Елена Ржевская - Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter - From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker

It seems to me that IPLH is a code yet to be decoded. IPLH was something new, somebody’s secret plan and intention, something that for a brief moment seemed to be possible, a brief twinkling of light in that succession of brutal years. And something more: IPLH was the spirit of a time whose very passing was history. We could feel that, and it fostered a passion for life in us.

The phenomenon that was the 1930s was a surge of covertly accumulated culture, but already a reckoning was near, the executioners were biding their time. IPLH was part of that brief break in the clouds, and of the mayhem that was to come. This was a coming together of students with great potential, broad interests and aspirations: future philosophers, major literary specialists, critics, historians, literary translators, journalists, experts on world culture, folklorists, linguists, publishers and editors who did so much for our country’s culture in those difficult times. For those alumni of IPLH who became writers, the war was tremendously important, as it was for me.

At that time IPLH brought together the thirst of students for knowledge in the humanities with an ardent desire on the part of its amazingly distinguished professors and dazzling young academics to impart it to them.

It would be a mistake to suppose all those who graduated from IPLH were like-minded people. No, for me some were close to my values while others were not; but when we marked the fortieth anniversary of the day the Germany attacked the USSR, the reunion of graduates of IPLH was held in a state of joyful emotion; we were glad in all sincerity to see each other, without raking over old grudges, and deeply moved. We assembled by the old familiar building in Rostokino Street and filled Lecture Theatre 15. Neither in what was said, nor in the atmosphere of the reunion were there any reproaches or embittered reminders of misdeeds dating back to the bad old days. It was a friendly, sincere, open-hearted occasion.

And how was that possible? The answer is probably contained in the code, but perhaps it was also because this generation had not had an easy life. It was weighed down with the ballast of blunders and hopes, darkness and insights; it was seduced, persecuted and, who can say, perhaps redeemed.

Even before the war you were conscious of the spirit of the times. Misha Molochko spoke about the mission of your generation and the coming war against fascism. What effect did the USSR’s pact with Hitler have on you?

Immediately after the signing of the pact we were very disturbed and upset by it. Perhaps we even felt humiliated. The IPLH students from then on invariably referred to the Germans as ‘our implacable friends’.

That year I met a girl in the street who had been a fellow student of my elder brother and now worked as a translator in the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. She told me in confidence that translators who were Jewish were no longer being sent abroad on assignments and were beginning to be fired from the Commissariat. I thought to myself that seemed to be taking fraternization with the Germans too far, and in any case, why were we choosing to lose face and trying to curry favour with the Nazis?

A few years ago, when a journalist asked when I thought the Stalinist state had adopted a policy of anti-semitism, and persecution and repression of other peoples of the USSR, I suddenly remembered that conversation in the street so many years before, and I replied, ‘Since the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They had only to start…’

At the institute, the board with its name in Russian and French was taken down and replaced with one in Russian and German. I remember an episode when the general discontent in the institute did surface. As part of the cultural events accompanying the pact and the exchanging of art, an old German film was dug out and delivered to IPLH. Word went round that the reel was very interesting and had been banned until recently. Lecture Theatre 15 was full to the rafters. A white screen had been erected over the stage. The reel had no sound so an accompanist was needed and a student, Lev Bezymensky, was identified as suitable and dragged up to the stage. To start with, he dutifully accompanied the images on the screen with neutral melodies, but suddenly took off, and when Siegfried mounted his horse, the piano belted out the Cossack, ‘Lads, Saddle up the Horses!’ After that there was no holding Lev, scene after scene! Brünnhilde’s appearance on a cliff high above the Rhine was accompanied by ‘To the Cliff Came Loveliest Katyusha.’ How the audience responded! They fell about laughing, guffawing, giving vent to their pent-up emotions.

On one occasion, after the fall of France, I saw seven or eight portly, respectable, self-satisfied Germans at the circus talking loudly and animatedly among themselves during the interval. I remember the wave of animosity that swept over me.

But the German language I loved. I was drawn to it, and was fortunate enough to have lessons for a year with a wonderful teacher, formerly the governess of Pyotr Stolypin’s children. From her I heard: ‘ Sie haben eine Gabe für die deutsche Sprache.’ You have a gift for German. That was unforgettable. Alas, she died in the spring of that year, but I did not drop German. I enrolled in parallel with my school lessons on an extramural course at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. I joined a circle conducted by the widow of Karl Liebknecht.

And earlier than that, before I was even at school, my grandfather would recite Heine to me by heart.

You wrote about your grandfather and this German teacher in Punctuation Marks, a novella about the 1930s. Today, talking to you about the book you are finishing, I am getting ever deeper insight into all you have written, into your memory, learning something about my own ancestors and the spirit of those times. So, for you young people destined to fight this war, the threat of hostilities did not seem to have receded after the pact was signed?

Perhaps to some extent it receded in time, but we were well aware war was inevitable. It was obvious. Already in Mein Kampf Hitler had written that he was not just interested in restoring Germany to its 1914 borders, but in conquering lands to the east. Russia must cease to exist and be repopulated by Germans. The fate of its population would depend on the extent to which slaves were required to cultivate these lands. After Russia, if his plan was successful, there would be no holding him. All of Europe was to be under the heel of Germany.

Why did the war start so catastrophically for us?

If we are going to talk about the beginning of the war, we have to go back to 1937–8 and Stalin’s terror. It is difficult to believe the extent to which the Red Army was vandalized. Of five marshals, three were liquidated. Almost without exception the commanders of armies, divisions, and even regiments were shot. When the trials began in Moscow, Hitler and Goebbels, who were constantly listening to radio reports, at first decided Stalin was murdering Jews, and were only puzzled that Litvinov had not yet been done away with.

‘Crisis in Russia and constant arrests. Now Stalin is going after the Red Army,’ Goebbels wrote on 3 February 1937. ‘The killings in Russia have the whole world agog. There is talk of an extremely serious crisis of Bolshevism. Voroshilov has issued an order to the army, singing the same old song about Trotskyites. Does anybody still believe all that? Russia is very longsuffering’ (5 June 1937). Finally Goebbels – Goebbels of all people! – comes to a conclusion he will repeat many times: ‘Stalin is mentally ill’ (10 July), he is destroying his own army!

How could Goebbels not rejoice at the news? ‘Since Stalin is himself shooting his generals, we will not have to.’ (This is in the entry for 15 March 1940, when Goebbels already had his eye on war.)