Again Letsukov was struck by Densky’s ability to surmount his chains, his split eyebrow, the squalor of his room…
“Your open letter to so-called international opinion mentions an anti-Soviet organization which goes under the cover name of the Free Trade Union Movement.”
“Except for the bias of your terminology, agreed.”
“When did this movement begin?”
“It’s been rising in the hearts of Soviet workers for over a decade, Comrade.”
“And you have been associated with it for how long?”
“Five years at least.”
“You admit to five years?”
“With pride.”
“You also admit that its objectives are anti-Soviet?”
“Its objectives are fair and free representation of workers in enterprises throughout the U.S.S.R. Its objectives are the strict enforcement of the Constitution of 1977 and of the guarantees to workers and citizens contained within the Labor Code. I will admit that those objectives are anti-Soviet if you will, First Assistant Secretary Letsukov.”
Letsukov held his pen suspended above the notebook. He found he had nothing to write.
“What is your view of the size of the membership of your movement?” he said at length.
“I am unable to answer you with any certainty,” Densky said. “There are obvious constraints on communication. But I have reason to believe that our objectives are widely shared by Soviet workers.”
Letsukov took out a packet of Belomors cigarettes. He hesitated, then gave one to Densky and took another for himself. “Are your activities confined to the Russian Federated Republic?” He got up and crossed the room. Picking up the rusting German helmet, he carried it back, placed it on the table between them and lit both cigarettes.
“Justice at work is a problem that affects the whole Soviet Union,” Densky said.
“Do you have direct contact with the autonomous Republics?”
“Yes.”
“Please specify them.”
“The movement in Leningrad has received pledges of support from workers and enterprises in the Caucasian Republics, in the Central Asia Republics, in the Slav Republics of Ukraine and Belorussia and from the Baltic Republics.”
“You admit this?”
“I claim it, comrade. Furthermore, the agents who ransacked my apartment would have all the original documents in their possession today if the fools had not maliciously burned before my wife’s eyes two packets of what they imagined were my wartime love letters to her from the front.” He smiled.
Letsukov noted the incident, the German steel helmet rocking as he wrote.
He lifted his head. “In the past,” he said, “bourgeois nationalist decadence has been associated with other forms of self-seeking dissident activity.”
“Let me answer you in simple Russian,” Densky said. “You may be right, comrade.”
“I’m asking you whether your movement, to the extent it exists, encourages this anti-Soviet nationalism in the autonomous republics and regions.”
“Comrade, I can see you are an intelligent man. I don’t have to tell you that national aspirations need no encouragement in the Soviet Union today. I have worked with Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Uzbeks… each and all of them sing the same song. They are not Russians, they never will be.”
“Nobody expects them to be Russians,” Letsukov said. “They are all Soviet citizens.”
“With the undoubted rights of Soviet citizens. Except in their case they are losing today not only their rights to true citizenship but their rights to nationhood also. This is their belief when they are forced to speak Russian, to leave their homelands to work in alien parts, to serve as cooks and cleaners in the army for true-bred Russian soldiers.” He spread his hands in a gesture of mock innocence and pulled taut his chains. “I have no comment to make on these anti-Soviet attitudes, of course. I merely repeat them to you, safe in the knowledge that here I am free to do so.” He rattled his chains.
“The equality of the republics and autonomous regions is a recognized principle of Soviet constitutional practice,” Letsukov said.
“We are equals, Comrade First Assistant Secretary, but we are not free. During the war when I was a young soldier advancing through the ruins of a Jewish ghetto in a Polish town, I saw this slogan scrawled by Jews upon the burned walls: ‘We are all equal — we are marked to die.’”
Letsukov sat watching him silently.
“I believe you to be a decent man, Comrade Letsukov. You will therefore understand what those Jews knew in nineteen forty-four. Equality is the opium of the people.”
Letsukov stood up. Densky bent his head forward to scratch the sandy hair at his temple with the knuckle of his thumb.
When Letsukov hammered on the steel door, the guards appeared within seconds.
Leaving the militia station, Letsukov walked slowly along the Nevsky Prospekt. The queues here, he saw, were if anything worse than in Moscow. But standing in line was no part of his life. In Moscow he had the Ministry Club and its commissariat. At a favorable price, and with marked politeness from the assistants, he could buy any home-produced goods and a limited range of foreign goods, too. Next year with his expected grade promotion, he would be eligible to shop in the Club on Sverdlov Square where prices were even lower and the range of Western goods considerably greater.
And Joseph Densky was in prison. Well, he had put himself beyond the law. Letsukov bumped into a stocky woman carrying two bags of vegetables. Recoiling without apologies they continued on their separate ways. What law had Joseph Densky transgressed? Section this, subsection that, he had a photocopy in his briefcase. But what law had Densky really broken? He had disobeyed not the open published dictates of the State, but the secret well-understood clauses. And in Paris that spring he, Alexei Letsukov, had obeyed the law. Not, of course, its open proclamations of national autonomy. But its secret intent to stifle all national feelings.
Later that morning, before a huge concrete apartment block, Letsukov got out of a taxi. The gray wall was cracking down 20 yards of its length. The narrow balconies sagged dangerously. A plaque proclaimed that the Kirov Apartment Building had been completed in record time on January 1, 1981, by the 171st Shock Construction Worker Brigade.
The two plainclothesmen approached him as he crossed the bald grass. Before they had a chance to speak, Letsukov drew his Ministry card from his pocket and handed it to them. They both wore the short car coats and brogue shoes available in KGB commissariats.
“I’m going to interview the prisoner Densky’s wife. Is she in the apartment?”
“She’s in, Comrade Letsukov. Do you want us to accompany you?”
Letsukov shook his head. “Has she had many visitors since her husband’s arrest?”
The short Bureau man with the bald spot on the back of his head glanced toward the apartment entrance as if someone might be trying to slip in behind his back. “No Comrade,” he said, turning back to Letsukov. “In the first few days there were dozens, but we had a full squad on then, we turned them all away, of course. Now you get one or two trying to call, mostly after dark, but we pull them up quickly enough, that’s what we’re here for after all.”
“They usually pretend they’re lost,” the other man laughed. “We take their names all the same.”
Letsukov left the two men and entered the apartment building. The flat was on the sixth floor and the lift was out of order. A staircase like a medieval spiral led him upward. The concrete walls were chalked with obscenities, faded expressions of support for the Soviet Olympic soccer team and new whitewashed slogans of praise for Joseph Densky.
At the sixth floor he rang the bell of apartment 28. A woman answered almost immediately.