Farewell (35 page)

They say we have common assets, my things, etc. which should be inventoried and taxed. That may be true; at least that’s what they say. But you must say that you sold all my things, that you don’t have anything left that belonged to me. The court must immediately send an order for debt recovery to camp 272/3 in Irkutsk. The living allowance has priority. If I earn 85 rubles, they’ll take the 83. That’s all.

Don’t worry, I beg you. It’s hard for me to write today. I am very upset, and this anger will end poorly for somebody.

I love you all very much, my dearest. Congratulations to Vladik for his excellent grades. Keep going that way, young man! Kisses!

If this doesn’t lead anywhere, there is another solution, a lousy one, a formality, but it would save you from bankruptcy. You will have understood me, Svetlanka [Vetrov is thinking about divorce].

Love

(Signature)

June 1983

I committed a crime, and this disgrace will be with me for the rest of my life. What do I have left, then? Struggling for survival, that’s all. And how? You know I’ll get through, it is a sure thing.

July 2, 1983

We were idealistic, we were dedicated to the cause, we were trying hard, we were absolutely honest, and ready to go to a lot of trouble for our homeland. And in spite of everything, believe me, that’s the way we’ll remain.

July 10, 1983

Svetik! Vladia! Babushka!

With Vlad. Mikh. [Vladimir Mikhailovich, another inmate] we’re having a party. Valentina Utkina has arrived, and we received a parcel: fresh, salt and smoked pork; four packs of candy and a shirt. Thank you so much for everything, especially for the pork and the two packs of Indian tea. In Irkutsk, tea is pressed into bars, it is dust, not tea. In the colony, chifir
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connoisseurs prefer tea “Made in India” with three elephants on the label.

Svetik, sweetheart, my darling, you must be so tired. I caused you a lot of worries and unpleasant trouble. I understand why you feel sad, and sick and tired of everything. Your beloved son has left. The apartment is empty without him. Don’t be saddened, live a full life, life is beautiful. It is now, precisely only now, that you can start to understand the joy and appeal of freedom.

It’s all just talk, or rather the rambling of a suffering soul, ashes of the heart that either consumed itself or is burning of a raging fire I am afraid may spread, devouring everything in its path. Reality shapes our view of the world, not the current reality here, but the analysis of past impressions. All around, it is horror, hypocrisy and duplicity. How is all this going to end? Is it a suitable topic in letters to one’s beloved wife? Svetik, bear with me, that’s the stuff of my current life. Thoughts are racing in my head. What for? I don’t know. I am probably turning mean, maybe mad at reality. Grant you, I am here of my own doing, and that’s not what makes me mad; I am mad at the reality of our life, at people’s misery. And, on top of it, this is a widely spread phenomenon, an epidemic. I may be mean, but I am smart, fair and, to this day, kind.

Today, we spent the evening listening to music, like in a club. We listened to memories about Ruslanova.
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Why her? Turns out, she spent six long years in the Irkutsk region, transporting barrels of water on a
telega
. Can you imagine this beautiful woman, at the peak of her glory and success, living in the forest? Why do I write about her? I just listened to a song about a cattle car or a shack, with those words: “I am far away from you, getting back with you would be difficult, but death is only four steps away.”
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All this is so true. We live like in wartime, and death is right here, nearby! No sniveling. I am alive, I’ll live with you again, I’ll return and will stay at your side. I’ll endure it all, I promise! Even at death’s door, I won’t surrender. I want to take you in my arms, get down on my knees in front of you, kiss your lips, then expire deeply, and come what may. By then, maybe your life will have changed, or circumstances won’t make it possible to see you again. Anything can happen in life. I am not philosophizing, it’s just a fact.

Wait for me, do something. I understand right now there is not much you can do, but still, keep trying, keep the initiative. Svetik, what a horrible mess I am in.

They probably should have shot me, your life would have been easier. Volodka Yashechkin is no more, nor is Andryushka Kuznetsov, and then it will be my turn to disappear, too. What would that change in life? Absolutely nothing. Living like slaves! It’s so sickening, especially when one can have only contempt for the guards surrounding us.

What’s new at home? You never say a thing about your mother. How is she doing? What does she do during the day, does she visit with the other babushki chatting in the yard, what do they say about me and the family?

How are Borka, Alexei and G. Vas. [the Rogatins] doing? Can’t they help me, maybe not this minute, but in general? Oh my friends-comrades! In any case, say hi to them from me. Sell the garage. I asked you before, please do it, have your portrait made, I beg you. It’s my last request from you and Vladik. Please…

What’s the latest with Iv. Grig., did he buy Katia’s house? Write more often, and longer letters.

This letter is probably the last one; I’ll be allowed to send only three censored letters per month; or I’ll have to find other ways, illegal ones, to send you letters.
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Please ask Lev to prepare a few records for me, if possible, that you’ll bring when you come visit me. Tell Lev that there is very little chance to organize a concert here, in the colony that is, because there is no money to pay for it. It would be good to organize the concert through the MVD in Moscow, they could sponsor it. That would be great. Seeing you, I’d live again. Everything would get back to normal, maybe; right now everything makes me puke. Don’t forget what we talked about in Lefortovo.
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If Vladik writes to you (talk about a lazy bunch, this one), send him my best, always.

Svetik, I’m ashamed of asking this, but are you really waiting for me? Silly me, right? I want so bad to see you, to live with you, to kiss you all, and fight together. Precisely together, always together.

Love

(Signature) Dad

#17 (I am not sure, but this must be the right one)

July 16, 1983

Believe me, everything will be OK. Evil won’t stick to me, never. I’ll remain the same: an honest man, straight, kind, with a good sense of humor, not an alarmist, ideologically constant.

Lastly, here is the letter Vetrov wrote to his son on the eve of Vladik’s wedding, which took place on August 25, 1984. The name of Vladik’s wife is also Svetlana.

Vladik!

Congratulations on this solemn day of your life and, from the bottom of my heart, my best wishes for a happy family life to your young bride and yourself. Remember that starting a family places new responsibilities on your shoulders that are not that strong yet. It’s not good enough to find happiness, one has to preserve it. This is mostly up to you.

Total trust and mutual respect must be the foundation of family life. Those two things are essential to happiness and love.

The great Russian writer A. M. Gorky said about family that a young man must choose a life companion who resembles him, that husband and wife somehow complete one another, and that a wife is another self.

True love happens only once in a lifetime, so family is created for centuries to come. Never forget this!

Vladia, let me say a few words to Svetlana junior (allow me to call you this way, Svetlana).

Svetlana junior, as Vladik’s father, I can tell you that he is a wonderful young man; intelligent, good-hearted, loving, frank, a bit touchy, that’s true, especially when criticized, but overall, a solid personality.

The sky above your heads is free of clouds that might cast a shadow on your happiness.

Helping one another, gain life experience, start fending for yourselves, be open to the world, don’t be a couple turned only onto itself, acquire knowledge, fill your little heads, it is essential in life. Knowledge is wisdom, kindness, bliss. If you have the opportunity to finish graduate school, do it.

And let me now cry out to you “
It’s bitter!
”
¹³
and wish you “
advice and love
.”
¹⁴

Father (Signature)

Vetrov’s letters are very informative. Considering the complexity of Vetrov’s “dual” personality, however, one has to refrain from choosing easy shortcuts and simplifications to describe him. He was neither a precursor of perestroika, nor an immoral bastard. Rather than simplifying him, it seemed more important to mine the ambiguities of his character from the correspondence. Such an approach should help understand Vetrov’s true nature, maybe even pierce his mystery.

The first interpretation of the letters is positive and, to some extent, closely akin to Vetrov’s description given by his handler Patrick Ferrant.

Family first. We discover a man deeply in love with his wife, for whom he has no shortage of tender words. Anxious to preserve her material survival, he thinks about all the possible solutions to avoid her ruin, going as far as suggesting in veiled terms a sacrificial divorce, a “lousy solution, a formality.”

A loving father, he still wants to help his son Vladik further his education; he cannot help praising him again, as in the good old times in the conversations with Ferrant, his only confidant. When you think of it, writing the letter to his future daughter-in-law must have been especially heartbreaking for Vetrov. He wrote it in August 1984, from Lefortovo, at a time when he must have known what was in store for him.

Love of the homeland. Vetrov comes across as the visceral patriot described by Ferrant. He sees himself as Ferrant perceived him: “We were idealistic, we were dedicated to the cause, we were trying hard, we were absolutely honest, and ready to go to a lot of trouble for our homeland.”

More surprising, his fidelity to his country takes an ideological dimension that did not show through when he was with Ferrant. We discover a sincere Marxist, who refers to Karl Marx as a “unique and remarkable” man, and he advises his son to read books about the origins of the workers’ movement. So now the feeling is one of an idealist who loves his country, is “ideologically constant,” but disgusted at a corrupt regime plagued by nepotism, where all ideals have been betrayed, including Marxist ideals.

As for his fundamental hatred for the KGB, understandably he could not vent it in a correspondence he knew was intercepted. We know, however, through the investigation file, that Vetrov could not refrain from writing letters critical of Soviet power. In part of the correspondence we had access to, one can sense his obsessive frame of mind in the regrets he expresses about Soviet leaders having retained nothing of the “remarkable” Marxist spirit.

Then come the remorseful moments, when he regrets the harm he caused to his family: “I caused you a lot of worries and unpleasant trouble.” Lastly, he mentions the crime, which he seems to consider as a misfortune that happened to him. Without naming Ludmila, toward whom he is still feeling a ferocious hatred, he mentions he is the one responsible for his actions and must pay the price: “I committed a crime, and this disgrace will be with me for the rest of my life.” In another letter he says, “I am here, nowhere to go to evade punishment and regrets.” Those thoughts assailing him resemble an ordinary feeling of regret. With Vetrov, though, nothing is ever ordinary, and the only regrets he expresses refer to the fact that he is behind bars, and not to the murder.

Of course, he is able to swiftly dismiss those gloomy thoughts, and in no time we are back with a naturally cheerful Vetrov who likes the good things in life. He thinks about his release from prison, his return to his wife and his son. The reality of the situation soon resurfaces, however, and a maelstrom of allusions lets the reader imagine Vetrov’s train of thoughts about his insane undertaking: “Reality shapes our view of the world, not the current reality here, but the analysis of past impressions. All around, it is horror, hypocrisy and duplicity. How is all this going to end?” Haunted by his fate, almost in a moving way, Vetrov whistles in the dark, and unexpectedly plunges into a form of mysticism: “Well, my dearest ones, chin up! Everything will pass. The darkness surrounding me will open and, like Christ, I will walk toward you crossing a sea of blood. I’ll survive.”

Another deep contradiction can be noted in this last sentence: his “I’ll survive” concludes an unmistakably mystical phrase. It is well known that mysticism is not only a quest for spiritual elevation, it is also an indirect way of accepting death.

And now, the prosecution has the floor. Taking the opposite viewpoint, and seeing Vetrov from the victims’ perspective, those letters may shock in many ways and reveal the dark side of his character.

It appears right away that Vetrov is no Raskolnikov. Nowhere in his letters or conversations with his family is there any indication that he regretted having taken someone’s life while trying to kill the woman he had loved. Guilt and regret are two concepts that seem totally absent from his thoughts. He has always viewed himself as a perfect man: “an honest man, straight, kind.” And an ultimate irony considering his situation is this excerpt from his service evaluation file: “ideologically constant.”

In fact, the murderer Vetrov thinks he is the victim. Like most criminals, he must have ended up sincerely believing the version he had polished for the investigation. As confirmed by criminal psychology specialists,
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it is ludicrous to ask a murderer why he is behind bars. The answer is always the same: “For nothing!” or “Because of a chick!” which comes to the same thing in his mind. Yes, he wanted to kill this woman, but deep down she is the one responsible for it. Vetrov, as confirmed by Svetlana, had the same line of reasoning. Yes, he killed, but it is because he lost control. Provoked by a woman such as Ochikina, any man would have flown off the handle as he did! But as he explicitly says himself, “Evil won’t stick to me, never.”

Undoubtedly, the KGB destruction mission he had given himself with a passion had eventually blinded him. The goal he had set for himself, together with his own destiny, became much more important to him than the few collateral victims who crossed his path. Like a hero of the Revolution, he ignored them. The end justifies the means.

It is because he viewed himself as a martyr that he quotes so many wartime songs. Vetrov likens himself to fighters who flirt with death in trenches, or to Stalinist repression victims when he refers to the singer Ruslanova. From this perspective, the quote “We were idealistic, we were dedicated to the cause, […] we were absolutely honest, and ready to go to a lot of trouble for our homeland” acquires another nuance. He is more reminiscent of an old Bolshevik from the early beginnings who, starving and freezing in a Stalinist camp, would stick to his communist ideals no matter what.

When reading his “mystical” sentence, “The darkness surrounding me will open and, like Christ, I will walk toward you crossing a sea of blood,” one wonders whether Vetrov still had his wits about him. Apparently, this phrase betrays his conviction that, like Jesus, he had to follow the Way of the Cross, a path of passion and suffering. The difference between their respective situations—one gave his blood for others, the other shed others’ blood for himself—does not bother him. Also, this sentence does not mean at all that he was, or had become, a believer. Criminologists know that, more often than not, inmates delight in displaying religiosity. It is their self-justification. If I believe in God, I cannot be guilty. This is part of their self-defense reactions; they have an impressively clever arsenal of defense tricks.

Apart from the fact that Vetrov’s letters are totally deprived of any sense of regret, there is no deep or original thinking either about the exceptional destiny he had lived. Could it have been possible to express such thoughts in censored mail? Each time he touches upon a more profound subject, it is with an accumulation of platitudes that do not let his personality shine through. A wise man said, “What we think, we become.” Apart from his bitterness towards imprisonment, Vetrov’s thoughts are very mundane: eating, killing boredom, and organizing his life in the camp as comfortably as possible.

His favorite topic is the same as for all convicts, the longing for freedom. Vetrov seems to have understood from the outset that only idiots serve their complete sentences. So, despite his loathing of the guards, he wastes no time in being on the best terms with camp management. He becomes responsible for educational and cultural activities. He is already expecting to get the most sought-after job, warehouseman. Vetrov relentlessly bombards his wife with requests to find so-and-so, who might be able to get him out of the camp; the example of Yasnov is the most telling. He keeps building projects for after his release. This is why he is so insistent Svetlana sell nothing of their precious assets. If he can stick to the line of conduct he set for himself, he has a chance to be released on parole after serving seven years.

He forgets the most basic prudence. Imagine the expression on the face of the KGB investigating magistrate who is convinced, despite the lack of evidence, of Vetrov’s treason, when he reads these words: “It would be great to go to…you know what I mean, but we have to be a little more patient.”

The most shocking letter, though, is probably the one about the cross-claim. The murderer, who has a thousand times enough money to pay the full allowance, counts each ruble he owes to the victim’s child. Where is the man who impressed everyone with his liberalities? What happened to Svetlana’s attentive escort? To the generous and affluent KGB officer?

And in general, what happened to this perfectly normal, even nice individual, to this good patriot, albeit critical of the regime? What happened in Vetrov’s life for the nice student, the lover, the young father to have become this amoral, selfish, hypocritical character? A question too far-reaching and too difficult for a definite answer.

Could the answer lie in a mental disorder? It is common knowledge that psychopaths have a real talent to behave as normal people for very long periods of time. The pathology affects only a specific segment of their personality, and it reveals itself only at an advanced stage. Until conditions are met that expose the subject’s pathology, even people who are intimate with the individual may not notice alarming signs. Often such pathologies make the patients very cunning. Maybe Vetrov was experiencing the early stages of a mental disease, which would explain everything that does not square in his case. A psychiatric examination performed during the investigation by the Serbsky Institute of Judicial Psychiatry had attested to Vetrov’s criminal responsibility. However, in the presence of an apparently normal individual, the procedure was often a mere formality, as in the cases of perfectly sane people who filled the KGB psychiatric wards on this institute’s recommendations.

All things considered, in Vetrov’s case, there was no sign of psychopathology. At the most, there was irrationality, mood swings, and impulses—often unmotivated—being amplified by alcoholism.

Many witnesses tend to attribute Vetrov’s behavior to his drinking and, incidentally, this weakness is part of the Russian culture. Vetrov operated in countries like France and Canada where drinking hard liquor is not condemned by public opinion, and an extrovert, Vetrov enjoyed parties and feasts. Finally, this behavior compensated for the stresses that are part of an operative’s job. In fact, wherever we look, everything in Vetrov’s life was leading him to seek refuge in alcohol.
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This being said, Vetrov was was never diagnosed as a chronic alcoholic, he was never sent to rehab, and there had been no threats to fire him on this account. Be that as it may, at that stage, drinking accentuates certain personality traits, such as impulsiveness, imprudence, or presumptuousness. This explains many of the foolish things Vetrov did while being handled by the French—the need to show off, the image given to others and to oneself being much more important than the risks involved. This explains also the secretsharing with his son, whose age and experience were not suited for the role of confidant, and for whom the moral burden was undoubtedly too heavy. Likewise, being still a kid, Vladik could say imprudent things to others, which might have caused his father’s ruin. This explains Vetrov’s certitude that his own professional abilities could compensate for his partners’ shortcomings or for bad luck.

In addition, excessive drinking leads to a diminishment of personality; emotions become simpler and cruder over time. The individual becomes less and less self-critical and loses the ability to censor his actions and to regret them. An alcoholic bothers less and less about choosing the means to solve his problems. Actions lose their moral dimension, as in the cheap lies he told to both women, hypocrisy, scorn for one’s uniform, betrayal of the homeland, and a murder attempt on a woman he once loved.

It would be too simplistic, however, to blame it all on the drinking. It appears that many shocking elements in Vetrov’s behavior can be explained by his duplicity. The ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes or to pretend to be somebody you are not is part of every intelligence officer’s acquired knowledge. Vladimir must have experienced the strange feeling many actors experience, no longer knowing exactly who it is in them who is crying, who is laughing, even when in the presence of close friends. Is it their inner self, or a character they can chase away in an instant? Like them, Vetrov probably knew how to win his audience over, be it only one person, by getting into the part of the character he could have been or wanted to be, with this feigned sincerity that draws on the depth of his imagination where any transformation is possible. Incidentally, there are so many gifted amateurs who spend their lives pretending to be what they are not and whose true identity is nearly impossible to grasp.

Different from trivial hypocrisy, this power, which is the operative’s required skill of “psychological mobility,” had not been used by Vetrov for years, since his unfortunate return from Canada. Vetrov put it back to use for his long plunge into the abyss that was his collaboration with the DST. Actually, it may be what slowed his fall down the most. Exacerbated by the intensity of his suicidal adventure, Vetrov’s duplicity is increasingly more reminiscent of a dual personality syndrome. Was he ever aware of it? The fact remains that, for an observant outsider, the duality of his life during the last years was obvious. Double agent working for the KGB and the DST. Double life between Svetlana and Ludmila. Double standards in his actions: Vetrov was generous in public, but pathologically stingy in his private life; he spoke kindly of people in front of them, but unkindly behind their backs. Yet all this is perfectly in line with the psychological norm, including what is called symbolic behavior, aiming at projecting a good image of oneself.