A Dialogue with Stalin
The next day, in Stalin’s study.
“It’s settled.”
Those were the first words out of my mouth the moment I opened the door and stepped inside.
Stalin did not look up from his papers. A papirosa sat planted in the ashtray, trailing smoke, while the scratch of a fountain pen across paper filled the room.
“I know.”
That was all he gave me—two words—in answer to the report that his son had broken things off with his lover and come home. Stalin’s reply began and ended there. Whether finding that so thoroughly like him was the judgment of a man from a later age, or simply what Yakov’s own memories felt, I could not say.
“Then you’ll send me to university, as you promised?”
“…A promise is a promise.”
Having said that much, Stalin took up his pipe, rose from his chair, and walked to the window. Backlit against the glass, his profile fell into deep shadow.
“….”
He stood like that for a long while, staring at Moscow reflected in the pane. It could only have been a few minutes. To me, that silence felt like an eternity.
“The offer to arrange a place for you at the Higher Technical School still stands.”
White smoke spilled from Stalin’s pipe.
“Is your answer still the same?”
There was no reason to reverse it.
“…Yes.”
“Is that so.”
Stalin set the pipe between his teeth.
“So you mean to get in on your own merit…”
A thin line of smoke drifted slowly toward the ceiling.
“An admirable ambition. But Yasha… that place is not one you enter on ambition alone.”
His analysis was exact. The Moscow Higher Technical School—Bauman—was among the finest comprehensive universities in the Soviet Union, and in engineering it had always held the top rank.
Unlike the single nationwide exam of a place like Korea’s CSAT, each Soviet university ran its own entrance examination. Coldly put, at Yakov’s present level he would never even clear the threshold of a first-rate school like that.
“So if you truly mean to study, you will need your father’s help. Staking your pride on an exam you are bound to fail is nothing but bravado. Do not mistake it for courage.”
Stalin curled his lip in open contempt. For an instant another man’s face overlaid his—the man I had barely been able to bring myself to call a teacher—and then dissolved.
Professor Park, flinging two years of thesis work onto a desk, and Stalin, dismissing Yakov with the same high disdain. The laughter of men who held authority looked the same across eras and borders.
“…It doesn’t have to be the Higher Technical School.”
Stalin’s brows shifted a fraction.
“Somewhere lesser is fine. An obscure provincial school—if I have to leave Moscow for another city, so be it. I will sit the exam on my own two feet and walk in myself.”
“….”
“If I fail, I take it again. If I fail then too, I keep sitting it until I pass.”
The curl of Stalin’s mouth eased back into place. For the first time, something serious began to settle over his expression.
“I would rather crawl into a third-rate school on my own power than become first-rate on Stalin’s hand. At least that place would be wholly mine.”
I pressed on without pause.
“If I cannot do it myself… then I would rather leave for good. Samara, Kiev, Leningrad—anywhere. Do not try to pen me in.”
I should have stopped there. My mouth moved first.
“And what, exactly, does Father know of me that lets him declare I will fail?”
“…What did you say?”
“Have you ever once looked into what books I read, what I am good at, what I am not? Aside from calling me a ‘stupid fool’ my whole life—has Father ever called me anything else?”
The warning in my head went unheeded by my tongue.
“You decide my failure for me and try to lock me inside that limit… but the one sitting the entrance exam is not Father. It is me. An exam I will take with my own head and my own hands. So how can you pronounce the result in advance!”
…Damn.
Only after the words were out did my mind catch up. Those had not been my words. Not, at least, words I had chosen of my own will. A clot of rage that had burst out on its own before Stalin’s mockery. I swallowed the afterheat of that feeling and held it down.
“….”
My heart was still hammering. Stalin said nothing for a long time. Once the moment cooled, I squeezed my eyes shut and reproached myself for not yielding an inch—but words are like water: once poured out, they cannot be gathered up again.
Stalin set his pipe down slowly. Looking at the son who had just emptied his anger, the scorn was already gone from his eyes. I had expected fury, and that absence of it only tightened the knot in my chest.
“…You are right.”
That answer, too, was unexpected.
“Judging the outcome beforehand was hasty of me. I will grant that I got ahead of myself.”
Stalin, taking a step back…? That iron General Secretary? I watched the change without understanding it.
He lifted the corner of his mouth and went on. This time it was not a sneer.
“Very well. You said you would walk the hard road on your own feet. Do so.”
“You mean…?”
“You said it yourself a moment ago. That you would sit the exam on your own strength. That you would leave Moscow and go anywhere.”
A chill ran down my spine. Strictly speaking, those had not been my words—but I forced that unspeakable thought back down my throat.
“Wait a moment.”
Stalin sat at the desk again and picked up a sheet of paper. Through the translucent page I could make out the heading: documents on technical colleges. Had Stalin, in his own way, been looking after Yakov’s prospects all along?
A little later, the name of a university left his mouth.
“Leningrad Polytech. That should do. The entrance examination is still about two months off.”
Leningrad. The instant the name touched my ear—
After Lenin’s death the city was renamed Leningrad from Petrograd. Its original name was Saint Petersburg, capital of the old empire. Second city of the Soviet Union, and the stronghold of Politburo member Grigory Zinoviev.
That whisper again. I packed the memories granted by possession down into my mind and ran a quick analysis of the situation.
Leningrad…
By an awkward coincidence, in the original history it was precisely here that Yakov had gone after his conflict with Stalin over marrying Zoya. And Zinoviev. Holding the chairmanship of the Soviet, he would attack Stalin’s faction at this winter’s Party Congress and formally break with him. I already knew which side would be the one left in ruins at the end of that road.
More to the point—sending his own son into a city like that, of all places? I could not help thinking Stalin was not merely considering Yakov’s career, but laying down some political piece of his own.
Well… he is Stalin.
That was reason enough.
“I will arrange lodging for you. Do not refuse this. ‘Kato’ would be grieved.”
Kato. Ekaterina “Kato” Svanidze. Stalin’s first wife, and the mother who had given birth to this body. At that word, a fragment of memory stirred in a corner of Yakov’s past. In truth, Kato was someone of whom not even a face remained for him.
She had died nine months after bearing Yakov, and the ones who had actually held and raised him were neither Kato nor Stalin, but her family—the Svanidzes.
I had not expected the name “Kato” to leave Stalin’s mouth. By temperament, when Stalin lost something he did not simply bury it in his chest and move on; he either erased it completely or clung to it without end.
Later psychological readings of the man put him in the former camp. But the Stalin before me now looked like nothing more than a middle-aged man still mourning a dead wife.
“…Understood. Thank you for the consideration, Father.”
Stalin gave a small nod. That was the end of the conversation between father and son. Watching him incline his head with his usual indifference, I left the study without hesitation.
The corridor outside was quiet. I had taken only a couple of steps when someone rounded the corner and nearly ran into me—a woman with dark brown hair drawn up neatly.
“Oh, Yasha…!”
In a plain dress and apron, she smiled brightly. In one hand she carried a tray with two teacups and a sugar bowl. Yakov knew perfectly well who she was.
“Nadezhda Sergeyevna…”
“Hm…? Yasha, is something wrong?”
A slip. Using her name and patronymic together made her tilt her head in concern. I hastily dug through Yakov’s memories and switched to the nickname for my stepmother.
“Is the talk already over? I brought a little tea for Soso and you.”
“Ah… it finished cleanly enough.”
“It’s been a long time since I saw Soso smile. It seems he has finally opened his heart to you.”
Hardly. Stalin treating his family with warmth? Neither I nor Yakov could imagine such a thing.
I bowed briefly and passed her by. Nadezhda looked as if she had something more to say, hesitated, then turned and headed for Stalin’s study. Before the door closed, his voice drifted out.
“Nadia, just two sugars.”
“I know.”
An ordinary exchange between husband and wife—the everyday talk that goes with a cup of tea. And this was the woman who, seven years from now, would fall into depression and end her life with a pistol.
Yakov thought that bleak future had to be rewritten. I agreed, turned my head, and walked on down the corridor.