Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

I was still unsure of what was happening—I thought I’d be cited for disturbing the peace or participating in an unsanctioned public meeting and maybe fined, but certainly let go pretty quickly. It was obvious to me what I had done, and surely it was just as obvious to them. If I was a spy it was unlikely I would have been out with a protest sign in front of RussOil. I’d have been trying to infiltrate RussOil instead. I figured it was now about five. I was going to miss dinner, but if we got this taken care of in time I’d at least make it to hockey.

Soon my arresting officers came to get me. I left my drunk dumpster friend where I’d found him and followed them to an office where, I felt confident, we were about to clear things up.

It was an ordinary rectangular office, with two small desks in the back and a large meeting table in the middle. The two police detectives, my FSB officers from the Coffee Grind, and one older, uniformed officer were inside. They dismissed my arresting officers and asked me to sit down.

Later on, I would think about all the books written about the interrogations of the 1930s, as well as of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. All the ’60s and ’70s dissidents and semi-dissidents, like Brodsky, had a story of how they’d sat down with the KGB and told them off. I have no reason to doubt those stories. But that’s not how this worked out with me.

Solzhenitsyn begins The Gulag Archipelago by listing all the tortures to which people were subjected in NKVD custody. It’s a long, impressive, inventive list. If those tortures were not enough, for whatever reason, the NKVD could and sometimes did offer to bring in family members and torture them. Under such pressure, who could resist? And yet Solzhenitsyn had some advice for the person who is suddenly seized on the street or from his home in the middle of the night and wants to survive his interrogation. Solzhenitsyn’s advice was simply this: You are now dead. You have no family, no home, no attachments. YOU ARE DEAD. If you can convince yourself of this, there will be nothing the interrogators can do or say to you that will cause you to break. “Before such a person,” writes Solzhenitsyn, “the interrogation will tremble .”

And there I was, wondering if I might make it out in time for hockey.

“Is it Androo,” the uniformed officer said, looking at my passport, “or Androov?”

“Andrei,” I said.

“Ah,” said the officer politely. “Andrei. Excellent. Why does it say Androo here?”

“It’s the English equivalent. My parents changed it when we moved to the States.”

“Understood,” said the officer. “Well, Andrei, these men are going to ask you some questions about what happened today, and what you’re doing in Russia, and what your plans are, and then we can all go home. The more help you can give them, the faster this will all go.

“They’re good men. They’re not going to torture you or beat you or any of the stuff you see in Hollywood movies. They’re just going to ask some questions. Is that OK?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Great,” said the officer, and stood up to leave, handing my passport to one of the FSB guys.

I felt like some kind of performance was being put on for me, but I couldn’t understand what it consisted of. What did dawn on me, with some force, as the officer moved out of the room, was that he could leave and I could not. I was not allowed to leave. Just down the hall was the door that led back out to Sretenka, to my grandmother’s house, and the road where I could hail a hundred-ruble car to Yulia’s place at pretty much any time of the day or night. But on this side of the door was me. And these men—four men, the detectives older than me, the FSB guys about my age—could keep me here. It wasn’t terrifying or anything; it was just strange. I was sitting in an office like any other office, “taking a meeting” by the looks of it, and though it was not, I think, a friendly conversation, it was a conversation nonetheless. We were all people here. And yet these people could walk out the door and I could not.

It occurred to me that I would do just about anything to get back on the other side of that door—back on Sretenka, out of this station, away from these people—and never have to think about them again.

“So, Andrei,” began one of the young FSB officers, “please tell us about yourself.”

This seemed like an innocent enough question, and I wondered if I should answer. I remembered the informal arrestee training we’d done with the old Marxist—don’t say anything. But he’d also said we should confirm our identity. So I answered. I told them about our emigration, that I grew up outside of Boston, that I had studied Russian literature. One of the police detectives claimed not to believe me, at which point one of the FSB guys whipped out an iPhone and offered to look up my profile on the university’s website. I hadn’t visited the site in months and wondered momentarily if I was still on there. But then there I was; there was even a little photo of me, and the FSB guy held up the iPhone in front of him, as if checking the photo against my face. “I think it’s him,” he said, showing the phone to the skeptical detective. The detective agreed that it was me.

Now the other FSB officer, the one holding my passport, said, “Andrei, so, you’re an educated person. How did you get involved with this extremist group?”

I laughed. “Extremist?” I said. “No. They’re not extremists. I met them through hockey.” This was not entirely accurate, but even at this point I felt I shouldn’t drag Yulia into it. I said, “Sergei Ivanov, who’s in October, is our goalie. He’s a good goalie.” I said this in a way that made it clear, I hoped, that no one who played hockey could be an extremist.

“Oh?” said the FSB officer.

“Yes!” I said. “They’re students, for the most part. They’re very sweet.”

“Oh?” said the FSB officer again. He was taking notes and didn’t look up when he spoke.

“Yes!” I looked around the room to see what attitude the others had taken. As I did so I remembered again the grizzled Marxist who told us to keep our mouths shut. But that was then, back in the Soviet era. These guys I was talking to were different; they had iPhones, and even if they weren’t different, still I could clear this up. If they only knew how harmless October was, this whole charade could quickly end. So I kept talking. “They have a reading group,” I said. “Usually it’s at Misha’s house. They discuss the news over email; occasionally they hold a public protest to bring attention to some event. They’re not extremists!”

“Is that Misha Vorobiev?” said the FSB guy. I stopped and looked at him. They knew Misha’s name. So they knew about October. So they knew they weren’t “extremists.”

I hesitated before answering.

“Vorobiev, right?” the FSB guy said again.

“Yes,” I said.

“If they’re not extremists,” said the skeptical detective right away, “what are they, in your opinion?”

“They’re run-of-the-mill European social democrats.”

“What does that mean for Russia? We’re not exactly Europe, after all.”

“What does it mean?” I didn’t quite understand.

“Enlighten us,” said the police detective.

“Well,” I began. They seemed to be all ears. And why not? Sergei had taught me that just about anyone could be convinced of the October cause if you just put yourself in their position and explained things in a sensible manner. These were still young men, living in a corrupt and dying country. They probably wanted things to get better.

“Well,” I said again, “I think we can all agree that Russia is in a difficult situation. It makes a lot of oil and gas, but its economy is not diversified. The entire country is hostage to oil price shocks. For the past twenty years it’s essentially been living off the infrastructure built during the Soviet era, which is now deteriorating. Faith in public institutions is very low.”