As for my promise to the regional KGB chief to keep the secret about their efforts to get me to enroll as a student for their school, I am writing about it in my book for the first time, for reasons that will become clear a bit later. Lieutenant Colonel Nasirov decided to take revenge for my lack of respect towards his “company”. I finished high school in 1953 with a silver medal, and that allowed me to enter any institution for higher education without taking the entrance exams. But there was a holdup, as it took me more than a month to get my draft card (a document allowing me to transfer my enlistment to another military office) from the regional military department. The regional commissioner insisted that I should enroll in the Orenburg Artillery School. But I was obstinate.
Every morning in July of 1953, I walked from my village to the military department, and every evening I returned home on foot, since there was no transportation between the village and the regional center in those days. There was no result. Many of my fellow students had already submitted documents to different institutions and I still haunted the doorstep of the military department.
Finally one day, after I had been sitting for the whole day by the door of the military commissioner’s office, I declared that I wouldn’t leave the building, and I would stay there for the night. It was the end of the workday and the employees looked at me as if I had gone mad. They didn’t like my resolute look at all, and threatened to call the police. At the same time, they realized that no threats could stop me now. At that moment, the military commander, Major Bezrukov, came out of his office and with a tone of disgust in his voice, ordered them to give a draft card to “this young whippersnapper”. I was so happy! I crossed the Belaya River and I ran the whole way to my house without stopping once.
At home, I announced that I was going to study in Moscow. My parents didn’t object, though my departure would cost them a lot of money. I got the money for my travel and for a month of living expenses in the capital. After that I was supposed to live on my scholarship and get a part-time job, so I could buy clothes and other necessities.
The delay with my draft card, which allowed me to enter a university, had its effect. With all the hardships characteristic of any journey at that time, I managed to reach Moscow only on Saturday, July 26. I was traveling in an overcrowded fourth-class train car, where passengers were sleeping on the floor. This journey took two full days and nights, and it was agonizing for me, even though I was a strong young man.
My ordeals were not over at that point. I was planning to enter the Bauman Higher Technical School in Moscow, and I wanted to major in “optical instruments” there. I arrived too late to go to the admission office there, and so I couldn’t get a place in the dormitory. I had nowhere to sleep even a little bit. I decided to return to the Kazan train station where I had left my luggage in the office.
I didn’t know Moscow at all, and it was difficult finding my way around on the metro. No matter how hard I tried to find the Kazan train station, for some reason I always ended up at the Kiev Station. Probably I didn’t have enough practice speaking Russian, since the subjects in our high school were taught in the Tatar. I was always speaking Tatar with other students.
By that time, I had suffered a lot because of my poor Russian language skills. I think it is the main reason why the first love of my youth ended in failure.
Once, when I was passing by the regional photographer’s studio, I saw a portrait displayed there of a wonderful young lady in a school uniform. Her large and thoughtful eyes and amazingly beautiful oval face struck me. Her long thick braids made her look like a movie star. This portrait was beautiful and surreal. Then I saw this girl in the street!
At that time and for a long time afterwards, I was extraordinarily shy, and I had to make an incredible effort just to speak to girls. That is why I couldn’t even dream of just coming up to a beautiful girl and speaking with her. I felt an insurmountable longing that I did not understand. Soon I learned that she was studying in the Russian school, though I am sure she was a Tatar or a Bashkir, not a Russian.
In those days, it was fashionable among the Soviet and local party officials to send their children to Russian schools, while the children who came from villages usually entered a Tatar high school. Certainly, this reflected the social stratification of the times.
Several months later, I made friends with Rishat Muratov, a decent and kind boy my age from the Russian school, who spoke the Tatar language mixed with Russian words. His father was the Second Secretary of the Raikom of the C.P.S.U. Soon I learned that my mysterious young lady lived in the same house as my new friend. Rishat explained that his neighbor was named Irene, and her father Bainazarov was the chairman of the Regional Council of People’s Deputies.
I was completely distressed by this news, because it meant we had absolutely nothing in common. The only thing I could do was to steal secret glances at Irene, when she dropped by Rishat’s place for some reason. For a long time, I never managed to utter a single word in her presence. They always spoke Russian there, and even the colloquial version of Russian was beyond me at that time, and for years afterwards.
I rented a flat from a Russian landlady and I tried to master this difficult language by speaking with her. I asked her, and she agreed to correct my mistakes. But speaking Russian with such a young beauty, whose looks deprived me of any ability to think, was out of the question. I frankly envied my friend who could speak so freely and naturally with Irene, as if she were his sister. Meanwhile, I cursed my shyness, and I was perfectly sure that I would never be able to overcome it. There was only one thing left for me to do. I had to make sure that Irene would know me as the top student and sportsman.
I tried really hard, and as I had a serious incentive, my efforts produced results. By winter, I became the top student among the eighth-graders and I was elected to every possible school and Komsomol committee.[7] It was surprising that I was elected secretary of the Komsomol school committee, which was the highest acknowledgement of my new position, although I was only sixteen and we had eighteen-year-olds on the committee.
When our physics teacher was ill (she was the only one in our school who taught her subject in Russian), another teacher from the Russian school replaced her. I knew from Rishat that the teacher spoke very well about me when he went back to his Russian school. According to Rishat, students of my age from that school were intrigued. Probably my friend’s news prompted me to take a desperate step. I summoned all my courage and wrote a letter in Russian to the object of my affections. Rishat handed Irene this note with my confessions of love and a proposal to be friends. Soon I received Irene’s answer, and she wrote that she had heard a lot about me and she even doubted that she deserved to be my friend. My joy was boundless when I received her reply to my second letter, and she offered to meet me.
We had to meet late at night at the end of one of the central streets of the town. That frosty February evening, Irene and I strolled along the street, and she told me about herself and her girl friends. I understood everything but, unfortunately, I was thinking too slowly to keep the conversation going in Russian. Of course, I could have recited poems in Tatar, or I could have told her about the books I had read; plenty of them were in Russian, but it seemed to me that some heavy weight was hanging on my tongue. I tried to murmur something, but I couldn’t say anything sensible. Horrified, I realized that I wasn’t making a very good impression. The embarrassment that overwhelmed me at that moment stopped me from even looking at Irene, but at the same time, I was infinitely happy that such a beautiful and bright girl was walking beside me and talking with me.
7
The Communist Party sponsored an organization, the Komsomol, or Communist League of Youth, for those between age fourteen and early thirties, so that they could learn the proper things to become party members. Komsomol members provoked political activity, completed social projects (e.g., planting trees along urban roads), and supposedly served as role models for socialist behavior. John Thompson,