Вил Мирзаянов - State Secrets - An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

I was completely distressed by this news, because it meant we had absolutely nothing in common. The only thing I could do was to steal secret glances at Irene, when she dropped by Rishat’s place for some reason. For a long time, I never managed to utter a single word in her presence. They always spoke Russian there, and even the colloquial version of Russian was beyond me at that time, and for years afterwards.

I rented a flat from a Russian landlady and I tried to master this difficult language by speaking with her. I asked her, and she agreed to correct my mistakes. But speaking Russian with such a young beauty, whose looks deprived me of any ability to think, was out of the question. I frankly envied my friend who could speak so freely and naturally with Irene, as if she were his sister. Meanwhile, I cursed my shyness, and I was perfectly sure that I would never be able to overcome it. There was only one thing left for me to do. I had to make sure that Irene would know me as the top student and sportsman.

I tried really hard, and as I had a serious incentive, my efforts produced results. By winter, I became the top student among the eighth-graders and I was elected to every possible school and Komsomol committee. [7] The Communist Party sponsored an organization, the Komsomol, or Communist League of Youth, for those between age fourteen and early thirties, so that they could learn the proper things to become party members. Komsomol members provoked political activity, completed social projects (e.g., planting trees along urban roads), and supposedly served as role models for socialist behavior. John Thompson, A Vision Unfulfilled: Russia and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century (Lexington, MA: Heath Publishers, 1996): 261-4. It was surprising that I was elected secretary of the Komsomol school committee, which was the highest acknowledgement of my new position, although I was only sixteen and we had eighteen-year-olds on the committee.

When our physics teacher was ill (she was the only one in our school who taught her subject in Russian), another teacher from the Russian school replaced her. I knew from Rishat that the teacher spoke very well about me when he went back to his Russian school. According to Rishat, students of my age from that school were intrigued. Probably my friend’s news prompted me to take a desperate step. I summoned all my courage and wrote a letter in Russian to the object of my affections. Rishat handed Irene this note with my confessions of love and a proposal to be friends. Soon I received Irene’s answer, and she wrote that she had heard a lot about me and she even doubted that she deserved to be my friend. My joy was boundless when I received her reply to my second letter, and she offered to meet me.

We had to meet late at night at the end of one of the central streets of the town. That frosty February evening, Irene and I strolled along the street, and she told me about herself and her girl friends. I understood everything but, unfortunately, I was thinking too slowly to keep the conversation going in Russian. Of course, I could have recited poems in Tatar, or I could have told her about the books I had read; plenty of them were in Russian, but it seemed to me that some heavy weight was hanging on my tongue. I tried to murmur something, but I couldn’t say anything sensible. Horrified, I realized that I wasn’t making a very good impression. The embarrassment that overwhelmed me at that moment stopped me from even looking at Irene, but at the same time, I was infinitely happy that such a beautiful and bright girl was walking beside me and talking with me.

We met a few more times, but I still behaved as though I were paralyzed. I understood that it was time to declare my love, to hug and kiss Ira, but all of this was beyond me.

My greatest happiness came from an episode connected with my performance at the regional cross-country ski championship. I couldn’t participate in the 15-kilometer race because I had broken my skis. Only the gym teacher had a spare pair of good skis, but for some reason he had decided to take part in the race himself, without any training. It was a great pity for me because I was in good shape by then and I had already taken the first place in the 10-kilometer race. But then unexpectedly I got the chance to show what I was made of. My teacher dropped out of the race after the first circle and the judges allowed me to start the race on his skis. Then a snowstorm broke out over us and it was practically impossible to see the ski-track. All the participants stopped racing. But I was inexorable and continued the race because I knew that Irene was among the few spectators.

I finished the race alone and became the champion, but I was happy for a different reason. Right then Rishat handed me a note from Ira with her words of admiration and an invitation for a date.

That date was our last one. Probably my mumbling and unintelligible murmuring in bad Russian dampened her enthusiasm. I failed to turn our budding friendship into love. After all, we were only 16, and at that time there were heated debates in the Komsomol newspapers about whether someone could experience love at such a young age. The answer was always certainly negative. According to the Komsomol directives, love at such an early age distracted young people from their studies.

I met Irene a few more times under different circumstances, but there were no more dates. During the summer following 9 thgrade, we both worked as counselors in a pioneer camp. Though we had a lot of different opportunities for meeting privately there, I never dared to speak to her. She was silent, too. Still, I was extraordinarily happy to be next to her.

As the years passed, my feeling turned into permanent pain. Though there was no love in the generally accepted meaning of the word, the image of Irene haunted me for a long time, overshadowing my further infatuations with women. There were moments when I cursed her for this and I tried to hate her, but it was beyond me.

We never saw each other again. I remembered her always as I saw her in that portrait on the stand in the photographer’s studio.

The Russian language problem haunted me in Moscow as well. Finally, I spent my first night in the Kiev Railway Station. Policemen drove out every suspicious looking character from the overcrowded waiting room. I think my looks didn’t really appeal to the police, because I was dressed in my ski tracksuit – which looked like coveralls. On my feet I had worn out old boots. At that time, Moscow was full of internal troops, and the police were struggling with criminals who had been released from the jail and labor camps, through amnesty after Stalin’s death. Practically all the released prisoners rushed to the large cities and started terrorizing people.

The people of Moscow hadn’t yet recovered from the shock caused by the appearance of the troops and tanks, which were there to prevent a coup organized by Beria and to arrest this omnipotent head of the KGB. I had to spend another day and night near Kiev Station. Fortunately, the nights were relatively warm then.

Early on Monday morning, I was already in the reception of Bauman High Technical School (MVTU) in Moscow. The admissions secretary listened to me and explained that the admission of medal winners was finished, and he had no right to admit me, a medal winner, to the entrance exams on general terms.

Needless to say, I was deeply disappointed because I hoped that I would be admitted and would receive a place in the dormitory. I desperately wanted to sleep, I could hardly stand up, and I couldn’t think straight. However, the instinct of self-preservation prevailed. I asked a university entrant to give me a reference book on Moscow institutions for higher education and I started making phone calls. The third Institute I called was the Lomonosov Institute of Fine Chemical Technology (MITKhT) in Moscow. I asked if I could come right away and get a place in the dormitory. The answer was positive, and this settled my fate for many years to come.