Cadet Candidate Yakov (1)
The Trojan Horse.
It meant the deception the Achaean alliance had used in their war against Troy—history’s greatest ruse, known now to everyone.
“…Are you saying that I am that horse?”
My voice carried low through the sealed room.
Mikoyan answered only with a smile as he drew a pipe from his coat. It was a papirosa of the kind Stalin favored.
“Heh. Think of it however you like. Koba said a frontal clash is still premature… but I rather think the moment is right.”
— Tap, tap.
Mikoyan knocked the pipe against the ashtray. The sound was like a guillotine blade dropping into place.
“That will do for today. Pack too much into a man’s head and he never sleeps at night.”
He set the pipe between his teeth. Smoke climbed slowly above the lamp.
“What you need to know, you will learn when the time comes. Until then, simply be a good cadet. An exemplary figure in every eye… a flawless superman, if you can manage it.”
With that, Mikoyan dismissed me. The interview was over.
Beyond the car window, Leningrad’s damp fog spread and blurred.
Katerina’s profile at the wheel was set like carved stone; I must have looked the same.
“Kacha.”
“…Yes.”
“I’m thoroughly confused right now. Dragged off without warning to an entrance interview at the Military-Political School, then meeting a Soviet Party committee member… and now a Trojan Horse? What is that supposed to mean?”
“…….”
“I never imagined any of this! Haah…”
The storm of questions had worn my mind raw. Had it been naïve of me to think I would simply enroll at the Polytechnic and be done with it? The man on the other side of this was Stalin, after all—the Red Tsar of the Soviet Union, the butcher, the emotionless machine… I had underestimated him, with all those damning traits attached to his name.
When my complaints finally ebbed, Katerina spoke.
“What has happened to Comrade Svanidze is most regrettable.”
She still faced the road ahead.
“But there are those who must fulfill the duties given them from birth. People like me—and like you, Yakov. I call that fate.”
“Fate…”
Her slender hand, gloved in white, tightened hard on the wheel.
“Being set in a place you never asked for. And doing the work that place demands of you. That is the whole of fate. So asking me changes nothing.”
“…Then I’m simply to accept fate without protest?”
“Whether you accept it or not is your own affair, Comrade.”
But both of us already knew the truth. We were the sort of people who had no choice but to accept it.
Kacha glanced back at me for a moment. Her emerald eyes caught the glow of a streetlamp through the fog, then let it go.
The car drove on through the mist…
A few days later, the day of enrollment at the Military-Political School arrived.
In the meantime a letter had come from Zhukov and Rokossovsky. The main points were that they had now graduated and would be leaving Leningrad, and that they wanted to meet in the city for a drink before reporting to their new posts.
Zhukov and Rokossovsky want to drink with me…?!
I read the letter twice—no, three times. The words on the page never changed, yet my eyes kept dragging over them. If I could carry this paper into the future, what would people say? The rediscovery of Zhukov and Rokossovsky… ah, that was getting ahead of myself.
I fixed the place and time from the end of the letter in my mind and read the postscript.
P.S. I can’t say for certain yet, but we may have one more man joining us on the appointed day.
A soldier from the Weimar Republic heard what you said and has taken an interest.
— Zhukov
Written in Zhukov’s voice. A soldier from the Weimar Republic, though? Who could that be?
Even as the question formed, I tried to guess which Weimar officers might be coming to the Soviet Union in this period. The Weimar Republic was, simply put, the German republic of the interwar years—the precursor to Nazi Germany, if one wanted to put it a little uncomfortably. At any rate: a Weimar soldier. Did I know any of them?
“We’ve arrived.”
While my imagination ran free, the car had already pulled up before the Military-Political School, red flags stirring in the wind.
“Not a cloud in the sky…”
Why did the weather always turn so fair on days like this?
Kacha said she would come back for me once enrollment was finished, then hurried away. The Tolmachev Academy’s term was also about to begin; she had business of her own to settle there.
The first day’s routine was simple enough: fill out forms, draw issue gear, get a clean head-shave, and receive a dormitory assignment.
…This felt uncomfortably like the first day of boot camp.
Of course the Military-Political School differed from the Korean army in many ways—weekends free to leave campus and roam, for instance. Still, I sat at the long table and took up a pen.
Name, origin, social origin, Party affiliation… I filled the blanks at a leisurely pace, relying mainly on Yakov’s memories. The one notable exception was writing the name as Yakov Svanidze. Svanidze had been his mother’s surname, and every detail of my personal record had been aligned to match. So at least in Leningrad I was not Yakov Dzhugashvili, but Yakov Svanidze.
When the forms were done, the candidate cadets formed a line before a narrow window. An instructor inside took each set of papers and directed the candidates into a side rank. Instructor Lapin caught my eye and grinned from ear to ear. Whatever pleased him so much, he always wore a smile.
He produced a pair of shears from his coat.
And then—
— Snip, snip.
One by one the hair of the lined-up cadets vanished. Even Stalin’s son could not escape it.
Next came the issue of gear: greatcoat, boots, mess kit, blanket—every item steeped in that distinctive Red Army flavor. Receiving the budenovka, the peaked cap unique to the Red Army, made me feel for the first time that I had truly become a Soviet soldier. Modeled on the pointed helms of the medieval Kievan Rus’, the cap had been worn from the Civil War straight through to the Winter War of 1940.
It had also, incidentally, cost countless Soviet lives in that later war; the red star fixed dead-center on the crown stood out far too brightly against the snow. But that was a story for much later. Right now the first order of business was simply gathering the armload of gear.
Greatcoat, blanket—the stack swayed precariously in my arms. Only after jamming the cap firmly under my chin could I manage a few steps. In that awkward shuffle I made for the assigned dormitory.
Inside, the place looked exactly like an old army barracks. Beds lined both walls; at the far end of the central aisle stood a small cast-iron stove in place of a television. My assigned spot was the farthest one in. I set the gear down and caught my breath; others began to filter in one by one. We exchanged curt nods and nothing more. I was among them.
But moments like these usually produce someone who refuses to stay invisible.
“Hello! Glad to meet you all!”
A young man shoved the door open and strode in. He seemed to be the owner of the last empty bed—tall, skin deeply tanned by the sun, with clear gray-blue eyes like glass marbles and high cheekbones that folded the corners of his eyes into a bright crease whenever he smiled. He hung his bundle of gear carelessly from one hand and planted himself in the middle of the room.
“My name’s Augusts Gailis! From Riga, Latvia. Just call me Gili!”
Even after that enthusiastic greeting, everyone only rolled their eyes awkwardly. Gailis paid it no mind and pressed on.
“Why’s everybody frozen solid? We’re going to be knocking around together for years at least, so lighten up! Come on—names!”
He clapped the nearest candidate on the shoulder. The name came out as if shoved. The next man, and the next after him, offered their names and a brief introduction. By the time Gailis had worked his way around the room, the frozen air had begun to thaw.
What a strange fellow.
Every candidate in the room must have thought the same. Yet none of us found him grating; there was something warm and almost welcome in that shameless good humor.
And of course my turn arrived as well.
“…Yakov Svanidze.”
“Yakov? Great—then I’ll call you Yasha!”
I snorted a short laugh and nodded at being given a nickname on first meeting. But I could not smile as brightly as he did.
Did Gailis know?
Augusts Gailis. Soviet political commissar who operated under the alias A. Neuberg; Comintern military advisor to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
Did he know that my true identity was the son of the General Secretary who would one day purge him?