Not Russian by Mikhail Shevelev

Author:Mikhail Shevelev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

1984

I always hated them. Like everyone around me hated them.

Everyone, or so I thought. In my junior year at the university, when I discovered that half of the guys in my class alone had chosen to intern with the Komitet—our slang for the KGB—I was shocked. They’d all seemed like decent people, some were even my friends. “What’s so strange about it?” they said in response to my surprise. “It’s a good job, with a decent salary. In two years, you’ll get to take your first trip abroad. And you get on the list for an apartment right away. Anyhow you Muscovites can afford to be choosy, but what choice do we have? Go back to Tambov?”

Well, that’s fine. You have your life, and I have mine.

My life did, however, eventually lead me to the KGB, but through a back door. I guess my life didn’t have to go that way, but there weren’t a lot of choices—your social being, as Marx said, determines everything.

Around 1983, in Yuri Sobolev’s art studio, I met some Americans—two guys and a girl. Yuri asked me: “Could you translate while I tell them about my difficult life as a painter under the yoke of totalitarianism? Maybe they’ll buy a painting or two, although it’s not likely. They don’t look like rich Americans.” “Of course, I’ll translate.”

He was right, they didn’t buy any paintings, but they turned out to be interesting people.

They came to Moscow from California to do something that any normal Soviet person would consider suspicious if not just stupid. They came to fight for peace. In California, they would visit all the progressive companies, especially in Silicon Valley, which was picking up steam at that time, and ask for grants, which they usually received. They used that money to educate their countrymen, helping them to see the Soviet Union as more than just an Evil Empire. They tried everything possible to bring the two countries, the two systems closer together. They brought student groups from all over the US to the USSR, staged joint theater performances, organized various exhibitions and festivals, symposiums and colloquiums. But their most cherished dream was to organize telebridges so that Russians and Americans could talk to one another in real time. And then, they believed, there would be no nuclear war. Truly, who could kill people they knew?

They were fantastically naïve but sincere in their American dream. During that time, I was occasionally moonlighting as an interpreter at a place that was called the Soviet Peace Committee, although it gave off a very different vibe.

I asked if they wanted me to help with translating. They were happy to accept my offer, as they’d been assigned some idiot who not only didn’t know English that well but was always interfering: “Don’t go here,” “It’s forbidden to go there,” “Don’t speak to those people,” “These are the people you’re allowed to talk to.”

So, I started helping out. First, because it was interesting to me. And second, there was the American girl, Cindy.

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