IGOR POMERANZEV
63
suddenly noticed that someone was looking at me through the win–
dow of a bus and my whole being shuddered . An incredible idea
crossed my mind that someone possibly understood that down the
main avenue of this seaside retreat two avengers were leading a pris–
oner. The bus passed . We crossed the street and once again the
heavy doors of the Committee of State Security closed behind me.
I keep going over and weighing each word that I said during my
interrogation . Just as I said then, I would repeat again, "Your fight
against books is monstrous. You are monsters." I would also repeat,
"I decline to answer all questions concerning my friends and
acquaintances." Just as I did then, I would still refuse to play the role
of a loyal Soviet citizen, dedicated to the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union and to the Soviet government. But even so, I was still
not consistent to the end. I should not have renounced three books,
which I had managed to obtain with enormous difficulty and which I
could not help but give to a friend of mine to read. They found these
books during a search and confiscated them. I claimed that I never
saw them, never read them, never gave them to anyone. I should
have simply declined to answer questions about books. "What
damned business is it of yours what I read. I don't ask you which
books you read . I don't dictate to you what to read, so don't intrude
into my life . Somehow I'll manage without you. I'll figure out on my
own who is talented and who is not, who is truthful, and who lies."
They read Article 62 of the Criminal Code of the U.S.S .R. They
threatened me with seven years imprisonment and five years exile.
This was not an empty threat. It was only for finding "forbidden"
books during a house search that they arrested the outstanding lit–
erary critic, Ivan Svitlychny, in 1972 in Kiev, and gave him this hor–
rific sentence. The same sentence was given to another literary critic
in Kiev, Evhen Sverstiuk. That same fateful seventy-second year
they threw the poets Ihor Kalynets and Vasyl Stus behind bars, and
a year later the journalist Valery Marchenko . So this is the payment
they got for their professional breadth and scrupulousness, for their
love of books, for their dedication to beloved writers! But I was very
fortunate. They released me, and a year later, after having herded
all my friends and acquaintances and my mother through interroga–
tions, they "advised" me to emigrate from the U.S.S.R.
Oh , how I would love to see , if only from the corner of my eyes,
the book storage of the KGB! These book storages are our best, our
most valuable libraries, our national pride and our national dis-
