Abstract
A Moscow poet recalls his conversation with the KGB
This is the transcript of a conversation between the Russian poet Vitaly Pomazov and KGB staff member Yu. N. Uvarov on 21 April, 1982, at the Serpukhov KGB Administration. Present during the conversation was another KGB staff member, who declined to introduce himself. Some of the remarks are his. The transcript was made by Vitaly Pomazov from memory following the conversation and is slightly abridged.
The heading is a word-play on a famous, very ‘Soviet’ poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Discussion about Poetry with a Finance Inspector’, It is an accurate and poignant reproduction of a situation very familiar to nearly every uncensored person of letters in the Soviet Union, and, indeed, in all countries of the Soviet bloc. The basic purpose of such ‘preventive conversations’ is ordinarily to ‘sound out’ the author of a ‘criminal’ work, but they are often also an attempt to warn him of ‘responsibility for acts perpetrated’. An appropriate ‘steps taken’ entry is made in the ‘offender's’ dossier as a result of such discussions.
Vitaly Pomazov (born in 1946 or 1947) studied history at the University, but in 1968 was expelled from both the Komsomol (Communist Youth Organisation) and the University. The reason was his sociological research study ‘State and Democracy’. In 1971 Pomazov was arrested on a charge of ‘anti-Soviet activities’ and sentenced to one-and-a-half year's imprisonment. After completing the prison term, he was forbidden to live in Moscow and moved about 50 or 60 kilometres to Serpukhov, where the conversation took place. He is editor of the typewritten literary miscellany Protalina (untranslatable expression — it describes a patch of land in early spring, from which the snow has disappeared during a thaw, while the surrounding countryside is still covered with snow and ice).