Dear Shura,
/ am in Vladivostok—USVITL,1 barracks no. 11. I was given five years for c.r.a.2 by the Special Tribunal. The transport left Butyrki on September p, and we got here October 12. My health is very bad, Vm extremely exhausted and thin, almost unrecognizable, but I dorit know whether there's any sense in sending clothes, food and money. You can try, all the same. Vm very cold without proper clothes.
My darling Nadia—are you alive, my dear? Shura, write to me at once about Nadia. This is a transit point. Vve not been picked for Kolyma and may have to spend the winter here.
I kiss you, my dear ones. Osia. Shura: one more thing. The last few days we've been going out to work. This has raised my spirits. This camp is a transit one and they send us on from here to regular ones. It looks as though Vve been rejected, so I must prepare to spend the winter here. So please send me a telegram and cable me some money.
USVITL: "Directorate for North-Eastern Corrective Labor Camps."
"Counter-revolutionary activity."
to go to the Union of Writers and sound out the ground. We already knew that the widows of both Babel and Meyerhold had applied for the rehabilitation of their husbands, and Ehrenburg had long been advising me to follow suit, but I had been in no hurry. Now, however, I decided to go to the Union.
Surkov came out to see me, and by the way he treated me I could see that times had indeed changed: nobody had ever spoken to me like this before. My first conversation with him took place in an anteroom in the presence of secretaries. He promised to see me again in a few days' time and begged me not to leave Moscow until we had spoken. For two or three weeks following this I kept phoning the personnel section of the Union, and every time they asked me in dulcet tones to wait a little longer. This meant that Surkov still had not received instructions about what he was to say to me. So I just continued to wait, marveling at the way that strange institution known as the "personnel section" had suddenly changed its tune.
A meeting was at last arranged, and I saw how pleased Surkov was at being able to talk like a human being. He promised to help Lev Gumilev and did everything for me that I asked him. Thanks to Surkov, I was given a pension—at the moment of our interview I was again out of work, and Surkov got in touch with the Ministry of Education and told them how outrageously I was being treated. He took a rosy view of the future and promised to arrange for me to live in Moscow, getting me a residence permit and a room, and he also broached the subject of publishing M.'s work. He said that, to begin with, I should formally apply for M.'s rehabilitation. I asked him how it would have been if M. had no widow to do this for him, but I didn't pursue the matter.
I soon received an official notice clearing M. of the charges brought against him in 1938, and the woman Prosecutor dealing with the case helped me draft an application to have M. cleared of the charges brought against him in 1934 ("the accused wrote the poem, but did not circulate it"). This second application was considered during the Hungarian events* and it was turned down. Surkov, however, decided to ignore this and appointed a committee to go into the question of M.'s literary remains. I was given 5,000 roubles by way of compensation. I divided the money among all the people who had helped us in 1937.
The second stage in the ritual of restoring the names of writers
• The Hungarian uprising of November 1956, which was followed by a political reaction in Moscow.
who perished in the camps is the publication of their work. Here the obstacles have been manifold. I know nothing about the competition they frighten us with,[30] but I do know how ruthlessly people fight to keep their entrenched positions. When the first rumors were heard about the rehabilitation commissions established by Mikoyan, many people were very upset—and not only people who had helped to dispose of their competitors. I heard whispered questions about where room could possibly be found for all the ex-prisoners returning from the camps—suppose they all wanted their old jobs back? How many new posts would have to be created in Soviet institutions to accommodate these hordes of "returnees" (as they were known)! But there was no problem: the majority of the returnees were in such poor shape that they had no thought of taking up any kind of active career again. Everything passed off very quietly, and those who had worried about having to make room heaved sighs of relief. But literature is a different matter. The carefully contrived "order of precedence" has to be protected at all cost, if many established reputations are not to collapse. This is why there is so much opposition to the publication of work by those who perished. It must be said that some of the living do not fare any better either.
A volume of M.'s poetry was scheduled by the Poets' Library in 1956. All the members of the editorial board pronounced themselves in favor. I was very pleased by Prokofiev's attitude—he said that M. was simply not a poet and that the best way to demonstrate the fact would be to publish him. Unhappily, he later abandoned this high- minded position and has since fought the proposal tooth and nail. Orlov, the editor-in-chief of the series, didn't at first anticipate any opposition, and started writing me friendly letters, but when he saw what trouble there might be with the volume, he hastily beat a retreat and broke off our correspondence. One could, however, scarcely expect anything else of Orlov, who is a high official and quite indifferent to M.'s poetry into the bargain.
Much more serious is the attitude shown by several people of real authority and independence who are anything but bureaucrats and have a real love of M.'s work. Two of them—both outstanding representatives of the generation that was destroyed—have explained to me that Orlov is right not to publish M., which technically would be quite possible for him: "It might be exploited by his enemies—thereare lots of people who would like to take his place. If he goes, it will be the end of a distinguished series." By sacrificing the Mandelstam volume, they argued, Orlov would keep his position and thus be able to carry out his project to publish the poets of the twenties, thirties and forties of the last century—a project with which both of these people were concerned. It is difficult for me to make any sense of all this, with the overlapping personal and group interests involved— not to mention the struggle to keep one's job and get a share of the cake handed out by the State. Since it is impossible, in our conditions, for me to publish M.'s work myself at my own expense, I realize that I shall not live to see his poetry come out in this country —I am now getting on in years. I am consoled only by the words of Akhmatova, who says that M. does not need Gutenberg's invention. In a sense, we really do live in a pre-Gutenberg era: more and more people read poetry in the manuscript copies that circulate all over the country. All the same, I am sorry I shall never see a book.
82 The Date of Death
some journalists from Pravda, who mentioned it to Shklovski, someone in the Central Committee said in their hearing that it now appeared that there had been no case against Mandelstam at all. This was shortly after the dismissal of Yezhov and was meant to serve as an illustration of his misdeeds. . . . The conclusion I drew was that M. must be dead.
Not long afterward I was sent a notice asking me to go to the post office at Nikita Gate. Here I was handed back the parcel I had sent to M. in the camp. "The addressee is dead," the young lady behind the counter informed me. It would be easy enough to establish the date on which the parcel was returned to me—it was the same day on which the newspapers published the long list of Government awards—the first ever—to Soviet writers.
г the end of December 1938 or in January 1939, according to