Professor Yefremov's KGB Files (Part II)
This is Part II of the article. Read Part I here
His novels Andromeda-the Space Age Tale, and The Hour of the Taurus describe panorama of life on Earth and inhabited outer space set at the end of fourth millennium. The world he described in Andromeda was an attractive alternative to the Soviet reality of Khruschev’s socialism, although many Soviet people still believed that Soviet-led scientific and social progress would lead to true Communism (what is meant is the culmination of social development, not ideology itself).
However, Yefremov was no dissident, and apparently did change some controversial (for the regime) paragraphs in his novel The Hour of Taurus , when the Communist Party boss Demichev had a discussion with the author after denunciations of the novel made their way to the top (one of them came back from the KGB chief Y. Andropov).
Professor Yefremov was quite ill in 1967, when he began to write the book; he knew there would be difficulties with its publication. According to his letters, he led a life of an Indian ascetic man; he almost died in the prior year, and worked slowly.
The book was published after the changes were made, but after Yefremov’s death it was banned and removed from Soviet libraries until 1988. It was a sci-fi story set on a fictional, gloomy and dark planet Tormans whose very Soviet-like and Red Chinese-like system and ruling regime are criticized. Tormans is inhabited by descendants of Chinese refugees who fled Earth centuries ago; when the spaceship from the now-changed home planet arrives, they exist in a totalitarian society.
The writer never mentioned Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin in his futuristic novels, although he was pressured to. In the 1930s the Communist Party would not accept him for membership because of his father’s “wrong” social class, and in the 1950s Yefremov declined to join it, stating that his father’s social class had not changed… Professor Yefremov could not leave the USSR after his visit to China in 1958, to prepare the joint Soviet-Chinese scientific paleontological expedition, even if he wanted to. He was not chosen for the actual expedition, and this caused him to leave the beloved Paleontological Institute in anger.
The authorities tried to silence any mention of Yefremov’s achievements (even in paleontology…) after his death, and for a number of years they did succeed, until of a massive campaign of famous Soviet scientists, artists, pilots, and cosmonauts, together with his courageous wife, forced the Communist ideologists to relent in the mid-1970s. The other explanation could be that the criminal investigation did not find whatever Andropov’s henchmen were looking for…
A STRANGE KGB INVESTIGATION
One month after his death in October of 1972, the KGB sealed off his modest apartment, full of books, diaries, scientific treatises, maps, notebooks, and many other items. The KGB looked for more than just subversive literature in his apartment on the Spasoglinischevsky Pereulok (Lane).
Eleven KGB officers searched the apartment using X-rays and a metal detector. They intended to open the urn with Yefremov’s ashes, but his wife was determined not to let them. When she tried to find out later what was the reason for all this, the KGB said that they found an anti-Soviet article someone (who left no return address) mailed to the writer. At the same time she was repeatedly questioned about her husband’s wounds, and all details of his life, from birth to death. The prosecutor’s office wanted to know how many years she actually knew Yefremov. She asked the KGB a direct question: what are you accusing him of? The direct reply was that they are not accusing him, as he is a dead man.
Yefremov’s wife, Taisia Iosifovna, kept a copy of the KGB (Moscow and regional departmental jurisdiction) search report; it stated that they were looking for “ideologically harmful literature”. They confiscated Yefremov’s old photographs (from different periods of his life), his letters to his wife, letters from readers, photos of his friends, and receipts. No author’s manuscripts were taken, but they did take homeopathic medicine bottles, some minor things; a book about Africa in English (it had dry leaves inside); his geological minerals, a cane with a “sharp metal object inside”, and a stick made from colored metals. They never returned the last two objects. The KGB had searched the apartment of the famous paleontologist for over 13 hours. Were they looking only for subversive literature? It is hardly likely…
The KGB had continued the investigation of Ivan Yefremov’s life and activities for eight years after the writer’s death. The “Yefremov’s Dossier” comprised forty (40) volumes.
MYSTERIOUS DOSSIER
Three Russian investigative journalists tried to uncover the truth. One of them, A. Izmailov, published his findings in NEVA magazine (Issue 5, 1990). Two others, Nikita Petrov and Olga Edelman, published their findings in 2002 in http://www.ruthenia.ru/logos/number/2002_02/02.htm . They were able to see the files pertaining to the case, files from the Office of the Prosecutor of the USSR.
