He thought to himself: 'To me, a distinction based on social origin seems legitimate and moral. But the Germans obviously consider a distinction based on nationality to be equally moral. One thing I am certain of: it's terrible to kill someone simply because he's a Jew. They're people like any others – good, bad, gifted, stupid, stolid, cheerful, kind, sensitive, greedy… Hitler says none of that matters -all that matters is that they're Jewish. And I protest with my whole being. But then we have the same principle: what matters is whether or not you're the son of an aristocrat, the son of a merchant, the son of a kulak; and whether you're good-natured, wicked, gifted, kind, stupid, happy, is neither here nor there. And we're not talking about the merchants, priests and aristocrats themselves – but about their children and grandchildren. Does noble blood run in one's veins like Jewishness? Is one a priest or a merchant by heredity? Nonsense! Sofya Perovskaya was the daughter of a general, the daughter of a provincial governor. Have her banished! And Komissarov, the Tsarist police stooge who grabbed Karakozov, would have answered the sixth point: "petit bourgeois". He would have been accepted by the University. Stalin said: "The son isn't responsible for the father." But he also said: "An apple never falls far from the tree…" Well, petit bourgeois it is.'
7. Social position… White-collar worker? But clerks and civil servants are white-collar workers. A white-collar worker called Shtrum had elaborated the mathematics of the disintegration of atomic nuclei. Another white-collar worker called Markov hoped, with the aid of their new apparatus, to confirm the theories of the white-collar worker called Shtrum.
'That's it,' he thought. 'White-collar worker.'
Viktor shrugged his shoulders and got up. Making a gesture as if to brush someone off, he paced around the room. Then he sat down and went on with the questionnaire.
29. Have you or your closest relative ever been the subject of a judicial inquiry or trial? Have you been arrested? Have you been given a judicial or administrative sentence? When? Where? Precisely what for? If you were reprieved, when?
Then the same question regarding Viktor's wife. Viktor felt his heart miss a beat. They showed no mercy. Different names flashed through his mind. I'm certain he's innocent… he's simply not of this world… she was arrested for not denouncing her husband, I think she got eight years, I'm not sure, I don't write to her, I think she was sent to Temniki, I found out by chance, I met her daughter on the street… I don't remember exactly, I think he was arrested in early 1938, yes, ten years without right of correspondence…'
My wife's brother was a Party member, I met him only occasionally… my wife and I don't write to him… I think my wife's mother visited him, yes, long before the war… his second wife was exiled for failing to denounce her husband, she died during the war, her son volunteered for the front, for the defence of Stalingrad… my wife separated from her first husband… her son by that marriage – my own stepson – died during the defence of Stalingrad… her first husband was arrested, my wife has heard nothing of him from the moment of his arrest, I don't know the reason for his arrest, I've heard vague talk of his belonging to the Trotskyist opposition, but I'm not sure, I wasn't in the least interested…
He was seized by a feeling of irreparable guilt and impurity. He remembered a meeting at which a Party member, confessing his faults, had said: 'Comrades, I'm not one of us.'
Suddenly Viktor rebelled. No, I'm not one of the obedient and submissive. I'm all on my own, my wife is no longer interested in me, but so what…? I won't renounce those unfortunates who died for no reason.
You should be ashamed of yourselves, comrades! How can you bring up such things? These people are innocent – what can their wives and children be guilty of? It's you who should repent, you who should be begging for forgiveness. And you want to prove my inferiority, to destroy my self-confidence – simply because I'm related to these innocent victims? All I'm guilty of is failing to help them.
At the same time, another, quite opposite train of thought was running through Viktor's mind… I didn't keep in touch with them, I never corresponded with enemies of the Party, I never received letters from camps, I never gave them material help, I met them only infrequently and by chance…
30. Do any of your relatives live abroad? (Where? Since when? Their reasons for emigrating?) Do you remain in touch with them?
This question increased Viktor's depression.
Comrades, surely you understand that emigration was the only possible choice under the Tsarist regime? It was the poor, the lovers of freedom, who emigrated. Lenin himself lived in London, Zurich and Paris. Why are you exchanging winks as you read the list of my uncles and aunts living, together with their sons and daughters, in New York, Paris and Buenos Aires? A friend of mine once joked: 'I've got an aunt in New York. I always knew that hunger's no friendly aunt; now I know that aunts mean hunger.'
The list of his relatives abroad turned out to be almost as long as the list of his scientific works. And if one added the list of those who had been arrested…
This was how to flatten a man. He's an alien! Throw him out! But it was all a lie. Science needed him – not Gavronov or Dubyonkov. And he was ready to give his life for his country. And were people with spotless questionnaires incapable of deception or betrayal? And were there no people who had written, 'Father – swindler' or 'Father -landowner' – and then given their own lives in battle, joined the partisans, been executed?
What was all this? He knew only too well. The statistical method! Probability theory! There was a greater probability of finding enemies among people of a non-proletarian background. And it was on these same grounds – probability theory – that the German Fascists had destroyed whole peoples and nations. The principle was inhuman, blind and inhuman. There was only one acceptable way of relating to people – a human way.
If he were choosing staff for his laboratory, he would draw up a very different questionnaire – a human questionnaire.
It was all the same to him whether his future colleague was a Russian, a Jew, a Ukrainian or an Armenian, whether his grandfather had been a worker, a factory-owner or a kulak; his relationship with him would not depend on whether or not his brother had been arrested by the organs of the NKVD; it didn't matter to him whether his future colleague's sister lived in Geneva or Kostroma.
He would ask at what age someone had first become interested in theoretical physics, what he thought of the criticisms Einstein had made of Planck when the latter was an old man, whether he was interested only in mathematical theory or whether he also enjoyed experimental work, what he thought of Heinsenberg, did he believe in the possibility of a unified field theory? What mattered was talent, fire, the divine spark…
He would like to know – but only if his future colleague were happy to say – whether he enjoyed long walks, whether he drank wine, whether he went to orchestral concerts, whether he liked Seton Thompson's children's books, whether he felt more drawn to Tolstoy or to Dostoyevsky, whether he enjoyed gardening, whether he went fishing, what he thought of Picasso, which was his favourite story of Chekhov's.
He would also like to know whether this future colleague was taciturn or talkative, whether he was good-natured, witty, resentful, irritable, ambitious, whether he was likely to start an affair with the pretty young Verochka Ponamariova…