The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (39 page)

Natalya Solzhenitsyn: “Sister of My Work”

A
lthough twenty years separate Natalya’s beginnings from Solzhenitsyn’s, the couple had major things in common: the gulag and the Second World War, which afflicted his life, had also scarred her childhood. She was born on July 22, 1939, months after her grandfather, Ferdinand Svetlov, a prominent Bolshevik publicist, was purged. Sentenced to eight years in the concentration camps of the Komi Republic, the harsh climate had killed him before his term ended.

Natalya does not remember her father, Dmitry Velikorodny. She was an infant when in 1941, during the Nazis’ advance on Moscow, he volunteered for the ill-equipped people’s militia and perished. What Natalya remembers from early childhood was her family’s dire need and hunger (they lived with her widowed grandmother). Her mother, Ekaterina Ferdinandovna, a student at the Moscow Aviation Institute where she also worked, alone supported the family. They also had to send food parcels to Natalya’s grandfather
in the gulag until his death in 1943. Natalya’s humble beginnings were familiar to Solzhenitsyn, also raised by a single mother whom authorities harassed as “a social alien.” Natalya’s mother, however, managed to circumvent Soviet questionnaires designed to detect suspect political backgrounds. She became an aeronautical engineer and worked in defense, the most guarded sector of all.

Natalya remembers wartime Moscow, getting up in the dark, as the city was under blackout, and taking long rides on a double-decker trolley to the kindergarten at the Aviation Institute. Her mother told stories to distract her from the cold and hunger. In the evenings, Natalya was always last to be picked up because her mother worked overtime. The Aviation Institute employed test pilots who came to fetch their children from the kindergarten. “I watched them come for their boys and girls, watched with envy and hope: what if my father was alive? What if some man … would come and ask for me, ‘And where is Natasha Svetlova?’”
694

But she did not feel miserable in childhood: in fact, her first memory was waking up with joy. Hardship made her stronger and taught her to appreciate being alive in a country plagued by war and genocide. She possessed the same vitality that enabled Solzhenitsyn to survive the war, prison camp, and a cancer clinic. His past mattered to Natalya a great deal: he was a living link to the father and grandfather she never knew. Two decades into her marriage, Natalya would say, “I am grateful to God for keeping Alexander Isaevich alive … that we have healthy and wonderful sons.… ”
695

Her mother was often away on business trips and Natalya, left on her own, made good use of her grandfather’s exquisite library. It had rare volumes of literary and historical works published before Stalin’s era and no longer available. When, in high school, she studied Stalin’s course on Communist Party history, she compared it against these original works. Her interest in Bolshevik history and knowledge of undistorted facts would impress Solzhenitsyn.

Learning to type at twelve on a German Torpedo typewriter her mother owned, Natalya produced samizdat poems by Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva, bound the copies herself, and gave them to
friends. Coincidentally, Tsvetaeva was also esteemed by Solzhenitsyn, who particularly liked her prose.

Natalya was ambitious in school, graduating with a gold medal. She also engaged in sports, winning the Soviet Union’s rowing championship twice, and pursued mountain climbing, skiing, and shooting rapids. As a university student, she went hiking and skiing in the Urals, the Caucasus, and the Altai Mountains and also traveled to Tyan Shan and Pamir. (In winter 1959, her group was caught in a blizzard in the Caucasus and spent the night in a mountain valley. By morning, their skis were irretrievably buried in snow, requiring them to walk back to base. All survived, but with serious frostbite.)

Natalya wanted to be a journalist, like her grandfather, but during an orientation day at Moscow University realized that hardliners were still in control and her training would consist of ideological drills. Her generation was steeped in Khrushchev’s Thaw and believed in freedom of expression. To maintain it, Natalya chose mathematics, which she had liked in school, and continued her literary pursuits on her own. She entered the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, known for its open-mindedness (in 1965, Mandelstam’s first poetry evening would be held there). Solzhenitsyn had made a similar choice before the war, which he called his “mathematical rescue.” He studied mathematics and physics at Rostov University because Soviet literature was so infected by politics that just discussing it could land one in trouble.

At twenty-one, Natalya married Andrei Tiurin, a gifted mathematician, who had joined her skiing expeditions and shared her interests in samizdat. Their son Dmitry was born a year later, but the marriage would not last. In 1962, the year Dmitry was born, Natalya read Solzhenitsyn’s novella
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
. She “immediately sensed it was a great event.”
696

It was a feeling many across the country shared. When Alexander Tvardovsky, the editor of
Novy Mir
, first read Solzhenitsyn’s manuscript, he sensed the emergence of a powerful new literature. Having read the novella at night, the editor could barely wait to share his
impressions. In the morning, he burst into his friends’ apartment shouting that a new great writer was born, that he had never read anything like this before. Realizing that Khrushchev alone could sanction publication of the gulag writer, Tvardovsky gave him the manuscript. This was before the XXII Party Congress dismantling Stalin’s personality cult. Khrushchev gave his personal permission to publish the novella, and it came out on time for the congress. Delegates received a red book with Khrushchev’s speech and a blue volume of the magazine with Solzhenitsyn’s novella.

Ivan Denisovich
became the first published account about the gulag in the Soviet Union. The novella was not only a work of literature: it was a political event, which rocked the country after decades of dictatorship and made the author an instant celebrity. The magazine’s total circulation of one hundred thousand copies was sold out in a single day. But the demand was much greater: there were waiting lists to read it. Playing on the novella’s title, a reader sent a telegram to the magazine: “I congratulate you with one day that has changed the world.”
697
Solzhenitsyn received hundreds of letters, many from former gulag inmates. Famous writers and intellectuals sought his acquaintance. Akhmatova, then living in Moscow, invited Solzhenitsyn and told him that she was happy to have lived to see his novella and that everyone in the Soviet Union should read it. Akhmatova also introduced Solzhenitsyn to Elena Bulgakov, to whom he gave a signed copy of the magazine with his novella. (Over the years, Solzhenitsyn would stay in touch with Elena, sending her postcards and photographs.) The novella soon became an international event: translated into many languages, it was published in Europe and in America.

Natalya did not seek acquaintance with Solzhenitsyn when he became a celebrity. Actually, she could have met him through her dissident circle if she had wanted to, but her time was consumed with her motherly duties and the graduate school where she studied under the world-famous mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov. Their meeting was predestined, however. In 1968, Solzhenitsyn’s major ally Natalya Stolyarova, who had arranged to smuggle the
microfilm of
The Gulag Archipelago
abroad, told the writer he needed to broaden his network of allies and meet energetic young people. She suggested Natalya, whom she had met at Nadezhda Mandelstam’s house.

Solzhenitsyn’s encounter with Natalya took place at her apartment on August 28, 1968. A week earlier, Soviet tanks had rolled into Prague to crush Czechoslovakia’s attempt to liberalize its Communist regime. In Moscow, a group of seven young dissidents went to Red Square to express solidarity with the Prague Spring. Just as the protesters unfolded their banner, they were beaten by the KGB and rushed away in police cars. Solzhenitsyn had learned about this from a BBC broadcast, while Natalya offered her insider view. She had ties to the emerging human-rights movement: two members of the group were her friends, and she had considered joining them in Red Square.

And now this intense young woman with her dark hair swept forward above her hazel eyes and without a trace of affectation in her manner and her dress was telling me not just how the demonstration had gone but even how it had been planned.… I was very taken with her fervent social concern—this was my kind of temperament. I could not wait to involve her in our work!
698

This conversation established immediate trust between them and Solzhenitsyn asked Natalya whether she could type
The First Circle
. He gave her a long version of the novel containing ninety-six chapters. She willingly accepted, but told him that she was working on her doctorate and teaching undergraduate classes, so she could only work for two hours each evening. Natalya and her six-year-old son shared a small apartment with her mother, stepfather, and grandmother, and the only room where she could type was their small kitchen.

The work took Natalya four months to complete, and during this period Solzhenitsyn visited many times. Natalya proved to
be a capable and interested editor and, aside from typing, suggested changes, verified facts, and presented Solzhenitsyn with meticulous queries. “She even put me right on details of Communist Party history, not an area in which I had expected her to have any expertise.…” Natalya was typing his chapters without a single error and “with an excellent eye for presentation,” an aspect Solzhenitsyn had not considered before. His manuscripts were dense, double-sided pages, typed without margins and paragraphs. He was an underground writer perennially fearing a search, and his only concern was condensing text to save space. Solzhenitsyn’s official life in Soviet letters ended soon after Khruschchev’s ouster in 1964. By the time he met Natalya, his several publications had been removed from library shelves and he was under close KGB watch.

On one of his visits, he asked Natalya whether she could keep his illicit archive, to which she replied that “she would take care of it.” She organized an efficient system of storing his papers. First of all, she read everything he wrote, then sorted his manuscripts and catalogued them, specifying what was in each bundle.

Because Solzhenitsyn was under surveillance, Natalya could not store his archive at her apartment: the KGB knew all his comings and goings. It had to be smuggled out by her regular visitors. Her exhusband Tiurin, who often came to visit their son, would not raise suspicion, so Natalya approached him first. Tiurin agreed to take the risk and arranged for his sister Galina, a professor of algebra, to store the archive at her place. She kept the manuscripts in her attic with her skiing equipment, and even her family did not know.

Natalya’s major concern was not for her own safety or even that of her friends: the arrangement had to suit Solzhenitsyn first. Her system, resembling interlibrary loans, allowed him to quickly retrieve any paper from his archive. “She would keep track of everything herself—who was storing what and how it was to be collected and returned—leaving my head clear for other things. I just had to deliver what I had finished and order what I needed.” For a writer who treasured his time, the arrangement was perfect. Natalya numbered a duplicate set of postage stamps, creating a
catalogue to identify the bundles. She kept one set at home, along with a coded list, and another on the packages. When Solzhenitsyn placed an order, Natalya checked her catalogue and passed the proper stamp to Tiurin, who gave it to Galina. Her conspiratorial system worked flawlessly: “To describe her as businesslike would be an understatement; she worked with an alacrity, meticulousness, and lack of fuss that were the equal of any man.”

In Natalya he found a trusted friend who was also of the same mind, and helpful on various fronts. He discussed with her everything from his writing to conspiratorial work and response to the authorities, including how and when to act. “Hitherto, I had faced all my crucial strategic decisions alone, but now I had gained an extra pair of critical eyes, someone I could argue things out with and who, at the same time, was a dependable counselor, whose spirit and manner were as unyielding as my own.” He became smitten by the much-younger woman, perspicacious and dedicated to his cause, and wanted to see her more often.

Nearing fifty, he was married to Natalya Reshetovskaya, his high school sweetheart.
699
She had recently helped Solzhenitsyn with correspondence and had worked secretly to microfilm his novel
The Gulag Archipelago
. But the relationship was strained by many things: his arrest, imprisonment, and divorce (Reshetovskaya had married another man while Solzhenitsyn was in the gulag). The couple remarried after Solzhenitsyn’s return, but had continual disagreements. Solzhenitsyn maintained that his work came first and, while quarreling with her, would say, “I don’t need a wife, I don’t need a family, I need to write my novel.”
700
His second Natalya, Alya, as he called her affectionately, knew instinctively what he needed and requested nothing for herself.

The fourth or fifth time we met, I put my hands on her shoulders as one does when expressing gratitude and confidence to a friend. And this gesture instantly turned our lives upside down: from now on she was Alya, my second wife, and two years later our first son was born.

Months into their acquaintance, Natalya told a friend, “I was very fond of my husband but until now I never knew what love was.”
701
They became “firmly united” in November 1968 when both discovered they wanted a child. Although Solzhenitsyn thought radiation treatment for his cancer had left him infertile, he was hoping for a miracle.

In the fall of 1968, Solzhenitsyn’s novels
Cancer Ward
and
First Circle
appeared in the West and became bestsellers. The following year, the American Academy of Arts and Letters made him an honorary member. But recognition in the West only intensified harassment at home. Having received threats and realizing that the KGB could kill him, Solzhenitsyn decided to designate a literary heir. All of his manuscripts were in Natalya’s hands, including
The Gulag Archipelago
, the novel that contained more than two hundred testimonies of former inmates. It was only logical to turn over his literary estate to her: Solzhenitsyn wrote a will and was relieved that his work was placed in “the firm and faithful hands of my heir.”