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EYE ON EUROPE |
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 ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN ...as sketched by the author |
A clandestine meeting
with an elusive author
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In memory of the death of Nobel prizewinning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn at age 89 on Sunday, Aug. 3, Michael Johnson has written this special column for TheColumnists. com. Johnson met Solzhenitsyn in 1970 while covering the Societ Union for the Associated Press. Readers who want to revisit Johnson's full report on his meeting with the esteemed Russian author can find it as Chapter Five of his Cold War memoir, REPORTING THE NEWS FROM A POLICE STATE by clicking here: DESPERATELY SEEKING SOLZHENITSYN. |
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
Coming face-to-face with Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the earliest days of his literary success was a stunning experience for me as a young reporter, and to read of his recent death aroused these strange reveries.
The circumstances of our encounter were anything but glamorous. He was peeking nervously around the door frame of a garage near Moscow where the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich had given him shelter. His hair and beard were a mess and his piercing eyes penetrated the winter gloom. He snapped “Kto eto?” (“Who’s there?”). He was not happy to see me.
Every journalist in Moscow had wanted to be the first to talk to Solzhenitsyn after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. I was a Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press and it took me just two days of detective work to find him. Typical of my breed, I was unconcerned about the consequences my publicity might have for him.
A number of intermediaries had helped me along the way. The late Lev Kopelev, a writer who was friendly with Solzhenitsyn from their days in the gulag, was one of his closest associates. I knew Lev’s wife, the writer-translator Raisa Orlova, and she invited me to tea at their flat. My presence made Lev nervous but he tolerated me. Between sips of tea from a glass, Russian style, I asked for Solzhenitsyn’s telephone number, only to be sharply refused. But Lev did agree to be the messenger for the news if he won.
A week later, I was on duty at the AP when the teleprinter came alive with a one-paragraph bulletin announcing the award. I let out a whoop and rang Lev, who received the news with an even greater whoop. He immediately relayed the news to Solzhenitsyn. But I still needed to see the great man in person.
With no further help from Lev, I set about calling Russian acquaintances who might know something helpful. Solzhenitsyn had recently been camping with various friends in and around Moscow. I set off for Peredelkino, the writers’ colony, an obvious place to start. I knew he had been harbored from time to time by Lydia Chukovskaya, a writer who also lived there.
There was no response at the Chukovskaya door and so at random I tramped through the mud and knocked on other doors around the village, including the Writers' Union office. Eventually I opened the gate of the late Boris Pasternak's residence and climbed the steps of the big, wooden house.
Stanislav Neuhaus came to the door and was most pleasant--unusual for encounters with foreign strangers. He was the son of Heinrich Neuhaus, the late Russian pianist and teacher. Neuhaus junior, also a pianist, was Pasternak's stepson. He could not help me.
After an interesting but unsuccessful day, I returned to my flat in Moscow.
The next day I followed up a new tip from a cellist friend, Natalya Gutman, a Rostropovich student. She had heard that Solzhenitsyn was spending time at Rostropovich's dacha in Zhukovka, a cluster of country homes where some of the scientific and artistic elite lived, about 30 minutes from Moscow.
I drove straight to Zhukovka early in the morning, and, following Ms. Gutman’s suggestion, asked the security guards for the dacha of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, a neighbor. Surprisingly, the policewoman gave me directions. I followed the pathways and soon came upon the great cellist's dacha.
A lone birch tree was struggling to survive on the front lawn. Nothing stirred.
I knocked at the door, expecting Rostropovich or his wife Galina Vishnevskaya, the soprano, to appear. A housemaid answered the door and said matter-of-factly, "Khozyain za rubezhom." ("The boss is abroad.") I asked if a Solzhenitsyn was living there and she replied, "There is some man with a beard living in the garage over there," pointing to an outbuilding.
I thanked her and set out across the snow-covered lawn to the garage. When no one responded to my knocking, I called out "Alexander Isayevich!" After a pause of a few seconds came a piercing voice, anxiously inquiring who I was and what I wanted. I replied that I was a foreign journalist from Moscow.
The door burst open and I was transfixed by this little man with a magnificent head and a reddish beard. When he was satisfied in his own mind that I was not a clever KGB spook, he confirmed his identity.
Solzhenitsyn spoke rapidly, like a man with a lot on his mind, in a strange, high-pitched voice. I asked some inane question such as "How does it feel to be a Nobel Prizewinner?" He avoided the question, perhaps dreading headlines. We exchanged a few unthreatening pleasantries.
The conversation was the shortest interview I ever had but it let the world know that Solzhenitsyn was still alive, still defiant and still at large.
As we made our way back to my car, I stopped to take a picture of the lonely, trembling birch tree in the foreground. It seemed to say it all.
©2008 by Michael Johnson. The sketch is ©2008 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted Aug. 21, 2008.
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