Seibert told Klim that recently, a group of bearded men in peasants’ clothing had come to him and asked in a strange, antiquated German dialect if it was true that this was the house of a famous journalist.

Their priest, who spoke good Russian, had composed a letter, which they wished to be passed to Stalin.

“Just take a look at what they wrote!” said Seibert with a bitter laugh.

Klim began to read:

Dear most esteemed ruler of Russia, Comrade Stalin:


After the revolution, the laborers of our village set to work, thinking that at last the good times were here, and we would see equality and brotherhood. But destruction is underway among us, and in the Volga Region, it is being carried out systematically.

Our canton was given an assignment for grain production, but half our winter rye is ruined. The authorities do not believe this is the case because they have never worked in the fields. The Party people are coming out from the city with revolvers and going around our houses. They declare that any family with wallpaper on the walls are the bourgeoisie. Then they demand a tax of whatever sum the devil puts into their heads. It is quite impossible to give them what they ask for.

Nine families in our village have been robbed, all their possessions handed over to state and cooperative organizations run by these city people. Otto Litke even had his children’s swing taken down and carted off. Please look into this, Comrade Stalin. Why was this necessary?

A teacher was sent out to our school to teach the children the way they are taught in Saratov city. But the teacher does not know our language, and the children do not understand anything he says. They have been instructed in this Saratov wisdom for a whole year and have only one line written in their exercise books: “At the first call of the Party, we will all go to the barricades to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Who will take care of the crops if they all go to the barricades?

Who needs all this? Or perhaps you are all sitting there in the capital without any idea of what is going on in the countryside?

We were close to giving up, so we sold all our possessions. The whole village decided to go to Germany where we heard they were looking for hired hands on farms. We came to Moscow and went straight to the German Embassy, but they told us that we would not get a visa without a special passport for traveling abroad. We went here, there, and everywhere, trying to find these passports, but all the city workers just take our money for nothing and don’t do their job. Bishop Meier took pity on us and let us stay in the Church of St. Michael, and our whole village has been living there now for two months like mice in a cellar, and because of this, our children are starting to fall ill.

Please send us a representative to see how we are suffering. And tell the city people not to torment us but let us out of the country without these passports that we do not need. If you do not come to our aid, we will die this winter since we have no money and no way of getting any because nobody will give us work.

Long live Soviet power and a brighter future! Death to those who refuse the workers their freedom!

Goodbye, Comrade Stalin. I am sending you this letter in secret, but if I need to answer for anything, I will do so willingly.

Truly yours, Thomas Fischer

Beneath the first name were dozens of crooked German signatures.

Klim looked up at Seibert. “They’ll all be sent to prison for a letter like this.”

“That’s exactly what I told them. But they have nowhere to go back to, you see. I wanted to ask the Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Comrade Babloyan, to help them. He owes me a favor—he has a liver disease, and I organized for him to get treatment in Berlin. But he won’t be back in Moscow for another couple of days, and I’m being deported. So, we won’t have a chance to meet.”

“Would you like me to speak to him?” asked Klim.

Seibert clasped his hands together beseechingly. “Please, speak to him! If you do this for me, you won’t regret it.”

Seibert’s forehead puckered, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been chasing after this Babloyan,” Seibert said with a sigh. “He’s a member of the Central Executive Committee and a personal friend of Stalin. I was hoping to arrange an interview through him.”

“And you’d pass that connection on to me?” Klim asked, astonished.

“I would die of envy if you pull it off, of course. But you can consider it payment for helping my fellow Germans.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Then I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. A couple of days from now, you can go to see Babloyan in the sanatorium for the All-Union Organization of Prerevolutionary Political Convicts and Deportees. Babloyan will continue treatment there for his liver complaint.”

Klim wrote down the address. “What will you do in Berlin?” he asked.

“I’ll get a job with a newspaper,” Seibert said. “After all, I have made a name for myself, and I’ve got plenty of experience. If we manage to get the Volga Germans out of the country, I’ll try my hand at politics. It would be a good start for my career.”

4

The caste system within the USSR had its untouchables—lishentsy—but it also had its Brahmins—members of the All-Union Organization of Prerevolutionary Political Convicts and Deportees. These people were lionized. They enjoyed enormous pensions, private apartments, and countless other privileges.

There were around three thousand members of the organization—several generations of anarchists, nihilists, and revolutionaries. It was calculated that between them, they had spent sixteen thousand years in labor camps and still longer in exile.

These former convicts had their own publishing house, bookshop, and a museum, which displayed documents testifying to the political repression that had taken place in the Russian Empire. But the jewel in the crown of the organization was the former mansion of Count Sheremetev, which had been transformed into a wonderful hospital and sanatorium. As well as former political convicts, members of the Party elite also went there often for treatment.

Klim used his connections with his downstairs neighbors, the Proletkult workers, to get himself a place on an excursion to this sanatorium. The other participants were a group of Young Communist League members.

They left Moscow by bus. The group leader, Vasya, a muscular bronzed young man in a striped shirt and baggy canvas trousers had brought a concertina with him, and all the way he roared out chastushkas, humorous folk songs consisting of one couplet.

See them now, the bourgeois lackeys

Trembling like jellies;

Now they have to pay new taxes

For their big fat bellies!

The girls around him all howled with laughter.

After a long and bumpy ride over country roads, the bus drove into an old-fashioned park with artificial lakes and shady avenues of trees.

The Young Communists were glued to the windows.

“Oh! Just look at those statues!” gasped the girls, pointing to the marble figures in the fountains.

“And look at all the flowers! More than on a May Day Parade!”

They got off the bus and stood, hesitating next to a large building of white stone with pillars and a broad staircase leading up to the porch.

“This is the good life, all right!” said Vasya. In his astonishment, he dropped his concertina, which let out a loud bellow as it fell to the ground.

A small, plump man with dark hair and a bushy mustache came out to meet them.

“Good to see all you fine, young people!” he said, heartily. “Come along, and I’ll show you around.”

Klim was the only one of the group who recognized Babloyan, although his picture was always in the papers, and his portrait was sold widely in sets of postcards. It would not have occurred to any of the younger people that such an important man could talk to ordinary workers so simply and easily and even show them around.

But Babloyan was clearly fond of consorting with the Young Communists. He laughed together with the young men and jokingly put his arm around the girls’ waists.

“Shh—quiet now!” he ordered when they came up to a terrace where old men and women in smart bathrobes were lying about, dozing in comfortable deckchairs.

“This place is like a living museum,” breathed Babloyan in awe. “These people sacrificed everything so that you, young people, could witness the dawn of socialism.”

The Young Communists tiptoed onto the terrace and, blushing awkwardly, began to thank the old men and women and shake their wrinkled hands, which still bore the scars of shackles.

Babloyan gave them a blow-by-blow account of the activities of the political convicts—which of them had attempted to assassinate generals and which had planted bombs in the official residences of city governors.

The Young Communists had grown up under Soviet rule, and as far as they were concerned, all this had taken place long ago in ancient times. They could hardly believe that the heroes of these historical events were still alive.

They were particularly amazed to be introduced to an eighty-year-old man called Frolenko. He had been one of the ringleaders in the assassination of Alexander II.

“Why did you try to kill the Tsar?” asked Raia, a tiny, dark-eyed girl with a snub nose covered in large freckles. “The country wasn’t ready for revolution at that time.”