Katerina Sokolova
That day's discussion turned into a full-blown debate that stretched a full eight hours.
I did not simply sit and watch, either. How could anyone pass up the chance to talk with living, breathing Marshals of the Soviet Union?
"To inflict maximum damage, one must make contact with the enemy across the widest possible front… I've heard something like that before, haven't I?"
"Comrade Dzhugashvili is right! The age when a single strategic victory decides the fate of a war is already over. In an era when trains can pour endless reserves onto the field, what matters most is supply and mobility."
Zhukov and Rokossovsky both nodded in admiration. The debate had no end. At every station they produced a fresh topic, and I carefully unpacked the theories of modern warfare and the shape of future conflicts I had kept locked in my head, reshaping them to fit the Soviet Union as it stood now.
I never once used the phrase deep operations—the doctrine that would one day become the foundation of the entire communist bloc. The words did not yet exist in the world. Instead I casually let slip notions such as "simultaneous strikes against the depth of the enemy's defenses" and "methods of disrupting rear-area reserves."
Our time slipped away like that, and the end finally came into view. City lights began to reappear beyond the windows; the train was slowing.
"We will shortly arrive in Leningrad…!"
The conductor's cry passed through the carriage. At the same moment Zhukov stood, brushing crumbs of bread from his coat. Rokossovsky unfolded his long legs and rose as well. I was still straightening my seat and pulling out my rucksack when a long shadow fell across me.
"Comrade Dzhugashvili."
Zhukov held out his hand.
"Thanks to you the trip to Leningrad wasn't boring. That fellow Kostya talks a lot but never has anything solid to say—he's a dull one."
"Oh? Saying that now, are we?"
Rokossovsky pulled a comically offended face. He too offered me his hand.
"I had a good time too, Yasha."
Somewhere along the way he had begun calling me by the familiar diminutive. I took his solid grip and answered with his own.
"I enjoyed it as well. And it was an honor to meet you, Kostya."
"What's an honor about meeting some cavalry regiment commander who's a dime a dozen?"
Rokossovsky laughed and waved it off. I had meant every word. I had shared black bread and eight hours of talk with men who until now had lived only inside history books. No scholar had ever managed that; I had.
"We'll probably stay in Leningrad another month or so. Remember the place I mentioned? Don't forget—come find us."
"Of course. I'll be sure to call on you."
"If only Budyonny and Voroshilov thought the way you do…"
"Kostya! Stop the nonsense and get over here!"
Zhukov, already some distance away, shouted. Rokossovsky nodded, looked at me, briefly doffed his service cap, then set it back on his head. I returned the gesture. He followed Zhukov down from the train.
The backs of the two heroes who would one day save the Soviet Union from the German invasion disappeared into the crowd. The Eastern Front that began with Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941… and where would I be by then?
I stood staring for a long moment before I finally picked up my trunk and stepped down from the carriage.
The air of Leningrad was far colder and damper than Moscow's. Standing on the platform I felt the inside pocket of my overcoat. It was time to take out the envelope Stalin had given me.
Fingering the envelope I walked out of the station into a broad square. Straight ahead lay the entrance to Nevsky Prospekt. The square in front of Leningrad Station looked little different from its Moscow counterpart. Even after dark the Nepmen kept trading under the streetlamps while Soviet citizens bought late-night snacks.
"Comrade Yakov Svanidze?"
Someone called from behind me—not by the name Dzhugashvili, but by my mother's surname, Svanidze.
"It's Dzhugashvili, not Svanidze."
"I am aware. Svanidze is your mother's family name."
I turned toward the voice. Beneath a streetlamp stood a woman. The moment our eyes met she placed a hand formally over her chest and bowed. Her black coat streamed in Leningrad's damp, heavy wind. Below the hem cocoa-colored stockings caught the light. My gaze lingered a moment too long on the slender legs before I deliberately raised it again and met her eyes.
"If I startled you, I apologize."
"Are you the contact Nadya mentioned—the one who would help me in Leningrad?"
"I am, Comrade Dzhugashvili."
She lifted the corners of her mouth just enough, narrowed her eyes slightly, and nodded with a smile.
"Katerina Alekseyevna Sokolova."
Somehow the entire sequence felt thoroughly trained, slightly unnatural.
"I see. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Katerina."
I set down the trunk and inclined my head lightly. When I looked up again she regarded me with an unreadable expression, then smiled, drew off her glove, and offered her hand.
"Please call me Katya. It's simpler."
I took Katerina's hand and nodded. It was ice-cold; she must have been waiting near the station for quite some time.
Same as ever—the ones who get ground down are always the people at the bottom…
Watching her pretend composure while hiding the chill, I remembered the days I had risen before dawn to race the bakery opening for my thesis advisor's daughter. She too had clearly been suffering in the cold the way I once had. Nadezhda had said she would arrange help, but in truth this was almost certainly an aide—and a watcher—attached to me by General Secretary Stalin himself. The real question was which of those two roles she leaned toward more.
From the corner of my eye I studied her profile as she gripped the wheel. And then—
Sokolova (Соколова). The house of the falcon—sokol. A name not uncommon among military families of imperial Russia.
That whisper again. Fresh information about Katerina settled into my mind. Descendant of falcons… I could only hope her talons were not aimed at me.
That aside—why had she addressed me as Svanidze rather than Dzhugashvili? On Stalin's orders? To keep his foolish son from using the Dzhugashvili name? With a man like Stalin it was possible. People of his sort needed everything under their control before they could rest easy. This was surely a petty little revenge for my having refused his command.
At the same time I was able to study Katerina's face at close range. Emerald eyes beneath long lashes, a high bridge of nose, thin lips, and bright golden hair falling past her shoulders. The gold was pinned up neatly, yet a few wind-tossed strands had slipped free against her temples. She was a beauty.
"It will grow cold soon. I've held an automobile ready. Shall we go?"
An avtomobil? Did she mean a car? In this period only a handful of Party high-ups and senior officers owned automobiles. The wall of suspicion I had carefully kept in place thinned by a layer. At least it did not seem someone was impersonating Stalin's envoy in order to spirit me away somewhere.
The place Katerina led me to held a sleek classic automobile—though of course in this age it would have been called the latest model. I had no idea of the make. Automotive history and model names had never interested me. In any case, as we approached the rather crude machine that still had not quite shaken off the silhouette of a carriage, Katerina opened the door.
— Kuuuung…!
The car shuddered once; through the cold night air came a sharp reek of oil and the hot breath of an engine already running hard. White smoke belched from the exhaust pipe at the rear and dissolved messily into Leningrad's damp fog.
"I've arranged lodgings near the school. Unpack, rest well, and be outside by eight in the morning. I'll come to collect you, so don't worry."
Good heavens— a personal secretary to meet me at the station. So this was the golden spoon… or rather the General Secretary's spoon.
The black automobile that still resembled a carriage pulled away smoothly.
"Is this your first time in Leningrad?"
The voice came from the seat beside me once we had eased away from Moskovsky Station and I had finally escaped the bone-cutting cold.
"Mm… I've been once before, actually."
Leningrad. Capital of the Russian Empire, city of three names. In imperial days it had been Saint Petersburg; during the Great War, Petrograd; after Lenin's death, Leningrad—only to become Saint Petersburg again once the Soviet Union collapsed. Today was 22 April 1925: exactly one year since Lenin had died.
Lost in thought, I watched the streetlamps of Nevsky Prospekt slide slowly past the window for several dozen minutes.
"How shall I put it… the atmosphere is quite different from Moscow."
Leningrad's nightscape unfurled before my eyes. Even at this late hour the white nights had not fully surrendered; electric lights and café windows glowed warmly along both sides of Nevsky Prospekt. Through the glass I saw people. Coats draped over chair backs, smiling faces talking across steaming cups of coffee.
One man held a newspaper open with solemn concentration; another shared a happy moment with the lover opposite him. Outside a street stall, workers with collars turned up clustered around hot bread, blowing on it between bites. Boiled potatoes, warm loaves, pickled herring… the smells of food slipped in through the gap in the window.
"Leningrad seems a fairly livable city in its own way."
"It was, after all, the capital of the empire. The empire fell, the revolution succeeded, yet its remnants still linger here and there, living alongside the people."
Katerina was right. Pastel façades, rounded arched windows, wrought-iron balconies—imperial buildings lined both sides of the avenue; not one of them looked hastily thrown up.
A century, two centuries of layered imperial inheritance. Even after the Soviet regime took power, those inheritances still stood in the very heart of the Union's borders and continued to function.
"Comrade Svanidze, what do you make of these remnants?"
"What do you mean… of what, exactly?"
"The tsar's palaces, the nobles' mansions, the empire's cathedrals… even after the Soviets arrived, those buildings still stand in the middle of the streets. Some say they must be torn down; others say they must be preserved."
Her voice was almost weightless. The glance that waited for my answer drifted casually toward the rear-view mirror.
"Which side are you on, Comrade?"