Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

“What’s the matter, Mommy?” Tata would ask, alarmed.

“Nothing.”

Tata felt sure that her mother was upset because of something she had done, and Tata was always doing the wrong thing.

Once, she had been sitting at the window when she had spotted her archenemy from school, Julia—a dark-haired girl with a heavy face, pale skin, and unhealthy-looking swollen eyelids. She had an urge to throw something at Julia, and as ill luck would have it, the first thing that fell to hand was a tray of eggs that Tata’s mother had bought at the market. Tata had subjected Julia to such a bombardment that she had been forced to retreat in disgrace.

But Tata’s mother chose that moment to come in with a basin of wet washing.

“You awful girl!” she wailed, grabbing a wet towel and starting to thrash Tata with it. “I was going to make you a birthday cake!”

Tata kept apologizing and told her mother that the Young Pioneers would definitely correct her bad character. They had managed to reform even worse offenders than herself.

“Nothing will change you!” her mother spat at her. “How did you turn out to be such an idiot? Where did you get it from?”

Tata really did feel stupid. A little later, she found out that Julia was a member of the Young Pioneers and was now doing all she could to prevent Tata from being accepted.

There was nobody to stick up for Tata as she had no friends.

6

Tata enjoyed playing with Kitty. That little girl was pretty and amusing just like a doll, and Tata had never had a doll.

Kitty looked at her with adoring eyes. “Can I come play with you again? We could play we’re running away from the jond… the jor… from the cactus plants.”

It was a pity that Kitty’s father had such bourgeois habits. Tata understood that he had to wear those dreadful ties and fancy ribbed socks for work, but why did he have to go about dressed up like a bourgeois on the weekend? He probably just wanted to show off in front of other people. It was very antisocial and immature of him, she thought.

When Uncle Klim and Kitty left, the tenants gathered in the kitchen and asked Tata about her guests. Tata could not help adding some extra details of her own to Klim’s biography.

“He’s a progressive journalist from Shanghai. He fought on the barricades there and saved wounded Red Army soldiers.”

The tenants exchanged respectful glances.

“Well, I hope you and your mother don’t get too big for your boots now,” said Mitrofanych. “You know the sort of thing. That foreigner gives you a stamp from one of his letters, and the next thing, you’re too proud to say hello to us.”

“Why should we care about his stamps?” Tata snorted, and immediately the thought struck her—maybe she should ask Klim for some old envelopes? Foreign stamps were worth their weight in gold at school. You could swap them for anything, even radio parts.

When Tata went back to their room, her mother had already gone to bed. Tata crawled into her sleeping quarters and stretched out. At last, she had grown tall enough for her head and feet to touch the opposite sides of the wardrobe.

The bench creaked, and her mother suddenly asked in an uncharacteristically affectionate voice, “How were things at school today?”

That was strange. She never asked questions like this. She would even sign Tata’s report without looking at it.

Tata told her that they had all played a game called “The Privilege Catcher.”

“They gave us balls that had things written on them: ‘union budget,’ ‘tax relief,’ and ‘electoral rights.’ We had to throw them to one another so that the churchman representative didn’t catch them. And guess who was the churchman? Julia!”

Tata climbed out of the wardrobe and began to run excitedly around the room in the dark.

“I’m a priest. I’m the enemy of the Soviet system!” she growled in a threatening voice, playing at being Julia. “I want to get the same privileges as the workers!”

“So, what happened?” asked her mother. “Did she get them?”

“Of course not!”

Actually, Julia had managed to get her hands on all the “privileges”—she had been chosen as the churchman as she was faster and nimbler on her feet than all the other girls in the class.

After the game, the Young Pioneer leader Vadik had made the panting children line up and told them that the real enemy was just as cunning and clever as this and that the privileges that had been given to the working class needed to be guarded fiercely.

“I hit Julia on the head with ‘tax relief,’ and she got nothing!” fibbed Tata. “They even praised me for being vigilant.”

There was a sigh in the darkness, and Tata fell silent, unsure if her mother felt proud or angry at her for her fight against the church.

“Did you like Kitty?” asked her mother.

“You bet!” said Tata. “I wish I had a sister like her.”

“I’m so glad,” said her mother and laughed a quiet and happy laugh that Tata had not heard for a long time.

1

Magda discovered a new way to get access to the Comintern hostel: she registered as a student on the Russian language courses for foreigners that had recently opened there.

The hostel was home to communists of all nationalities, from Norwegians to Indians. They shaved their heads, wore traditional Russian shirts, and spoke in a strange jargon of their own, peppered with the words “Lenin,” “communism,” and “primus.” The Kremlin thought these foreigners were potentially useful—come the world revolution, new governments all over the world would be formed from their ranks.

That radiant day was still in the future, however, and meanwhile, the communists at the Comintern hostel lived at the expense of the Soviet authorities, spending their time arguing heatedly about politics and signing all sorts of resolutions.

At the entrance to the hostel, a receptionist asked for Magda’s documents and entered her name in a ledger.

“First floor on your right,” he told her, but Magda headed straight off to see Friedrich in room 66.

She walked down a damp, dimly lit corridor and stopped in front of the precious door. Some jokers had added another “6” to the number plate and scrawled on it, “Gates of Hell—Please knock.”

Quietly, Magda tapped on the door with her fingernails. Nobody answered, so she pushed open one of the double doors, which was slightly ajar.

“How much do you want?” she heard Friedrich’s voice coming from the bedroom.

Barely aware of what she was doing, Magda crept into the hall and then in the bathroom. She stood with her back to the water heater, her heart thumping, listening to what was going on in the bedroom.

“Let me tell you, you won’t find better cocaine in Moscow,” Friedrich said persuasively.

“But why is it so expensive?” asked a voice with a French accent.

“Well, if you don’t like the price, you can go and buy hashish from the Uzbeks at the market.”

Magda’s head was spinning. The man she loved was a drug dealer!

Soon after, the Frenchman left, and Friedrich came into the bathroom. He was so startled to see Magda that he cried out in alarm.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped.

“I… I wanted to buy some cocaine,” she blurted out, unable to think of anything better to say. “I heard you were selling it.”

2

Magda began to make regular visits to room 666. It was madness to spend the last of her money on cocaine she neither wanted nor needed, but it was the only way she could meet Friedrich alone.

They would speak only briefly, and their conversations always began with Friedrich criticizing Magda for her “drug habit.”

“I don’t feel sorry for the others,” he said. “They can poison themselves for all I care. But you saved me from the Chinese police. Do you know what’s going to happen to you? First of all, you’ll have hallucinations and fits of despondency; then, after a couple of months, you won’t be able to think of anything except your next meeting with me.”

Magda looked into his eyes. “You’re quite right, you know.”

But despite all his warnings, Friedrich provided her with liberal supplies of cocaine, issuing strict warnings not to buy it from street kids.

“The stuff they sell is contraband from Livonia—cut with chalk or soda.”

She would go back to her hotel room and flush her purchase down the toilet.

One day, Magda asked Friedrich why he had started to deal in drugs. His reply amazed her. He told her that his superiors had given him a choice: either he would start transporting cocaine into the country or somebody else would be given the job of flying to Berlin, and Friedrich would join his friends the Trotskyites in exile or in prison.

Like vintage wines and brandy, expensive drugs came into the USSR mainly from Hamburg, Berlin, and Riga. The top quality stuff was brought in not by smugglers, who tended to manufacture their own substandard product, but by ships’ captains, train guards, diplomatic couriers, and pilots. These groups could get through customs without having their baggage inspected, and their product would be sold straight to eminent Party dignitaries and “useful foreigners.”

“Do you think I’m ashamed of what I do?” Friedrich asked Magda. “Not in the least! Half the people in the Kremlin either swill vodka or sniff cocaine. Those scoundrels have killed the revolution, and I’ve no sympathy for them. What I can’t understand is why you’ve become a drug addict.”

Magda assumed a tragic expression. “What else do I have to live for?”

Then she told him all about how Klim Rogov had taken the job she had set her heart on. In spite of all her efforts to find work, no Soviet editor had expressed an interest in hiring her, and she now had no visa and no money.

“Do you know how to do anything?” demanded Friedrich angrily.

Magda put her hand to her heart. “I can write books, and I’m a good photographer.”

The next time Magda came to Friedrich, he gave her a letter from an editor in Berlin. This editor explained that Germany was very interested in what was going on in the USSR because many German firms were hoping to supply goods to the country. They had nowhere else to turn since the victorious allies had placed heavy restrictions on German foreign trade after the Great War. If Miss Thomson were willing to write a book about her life in Moscow, the publisher would take on the expense of having the book translated, even paying her an advance. All the editor asked was for her to send him a plan and a couple of sample chapters.

“It’s one of my… well, my customers,” muttered Friedrich. “You need to grab your chance with him while he can still think straight. Pretty soon, his family will have him committed to a clinic, and he won’t be any use to you.”

Magda was so moved that tears came into her eyes. “Of course I’ll write to him! Let me have the address.”

Friedrich told her that all correspondence should be directed through him. That way, it would be possible to get around the censors.

“I’m happy to help you,” he said, “but on one condition. You must give up cocaine. And believe me; you won’t be able to fool me. If you carry on taking it, I’ll be able to sniff it out.”

Magda swore in the name of all that was sacred that she would never again touch the dreaded white powder. She was overjoyed at the prospect of her new job.

3

Magda’s plan was approved in Berlin, the contract was signed, and work began on the new book.

The Bolsheviks were very keen to attract tourists into the country, and Friedrich advised Magda to inform the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs that she was planning to write a travel guide for foreigners. Her visa was extended straight away, and she was allowed to rent the apartment of an opera singer who had left the country on a tour.

What a shame it was, thought Magda, that Nina was no longer with her! The interpreters sent to her by the state did their best to take her to places she did not care about, such as the Bolshoi Theater or the furniture museum. In the end, Magda decided she would go everywhere alone and explain herself to Russians using sign language if she had to.

For a chapter of her book devoted to Soviet children, she had to write about the street urchins, homeless waifs who had appeared in vast numbers as a result of the civil war, the recent famine, and widespread alcoholism among the working class.