Escape to Russia

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Escape to Russia ( Russian Бегство в Россию / Begstwo w Rossiju ) is a novel by the Russian writer Daniil Granin , which was published in 1994 in issues 7 to 9 of the Russian literary magazine Nowy Mir in Moscow . In the following year Volk und Welt published the German translation by Ganna-Maria Braungardt in book form in Berlin .

The superficial reader holds a strongly fact-oriented, harshly motley spy thriller in their hands. But actually the retrospective first-person narrator after the collapse of the Soviet Union mercilessly pursues the question: What was really done wrong in the Eastern Bloc ? The book can be read as a small contribution to the Chronicle of the Soviet Union. For example, in the context of the doctors' conspiracy there is a meticulously described section of Stalin's remains . Or there is talk of xenophobia , even anti-Semitism, in the Soviet Union in several passages .

background

As I said, the prose text is partly documentary in character. It tells the story of the two American communists Joseph Berg and Philip Staros, members of the New York party cell around Ethel and Julius Rosenberg .

overview

The native New York Jew Joseph Berg is named Joe Bert by the Americans and Iossif Borissowitsch Brook from Johannesburg by the Russians . In the novel, the Americans name his friend, the Greek Philip Staros, Andrea Kostas and the Russians, Andrej Georgievich Kartos.

The novel plot runs for four decades. Around 1950, during the McCarthy era , the FBI did not stop at the aforementioned Rosenberg group while hunting down communists. The physicist Joe and the engineer Andrea manage to escape to Leningrad . Andrea takes Anne Hillman with her. Anna Jurjewna, as the Russians will later call Anne, runs away from her husband and abandons two small children. On behalf of the Soviet Air Force, the two emigrants in Leningrad initially developed devices for radar location and guided missiles . Then they finally switch to the fields of microelectronics and computer construction. Most recently, under the direction of Joe and Andreas, over twelve thousand employees carried out research in the two Leningrad laboratories. The two emigrants are dismissed from their posts after the fall of Khrushchev . Andrea, disappointed and overworked, dies in Russia. Joe returns to the States. There he wants to monetize his computer chip production process. Veterans of the US Air Force to call Joe, the guided missile Bauer, a murderer.

content

Andrea is allowed to work on the cyclotron at Cornell University . Joe works in the field of aircraft tracking. He is fired, studies music in Paris and takes a position in Prague's electrostatics and semiconductor research . The institute's director, a professor, conducts research in the field of mathematical logic. At the urging of the Czechoslovak State Security , Joe is supposed to marry. The "South African" has his own mind. He wants to go to the Soviet Union and marry a Russian woman there. The young widow Magda, an interpreter for the "organs", lives with him as his wife. A son emerges from the forced relationship.

Andrea flees with Anne via Mexico to Poland . The hands of the generals are tied in Warsaw because Berijas Abakumow from Moscow is interested in the Greeks, as Andrea is called in the Eastern Bloc. Then in Moscow the scientific celebrities are very enthusiastic about Andreas intellectual potency. Joe ends up in Moscow too. Conversations with colleagues soon sobered him. Joe learns, for example, from his colleague, radio technician AL Minz, that Berija lets several scientists work partly as prisoners and partly in freedom. And colleague Rumer tells Joe about such an imprisonment in a secret company. Joe meets Russians who have survived camps for up to 17 years .

The relevant officials do not want to hear about the American pseudoscience cybernetics . After the desperate Joe asked for an appointment in Stalin's office, the two emigrants were brought to Prague in 1952. There is work to be done on the analog computer . It's about air defense . Andrea as an engineer becomes the leader. The secret service agent who maneuvered the gentry to the east wants to be executed as a double agent . The two emigrants are generally disillusioned. Work colleagues have to pass on the content of the conversation with the "Greeks" and the "Johannesburger".

Fortunately for Joe and Andrea, there are officers who need the computer. The three of them finally settle in Leningrad. While the Leningrad population sometimes lives in communal apartments, foreigners are allowed to move into individual apartments. Anne has since given birth to a boy. After a few months, the frail child dies. Anne's love for Andrea shatters over the painful loss. Anne works as an interpreter and falls in love with the talented painter Valeri Petrowitsch Michaljow, who finds his way through as an assistant to the director of the modern art magazine. The Leningrad computer laboratory Joes and Andreas is popular. Young engineers start there. Not everyone is hired. Computers for submarines are being developed. As the boss, Andrea always has tough arguments with the Leningrad holders of power. If the dispute doesn't go any further, the local natshalnik ends it with: “We will teach you to respect the party organs.” Andrea should also write behind the ears that the party organs are even more powerful than the First Secretary .

The KGB tries in vain to persuade Anne to tail her husband Andrea. The secret service knows about the relationship between the fearless woman, who is not a Soviet citizen, and the painter. The KGB officer pretends that he is afraid that the CIA is trying to get to Andrea through the painter Mikhalev. Immediately after the KGB visit, Anne confesses to the painter. Michalyov resolves the relationship on the spot. The painter is demonized in the press as "apostate". Arsonists devastate his studio. Anne is asked on the street to persuade Michalyov to leave the country. Otherwise there is a threat of exile to Kolyma . When Khrushchev visits the Leningrad computer laboratory, nothing is left to chance. Andrea is instructed by the First Secretary that differences with the local party organs should not be brought up. Andrea persuades the party leader, who actually appears around 1962 with Ustinov in the wake, to set up a “center of microelectronics” in Leningrad. Deputy Minister Kuleschow whips the planned project through. In the fall of 1963, the local party organ demands that Andrea, who is merely brisk, solid results. During the discussions Andrea makes a mistake; insults Kuleschow.

Joe falls in love with Milja. This is the niece of the nuclear physicist Kirill Ligoschin, a former employee of Kurchatov . Milja arranges a meeting with Joe's famous uncle. Joe, who was friends with the Rosenbergs, wants to know whether the couple actually disclosed relevant information about the construction of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The farmer's son Ligozhin hates the Soviet regime because it banished his father to Siberia during the deculakization . The physicist denies the question of relevance. Fuchs , who - in contrast to the Rosenbergs - had really betrayed what was usable, got away with a prison sentence in the States.

To Joe's utter disappointment, Milja marries a Russian. Andrea responds to the allegations of the local party organ with the prototype of a mini computer that exceeds the performance parameters of comparable US productions. Tupolev , Myasishchev and Keldysch come and marvel at the marvelous thing. Kuleschow, on the other hand, takes a completely different point of view: copying existing things from the USA is more effective. After all, why does the Soviet Union have excellent scouts ? Andrea complains in writing to Khrushchev. The first secretary is deposed. The letter is found in the Khrushchev Secretariat.

Under Brezhnev , the local party organ and Kuleshov were right. The “center of microelectronics” of the “demagogue” Andrea is closed. Tupolev and Keldysh protest in vain.

Joe is homesick. The exhausted Andrea left Leningrad around 1975 and worked as a painter in Moscow. He received an offer from the Novosibirsk region. There in Siberia he is to be elected to the academy . Andrea leaves on one condition: his wife Anne should be allowed to travel to New York to see her children.

As a result of the miserable supply situation, the scientific employees in Siberia are more interested in survival allotment gardening than in the development of integrated circuits . Andrea dies during the academy election procedure.

Quote

After the collapse of the Soviet Union , politically free speech prevails in Russia. Daniil Granin, for example, gave the floor to Rudolf Ivanovich Guber, the nestor of the submarine fleet: “ Lenin was a coward, Kirov crept up Stalin's ass out of cowardice, and Stalin was scared to go to the front. Khrushchev was the only one who showed courage. "

reception

German-language editions

  • Daniil Granin: Escape to Russia. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Ganna-Maria Braungardt. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1995 (first edition), 424 pages. ISBN 3-353-01029-7 (edition used)

Web links

In Russian language

Remarks

  1. ↑ The parents emigrated from Russia in 1905 . Joe was born in New York in 1916 (Edition Used, p. 6).
  2. ↑ Andrea's parents had emigrated from Greece. He was born in America (edition used, p. 10 above and p. 171, 4th Zvu). His companion Anne (see in the text below) is a "real" American. Her ancestors immigrated from Sweden 150 years ago (Edition used, p. 171). Anne has heard lectures on art in New York (Edition used, p. 219, center).
  3. ↑ For example, one of the secret services of the Eastern Bloc from 1951 to 1983 kept a file on Joe (Edition used, p. 102, 5. Zvo).
  4. ↑ Spy thriller writer Daniil Granin pulls out all possible stops. The professor kills himself by jumping from the fourth floor of a Prague house (edition used, p. 98 below).
  5. ↑ The omniscient first-person narrator informs the reader that the interpreter wanted Joe's child and felt "the moment of conception" during the first cohabitation (edition used, p. 94, 15.
  6. ↑ The name Ligoschin is an invention of Daniil Granin (Russian physicist of the Soviet Union ).
  7. ↑ Daniil Granin lets Ligozhin tell two untruths: First, Ms. Fuchs was Russian. (Edition used, p. 293, 14. Zvo) and secondly, Fuchs was neither a socialist nor a communist (Edition used, p. 294, 17. Zvo).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Новый мир
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 5
  3. ↑ Edition used, pp. 196–202
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 243
  5. ↑ engl. Joseph Berg
  6. ↑ engl. Philip Staros
  7. ^ Russian Daniil Alexandrowitsch Granin
  8. ↑ Russian AL Minz
  9. ↑ Russian нача́льник
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 245, 16. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 316, 12th Zvu