The Interview
In the middle of the school grounds stood the statues of Lenin and Nikolai Tolmachov, imposing in their dignity.
Apart from those, it was an unremarkable university of plain gray stone walls and iron gates. That was the first impression the Military-Political School made.
But the plainness lasted only until one passed through the main gate.
Not a single cadet crossing the drill ground opened his mouth. Hundreds of men moved through the space, yet the only sound was the tramp of boots on earth. Inside the school there was no idle talk, no laughter, not even the ordinary clearing of a throat.
Men passed one another without meeting eyes; no one broke the rhythm of his step. It was a place where silence itself was discipline, and discipline was the very air. The warmth of the city seemed to have been left outside the iron gates.
It feels nothing like what I saw from outside.
Katerina stopped in front of one of the buildings.
“From here you go alone. The interview room is on the third floor of this building, the room on the far right.” She handed me the trunk and lowered her voice. “…Good luck, Comrade Jugashvili.”
There was a trace of expectation and encouragement in the words. I nodded and stepped inside.
— Knock, knock.
A brief permission answered the quiet rap.
“Come in.”
I opened the door. Three men sat behind a long table. Exactly as Katerina had said.
On the far left, a man with arms folded, motionless. The red-army tunic with its high collar showed not a single crease; one look told you he was a soldier. There was no need to ask who he was. Instructor Savelyev, without a doubt.
On the far right, a plump, good-natured man lounged against the back of his chair and sent me a smiling glance. That would be Lapin.
And in the center… a gaunt man with sunken cheeks, peering over round spectacles first at the papers and then at my face. Voronin, it seemed.
“Name… Yakov Svanidze?”
The dry, middle-aged voice belonged to Savelyev. For an instant I almost corrected him to Jugashvili, then closed my mouth. Katerina’s words came back to me.
So this is what she meant when she said it would be hard for them to know I was Stalin’s son…
“Technical-school graduate… a boy with no military experience whatsoever.” The rustle of papers being turned roughly sounded unnaturally loud.
“No military experience? How did such a person get this far? Comrade Lapin…!” The man in the middle, Voronin, snapped his head to the left and barked, “Who on earth recommended him?!”
Savelyev’s commanding tone made Lapin fumble a handkerchief from his pocket and mop his brow as he answered.
“Ah, Comrade Anastas Mikoyan recommended him…”
“What? The Party Committee man from Rostov-on-Don? The youngest People’s Commissar, a rising figure—why would he recommend a student like this for political officer?”
Voronin’s astonished reply left me astonished as well. The letter of recommendation inside the envelope had been Stalin’s. Yet the name on the examiners’ lips was Mikoyan’s.
What is going on…?
Or rather… had the name on the recommendation been Mikoyan’s all along, not Stalin’s?
I thought quickly. Yakov and Mikoyan had never met. The only explanation was that Stalin had asked him to write it. Anastas Mikoyan—I knew he had been called one of the Caucasian trio with Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, but was he still working with Stalin at this time?
“Even if it is Comrade Mikoyan’s recommendation, this is the Military-Political School! We train commissars who will become the heart of the Red Army, men who hone both ideology and force of arms. And he recommends a technical-school student with no military record? Is he not insulting us?!” Voronin raised his voice, glancing between the papers and Lapin’s face.
“Now, now, Comrade Voronin. Calm yourself. We are still in the middle of an interview.” Lapin stuffed the sweat-soaked handkerchief back into his pocket and hurried to interject. “And that exacting, thorough Comrade Mikoyan would not recommend someone without good reason, would he? He must have been certain of the lad’s Party spirit, at least.”
“Ha—Party spirit? You there, Svanidze!” Voronin shouted at me. “Are you a member of the Communist Party?”
“If necessary, I am willing to join.”
In truth, as long as Stalin remained General Secretary I would have to join the Party someday. He would not want political attacks over a son who had never even become a member, and he would keep pressing me.
“What—what did you say…?! A non-Party man dares open the door of this interview room and apply to the Military-Political School…?”
Ignorant of the background, Voronin found my calm answer simply outrageous. His face flushed purple; at last he could not contain himself. He slammed the table with his fist and shot to his feet.
“Comrade Lapin! Do you call this reasonable?! Putting a half-grown boy who is not even a Party member into a chair…!”
“Wh-what? Comrade Svanidze, is that true? With Comrade Mikoyan’s recommendation I naturally assumed you were a Party member…” Lapin mopped the cold sweat from his forehead in agitation.
Voronin’s ferocious presence looked ready to drag me out of the room and pack me off to some distant Siberian gulag. Through it all I kept my breathing steady.
Well, I don’t mind being thrown out.
I had come only because Stalin insisted. As a historian I might have been curious about a 1920s Soviet political school, but otherwise I would never have given the place a second glance. The same went for Yakov. A man who had walked the path of engineering his whole life was hardly cut out to be a political officer.
So I fixed my eyes calmly on the purple-faced Voronin and was about to continue when—
— Tap!
“Everyone, quiet.”
Savelyev, who had sat with folded arms on the left, lightly rapped the table with one finger. Voronin and Lapin closed their mouths at the same instant, as if by prior agreement.
“If he graduated from a technical school he is still not even of age. Ask a minor whether he has joined the Communist Party and of course he will say he has not yet, Comrade Voronin.”
“Th-that is true, but…”
“And you seem to be under a misapprehension… A recommendation is nothing more than a ticket that lets a man open this door. The real interview has not even begun, so why are you trying to crush a young seedling’s spirit!”
— Crack!
“If by any chance Comrade Mikoyan rejected ‘your’ proposals and that is why you are acting this way, I will not sit still, Voronin…!”
Savelyev’s angry palm struck the desk again. The wooden table splintered and collapsed with a crash.
“H-hiiik…!!!”
“C-calm yourself! I did not mean it that way!”
Lapin and Voronin froze solid.
…This was not going the way I had expected.
“Listen, Comrade Svanidze.” The dry soldier’s voice pierced my eardrums. “When you leave this room, whether you pin a cadet’s badge to your chest or are thrown out like a piece of luggage depends entirely on your mouth and your head. Pay no attention to anything else. Understood?”
Savelyev spoke sternly. He simply wanted an interview conducted like an interview.
I gathered my scattered thoughts. Part of me had truly not cared if I were expelled; I had not come of my own will. But the moment I met Savelyev’s eyes, my resentment at Stalin’s deception was already pushed aside. To treat an examiner who was taking the matter seriously with half-hearted answers would have been rude.
And this was precisely what I had longed for so long and never received: a place where only my own ability would be weighed. It happened to stand before a true soldier who asked nothing about origin, recommendation, or background—only what I knew.
…Then the proper thing was to meet him on those terms.
I straightened my collar, squared my shoulders, and looked Savelyev straight in the eye, not the other two.
“Please go ahead. I will answer whatever you ask.”
“Do you know what a political commissar does?”
“When the army levels its rifles at the enemy, it is the post that watches to make sure those rifles are not pointed the wrong way.”
“…Not bad.”
Savelyev spoke briefly, then moved at once to the next question.
“The front has collapsed. You find two platoons: one retreating, one holding its ground to the last.” He pulled a side table over to replace the broken desk. “The former is behind the line, the latter in front of it. As political commissar, which side do you take?”
“The retreating side.”
“Ha! Plain cowardice! Surely you should stand in front of the line and hearten the men!”
Voronin jeered; Savelyev silenced him with a glance.
“…Reason?”
“A political commissar’s first duty is not to go where fighting spirit is already high, but to question those who have turned their backs. Is the retreat justified? Who has been infected by defeatism? Who is afraid, and who is in league with the enemy… Sorting that out is the commissar’s work.”
“Hoh…”
Savelyev’s eyes gleamed.
“Hmph… All talk and no guts…!” Voronin’s eyes narrowed.
Next it was Lapin’s turn.
“In a unit, when you are certain that only you are right and everyone else is wrong—what do you do then?”
I had faced a similar question in a graduate-school interview; I answered the same way.
“I doubt my own certainty.”
“Explain further.”
“There are only two possibilities when one man is right and all the rest are wrong: he has seen the truth, or he has gone mad. And to the man himself the two look identical.” I continued, looking at Savelyev. “So I would gather evidence to prove the hypothesis. And I would have to persuade everyone. If I cannot persuade them all, I would try to persuade even one. If even that fails, I would have to accept the possibility that I, not they, am the one in error.”
“….”
“However.” I paused a beat and met Savelyev’s eyes. “If after all that doubt and verification I still believe I am right—then I will stand in that place even alone. The fact that a majority has gathered does not make it absolute truth.”
The room fell silent. Only the scratch of the examiners’ pens filled the air.
“Well then, my turn.”
Voronin broke the silence, stroking his beard as he spoke.