Enclosed in memory
Freedom and Bondage of Georgy Zhzhenov
Author: Sergey Tashevsky
In September 1939, the cells of Leningrad's Kresty prison were overcrowded. A special council was churning out sentences one after another—three, five, eight years. Prisoners, notified of their sentences, were herded together, 40-50 at a time, into a small "transit" cell on the ground floor, where it was impossible to sit or lie down. People stood in a cramped, crushing environment, like rush hour on the subway, for ten to fifteen hours. They weren't allowed to use the restroom, and the stench and heat were unbearable. And in this hell, where many lost consciousness and still couldn't fall to the floor, one day, suddenly, lines of poetry began to resound. In a quiet, calm voice, someone read:
Not Tabriz carpets, silk ones, languishing in a forged chest – my priceless, crimson days, my colorful evenings locked away. Those carpets, woven in vain in pre-wedding anxiety, by slaves, not by candlelight, Jan! Your feet yearn for them on the cold, ringing bricks...
These were lines written just now, in the “upper” chambers of the “Crosses” by a poet and linguist, a companion Academician Marr, by Levon Bashinjaghyan, who, along with other convicts, was awaiting transfer. No, actually. They weren't written down, existing only in a voice spoken to a few random listeners who couldn't even turn their heads to see the author. It seemed these poems had no chance of leaving prison—like their author, they were doomed to become camp dust. But at that moment, a young man was in the cell, hanging on every word—and he remembered Levon's lines for the rest of his life. This man, destined to endure the hell of the Gulag and become a great actor, never stopped listening and memorizing, storing words and details in his tenacious professional "actor's" memory. Among many other things he accomplished, it was he who, half a century later, revealed the Georgian poet's final verses to readers in one of his memoirs. His name was Georgy Zhzhenov.
The Zhzhenov family's fate under Soviet rule seemed destined to be prosperous. After all, they were neither nobles nor merchants. They were simple peasants who had moved to St. Petersburg just before the First World War. Soon after its outbreak, in 1915, Georgy was born. As an infant, he was profoundly indifferent to all these great upheavals, including the revolutions that swept across Russia. But his father, Stepan Zhzhenov, a former peasant from the Tver province, was not thrilled by the October Revolution. He is said to have spoken favorably of the Kronstadt rebellion (and, according to investigative reports, even had some connections with General Alexander Kozlovsky, who sided with the rebels). He almost paid for this concern with his life back then, but luckily, he had a friend among the commissars, and he was sentenced to just three months of forced labor for counterrevolutionary agitation. You could say he was forgiven.
This proved to be a salvation for his large family (Georgy had three sisters and two brothers). They somehow managed to survive the New Economic Policy (NEP), although his mother was repeatedly caught for illegal street trading, and then their life on Vasilievsky Island somehow improved. And after completing his seven-year school, Georgy, who clearly showed artistic talent, decided to enroll in a circus school. Or rather, a "circus technical school." However, he was still too young for this (he had barely turned 14), so he enrolled using the documents of his older brother, Boris, adding a couple of years to his age. Later, the forgery was discovered, but Georgy was allowed to attend the school.
By the early 30s, he was already a rising star; one of his acrobatic acts, "The Chinese Table," was a regular feature at the Leningrad Circus. There, a film executive noticed the young acrobat and invited him to work at the Leningrad Film Studio. Georgy starred in several films, both silent and sound, and realized that cinema was his destiny. In 1932 (at age 17), he enrolled in the film department of the Leningrad College of Performing Arts, where the then-famous director Sergei Gerasimov taught. He graduated in 1935 as a professional film actor. A rather famous one, at that: during this time, although not in leading roles, he appeared in films such as "The Crown Prince of the Republic," "Golden Lights," and "Chapayev" (in which he played Tereshka, Furmanov's orderly). He was already recognized on the street.
But the Zhzhenov family's problems with the Soviet regime continued, seemingly handed down from their father to his sons. The eldest, Boris, a student at the Mechanics and Mathematics Institute, refused to attend Kirov's funeral in 1934 in broken shoes, telling a Komsomol member: "If I go, I'll get frostbite on my feet, and it won't help Kirov anyway." This was enough to get him expelled from the institute and stripped of his Leningrad residence permit. Boris refused to accept this, and spent a long time pestering the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of the USSR in Moscow. Eventually, his student status was restored—but six months later, he was arrested, accused of "anti-Soviet activities," and sentenced to seven years. Broken shoes in that era could easily destroy their owner.
Georgy didn't yet understand what was happening. Like most of his contemporaries, he was convinced that the authorities were always right. If they convicted someone, it meant there was a reason. Although he still couldn't imagine his brother as a criminal. But during the only meeting they were allowed before his brother was sent to the camp, he was at a loss:
"...I spouted some utter nonsense about conscientious work being rewarded in our country... Don't despair," I told him, "try to work hard in the camp... And you won't even notice how you'll be released... Work is a great force, especially in our country! Just pull yourself together, forget your grievances, and keep working... Everything will be fine!"
With every word I said, Boris grew more and more gloomy, withdrawing into himself... His stern gaze, fixed on me, revealed shame and contempt. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore: "Get out of here, you idiot! Call your mother."
This was his last meeting with his brother. Boris died in 1943 in the Vorkuta camps.
And soon, in early 1938, the entire Zhzhenov family experienced the force of "fair Soviet justice": Boris's parents, brothers, and sisters were sent into exile to Kazakhstan. They were sent, however, without escort, "voluntarily-compulsorily." They were even allowed to take a few belongings with them. Georgy was supposed to go with them, but he refused, despite the risk of arrest. His career at Lenfilm was on the rise, Sergei Gerasimov predicted a great future for him, and ultimately, at the famous director's request, he was released from exile. He continued filming.
In 1938, they were supposed to film "Komsomolsk," in which Zhzhenov was invited to play one of the leading roles. Of course, this kind of film was always shot on sound stages, but to "be part of the heroic deeds of the builders" erecting a new city on the Amur River, almost the entire film crew traveled to the Far East. The journey was long, almost a week, and during this time, Georgy (like the rest of the film crew) became acquainted with all the passengers on the train. In particular, he met the American military attaché, who spoke excellent Russian. Philippe FaymonvilleThe acquaintance was fleeting, but to his misfortune, upon returning to the capital, Zhzhenov ran into him again by chance at the theater. The American was overjoyed at the unexpected meeting, and Georgy, feeling the ground slipping from under his feet, tried to say goodbye as quickly as possible. The American attaché merely shrugged: "Please. You're not the first Russian to end an acquaintance without explanation. Do as you please—though I don't understand it."
But it was too late. And on the night of July 5, Zhzhenov was arrested—naturally, charged with criminal espionage ties to the American. However, the investigator was more forthright with him: "You and your family didn't leave Leningrad—and that's a shame. Our city has no place for the relatives of enemies of the people."
The interrogations dragged on; Zhzhenov was deprived of sleep for days, kept awake until he fainted. The investigator hung on every careless word and forced him to sign reports immediately. "He didn't listen, he waited for you to say the right thing." Eventually, the case "came together." In September 1939, Georgy Zhzhenov was sentenced by the Special Council of the NKVD of the USSR under Article 58-6 to five years in a forced labor camp and sent to Kolyma, to work in the logging industry.
It was the most brutal time, when the Dallag administration completely stopped paying attention to the death rate in the camps. On the contrary, the higher the rate, the better. Prisoners died from disease, cold, and malnutrition—but murders by prisoners also occurred literally every day. Zhzhenov himself witnessed these murders more than once, and they always shook him to the core: "It was hard to believe that the body lying on the ground, shaking like a prisoner, smeared with dirt and blood, had just minutes ago been moving, turning, smiling, a living person..." However, he wasn't thinking about death—he was more preoccupied with something else. He tried to save face. Not figuratively, but literally—from frostbite, from a blow from a rifle butt. After all, the face is an actor's most important instrument.
And in the end, he really did need it soon. In 1943, when his sentence was about to expire, Zhzhenov, like all surviving prisoners, was almost automatically given a new sentence—another five years. But then they remembered he was an actor.
Just before the war in Magadan, the local Soviet authorities wanted to open musical and dramatic theater — and in 1938 it was born. At first, it operated out of a local club, then a very substantial building was built, complete with columns and an entrance. No worse than the capital's theaters! And there were no problems with actors and directors either—they were regularly "supplied" by the Gulag. Sometimes they even hired them—for example, when in 1945 the famous director Leonid Varpakhovsky, serving time in Magadan, staged "Iolanta" at the request of his superiors and discovered he had a shortage of choristers, a newly arrested choir from the Tallinn Philharmonic was quickly dispatched to Magadan. The actors lived as in the days of serf theaters, like the same involuntary slaves—they lived in barracks with other prisoners, but they were driven not to the logging camps, but to rehearsals. And that was a completely different matter.
Zhzhenov was lucky—he was invited to join this theater company, and soon, in 1944, he made his debut there in the leading role in Vsevolod Vishnevsky's patriotic play "At the Walls of Leningrad." He recalled the Magadan theater as "magnificent": the company had about 200 actors, staging plays, operas, operettas, and ballets. Costumes were brought from the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Very soon, Zhzhenov, with his natural and brilliant talent, became "a favorite of the Magadan public." That is, of the wives and relatives of the Gulag authorities. It's no surprise that fate finally turned tails—in March 1945, he was released and continued working in the theater for another year as a freelancer. Then, in 1946, he left for the "mainland" and began acting in films at the Sverdlovsk Film Studio, then moved to Gorky and found work in the theater there. Moscow and Leningrad were still closed to him, but his return to his familiar craft was well underway. "It wasn't freedom. But it was a chance to breathe," he later wrote.
However, the Gulag didn't let its actors go so easily. In June 1949, Zhzhenov was arrested again and, to avoid making things up, was immediately sentenced under the same Article 58-6—on charges of espionage. He was sent into exile in Norilsk. And yes—what a remarkable coincidence—the camp authorities there just happened to build a theater.the northernmost, polar— he's still famous for it.) To spite Magadan! And there, of course, they needed actors. So Georgy found himself on stage again, in the position of a "serf artist." However, there were also "free" actors, though not entirely of their own free will. For example, the young Innokenty Smoktunovsky, who became Georgy's friend and stage partner for many years. He had returned from German captivity and knew full well that if he remained in his native Krasnoyarsk, he would almost certainly end up in a camp—so he himself went to Norilsk, far beyond the Arctic Circle. This logic worked: in Norilsk, against the backdrop of political exiles, Smoktunovsky was already "an ordinary artist from Krasnoyarsk who had come to earn money," and not a suspicious character who had returned from captivity. He managed to "wait out" the most dangerous time, and in 1953 he went to Stalingrad, and then to Moscow, where his acting career gradually took off.
As for Zhzhenov, he lived in Norilsk almost until the end of 1955, that is, until he was fully rehabilitated by the Military Tribunal of the Leningrad Military District. This was his "lucky ticket": permission to return to Leningrad! But he was sent from there to the camps as a budding artist, full of fears and hopes. And he returned 17 years later as an experienced actor, having played dozens of roles under the guidance of some of the best Soviet directors. Such was the "GULAG theater school." And it wasn't just him. An entire generation of former Soviet actors came to the stage in the late 50s: Pyotr Velyaminov, Tatyana Okunevskaya, Zoya Fedorova, Maria Kapnist, and many others... They brought a certain intense and sincere spirit to theater and cinema—the spirit of people who had lived through real, not just "bookish" tragedies.
Zhzhenov immediately joined the Leningrad Regional Drama Theater, then transferred to the Lensovet Theater, and in the mid-60s, moved to Moscow. His popularity grew rapidly, especially thanks to his film career—he starred in numerous films. But, oddly enough, it was Ryazanov's film "Beware of the Car" in which he played the seemingly pedestrian role of a traffic cop on a motorcycle that made him a national star. After that, in 1968, he was invited to Gorky Film Studios, where the relatively unknown director Mikhail Tulyev was filming "Resident's Mistake." Zhzhenov played a foreign intelligence agent in this straightforward detective story. In other words, a man twice convicted of espionage now played a spy. And he played it brilliantly. Thanks to his acting, the film, as they say, "took off" - it quickly became popular among the people, and even the songs from it (for example, "And in the cemetery it's so quiet") became a kind of "musical passwords" for an entire generation.
Yes, the film was loved. And not only by the people, but also by those who were responsible for keeping an eye on them. It was for "Resident's Mistake" that Zhzhenov received one of his first awards. But the cruel irony is that it was an award from... the KGB of the USSR. Yes! Such an award, conceived at Andropov's initiative, existed in the Soviet Union, and it was given "for depicting the work of the Soviet state security agencies."
"And he accepted this award from the hands of the people who killed his brother!" modern bloggers write with indignation.
Yes, of course. But refusing the KGB prize would have been an anti-Soviet act. And not just putting an end to one's career, but quite possibly losing one's freedom again. Isn't that asking too much of a man who returned from hell?
Moreover, beginning in the late 80s, when it became possible to talk about the camps, Zhzhenov began writing and publishing memoirs in which he described his camp experiences, honestly and mercilessly. One of these books included a story about an unknown poet reciting poetry in an overcrowded cell at Kresty:
Insha Allah!.. There is no end to the game of fate! The time will pass, and a faithful hand, shimmering with henna, will carefully remove the captive carpets from the chest. They will lie again at the feet of the beloved, bloom, splash in the rays - If only you, Jan, do not fall out of love with them, Until then, oh Jan!.. Do not tire out your light feet on the ringing bricks.
"I never heard anything more about him. I have no illusions that he's alive," Zhzhenov wrote. "But I simply decided to fulfill my human duty. As long as Bashin-Dzhagyan's poems are fresh in my memory, I pass them on like a baton to readers."
Alas, poets are not actors; they have no chance of salvation on the stage of a noble theater. All that remained of Bashin-Dzhagyan were these lines, allegorically describing the feelings of a man doomed to death. Even when the KGB archives were briefly opened, only one document was found that told of this man's fate. A certificate of sentence to ten years in a labor camp. But below, under the announced sentence, was added in tiny handwriting: "without the right to correspond."
When and where this allegorical sentence was carried out, no one knows.
Zhzhenov was lucky. Not only did he survive and live to be 90, but he also became one of the most famous Soviet actors. He starred in dozens of films and, in addition to the prize he couldn't refuse, received the title of "Honored Artist," the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, and many other awards. But not everyone knows that he wrote not one, not two, but ten books, in which he tried—as best he could—to tell the story of his life and that of those unlucky enough to escape the camp's slaughterhouse alive.
"Human memory is a gigantic museum, preserving in its 'vaults' everything time has not claimed, everything forgotten," he wrote in the preface to "The Lived." "I have no other sources by which I could verify my own memory with reality, with the facts of the monstrous arbitrary actions of the authorities. And there's no one to ask... The secret of crimes is carefully guarded—violators and witnesses are not spared. And my only hope is my own memory."
