turned down this offer, of course; and we did believe we had friends who were not living a blackmailed life. We also did not know which of our friends had parents on the persecuting side, people in authority who wrote and enforced laws that imprisoned political dissenters, ran brutal Gulags, or signed orders for executions. But we did know several students who accepted the deal, and were assigned to us and to our British and Canadian friends. Some of these students became the middle-aged or retired professors, engineers, teachers, computer scientists, doctors, government bureaucrats, linguists and librarians who staffed the nation for years, and who may or may not remember the original terms of their education. Some are probably no longer alive, with early death blotting today’s Russia.

      Our stay in Moscow ended abruptly, unexpectedly, and dramatically before we ever witnessed the warmth of spring. We left Russia suddenly on Thursday, April 21, 1966. Well advised or ill advised, framed or fooled, we’ll never know. On April 20, Mr. C. at the American Embassy, Moscow, summoned us to tell us that a Russian who jumped ship and defected to the Philippines had given Jim’s name as a reference. The facts no longer mattered: whether we knew him or not was inconsequential. What mattered was that we might be subject to arrest (we did not have diplomatic immunity), vulnerable for supposedly aiding his defection.

      We also knew this was not fanciful thinking. In 1963, Frederick Barghoorn, an exchange professor from Yale University, was arrested and held for a period in a Russian jail. Whatever reasons were provided, we assumed that his research topic transgressed the Soviet’s comfort zone. The thought of jail transgressed mine: totally chilling.

      “That’s not something any of us would want to risk,” Mr. C. indicated.

      Truth was, we did not know the man. This stranger had knocked on our door unexpectedly some months before, announced his startling plan to defect, and then left. Innocently or deliberately, he had made us party to his intentions. A few months later he executed his scheme, naming Jim in the process.

      We felt defenseless against incarceration or expulsion. We already believed that the Soviets had for some time wanted to rid themselves of Jim’s presence. This event provided an opportunity. Or created one. Russian intelligence apparently assumed (we later extrapolated) that Jim was an agent. His Russian was too good. Somehow, he was the designated “leader” (starosta) of the student group, which they took to mean that he had been anointed by the U.S. government. We knew he had been elected to that post spontaneously in a raggedy discussion on the train into Russia with our fellow students, partly because of his proficiency in Russian. (“Sure, sure…” we could imagine their saying.) Perhaps seeing they could not frame him through the usual weapons of choice— women, drink, or drugs—they scared us into leaving.

      Or, perhaps this stranger truly was a free spirit, defecting to defy the regime, and planning mindfully to cover his attempt with the name of a genuine student. But a real defection likely made us even more vulnerable than a set-up might have done.

      We spent our last night in terror and fear. With imaginations fueled by films, we had bolted and blocked our door, wedging the back of a tilted chair under the doorknob. We lay awake all night listening for footsteps, but making no noise that our eavesdropping equipment might pick up. It was the longest night of my life. Exhausted by morning we left empty-handed as advised, avoiding suspicion, acting normal. I knew at the time that our futures hinged on how convincingly nonchalant we appeared walking from our rooms, through the enormous building, out the guarded gates, and into the car the Embassy had sent. The less time exposed to taxis, metros, or streets, the more likely we would escape expeditiously. After a silent ride to the airport, with nothing but our coats and a few dollars in our pockets, Mr. C. deposited us on an airplane bound for Warsaw, Paris, and London. Once we were gone, our fellow American students packed our personal belongings - including Jim’s research notes - into the footlocker that had accompanied us to Moscow, and the American Embassy shipped it to the London docks.

      Our hearts flipped on landing in Warsaw to learn we had to leave the plane. We feared the reach of the KGB. Our hope was to huddle in the midst of a cluster of tourists, not allowing ourselves to be isolated. We figured that the police would want to avoid a scene or any public display. So we continued our high-stakes acting gig, clinging close to a large clump of French tourists inspecting the Polish folk arts for sale in the airport shop, feigning our own interest in these assorted wares. (“How colorful!” “How cute!”…)

      Relieved