House of Meetings

NOTES

^*1Joseph Vissarionovich is Stalin, leader of Russia, 1928?–53. Lavrenti Beria was head of the Cheka, or secret police, 1938–53. Nikita Sergeyevich is Khrushchev, leader of Russia, 1953–64. I see no way around these footnotes. It would have cost the memoirist his soul, I know, to write out the word Stalin.

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^*2Immobilized by an “anesthetic aerosol,” all thirty-five hostage-takers were executed in situ. Of the seven hundred hostages, one hundred and thirty were fatally gassed.

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^*3Temachin is Genghis Khan; the Mongol warlord Hulagu is his grandson. Vladimir Ilich is Lenin, leader of Russia, 1917–24.

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^*4Dostoevsky was imprisoned from 1849 to 1853, for sedition. Vladimir Vladimirovich is Putin, leader of Russia since 1999.

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^*5Leonid Ilich is Brezhnev, leader of Russia, 1964–82.

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^*6Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov belonged to the regnant inner circle from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s. Both were key actors in the two great waves of terror, 1931–33 (the countryside), and 1937–38(the cities and towns). This is the last footnote. And the reader may want a question answered, in view of what is to come. Do I forgive him? In the end, yes, I do. The only thing I don’t forgive is that he wouldn’t let me drive him to the airport. That was O’Hare: at least another hour.

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