State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

CHAPTER 2 My Background

When I try to understand what inspired me at the beginning of the 1990s to publish articles about Russian chemical weapons and the secrets of the military-industrial complex, which drastically changed my whole life, I inevitably come to the conclusion that there was nothing accidental about this. Undoubtedly many people asked, “What did this scientist – this chemist need? Surely, he lived a good life under that regime.” Were my actions an impulsive emotional outburst and recklessness?

Not at all. I look back at my life and I see that the whole chain of events in the history of my country and my people made me challenge the lies that littered the state. I became completely entwined in the fate of the country and my people….

I come from a family of village teachers. My father was born in 1902. He was the son of the village mullah, Mirzazhan, from the Kazakov clan. His grandfather and great grandfather were also mullahs, according to the archival documents. Legend has it that the Kazakovs are descendants of the Orenburg Tatars. Some members of his kin were engaged in trade, and others became Muslim clergymen. We know that one of the Kazakovs built a mosque in Kazan which was turned into a warehouse during Soviet times, and in 1975 it was demolished.

Although Muslims had no last names before the revolution, the Cossack “kushamat” (a peculiar nickname that was often added to one’s name in Tatar villages) stuck with them after they participated in the rebellion of Emeliyan Pugachev, an Orenburg Cossack, against the Tsar.

My grandfather died after returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca when he was less than 30 years old. My father was only one year old at that time, and my grandmother Minyamal was left a widow with five young children; the eldest was only seven. Still, my father’s humble origins remained a blemish for him until his last days and hindered his education and career advancement. Before and a few years after the revolution, my father studied in the madrasseh, a Muslim religious school. Following the family tradition, he was preparing to become a mullah. I think many of my father’s actions could be attributed to his efforts to prove that your origins mean nothing, when it comes to loyalty to the new regime. He was ready to be faithful to it. My father became a staunch Communist. I’m not going to blame him or excuse him, because he had no choice. It was the only way for him to survive, because in every respect he was an enemy of the regime in power. At that time, it didn’t matter that my father grew up an orphan, practically in poverty. In 1916, his older brother, 22-year-old Fazliakhmet, perished on the German front of First World War.

My father’s ancestral roots made him an outsider. His mother came from the Valitov family, whom people considered to be members of the nobility. The Valitovs, on a par with the Russian gentry, enjoyed all the rights of land ownership and property. In return, they had to serve in the Tsar Guards, reporting for duty with their own horses and equipment. As we know, during the endless wars in Europe, the Tsarist military leaders ordered Bashkir cavalrymen to attack first, which often resulted in a change for the better for the Russians. However, many of our people perished and the male population of Bashkortstan began to dwindle away. All signs point to the fact that this was the deliberate policy of the Tsarist regime, which sacrificed their age-old enemies, the Tatars and the Bashkirs. Both groups realized how desperate their situation was, and they regularly rebelled against the Tsar. However, they lost every time, since the powers were not equal. I am not going to debate historical themes here – that is not the point of this book. However, a certain sojourn back into history is still necessary to understand my path to the truth.

Nowadays, there are people who idealize the Tsarist autocracy and long for the time when Great Russian chauvinism was in fact the state policy. However, historical facts are difficult to argue with, and they completely deflate any attempt to rehabilitate Russian expansionism, which resulted in so many deaths and hindered the development of non-Russian peoples, unfortunate enough to live near the Russians.[1]

You may judge for yourself. Before Ivan the Terrible seized Kazan in 1552, the population of the Tatars and Bashkirs equaled that of the Russians, and there were about 7 million of each. Four hundred years later, the population of Russians grew by 160 million, while that of Tatars and Bashkirs remained at close to seven million. The reader can draw his own conclusions regarding the scope of assimilation and purposeful genocide of Turkic-speaking peoples in Russia.

Our people were pulled down into slavery. The Russian Tsars almost returned the Tatar and Bashkir people to the Stone Age. They prohibited all crafts connected with iron working, so that the enslaved people couldn’t arm themselves and rise up against their oppressors. Moreover, Tatars and Bashkirs were forbidden to marry each other, so that these two kindred nations couldn’t unite and become a strong body capable of struggling with their common enemy, the Russian autocracy. These prohibitions were abolished only after the February Revolution of 1917. Nevertheless, we still live with the strong echoes of that colonial regime.

Some people try to prove that the Bolsheviks were internationalists, who completely rejected Great Russian chauvinism and made all the nations of the Russian Empire equal. Unfortunately, these statements have little, if anything at all, to do with the truth. I think the truth is that Bolshevism transformed Tsarist Great Russian chauvinism into Communist demagogy, making it more draconian and disastrous for small populations of people.[2] The facts speak for themselves.

In 1927, the Soviet power structure prohibited the use of the Arabic alphabet, which the Tatars and Bashkirs had used for more than 1,000 years. In this way, Bolsheviks were effective in disconnecting these peoples from their rich centuries-old literature, history and culture. This ban had grave consequences for the generations born after the Bolshevik upheaval of 1917. They literally became generations without any roots, who didn’t know their past. Like millions of other Tatars, I don’t know the Arabic alphabet and so I haven’t read any of my national literature written before 1917.

Another classic example of the Bolshevik policy is the national map drawn up by the Bolshevik empire. New borders were carved out between the republics, which resulted in eternal and overwhelming hostility between nations. In 1918, the first autonomous republic appeared in Bolshevik Russia – Bashkortstan. However, the main territories with the majority of the Bashkir population, which are in the Urals and in the Trans-Urals, were not made a part of this republic. So a time bomb was constructed that still has wrenching effects on the lives of Russians, Tatars, and Bashkir people. This kind of groundwork that was laid is currently exploding in the Caucasus region and is the source unsolvable bloody conflicts.

Even so, when the Bolshevik revolution began, “foreigners” didn’t support the Tsarist regime. To a large extent this probably accounts for the defeat of the White Army, because non-Russian peoples saw nothing good in keeping a regime in power that they hated. Also, the Bolshevik demagogy, which promised true equality, played an important role in the outcome of the revolution. However, very soon many people realized what was behind this doctrine. I know from my fellow villagers that a group of young men, including my Uncle Akhmetziya, were forced to serve in the Bolshevik army, and to fight in the Civil War of 1918. However, when they found themselves in the regional center Djirtjuli, they swam across the Belaya River and ran back to their village, on the very first night. It would have been strange if they hadn’t done that, as the rule of the Bolsheviks began in Djirtjuli with mass robbery and great excesses. Having demolished the wonderful house of a rich merchant, the Reds rolled a lot of barrels of honey out of his cellar and began oiling the axles of their carts. No attempts were made to give the honey to the poor, who the Bolsheviks were allegedly taking care of.

My father became one of the first Communists in the village and organized a collective farm in 1928 together with my maternal uncle, Mirkasim Kamalov. But the most terrible fact was that, together with other Communists, he participated in the dispossession of the wealthy peasants (kulaks) and their banishment to Baika (a remote region of Bashkortstan). Among them there were his Uncle Mirkasim Khasanbikov, a mullah, his cousin Gulim Khasanbikov, and other close relatives.[3]

Gulim was forced to live in this settlement for the rest of his life, and he came to the village several times during the 1950s to visit us. He told my father about all the horrors that he had to suffer through, with his family in the forests in the Ural Mountans of Bashkortstan.

“You know, Sultan, I survived only thanks to my diligence and physical strength,” said Gulim. “To get an additional food ration, I collected more than 10 cubic meters of wood by hand, working 18 hours a day… Hey, Sultan, what did you start all this for? Look, how you live. You are the director at your school, but you practically live in poverty. I now have more than 30 beehives, four cows, a horse, and a large house – everything that the state allows deportees to have. I can say that now I am much wealthier than I had been before you dispossessed me. The children are settled. They married, all of them have learned to read, and they live quite well. But am I happy in a foreign land? No! My roots are here, but even now I have no right to come to my native village…”

I inadvertently overheard this conversation when I was only 13, but I understood that a kulak or a village baj (rich man), wasn’t an exploiter or a bloodsucker, as they wrote in many of the books I had read by that time. He was a hard worker who, under any circumstances, tried to create something of value.

Another “feat” of my father was his active participation in the so-called Cultural Revolution, which sought to introduce the “backward masses” to Communist culture. Everything that didn’t contribute to this was proclaimed hostile, and it had to be destroyed. That is why the Communists started the Cultural Revolution by sawing the minaret down and turning the mosque into a club for their numerous meetings and amateur art activities. They held performances which mostly ridiculed our past and the “exploiters”. One of the components of the Cultural Revolution was the newly formed names, which were given to children of “highly principled” people. Accordingly, I was given the name VIL, which is composed of the first letters of the name – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

However, even this didn’t save my father and his children from the very derisive nickname, “ishan”, which the village loafers gave us. It hurt me very much to hear it, and I tried to convince people who insulted me that my father was only a very little boy when his father the mullah died, that he grew up an orphan in poverty and now he had completely renounced “the Old World”. It didn’t help a bit.

My great grandfather Nazhmetdin deserved the title “ishan”, which the Mufti – head of all the Muslims of Russia – gave to outstanding advocates of Islam. It was meant to honor those who excelled in enlightening people and bringing up devoted followers of the Prophet Mohammed’s teachings. In a grassy knoll on a high bank overlooking the Belaya River, you can see the white stone top of the grave-vault, which the ishan built with his own hands. He requested that they bury him there, but this was never done. The explanation was that the vault was on the opposite side of the cemetery, and because of that, those who wanted to pray for his soul wouldn’t be able to do so. Some old men told me later that the reason was just envy.

It was no accident that some of my fellow villagers, who didn’t know their roots, behaved in this way. To some extent, it reflected the class warfare of the “lower classes” with the “upper classes”, which had taken root, thanks to the Bolsheviks.

When I was in graduate school, at the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, I always went to my village to visit my parents during my vacations. During one of my trips home, I ran into Uncle Salikh, a close relative on my mother’s side, who was sitting on the porch of a country store, keeping company with several tipsy men. He was rather drunk himself. He called to me, “Mirzayanov, I need to talk to you!” He looked resolute and aggressive, as if he were going to take revenge for an insult that had just been hurled at him. Salikh was a disabled veteran, with no right hand, and only three maimed fingers remained on his left hand. Like many people, he lived in poverty and “celebrated” the day in the village store, when he received his small disability allowance. He usually bought a quarter liter of vodka, and kept it in the inner breast pocket of his shabby gray jacket, which he never took off, no matter what the weather was like. From time to time he tenderly took the bottle out of this pocket and took a little sip with great pleasure. At that moment, he impersonated a connoisseur of delicate French wines. After this, the bottle was returned to its place.

Salikh quickly got tipsy, and after that he imagined he was a generous rich man who was ready to treat anybody who was fortunate enough to be honored with his attention at that happy moment. “Hi there, Gadelzhan, come here!” he would forcefully but politely address somebody who was passing by. “I decided to serve you, don’t be freaking squeamish. Don’t you see who you are talking to? So, you should be proud that I personally paid attention to you, bastard, and have invited you. I didn’t have to do it, you son of a bitch, you know that damn well…” Having delivered his standard monologue, Salikh would take the bottle out of his pocket with his crooked fingers, and bring it almost vertically to the mouth of his guest, so that the person whom he was treating couldn’t possibly take a single sip.

All men in the village were used to Salikh’s manner of serving his guests, and everyone understood that it was a game created by the imaginary hospitality of this disabled man. It had never occurred to anyone to be offended. The store was opposite our house, near the school, and like the other boys, I liked to watch grow-ups and listen in on their conversations. However, I remember that one time a rather indecent guy decided to play a joke on Salikh. He distracted the attention of the veteran Salikh, took a few sips from the bottle that was offered to him, and practically emptied it.

You can’t imagine what happened next! Poor Salikh was outraged and couldn’t stop yelling at him. He wouldn’t agree to the compensation that the youth who had insulted him was offering. Tears were running down the old man’s cheeks. He was really unhappy. At that time, vodka was brought into the village only once every three months, and it lasted a week or two. Mostly poor old men and women bought it to sell at a higher price later. They also had to use it to pay for firewood, hay or for having something repaired in the house or in the barn. Without vodka, it was almost impossible to accomplish these things in the village. At that time, vodka performed the same function as foreign currency, as the American dollar or the Euro does now.

That is why when Salikh declared that he wished to talk to me, it wasn’t unexpected because he often addressed people in this way when he wanted to “serve” somebody. And this is exactly what happened.

“Muscovite, do you want to drink a little with me or are you freaking squeamish?” he asked as usual.

It was a hot July day and, frankly speaking, with so many people around, I didn’t want to demonstrate a positive attitude to his offers. I refused and this provoked the usual angry tirade of Russian and Tatar curse-words from Salikh. However, contrary to his usual habit, he quickly calmed down and said sternly:

“Will you be honest? I need to talk with you.” I promised him to be honest.

“People say you study in Moscow. Right?” asked Salikh. I confirmed this.

“And what will you be after you finish your studies?” he continued his interrogation with irony. I explained that if I succeeded in accomplishing my goal, I would have a Ph.D. in chemistry. This didn’t make a favorable impression on Salikh. I guessed that he simply hadn’t understood my answer. He followed with an acid remark, and asked me not to pull the wool over his eyes because, when necessary, he also could speak vaguely and scientifically, no worse than any rogue-commissioner from the regional center, who is sent to the village every spring to put into service some task on the labor front.

The crippled Salikh was one of the first men to come back to the village in 1942 from the front, or rather from the hospital. Then there were almost no men left in the village except for the chairman of the collective farm, the lame Gerey, and the eternal guard of the property of the collective farm, the lame Shaikhutdin. The rest were very old indeed. The women and children lived who in the village ploughed, sowed, mowed, and harvested the crop. Hay and grain were carried in carts to which cows were harnessed, because all the horses had been mobilized into the Red Army.

The ferocious and lame Gerey with his bulging eyes, which were always red from constantly drinking, appeared one morning in the office yard of the collective farm, which was situated near our house. He had a wet white kerchief tied up on his forehead, and he took a deep breath, and as always, started shouting at the women who had gathered there. I remember one of the phrases that he often repeated, which made the poor women tremble, “Do you think I am from Japan?” At that time, very few people in our village had heard about this remote foreign country across the sea. Even if someone had heard about Japan, they only knew that it was an enemy and that the Red commanders gave the Japanese hell near Lake Hasan, in 1939. That is why these words frightened the poor women almost to death. Some old woman always tried to humbly soothe the raging village boss, “Dear Akhmetgereyzhan. Forgive us. We are ignorant and stupid!”

Once, Gerey badly frightened me too. One wintry day, when I was eight years old, I was gathering straw in the street, which was to be strewn in the farmyard. I didn’t notice when Gerey’s koshevka (a light cart) passed me, but I almost fell down from fear when I heard his thunderous bass, “You! Ishan’s mongrel! Do you think that your father left this straw for you?”

It was 1943 then, and my father was out on the front. There was no one to stand up for me. I was paralyzed with fear, and I could neither move, nor say anything to excuse myself. However, when I saw that his short whip, which was made from twisted leather strips, was returned to the cart, I realized that the storm had passed. Probably that time Gerey decided that scolding was enough. Absolutely exhausted, I managed to drag myself home.

As there were no other deserving candidates, the disabled Salikh was immediately appointed as deputy chairman of the collective farm. He quickly adopted Gerey’s style and method of roaring at the helpless women and children. More than 200 beehives of the collective farm’s bee-garden produced enough honey for malt drink to always to grace the tables of the farm’s managers. Finally the stores were depleted, and babaj (beekeeper) had to use up the surplus honey, that was supposed to feed the bees over the winter. This meant the end of the bee-garden, but that didn’t make the chairman and his deputy stop drinking. They switched to a home-brew that was prepared for them in the neighboring Russian villages, in return for grain. The end of the war put an end to Salikh’s career, because younger men came home from the front, and they, in turn, wanted the same privileges that Gerey and Salikh had enjoyed.

Salikh was standing in front of me, quiet and somehow drained, but he tried to prove that he was still afloat.

“Tell me,” he whispered, moving the rolled cigarette of cheap tobacco and newspaper scrap with the tip of his tongue, from one corner of his mouth to the other. “What will you do with your science?”

I explained that I would invent or develop something new.

“And you will be a scientist?!” Salikh blurted out with indignation. I agreed, because it was very close to the truth. (Although I had and still have a different opinion because, according the Russian notion, “scientist” is a high title. It is an acknowledgement of your real place in science, rather than your profession, as is the case, for example, in the United States). The face of my village interrogator trembled and he shouted at me, making no attempt to restrain himself.

“What? You again? Damn you! What did we need this revolution for? We uprooted you! We did, and after this you will be on the top again, while our children will remain where they are! Tell me, Ishan’s bastard, am I right?”

I couldn’t think of anything better to do than to remain philosophical and to beat a silent retreat – followed by torrents of foul language vomited up by my relative.

God creates us unequally, but unfortunately many people perceive this as malicious intent on the part of the so-called elite.

Not everything is so simple. Even in my small village, there was enough to alienate people from their former way of life. My fellow villagers who thought about their lives were looking for ways to change them for the better.

Over the last few years, we got accustomed to idealizing our former life and denying everything connected with overthrowing autocracy and the revolution of 1917 in Russia. I suppose it would be a serious mistake to think that everything happened solely due to the evil will of Bolsheviks. If only it were that simple! Many people believed in the changes that were coming, and did everything to make it happen as quickly as possible. Neither my father, nor my Uncle Mirkasim could cope with some of the old savage village customs, and they followed those who promised to “change the world”, especially since outrageous events took place in the village, which encouraged some young people to take resolute actions.

Terrible hunger broke out in Russia in 1921, which was connected, to a large extent, with the activities of the Bolsheviks. There were millions of victims of hunger, and cases of cannibalism were not rare.[4] Famine laid its hand upon my village as well, and it was combined with the cruelty of the prevalent village customs of that era.

A neighbor of my mother, a woman named Ak-ebi, couldn’t endure her suffering from hunger any longer. She caught someone else’s unlucky goose, which had strayed into her garden, killed it, and made soup. This misdemeanor couldn’t pass unnoticed in the village. When the poor woman came to herself, she tried to redeem her fault by giving her neighbor everything of value she possessed, including a cashmere shawl, which is expensive even now. The neighbor didn’t refuse this treasure, but at the same time he decided to act in keeping with most savage village customs. He and a few other aggressive men quickly organized mob law over the poor old woman. They tied the victim up with a thick rope and paraded her along all the village streets. Every living person had to hit her with a whip or a stick. No one could refuse to participate in this terrible execution, because anyone could be tied to the same rope for avoiding his or her responsibility to “Sharia”.

The poor frightened Ak-ebi was moving slowly, barefoot and dressed in her ragged white homespun dress. Her long hair was loose and dirty, and her face was black from soot, which she had deliberately smeared herself with from immeasurable grief. She was too exhausted to utter a single word. Only occasionally did she raise her drooping head, in the desperate hope that someone would have pity on her and not hit her so ruthlessly. However, mercy was not to be expected. That was the cruel custom.

The next morning Ak-ebi died without regaining consciousness, on the cold floor of the small and unheated village jail house, built especially for this kind of thing.

The crowd was over-excited by the mob law and also ruthlessly punished her fourteen year old son. The boy tried to barricade himself into a relative’s house, by locking the door from the inside, but furious men dragged the silly little boy through the window with hooks. By daybreak nobody had picked up the ruthlessly disfigured orphan. We only know that he disappeared and no one ever saw him again. All this happened in the early spring, when the snow hadn’t completely left the streets and yards of my native Stary Kangysh.

Another drama took place that same year, in the hot summer of 1921, when hunger was rampant.

A widow with three sons lived near my mother’s home. Two of her sons were grown-up. They ploughed, sowed, and did all the usual peasants’ work, but the third one was much younger, only twelve years old. This family was starving like many others, and every morning the mother made a large pot of soup, which was mainly a mixture of herbs, goose-foot, and a little bran. The family ate a little of this broth and then the mother and her adult sons went to make hay or do other fieldwork. They strictly ordered the younger boy not to touch the precious food. Every day the younger brother patiently waited for the adults to come home to satisfy the hunger that tortured him. During the daytime he never even looked at the incredibly tempting “soup”. However, on one agonizing day the hungry boy couldn’t stand it any more, and he decided to swallow at least a little bit of the life-saving food. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop until he finished up the whole pot of soup.

When the brothers came back in the evening, they first looked into the pot and literally howled with despair, which soon prompted them to ruthlessly punish their own younger brother. First they hit him with their fists, and then they practically turned into beasts and started hitting him with everything within reach. They only stopped after they buried the boy, who was still alive though no longer breathing, at the end of their kitchen garden, under the manure. Then they fell on the ground exhausted, near the grave of their victim.

There was no one in the village to stop this insanity. Only the children from the neighboring houses cried loudly, watching this horrible spectacle.

Some time later a representative of the Soviet administration appeared in the village and told the elder brother to report to him, at the Djirtjuli Volost (Township) center, which he did.

He returned from Djirtjuli in a good mood. He said that the head of customs there didn’t say anything bad to him, and even asked him to deliver a package to the canton (regional district) center in Borai, which is thirty kilometers from Stary Kangysh. Not long after that, the brother went on this errand, but we don’t know what happened to him, because no one ever saw him again.

It seems to me that my father loved my mother, Vaziga, a young and beautiful girl, when he married her. At that time she was only a little more than 17 years old. Possibly, it was also a good match, because she came from a family of common peasants, and had lost both her parents. This was evidence that she belonged to the class of poor people which the new regime allegedly supported. When her father Minkamal was conscripted to the front in 1914, my mother hadn’t been born yet, and her older brother was seventeen year old. My grandmother had six children to take care of, and we can only imagine what ordeals they had to suffer through.

My grandfather Minkamal never returned from the war. He was taken prisoner by the Germans, along with the other villagers, who were hastily clad in soldiers’ uniforms. Then, they sent all the captive Russian Muslims to Turkey, so that Turkey could use them in the war against Russia. However, the Russian revolution upset all the plans of Germany and its allies. Turkey agreed to return the Russian captives, but some of them who were in Baghdad (which was a part of Ottoman Empire at that time), including my grandfather, decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Grandfather managed to visit the Muslim sacred site and to do everything that Muslim pilgrims should do there. Then, he became ill with a severe form of dysentery and died in Baghdad, after returning from his pilgrimage. According to his countrymen, he was buried in the cemetery of “shakhids” (martyrs who perished fighting for Islam). My grandmother died three years later.

My mother’s older brother Mirkasim became the head of the family when he was in his early 20s. The slogans of the Bolsheviks and their promises inflamed the imagination of this bright young man, and he became the first Communist in the village. He also organized the collective farm, along with my father. He sold his large family house so that he would not be reproached by villagers for organizing the collective farm, while contributing nothing himself. With this money he bought a horse, which he brought to the collective farm, and a tiny hut.

By the beginning of the Second World War, Mirkasim became Secretary of the Raikom (Regional Committee of the Communist Party) and volunteered to go to the front. He was killed in the winter of 1943 near Don, not far from Novocherkassk. I remember that he dropped by our place late one night in the summer of 1942. My father was on the front then, and I listened to my uncle’s war stories with delight, pretending to be asleep. When he went to leave, he kissed me, but I was “sleeping”, so I couldn’t look at him openly, which was really very silly. Before that I had watched this strong and handsome man through a crack in the partition made of planks which separated children’s quarters from the grown-ups’ parts of the room. I still feel admiration when I think about him. He gave the impression of the invincible heroic commander, dressed in his splendid new uniform of the political officer, and he carried the aura of certain victory over the Fascists.

Despite his desperate struggle with his ancestral past, my father narrowly escaped jail at the end of the 1930s. He was simply expunged from the party, as an enemy who had penetrated the Bolshevik ranks by fraud. My father took this disgrace very hard. In 1941, on the front, he joined the party again. It seems that my father fanatically believed in Communism, as a lot of the rank and file did. When he was already well advanced in his years, he assured me that to a large extent, our troubles and our poverty have to do with the existence of the two world camps. So, when there is only one left (and it was clear as day to him, which one), all our problems would easily be resolved.

Lenin, Stalin, and the other “geniuses” of world Communism were like saints to him. Of course, his attitude was automatically passed on to us. Right after the war, my mother told my dad that she asked the secretary of the party organization, Khabel Kagarmanov, why Lenin had embarked on the path of Marxism and had decided to struggle against the Tsar. He told her that the leader of the proletariat had avenged the death of his brother, who was hanged for organizing the murder of the Tsar, and had decided to become the Tsar himself. My mother was horrified. Strange as it may seem, my father wasn’t shocked by this report, and he just advised my mother not to repeat Khabel’s words to anyone else. As far as I know, Khabel had a sharp peasant’s mind, but to this day I don’t know how such seditious thoughts appeared in his head. Rumor had it that he used to be a member of a faction of Trotskyites-Bukharinists, Stalin’s rivals. But what Trotskyites could there possibly be in the god-forsaken village of Stary Kangysh? Who knows? Maybe the deeply hidden hatred that progressive people felt toward the Bolshevik regime took root and grew from time to time. Perhaps this is the reason why some people in my village composed a list of those the German troops should kill, when they were moving towards the East at full speed in 1942. My mother told me this several times as a great secret, and stressed each time that she was on that list, too. Like my father, my mother was a teacher.

She taught me until the fourth grade. I studied without any difficulties, although there were problems with teachers from time to time. Even at a young age, I had already read a lot, mostly fiction, and that is why I constantly had questions that my teachers couldn’t always find answers to.

Generally, I had good relations with kids my own age. I was a child during the hungry war years and the post-war years, when each piece of bread and every potato was worth its weight in gold. We village children didn’t even know about sweets or ice cream. We had other joys, growing up surrounded by beautiful country. We spent whole summer days on the Belaya River. In the winter, we went sledding and skiing in the high hills. There were plenty of them near our village. I think the delightful natural environment of my childhood encouraged my love of sports, which I have retained to this day.

The war years left a profound impression on us. We felt the frosty breath of the war that was grinding on thousands of kilometers away from us. As children, we watched with horror as the tow-boats dragged bombed-out, half-burnt, and blackened hulks of barges and ships against the current up the Belaya River, on their way to Ufa. We understood that they came from the besieged city of Stalingrad. There was no radio in our village then, and we only received news about the war from people who traveled to the regional center of Djirtjuli, which was 15 kilometers away.

The boys always went to see off those young men and very young guys, almost boys, who were heading off to the front. They drove around in a cart in all four streets in the village, singing for the last time. Their songs accompanied by the harmonica were so sad that they brought tears to our eyes. The new recruits bid farewell and symbolically asked for our forgiveness, in case they had accidentally hurt someone.

I remember seeing off 17-year-olds who had never been farther than Djirtjuli in their lives. These boys had never seen a real city, a railway station, cars, or tractors. They sang and cried at the same time. None of them returned home – everyone perished.

When I went to visit Stary Kangysh, I always went to the village club, where there is a memorial plaque with names of more than 200 men who died in the war. This is the list of the victims of just one more world slaughter, from a village with hardly more than 150 households.

How could the number of victims have been less, since Stalin and his accomplices threw absolutely unprepared and unarmed children into battle? Now, in Russia, there are many newly hatched “patriots” who try to rewrite the history of the war and deny these facts. But, fortunately, they can’t rewrite the testimony of the people and their memories.

My late relative, Gabbas Nugumanov, who served in the railway troops during Whole War II, told me that he met his fellow-countrymen from Stary Kangysh in 1942, at Klin Station near Moscow. The special train (echelon), in which they were taken to the front, stopped there for technical problems. Klin was just a few hours drive from the front line. His fellow villagers told Gabbas that they had only two rifles for seven people. They were not sure that they would be given more weapons after they got off the train. Alas, their doubts were confirmed: it was clear from the very beginning that warehouses with weapons were not to be found anywhere near the trenches.

The war had the most dire consequences for these unarmed people – no sooner were they unloaded from the train than everybody perished.

I remember I couldn’t satisfy my curiosity. I wanted to know how many Fascists our soldiers had killed. The front-line soldiers laughed and told me they knew only one thing – that the Germans hadn’t killed them. But they hadn’t killed anyone. I was totally baffled by their answers, so I asked my father about it when he was a little tipsy and more talkative. Finally he explained to me that a soldier normally shoots when and where he is ordered to. If a German perished, it was impossible to say who had killed him, and nobody thought about it. My father said a soldier was like an automatic machine. You run when you get an order to run. You crawl when you get an order to crawl. The only relevant questions are those of survival – what to eat, where to sleep, and how to wash yourself.

Stories like these deeply disillusioned me, because I already knew all about the great feats of the heroes who had crushed hordes of German soldiers, from the books I read and the movies I had watched. But my father “comforted” me by saying that the people who had written those books and staged the movies simply lied, because none of them had actually taken part in the war. I protested – what about such famous writers as Konstantin Simonov, Aleksander Fadeev, and Michael Sholokhov – weren’t they war correspondents on the front line, who issued newspapers and wrote essays? “Yes, of course,” he said. “That’s true. But the point is that the editor’s office (even that of the military division newspaper) is 40-70 kilometers from the front-line. The editor’s offices of the bigger army or frontline newspapers are much further away.”

I think that must have been true, because over the course of the war none of our “great writers” got even a scratch. However, several lesser-known writers died or had been taken prisoner.

The story of the great Tatar poet Musa Dzhalil comes to mind. My second uncle, Fazil Nugumanov, seems to be one of the last people to have seen him before he was taken prisoner. Uncle Fazil also narrowly escaped captivity, along with the remnants of the army of the “great commander”, Lieutenant General Vlasov, who was one of Stalin’s favorites. He told us that Musa had come to his mud-hut late at night in the spring of 1942 and introduced himself as a newsman. My uncle understood that he was a Tatar and they started talking. Musa said that the situation was alarming. This was true. My uncle, a First Corporal Commander, gave Musa something to eat and put him to sleep in his own bed. Early in the morning, the poet heartily thanked my uncle Fazil and left.

Then the army was encircled, with no hope for a breakthrough. The enemy’s troops methodically, with German meticulousness, and with the help of artillery, crushed the remnants of the army. They were addressing everybody on a radio megaphone, suggesting they surrender. My uncle and a few others in one section of the front were lucky enough to break through the continuous barrage of German mortar fire.

General Vlasov surrendered, along with what was left of his army. The poet Musa Dzhalil was among the captives. Once he was in German territory he started an active campaign among the captive soldiers, urging them not to fight against the USSR in the army of the general-traitor, who had crossed over to the German side. Dzhalil was betrayed and found himself in the infamous Moabit jail in Berlin. He was sentenced to death by beheading, but while he was waiting for his execution, the poet wrote his immortal Moabit Notes – verses full of love for his people. Timmermans, a Belgian whose cell neighbored Musa’s, was lucky to survive. He fulfilled the request of the poet and brought these verses out of the jail.

When I am in Kazan, I look at the beautiful monument to the poet with infinite pain, and think about the greatness of my people, who despite all oppression and adversity, preserved themselves and nurtured such heroes as Musa, who the whole progressive world is proud of. Certainly, he was a Communist and looked at many things through the prism of the party philosophy. But his whole-hearted devotion to his people and his love for humanity is an example of genuine heroism, the kind which helped us to hold out and win in the unequal struggle against Fascism.

In addition to the books which my father brought back from the regional center, the radio became a window to the world for me.

In 1947, my father was the first man in the village to buy a battery powered radio-set. Our whole family liked to listen to concerts of Tatar and Bashkir music. Sometimes in the evenings, I would dial the tuner of the radio and listen to voices speaking in different languages. At that time, I studied Russian very hard, though my knowledge of it was weak. Once I heard something unusual through the constant crackle and background noise, and I understood some things. In an anxious voice, the announcer was talking about slavery in the USSR, about the inevitably hopeless position of the peasants and collective farmers, and about the suffering of former Soviet war captives in numerous concentration camps. I was scared by my discovery, but I didn’t even tell my parents about it. They didn’t suspect what their son’s new preoccupation was. Sometimes they reprimanded me, asking what good there was in listening to this noise and crackling.

Very soon, I found out that this was called “The Voice of America”. Of course, it was very difficult for me to believe everything that the American radio was broadcasting, considering that I had never been to the city or seen a railway. However, something that was said about the poor and powerless peasants seemed true to me, even though I was just a boy. Probably that was the time when doubt was conceived in my soul, which would guide and shape my behavior later on.

Indeed, I once saw how an old man, who had lost all his sons in the war, was forced to sign up for a huge loan. He asked in despair where he would get so much money from, if he was paid nothing in the collective farm where he worked. The man and his old wife had nothing to live on. Through the open window of the village council building, which was near our house, I heard the commissioner from the regional center, yelling and threatening, “You, son of a bitch! Do you dare to slander the party and the Soviet system? Thank God your sons are dead, or you would damn sure be serving your term in jail. You are a lucky man. Our party is kind and I am just sending you to the storeroom, so that you, bastard, can think over your crime tonight. Probably, I will be satisfied by your signature, for the amount I offered you.”

“The Voice of America” was also right about the limitless taxes, which the peasants simply couldn’t pay. I remember once that all the fruit trees disappeared from the yards in our village, as if by collusion. Peasants chopped them down to avoid paying a tax for each tree. In the severe continental climate of Bashkortstan, each apple-tree, even if it was simply a wild variety with small apples, was precious and practically the only source of vitamins. For some reason, Tatars and Bashkirs at that time rarely grew vegetables in their villages, and they only started growing potatoes after the war. There was no money to buy grain, and collective farmers received a few hundred grams of rye as payment for a so-called working unit (this was a unit of measuring labor). I remember once, that in the neighboring village of Minishta, people received a whole kilogram of it! This was a real sensation. It was hard to believe. All the milk from the private cows of each collective farmer was given to the state, and as soon as a calf was born, it was taken away as meat tax. Every hen was counted and a collective farmer had to hand over all the eggs.

At that time, the tax agents were merciless. One cruel agent with eyes empty from drinking was especially ferocious. He had a Russian last name, Murov, though he was a Tatar. He would enter the house where a family couldn’t pay taxes, make a list of all the things that could be confiscated, and then he took the sheep and goats.

Once he came to the home of a widow, who was our neighbor. At that time, there were only two sons at home, 16-year-old Madikhat and 7-year-old Favaris. Kanifa-apa herself was serving her compulsory “labor minimum” at the collective farm. Each adult had to serve a required number of “working units” there. If anyone failed to do this, for any reason, he or she was inevitably sent to do corrective work collecting wood in the mountainous regions of Bashkortstan.

Cursing away, Murov started collecting things from the house. When that seemed too little for him (what could be precious in poor peasant homes at that time?), he seized an axe and threatened the boys. He told them he would kill them if they didn’t tell him where all the valuables were hidden. The heart of the poor Madikhat couldn’t stand it and he fainted. My mother and the whole village came running to save the boy. At that time, we couldn’t even dream of doctors. There were none in the neighborhood. The villagers managed to nurse the boy back to health.

We were the children of teachers (at that time, we were a family of four, plus my grandmother), but we suffered the same hardships and often we were starving. The salaries of our parents, minus the numerous taxes and the state loan installments, which sometimes amounted to half of your annual salary, weren’t even enough to put food on the table, never mind buying any decent clothes. Every day after school, my younger sister Lisa and I grated two large buckets of potatoes with a homemade grater made from a half-rusty piece of iron sheet. Our hands were constantly bleeding and aching because of this monstrous labor. But what could we do if we had no flour and potatoes replaced bread?

The news that “Voice of America” reported about the fate of our war captives terrified me. When my father was sharing his war experiences, he said that he had never used up all his bullets, because he kept the last one for himself. He was planning to shoot himself, if he was ever surrounded and in danger of being taken prisoner. He knew that any prisoners of war would be considered traitors to Russia, with all the ensuing consequences.

At that time, a soldier who had been taken captive made it back to our village. He told us about the extensive horrors of Fascist captivity, but preferred to remain silent about the conditions in our camps, which were equally atrocious. Each month he went to the regional center to confirm that he was still residing in his native village and hadn’t gone off anywhere. He was released from the Soviet camp for former prisoners of war, only on this condition. A few men from my village served ten-year sentences of hard labor in the Donbass mines in Ukraine, and they remained there forever. They were guilty in the eyes of the Motherland, because they had been freed from the Fascist camps by British and American troops. These were our allies, who then handed them over to the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Later, it became clear they had returned to their country only to be sent to the Siberian gulags.

I can’t help noting the shameful role that Winston Churchill played in all that. In 1945, he betrayed millions of Soviet war captives, by ordering that they should be forcibly sent to the Eastern zone of Germany occupied by the Soviet troops.[5]

An acquaintance of mine, a Tatar who now lives in New York, was in German captivity at that time and he knew what to expect in his Motherland. He told me that a lot of people had committed suicide to avoid the Stalinist camps or had crippled themselves, cutting off their hands or even their whole arms. According to him, that caused quite a stir in the West, for example in the U.S. in 1945-1947, and it helped a few lucky men avoid being dispatched to the USSR.

Soon I found someone to talk with, who shared my interest. He was an accountant at the boarding school, where my father had started working as the director. My father bought a radio-set for the boarding school, and it turned out that this accountant had also been listening to “Voice of America” at night. He warned me very sternly that I must not tell anybody about this obsession of mine, because it could result in my imprisonment and a severe penalty for my parents.

I kept my word. Now I am writing about it, when the man I was talking to and my parents are no longer alive, and it seems that “Voice of America” is breathing its last breath, due to the evil scheme of some American politicians.[6] Isn’t it too early to dismiss Communism, when millions of believers in this flavor of Fascism openly want to take revenge, not only in Russia, but also in other countries devoted to the ideas of the free market and the pluralism of opinions?

My discovery of America didn’t set me against the Soviet regime, nor did it make me a partisan of the West. When I was young, I believed that everything would be fine in our country. We only had to follow Lenin’s guidelines. I thought that the enemies of the Soviet state deliberately set people against the party, to return them to their dark past. Nevertheless, the seeds of doubt remained in my soul for years to come, after listening to “Voice of America”.

I think it already influenced me, when I was summoned to the regional department of the KGB, during my last year in high school. They suggested I go to their school for Chekists, but I refused. It is difficult to say what prompted me to make that decision then, but I think mostly I was encouraged by the “enemy’s” influence, as it was called by officials, “Voice of America.”

My refusal to be recruited was a bolt out of the blue for Lieutenant Colonel Nasirov, the regional head of the KGB. At that time, I was the top student not only in my high school, but also among all the high schools in the region. I was the secretary of the Komsomol Committee at my school and a member of the bureau at the Komsomol Raikom (regional committee). Nasirov didn’t show any emotion; he only asked me not to tell anybody about our conversation.

The lieutenant colonel was sitting under the portrait of his leader, Lavrentii Beria, and he severely cautioned me about the possible consequences of my insubordination. He added that this was the first time he had met anyone who refused such an honor to serve the party by being a member of the KGB. All of this happened in the middle of March of 1953, soon after Stalin died.