Constant Nobody

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Early in this project, tired, intimidated, and nearly broke, I rolled my chair back from my desk, rubbed my eyes, and said ‘What I need here is a detailed social history of Moscow in the year 1937.’ I couldn’t bear to look at my computer screen any longer, so I took a trip to a bookstore. I meandered over to the history section, where I spotted a thick hardcover called Moscow, 1937, by Karl Schlögel. I took a step back from the shelf, looked again: yes, it existed and yes, it offered up invaluable details of everyday life in 1937 Moscow — details of everyday life colliding with the brutal realities of the Great Purge. It was precisely what I needed. I couldn’t afford it, yet there it sat, as if waiting for me. My next paycheque several days away, I had to choose between the book and food. I chose Moscow, 1937. I owe Karl Schlögel and translator Rodney Livingstone a great debt.

I also owe a debt to Vadim J. Birstein for The Perversion of Knowledge, his study of Soviet doctors and scientists working on poisons, to Alexander Vatlin and translator Seth Bernstein for Agents of Terror: Ordinary Men and Extraordinary Violence in Stalin’s Secret Police, and to Jeffrey Keith for his MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-49. Of course, writing about characters in complex historical settings risks historical flubs. Any such errors in the novel are due not to my research sources but to my own limitations.

Somewhere around draft six, I recognized I did not have a full grasp of Temerity West. I’d assumed she would be easier to write than the Russian characters, as she is English and I grew up in a culture informed — perhaps dominated — by British habits and views. I’d forgotten something crucial: the British Empire. The 2002 TWI/Carlton TV miniseries The British Empire in Colour was a huge help. This documentary explores the empire’s miseries, complexities, and legacies — and the footage is fascinating.

I also studied, and continue to study, a work that felt like a quiet invitation into the realities of Soviet life in 1937: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Shostakovich composed the symphony during the summer of 1937 while in official disgrace and terrified of imminent arrest. The symphony confronts the listener with fear, dark comedy, subversion, and tragedy: with truth. Listeners at the symphony’s premiere in Leningrad in November 1937 gave a half-hour standing ovation. Many wept. My favourite recording is the January 2015 concert performance by Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Paavo Järvi.

An earlier and thinner version of this story as a one-act play called Aphasia benefited from the 2007 Women’s Work Festival and dramaturgy from Robert Chafe and Sara Tilley. I also acknowledge financial support for Constant Nobody from ArtsNL.

Warm thanks to Bethany Gibson for her thoughtful edits, Jill Ainsley for her sharp-eyed copy-edits, and Antanas Sileika for reading a manuscript version and suggesting a change that I first resisted but then welcomed. Thanks also to Christine Fischer-Guy, Christine Hennebury, Ami McKay, Sean Michaels, and Trudy Morgan-Cole for manuscript reads and helpful advice. Loving thanks to my husband, David Hallett, who read every draft, and to my children, Oliver and Kendall, who endured hours of me chattering about this or that historical tidbit, sometimes grotesque, over supper.