of his positions as premier of the Ukrainian SSR and chairman of the Economic Affairs Council, accused of nationalistic deviation and factional activity, and called upon to perform unsparing self-criticism. Our family had the bad luck to be related to Vradiyev on my mother’s side. At every show trial, care was taken to produce a series of subordinate accomplices who were prepared to testify against the main defendant. My father was assured that the Party was aware of his achievements and that the court would declare a verdict in appearance only; as soon as the dust settled, he would be granted a pardon. When my father declined to take part in the deception, he was arrested.”
Alexey kept his eyes fixed on the window, so that he seemed to be telling his story to the young people outside.
“My father was chained hand and foot and put in an underground cell. His jailers pumped in cold water through the ventilation flaps and threatened to drown him. There were other tortures, and he held out against them all for three months before he signed the first confession. In the meantime, we had no news of him. My mother asked all his old Party friends for help; they either remained silent or pretended they were out. She received a single letter from the prison. The handwriting was my father’s, and the letter stated that he wasn’t afraid. He was a true communist, he wrote, and as such had nothing to fear from the state security agency, which was the iron fist of the people’s democracy and struck only its enemies. When she read that letter, my mother knew he was lost. She sent my sister and me to an uncle who lived outside Ukraine. Because my uncle forbade me to show myself in public until everything was over, I had to break off my pursuit of a degree in physics.” Alexey turned to Anna. “For a whole year, I did nothing but wait.”
“What happened to your father?”
“He had to go through the whole procedure. Right on cue, before the trial began, the state security headquarters turned into a convalescent home; the accused were given medical care and nursed back to health. In the meantime, a committee of experts had underpinned the vague accusations against Vradiyev with technical details. He was now accused of economic sabotage. The defendants who’d been selected for the show trial were assigned teachers, with whose help they learned question-and-answer texts and—above all—their confessions, verbatim and by heart. The same scripts were distributed to the judges. The trial took place in the Great Hall of the People’s Army Retirement Home in Kharkov. The only spectators allowed in were dependable factory delegates, people from the kolkhozes, and some selected journalists. The proceedings were broadcast on the radio.”
Outside, one of the young people inadvertently bumped against the window. His friends suggested that he should watch what he was doing and pulled him away in the direction of the market. Meanwhile the impact had awakened the birds, which ventured a duet of tentative peeping.
“First, Vradiyev’s prestige was dragged through the mud,” Bulyagkov went on. “He was ‘convicted’ of being a separatist of long standing who’d collaborated with fascist stool pigeons in the early forties. But before he admitted his guilt and requested the severest penalty, the squad of co-defendants had to perform. My father spluttered during his confession and lost his power of speech. The court was obliged to have the confession that had been tortured out of him read aloud.”
The two birds were now merrily chirping away; inside the automobile, their singing sounded unusually loud.
“Vradiyev was sentenced to death by hanging. Many of the others received a sentence of life imprisonment. My father got twenty years of forced labor.” Bulyagkov leaned toward the cage and tapped its bars with one finger.
“And then?” Anna gazed at the white nape of his neck.
“It was a good year, nineteen hundred and fifty-three,” he said, smiling and turning around. She didn’t grasp his meaning right away. “On the fifth of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-three, Stalin died. The following December, my father was rehabilitated. Not long after that, in an anti–show trial, the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, as well as the head of the secret police, was condemned and executed.”
“And how about you?” she asked, touching his shoulder. “Did you go back to Kharkov?”
“I went to Moscow with my uncle.”
“Why? I don’t understand … When did you see your father again?”