Texts from the SPUTNIK catalog versión en español

TABLE OF CONTENTS @ PRESENTATION by L. Ishi-Kawa @ BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION by Olga Kondakova @ ON THE TRAIL OF IVAN ISTOCHNIKOV by Michael Arena @ EPISODES IN A LIFE DEVOTED TO SPACE by Piotr Muraveinik @ THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK by Michael Arena @ JOURNEY TO NEVER-NEVER LAND by Michael Arena @ SIGNS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS by Piotr Muraveinik @ COSMOBITCH by Piotr Muraveinik @ THE ENIGMA OF THE METEORITE by Salman Zagdeev @ STUDY OF THE ASTEROID by Salman Zagdeev

PURE FICTION - PURE FICTION - PURE FICTION

PRESENTATION L. Ishi-Kawa   But if you tell them "The planet he came from is the asteroid B612", then they'll believe you and they'll let you alone with their questions. They're like that. And you mustn't resent them. Children have to be very patient with grown-ups. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

After many years of reliable accounts of human presence in space -a curious name: space- it continues to mingle in the mind with dreams and with something that, for want of static references from which to move, we have called reality. Some of these dreams are what Ernst Bloch, in The Principle of Hope, called "daydreams". This kind have a anticipatory, projective, and creative nature which clearly differentiates them -Bloch maintains against Freud- from night dreams, about freedom, identity and what the future holds in store for the dreamer who enjoys them. Undoubtedly, many people have come before us, individuals who, over the years, projected their "daydreams" creating new realities; people who have persisted, evolved, modifying and adjusting their dreams, until they succeeded in persuading and implicating others who could provide them with the necessary material means to set a few human beings adrift from their natural habitat, letting them leave (alive and for a brief spell) their atmosphere, discovering new territories for new daydreams. There have also been, and still are, people who, ignoring the many lucid, creative dreams that have shaped our positive present, try to monopolize reality, establishing correct modes for it, its official existence. In one way or another, this exhibition is, among other things, a pacific -and somewhat ambiguous- warning against the dangers of the formal establishment of a correct reality. Ivan Istochnikov, the leading actor in our show, is the kind of person that legends are made of. A man waiting his due who, suddenly, in a confederacy of tangible proof and revealing information, became visible. A little Orpheus who had to be rescued from the underworld of "Reasons of State" and whose destiny both moves and intrigues us. A ghost recovered from the past, not a breathing, living being, but as we contemplate the pictures that re-create his childhood, his career and his journey, our minds are touched by his warmth. The Sputnik Foundation, whose team the Fundación Arte y Tecnología wishes to thank for their admirable research work and cooperative attitude, is one of those necessary -and uncommon- institutions whose task is to check the nation's History every now and again, verify the facts and discover to what extent they may have been manipulated. For there is such a very small margin between truth and the appearance of truth that sceptics (and unscrupulous individuals) believe that it is generally impossible to tell them apart, and that this margin cannot be seen, or worse, does not exist. All one has to do is use the right sense to perceive it. Or, in the words of Saint-Exupéry: "Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux".

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION Olga Kondakova Director of the Sputnik Foundation It is with great satisfaction that the Sputnik Foundation is associated with a Spanish institution for the first time and has the opportunity to show the results of one of its activities on Spanish soil. Since Spain and the Russian Federation signed an agreement of friendship and co-operation on the 12 April 1994 there has been no lack of projects for exchange programmes in the fields of commerce, science, culture and art. But only now has one of these projects seen the light and this, evidently, is a good reason for all the directors and contributors at our organization to feel content.

Above and beyond the small step that this implies and of the modest consequences of this exhibition, we hope that the pioneer experience of our association with the Fundación Arte y Tecnología will act as a bridge opening a road to mutual know-ledge between the people of two countries that rightly mark the edges of Europe to East and West. For two thirds of this century political events kept Spain and Russia ideologically poles apart, and the people of both nations suffered under the severity of totalita-rian governments. However it looks as if both are entering the next century in much brighter conditions. Spanish democracy has now been firmly established; in contrast, our reformist government still has many difficulties to surpass and, for this reason, the strengthening of international ties is a priority on the agenda of all Russian democrats. It is vitally important that progress made towards peace, freedom and justice be irreversible. "We can all learn from each other" preached the poet Levtuchenko. Our universities and research centres are open to students from other countries wishing to share their efforts and talent. To be fair and reciprocal, we aspire to be able to send our most qualified students abroad, to allow them to be taught at specialised centres that are more advanced in subjects not as well established in Russia. A more profound knowledge of both country's classics and new artists in the fields of music, dance, literature, painting or cinema, signifies, without doubt, a spiritual advancement and will promote a mutual understanding of the ways of being and thinking of one another. Thus, a two-way flow of collaboration is set up. The Sputnik Foundation is still a very young organization, but one that wishes to be built as a symbol of New Russia, in the same manner that similar organisations are doing in the fields of commerce, sport, communications, in the control of natural resources and the ecology, national and architectural heritage, the divulgation of language and literature, etc. Our foundation is the daughter of glasnost embarked upon by Mikhail Gorbachov in 1986 and was born just as the perestroika pushed forward the following year. A series of measures taken, step by step, to prove that the politics of blocks was over, such as pulling troops out of Afghanistan, full concessions to the national demands of the Baltic Republics, constitutional reform with the "Treaty of the Union", the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact, or the signing of the nuclear weapons reduction agreement Start-91, was reflected by other signs of transparency and goodwill. Likewise, many members of the Academy of Sciences pressurized the authorities to free them from the severe restrictions under which they had to work and of the obstacles in the way of contact and exchange of information with their foreign colleagues. Throughout the "Cold War" it was presupposed that any Soviet scientist, especially if he had access to technological top secrets, was a target for the spy services of western powers and, consequently, his movements would have to be watched by K.G.B. agents. But with the perestroika this situation became absurd. This conviction gave rise to the creation of the Institute of Cosmic Investigations (Institut Kosmicheskij Isledovani), whose mission was to guide and co-ordinate studies and technical work in the general area of astronautics, that is, astronomy, geophysics, aeronautics (flight control and space navigation), telecommunications, engineering and design of space vehicles, rockets, reaction engines and fuels, medicine and biology in space, life support systems, and space Law. In recent years the efficiency of the I.K.I in the theoretical field, and of the Glavkosmos in the practical one, have been fully recognised by the international scientific community and by astronautics professionals. Because, in spite of spending cuts, the Russian space programme has notched up some very important achievements: to name but one, the orbital station MIR, an enormous laboratory at the service of all mankind. Without resorting to excessively technical subjects, a number of other factors can be mentioned to illustrate the point. For example, it is true that Moscow is behind Washington in terms of opticalelectronic observation, but, in contrast, it is ahead in high resolution photographical techniques. For this reason part of the photographic collection from the Archives of the Military Intelligence Service has been sold to the CIA. Similarly, NASA have acquired the patent of the latest model of a space suit designed by the firm Zvezda. Moreover, our training programme for cosmonauts and astronauts has warranted solid praise because it includes both an in-depth preparation and one that is ample and complete encompassing the numerous branches of astronautics. So much so, that the Yuri Gagarin Preparation Centre in Zvezdny Gorodok (City of Stars) takes in future cosmonauts and astronauts of all nationalities (even North Americans!) who prefer the qualities of our system. Let me add that the only, for the time being, Spanish astronaut, Miguel López Alegría, was trained at Zvezdny Gorodok. Some of us within the I.K.I. think that research work should be complemented by a work aimed at informing the general public. So, on the 4 October 1987 we set up the embryo of the Nauchno Isledovatelski Institut Sputnik (Sputnik Foundation), commemorating the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first man-made satellite. In fact, the legal establishment and, in practice, the setting in motion of the organization did not come about until two years later. Its name not only pays tribute to that rudimentary satellite which marked the beginning of the space race, but also to the meaning of the word. In Russian "Sputnik" means "travel companion" and the Sputnik Foundation wanted to recover the attri-butes of protector and educator of someone who, like a guide, accompanies us on a voyage of discovery and initiation to the cosmos. The history of Sovietic cosmonautics, in contrast to that of the United States, has been submerged in secrecy. In the old USSR the space programme was classified as military strategy and as such was kept completely secret. The authorities not only kept any information about its plans and activities from the public, they also zealously hid anything that might give a hint as to what was going on. Only events with a strong propagandistic effect ever saw the light. But even then the information was neither regular nor complete, which obliged experts to submit it to a critical filtration and reconstruction, the results of which could only be approximative. It is not surprising that under these circumstances the best experts, such as James Oberg and Otto Zimmer, were fo-reign. But, still there remained enormous gaps and inexact, or simply undiscovered, data. With the advent of the perestroika this situation would also undergo a radical change. Documents that did not compromise State security could now be freely consulted and the last secret dossiers were declassified at the request of Viktor Ierin, after he was named Head of the Security and Intelligence Services, which replaced the K.G.B., by Boris Yeltsin in July 1995. Our organization is currently requesting custody of the part of the archives that refer to Sovietic and Russian cosmonautics, though we also understand that other institutions are making a legitimate bid for specific areas, such as the K. E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Kaluga, the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow, the House of Aviation and Cosmonautics of the Military Academy of Aviation Zhukovsky, and the library and documentation centre of the Gagarin Institute in Zvezdny Gorodok, in whatever case, the important thing is to try to prevent the archive from becoming too dispersed; in the Russian Federation there are forty museums dedicated to cosmonautics, gathered together administratively in AMCOS (Association of Museums of Cosmonautics) whose president is the pilot-cosmonaut P. R. Popovich. But it is crucial to cut out, what has already unfortunately occurred, that valuable documents leave the country illegally (some of them we have discovered are, on occasion, sold with sheer audacity at public auctions). The wealth and breadth of those materials, mostly unpublished, allow us at last to examine in a trustworthy way the information about our space programme, even in its most recondite details. So much so that our foundation has proposed under-taking a series of exhibitions which help to reveal lesser known or intentionally censored episodes from the history of cosmonautics, as well as those that highlight the role played by key figures who have been unfairly neglected (such as Korolev, Feoktistov and Keldysh) as well as some incredibly ingenious projects which for many different reasons ended by being abandoned. On this occasion it is the turn of a hero-martyr of space travels, Ivan Istochnikov, pilot-cosmonaut of the Soyuz-2. His name does not appear in the annals of cosmonautics, nor on the plaques that commemorate its victims; his body does not rest in a pantheon, neither were his ashes cast ceremoniously to the Volga. It is as if Colonel Istochnikov never existed, as if his existence had been erased from the face of the earth, or better, as if the earth -or the cosmos- had swallowed him. Superimposed on an enigma for which science would sooner or later find a rationally plausible answer was the ridiculous attempt to cover a failure, probably an unpredictable accident, but a failure all the same. This failure occurred deep within a very particular political situation, and the sick minds of a number of senior civil-servants arrived at the absurd decision to erase his existence by confining his family, blackmailing his colleagues and altering the archives. Officially Ivan Istochnikov never existed. Reality had outstripped even the most far-fetched science-fiction plot. But he did exist: he lived to play the leading role in one of the most riveting and tragic episodes of the history of cosmonautics. This book and the exhibition that accompanies it endeavour to rehabilitate the name of Colonel Istochnikov. On the one hand, we would like to do justice to the memory of a man who unquestioningly gave his life for a passion to explore deeper into the unknown. Possibly only those among us who have lived close to real life cosmonauts can begin to understand the mystic power of this passion. My sister Elena Kondakova is a cosmonaut and when she returned from her stay of one hundred and seventy days in the MIR station, which earned her the women's record for the longest stay in space, she spoke of her passion as one would about a feeling as intense and unfathomable as an infatuation. The cosmos certainly provokes passions; it is not surprising that Greek origin of the word has a double meaning: "everything" and "beauty". On the other hand, above and beyond Ivan Istochnikov's human, military and scientific qualities, this shocking story entails shedding well-needed light on the stages that preceded the conquest of the moon, on the first steps taken by the Soyuz programme and the following tests for building ships in orbit. And there is another colourful, but striking fact. Today we know that many cosmonauts, without their superiors' knowledge, took small insects with them into the capsule: the company of another living creature, no matter how insignificant a cricket or a fly might be, could ease the anxiety of loneliness in the immensity of the cosmos. Or it might just have been an example of Slav humour, or even a bet between colleagues Colonel Istochnikov did not have to resort to these tricks because the Soyuz-2 was the only flight arranged for a mixed crew comprising a human being and a dog. Kloka the dog, a friendly common Siberian breed was in fact the silent witness of that expedition. To conclude, I would like to thank all the many people who have contributed to this project, providing details, illustrations and ordering the information. To the staff at the Fundación Arte y Tecnología and, in particular, to its artistic director Laila Ishi-Kawa, for the kind reception they have given us and for their extraordinary professionality. But in these closing sentences I must mention two magnificent professionals who as curators of the exhibition have been its heart and soul: the academic Piotr G. Muraveinik, in charge of cosmonautics in Izvestia, and the researcher Michael Arena, journalist, writer and consultant for the Smithsonian Institute. Mr. Arena is the father of this enterprise as it was he who discovered the first clues about the case. Professor Muraveinik carried out the painstaking work of fitting together the pieces of the puzzle by discovering the vital documents by quasi-detective means. Their teamwork has proved praiseworthy and exemplifies how sterile competitivity can be transcended by the triumph of fertile collaboration.

Luck is at the root of many discoveries; inspiration too. That's why, as Edison said, "When they arrive, better find us working". Working and I might add, in order to bring us up to date with the age of hertzian satellite broadcasts, with the aerial pointing the right way. Luck started to make itself felt in this story on the night of Friday 10 of December 1993. It had been a pleasant afternoon and my wife Sarah and I went for a stroll round the outskirts of our holiday bungalow looking for a open hill to set up our telescope. A meteor shower had been announced for the following two days, and we didn't want to miss the spectacle. The Geminid that we hoped to see was expected to have an average brightness of 2.7. It came from a dead comet which was detected by the IRAS satellite. At dusk, there was still a clean atmosphere and you could see, quite clearly, Venus between Sabik and Antares, and Jupiter between Sabik and Kaus Australis. Engrossed in her observation of the sky Sarah stepped on a fold in the ground and twisted her ankle. Nothing serious, but enough to make us drop the shooting stars and return to New York. That gave me the opportunity to go to Sotheby's on Saturday morning. The first auction of Russian space material was to take place, something that I wouldn't have minded missing as I had already examined the lots at length the day the exhibition was opened to the public. The man behind the auction, David N. Redden, vice-president of Sotheby's, had spent nearly three years persuading cosmonauts and their families to part with their souvenirs. The money from this auction would allow them to improve their situation because generally they lived on very poor pensions which had been devalued by inflation. However, the majority of these objects came from the gigantic public company Machinos-troenia , manufacturer of space equipment, or from Zvezda, manufacturer of space suits. On more than one occasion, David had even asked me for some information about the materials and to intervene for him secure them. The idea was so novel it provoked the distrust of the Russians. During the lengthy preparations he kept me up to date about the progress he was making and the problems that brought him to a standstill. This contact was useful to him because, apart from giving him a helping hand once in while, I might also act, in the background, as an important potential buyer. At the headquarters of the Smithsonian Institution, I belonged to the board of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. and, for example, I had been in charge of the negotiations to buy a Soyuz ship, to accompany a Salyut, which is one of the biggest attractions of the permanent collection. But the final decision about purchases would be taken the director Donald S. López and the commission of the space section. Donald, like myself, is of Hispanic origin and so we get along well with each other. He had no drawbacks in telling me that what he really interested him was aviation (he had been a fighter pilot in Chennault's Flying Tigers in the Second World War) and he didn't understand a thing about astronautics, which meant that he often asked for my opinion. When the auction at Sotheby's was announced Donald asked me for a short report indicating the lots which I considered worthwhile and the maximum amount of money which would be reasonable to offer in each case. I carried out the assignment diligently -I was certain my opinions would be contrasted with those of other experts- and that was the end of my interest in the auction. The prospect of the Geminid was much more tempting. But now that I was back in New York I decided to take a look. I knew I would see a number of familiar faces and could satisfy my curiosity about the ups and downs of the sales and the identity of the buyers. Among the pieces that I had recommended was a heavy suit designed in 1968 to explore the moon that proved that the Russians had planned to send a man to the satellite, but had been beaten to it by us in 1969, though at the time they denied it. Donald bid for it successfully and, as the voice said "sold", he caught my eye and aimed me a crafty wink. Evidently, Gagarin was the star of the day. In the presence of his widow, who signed autographs tirelessly, his training suit, the manuscript of the speech he give two days before the deed, and the four-page telegram that Nikita Kruschov wrote him to congratulate him on his return were put up for auction. Another interesting lot was the mannequin-cosmonaut bearing the name Ivan Ivanovich, who was sent into space on 23 March 1961 in the capsule Vostok. The success of this rehearsal signified the green light for Gagarin's flight. Then there was another kind of materials, very curious, such as a bag for collecting urine in zero gravity conditions (the auctioneer made the point, much to the amusement of the public, that it had never been used and he guaranteed it was completely germ-free). A battle was fought over this piece between a Texan collector and a sanitary company from Oregon; Texas won. The fork and the can opener used on the 6 August 1961 by German Titov, the first man to eat in space and the second Soviet cosmonaut, was bought by the representative of a large Japanese canning company and immediately I had visions of the kind of publicity that could be made from it. David rubbed his hands together in satisfaction and he had good reason: at the end the total sum was $ 6,817,198. Twenty-five television channels had filmed the sales and, the cherry on the cake, the N.A.S.M. announced that a substantial part of the pieces it had acquired would be constitute the core of its permanent exhibition dedicated to the space race, to be installed definitively in 1997. I, nevertheless, was fascinated by the dedicated photographs, the diaries, the technical drawings, the diagrams and the cosmonauts' personal papers. For example, it seemed incredible to me that on a space flight involving state of the art technology, the pilot would have the instructions about important manoeuvres to had to be carried out written in pencil, looking like the kind of note one might smuggle into an exam to cheat, or that the copies of important documents were made with carbon paper. But that is the way it was and this accumulation of details resized our human presence in the overwhelming supremacy of the machines. A lot comprising notes and photos, that had belonged to Giorgi Beregovoi, received no bids whatsoever. Beregovoi had been pilot of the Soyuz 3 in 1968 and, shortly after his aborted mission, he took over the management of the Gagarin Training Centre. His silent work as an administrator, did not appear to encourage the enthusiasm of the buyers. The opening price was affordable, and I bought it without any competition. At that moment the purchase didn't seem particularly important, rather it was simply my contribution to the success of the auction. The excellent outcome should quieten the savage criticism made by those who objected to Sotheby's stealing the national heritage of the old Soviet Union, exploiting its desperate economical situation. Without haste, some days after, I decided to open the folder and savour its contents. If it proved to be worth something, I would donate it to the museum. Basically it consisted of notes taken during the preparatory stage, something related to approach manoeuvres and assembly of the Soyuz. They looked like student's notes and I remember that I asked myself what had led Beregovoi, or whoever it might be, to keep these papers. Was it a consciousness of his own historical dimension, perhaps? I know that I would definitely have thrown them away during one of the fits of tidiness and order that overcome me periodically in my office. I don't know, perhaps astronauts really believed they were chosen for glory and, consequently, were convinced that any small element associated with them would one day be worth a fortune. Like the buttons on Elvis Presley's jacket or the pillow of some hotel where John Lennon's head rested for a night. Sometimes, in effect, the value of a document and mere fetishism are mixed up. In the USSR of the sixties, and part of the seventies, this fetishism had an explanation: astronauts were national figures, idols for the masses. The nation followed their adventures with fervour, the people knew their achievements by heart, how many times they had orbited the earth, how many hours they had spent in space. They were invited to give speeches, to lay the first brick of a new school, to open factories. They were met by placards and bunches of flowers. Their effigies illustrated stamps and medals. Teenagers collected their pictures in transfers and admired them as much, or more than, sportsmen and rock stars are admired in western countries. This rite never reached this level in the United States; Tom Wolfe wrote a book, Hollywood made films, but the average American never went as far as to mythicize their cosmonauts. To the contrary: when the moon walks became routine, no one took any notice of them. In the midst of these thoughts, I continued leafing through the folder until I reached half a dozen photographs. They were portraits of Beregovoi on a number of official occasions, either alone or in a group. One of the last ones attracted my eye: ga-thered together beside the Kremlin, a group of cosmonauts posing for the camera before the parade to commemorate the October Revolution began. Their signatures were stamped on the lower margin of the page, alongside the date: 7 October 1967. From left to right appeared A. Leonov, one I. Istochnikov, V. Rozhdestvensky, G. Beregovoi and V. Shalatov. I knew all of them by name, apart from Istochnikov. But there was something in the portrait that I found familiar, as if I was experiencing déjà-vu. I was sure that I had seen that photograph, or a very similar one, somewhere before, but where exactly? I searched, without luck, in various books and almanacs, until, quite suddenly, I remembered where I had seen it before: the photo album "Voyage to the Stars" (1975), compiled by Boris Romanenko. Still grateful for the whimsical way my memory works, I lost no time in finding the book on the se-cond row of my bookcase. Badly printed, even more poorly bound, it had gathered enough dust to be considered ancient rather than just plain old. Something that still surprises me about those Russian publications, is that the design still closely followed constructivist recipes from the twenties and thirties, and that the printing exaggerated the poor quality: overly absorbent paper, thick lines, unstable colour plates In short, one can't deny that these features, ended up by donning them with a strong and easily recognizable character. I turned the pages delicately until I came to the photo of the group. Then I received an unexpected surprise: it was, without a doubt, the same picture, but in the book there was one person less. By a not very skilful retouching process, Istochnikov had disappeared as if by magic. It was not a new technique. In the times of Stalin, poor Trotsky had been victim of the same transmutation: the disappearance of his image in official papers, was a symbolic act that acted upon the collective memory, but which also anticipated the real physical disappearance of the enemy, like making a wish come true, correcting dialectical discrepancies and making history believable. The success of the operation encouraged it to be applied to members of the Politburo who had fallen from grace, as well to all kinds of traitors and dissidents, who during Stalin's government, sprung up like mushrooms in autumn. Today we know that school teachers told their students to cross out certain names and ink out certain pictures of some of the country's ex-leaders who appeared in their text books; the children were then obliged to write "an enemy of the people" on the page. Probably the pupils were be astonished at the incredible amount of enemies who had formerly occupied such prominent positions in history and the text books. But if this practise was foreseeable in the political class, applied to a cosmonaut it was mystifying. What crime could poor Istochnikov have committed to have deserved such punishment and to enter the ranks of criminals. Now that my curiosity had been whetted I attempted to solve the mystery. My first step was to search the Internet, but there was no mention of the name "Istochnikov". Disappointed, I decided to contact the Association of Space Explorers, which unites cosmonauts and astronauts of every nationality, though of course mainly American and Russian. I knew some of the founding members, such as Mike Murphy and Jim Hickman, who could in turn pose the question to their colleagues. After an anxious wait, the same discouraging answer always arrived: either they didn't know anything or they preferred not to speak. I insisted that they speak to Alexei Leonov, a member of the association who appeared in the photo, which meant that he must have known Istochnikov. But, even better, I obtained his E-mail address and sent him a message endorsed by some of the American Explorers. In the meantime I phoned James Oberg, Charles Vick, David Woods and Mark Wade. Only Charles found the name fami-liar, but he couldn't remember exactly why. Leonov's reply arrived: Istochnikov had been one of the cosmonauts trained for the Soyuz programme, but he advised me to contact Beregovoi, who was also a member of the association, for more information. I did just that and for days I was glued to my computer, waiting for his reaction. Over a week passed before, at last, an E-mail arrived from Moscow. It wasn't from Beregovoi, it was from Piotr Muraveinik, a Russian expert in the history of space. He apologised for Beregovoi, whose English was a little shaky, and told me that my questions had produced a domino effect that had provoked some remarkable results, upsetting many of the older cosmonauts. Yes, the "Istochnikov case" existed and, even today, it was neglected because the majority of the people involved with it still felt ashamed of their passivity and prolonged silence. The basic outline of what had happened , the version of the facts that Muraveinik had been able to ascertain, was the following; on the 25 October 1968 the Soyuz 2 was launched with the pilot-cosmonaut Colonel Istochnikov aboard. The ship would be the target for the Soyuz 3, manned by Lieutenant Colonel Giorgi Beregovoi, which the following day would carry out a docking exercise linking the two craft in orbit. These were the days when the United States and the USSR worked against the clock to be the first to reach the moon. Political pressure had priority over technical guarantees and the space race had cost some lives. In the voyage that preceded this one, the Soyuz 1, things went badly from the start and ended in a tumultuous disaster: Komarov crashed coming back, due to the parachutes not working correctly. All systems had to be completely rechecked; then a number of automated docking tests with the Kosmos 186-188 and the Kosmos 212-213 were successfully carried out. In spite of the time that had been lost, optimism was in the air once again. Having maximized security measures for the next manned Soyuz mission, everything promised success. Unfortunately it didn't happen that way: after a failed attempt at docking, the Soyuz 2 and the Soyuz 3 drew apart from each other and lost contact. The following day when they found each other once again, Istochnikov had disappeared and his module bore the marks of an impact with a meteorite. In fact, it is not clear what had really happened and the mystery provoked a whole series of conjectures. But, the Soviet authorities were clear about not wanting to admit another new fiasco and they designed a machiavellian explanation: they announced that the Soyuz 2 had been an automatic, unmanned flight. For the official record Ivan Istochnikov died from an illness a few months earlier. To avoid contradictory voices his family were confined, his colleagues were blackmailed, the archives were doctored and photographs retouched. Muraveinik admitted that reality had surpassed the most far fetched science-fiction plot. Though the Istochnikov story was the most extreme case, I already knew about a number of other accidents that the Soviets covered up for years. For example, the explosion that occurred on 23 March 1961 during the Vostok programme. During a routine check of an isolation chamber, the cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko died in a split-second ignition in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. The Soviets did not reveal the facts until 1986. Another tragic episode, the exact magnitude of the damage of which is unclear, took place a shortly before 24 October 1960. During final preparations for the launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the SS-7, a fuel leak was discovered. The logical and prudent solution would have been to empty the rocket's tanks and before attempting to repair it; however, to gain time, the technicians made no objection to carrying out the repair work on full tanks because a few months previously when a similar problem occurred during the launch of a Vostok it had been solved without a hitch using this fast option. The technicians soldered the leak and began the countdown again. Thirty minutes before lift-off, field Marshall Mitrofan Nedelin, commander in chief of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Force (the same rank as a commander in chief of the army), watched how the technicians fini-shed by reconnecting the electric system of the deposits still full, when, suddenly, the second phase of the rocket's engines ignited accidentally for unknown reasons, possibly a short circuit. The flames caused a horrific explosion killing many machinists, engineers, and the commander in chief. Sadly the list of this type of accidents is a long one; our spy planes detected, in the decade of the seventies, at least half-a-dozen explosions and radioactive leaks in areas connected with the Soviet space programme, which gave the impression, judging by the frenzied activity that was deployed immediately afterwards, that they were not precisely controlled tests. And, naturally, we are speaking about human casualties; if we focused on the animals sent into space they would be material enough to provoke collective heart attacks at the headquarters of the Worldwide Wildlife Foundation. Unfortunately for these zoological specimens, mainly rabbits, moneys and dogs, at that time there was no sensibility against animal experimentation, became the advance party of a dangerous intergalactic Noah's Ark. The most emblematic case featured the dog Laika, who spent a week in space in November 1957. Her bark and black and white muzzle were seen around the world. Yes, Laika came back to earth, but as a burnt corpse, absolutely roasted. Her capsule had been badly thermally isolated and the temperature began to rise at lift-off; the outcome was a Chinese gastronomic speciality. But a big mistake needs a big remedy: they made the switch and Laika's burnt body was substituted by another very similar dog in the photo call for the press. No one found out, and the case was treated as a great success, much to the enjoyment of those who had thought up the tall story. In short, the conquest of space has cost the lives of many anonymous victims who the current generation should rehabilitate. Ivan Istochnikov's life exemplifies a doubly painful sacrifice: the loss of a life, and the rejection that his memory evokes. The unjust, corrupted memory that has hung over his ghost, spurred both Muraveinik and myself on to such an extent that we decided to carry out a joint investigation into the case. We wanted to recover the figure of Ivan Istochnikov and to denounce the evil conspiracy which had sentenced him to the sewers of history. Now that the repression that had dominated the country was gone, the pact of silence was gone too. One could consult the sources, interview the people involved, reconstruct the thread of events. Muraveinik suggested that the work be carried out under the auspices of the Sputnik Foundation, a decision which I find absolutely correct. For us this meant having an very helpful, important institutional platform; for the Foundation, we provided the symbol that Istochnikov embodies in Russia for a memory that, in order to proudly enter history once again, has set it hopes of redemption on the universality of its knowledge, rather than on acquitting itself with merit from its political labyrinth. The truth is that, I was so convinced of the literary, cinematographic, scientific, etc., news value of "our" Istochnikov that for a few moments I was tempted to offer the story to Spielberg and Lucas; better still, my mouth watered just thinking about the episode of the "X-Files" that Chris Carter could make with this story. Because there is still a large amount of enigma that has not been cleared up at the bottom of this tragedy, an enigma that might end by producing glimpses of reality at 3001: the last odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke: The astronaut Frank Poole was lost in space because of a flaw in his super-computer Hal, but a millennium later his body is discovered, perfectly preserved, and he is able to be reanimated. If we could find and reanimate Istochnikov, what would he tell us? What follows should be understood as an approximate answer.

EPISODES IN A LIFE DEVOTED TO SPACE Piotr Muraveinik

It was the winter of 1942, during the siege of Moscow. The debilitated troops of the Red Army defended themselves against the German advance like cats with their claws. The front had been set up a few kilometres from the capital, along a line drawn by small outlying cities: Bielev, Kaluga, Maloïaros-lavsk, Naro Fominsk and Rjev. The shortage of suitable armament to employ in resisting the crushing armoured divisions of the VI Army of von Paulus did not reduce the courage of the defenders. In desperation, women and children gave equal demonstrations of bravery. With no projectiles to penetrate the tanks armour, imagination, daring, and even recklessness, were brought into play. A commonly used urban guerrilla tactic consisted in dangling teenagers by ropes from tall building and lowering them until they were above the enemy tanks; from there they threw a molotov cocktail inside the tank, or at its most vulnerable point, right beneath the turret; before the explosion they were hoisted to safety. In Kaluga, a lad who was affectionately nicknamed Malienky Ivan Grozni ("Little Ivan the Terrible") held the record: between the revolution holiday in Nov-ember and the German surrender at the end of January 1943, he alone had immobilised seven impregnable Panzers. His real name was Ivan Fiodorovich Istochnikov. He had been born on 24 February 1930 in Kaluga. His father, third son of a humble family of Ukrainian origin, was called Fiodor Ivanovich Istochnikov; he came into this world on 1905 in Novosibirsk, one of the flourishing cities of west Siberia, whose growth demanded a constant flow of immigrants. His delicate health prevented him from following in the trade of his ancestors, traditionally woodcutters and railwaymen, and he became a teacher. Fiodor Ivanovich would have resigned himself to being an inoffensive schoolteacher had it not been for the Revolution, which pumped new life into his chest. Taking a pinch of responsibility for the regeneration of the country, he decided to move to Moscow to experience the new tide of history in the making. He also decided to study maths, no only obeying a personal obsession for exactitude, but also in the belief that the precision and logic of this abstract science would be needed to contribute towards the strengthening to a new regime that abandoned the intrinsic irrationality of God and the Tsar. His revolutionary fervour, his enthusiastic harangues of indoctrination aimed at his student comrades, impressed Elena Andreievna Kornakova, then a theatre box-office girl and a talented student at the exclusive music conservatory, Glinka. After a short engagement during which Fiodor Ivanovich proved that behind the conceited front there was a tender and affectionate being: the couple were married in 1927. Elena Andreievna came from Kaluga; she was the daughter of a unmarried mother, who had apparently be raped by a passing Cossack, during a night of incredible drunkenness; but this was an unclear episode which was not spoken about. Shortly after the wedding Elena's mother was taken ill and the couple returned to Kaluga, where the young mathematician was offered a post of professor at the local institute. They settled into a bucolic wooden house, on the outskirts of the town, probably in an old dacha that might have belonged to a Muscovite potentate who fled during the Revolution. The rolling countryside, with beech and birch woods, flanked by small lagoons, made an idyllic picture which any newly married couple would aspire for. However, Fiodor Ivanovich felt slightly uneasy finding it "suspiciously bourgeois"; to alleviate his guilty conscience, he arranged an outhouse to invite, when the snows had melted, some of his talented pupils to seminars that explored the mysteries of algebra in depth. A first pregnancy dispelled any vocational doubts that his wife still sheltered, between being a pianist or a ballerina. Their first child was Maria, in 1929; then came Ivan, and finally Yuri, two years later. Clearly, family concerns were much more compatible with piano than with the stage. The three children studied at School 2 until the outbreak of war. Their father directed the organization Komsomol in Kaluga and this donned the children with a special halo at their school. Ivan inherited his interest in piano from his mother and his passion for chess from his father. His level in the game began quite remarkable, even at a young age, winning him success not only in inter-school tournaments but in also regional ones. His skill at the game delighted his father, who idolized the grand masters such as Tal, Alekhine, Smilov, Tchigorin, Korchnoi and Spasski, who had turned Russia into the world chess super-power. Such was his enthusiasm that on one occasion he tried to get the Soviet Chess Federation to give the name Istochnikov to a highly tactical, half-open, opening move that his son used skilfully and which finally, after the opportune investigations had been made, proved to be simply a variation of the Ufimtsev Defence. His mother, in contrast, never envisaged Ivan as a future Tchaikovsky. His hands were too thick for the delicacy of the instrument and banged away at the keys mercilessly. Musical sensibility had fallen more generously on the other members of the family. But Ivan possessed many other qualities and interests: he liked animals and had infinite patience training them, he was good at gymnastics, he liked collecting all sorts of things, but unlike other children he was steadfast in his collections, and, mostly importantly, he was extraordinarily curious and had a prodigious memory. These and other remarkable abilities that do not match those of his parents, can be attributed to the genes of that mysterious Cossack rapist, who, in spite of his wickedness, had ended up by enriching the stock. But what most populated young Ivan's dreams were flying machines, something that was closely linked to the time and the place. The country had not yet fully recovered from the devastation of the first world war and the bloody civil war that followed it. Moreover, a number of intense conflicts were still causing an increasingly significant internal confrontation: Stalin sought power, and in order to gain unlimited control of the nation he would have to eliminate the Kulaks, the only class who were still opposed to communism: rich farmers who produced the majority of the country's food. In spite of the vital economical contribution they made, Stalin considered their deportation and persecution as a revolutionary necessity. For the repressive operation to work the population needed to be infused with a great vision, to be convinced that a mission of historical proportions had been embarked upon: to put the principals of "scientific communism" into practice. To divert attention from daily poverty, Stalin proposed the motto of "the conquest of nature", encouraging the analogies that linked the Russian's natural passion for exploration and adventure with ideological imperatives. Propaganda promoted brave aviators, polar explorers and the engineers who invented miraculous machines as the heroes of the age. The craze for records and first attempts arrived: records for fastest and for longest flight, for reaching the highest altitudes in a plane or a hot-air balloon, for acrobatic and display flights... In order to infiltrate these deeds into the popular imagination, the State encouraged an almost mystical vision of new technology and machinery. The country was compared to a gigantic machine, in which the workers were the pieces and society a train running full speed towards communism. Planes were never simply planes, they were "birds of steel"; even, to give an example, Vasili, Stalin's son, became a pilot. Seen in retrospect, these propagandistic metaphors seem outdated to us, and in some cases, even worse, worthy of breaking the record of stupidity. For example, when Laurenti Beria advised Russian couples to abandon the "missionary position" in their sexual encounters, considering it reactionary and reeking of opium of the people, and to take up the "aviator's position", in better accord with the ideology of progress he wished to instil. Three decades later, in the era of space flight, this position was renamed the "cosmonaut's position": the man took his partner in the same way as one imagined a cosmonaut did with the controls of his capsule. In any case, the launch in June 1963 manned by the first woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, upset this chauvinistic plan. The city of Kaluga, in turn, added an extra ingredient to the receptivity of all this technologistic atmosphere: since 1898 it was the city adopted by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, known as the founder of modern cosmonautics and the father of rocket technology. As a young man he worked as a teacher in a remote rural region. He was self-taught and had been awarded his teaching diploma in an unconventional manner, passing all the exams without ever having attending classes. A attack of scarlet fever during his childhood had left him almost completely deaf and perhaps he overcame his difficulties in communicating with the outside world by building his own fantasy world, full of models of flying machines and inventions to reach the stars. His most decisive scientific contribution was the formula, published in 1903, that relates the characteristic speed of a rocket with the speed of its propulsion fuel (u) and the logarithm of the quotient between the rocket's mass at launch (Mo) and the final mass (Mf) remaining once the mass of the propulsion fuel used (Mp) is subtracted. In spite of being giving a certain amount of recognition under the communist regime, it is difficult to imagine Tsiolkovsky, the prophet of interpla-netary flights, inventor of the principal of multiphase rockets and a remote precursor of the space shuttle, cloistered in a routine life as a simple school teacher at a girls school in Kaluga, constantly immersed in an imaginary world of inventions and technical dreams. Ignorant of his mental powers, Ivan's parents knew Tsiolkovsky solely as a colleague of the local teachers profsoyuz. They considered him a kind of "mad professor", but his fantasies were harmless and amused the young pupils. It was only when Tsiolkovsky was invited to give a speech from the podium of Moscow's famous Red Square at the parade on 1 May 1935, that those around him realized his immense calibre as a scientist and an inventor. Elena Andreievna and Fiodor Ivanovich, together with their children, paid him a social call shortly before his death. Despite his young age, Ivan was dazzled by the inventor's toys and by his contagious enthusiasm that brimmed over when this white bearded, thick-spectacled grandfather succeeded in persuading everyone that soon those toys would be a reality. Over tea he told them how he had set on the angle of a rocket's aerodynamic penetration by finding inspiration in the lukovitsi (literally "onions", those pointed cupolas that crown the towers of orthodox temples) of the Kasankaya church in Kolmenskoye erected in the times of Ivan IV. Then he told his mesmerised audience prophetically: "Perhaps one of you will have the chance to travel inside one of these extra-atmospheric ships". They all treated it merely as the utopical dream of their almost octogenarian host, apart from Ivan, who took a firm decision that day to become the pilot of an extra-atmospheric ship. After the victory against Germany, Ivan Fiodorovich was admitted at the Aviatsioni Teknikum. Later on, in 1948 he moved to the Saratov Secondary Technical School, near Moscow, where he began to study aeronautical engineering under the guidance of Viktor Muskadov, who would become one of the closet collaborators of Sergei Korolev, Soviet visionary, in terms of space, and founder of the Energiya Technical Office. At the same time he joined the air-force, reserving a place at the Chkalov Pilot School of the 1st Air Force. Gradually he began to relegate theoretical engineering to concentrate on his training as a pilot; at the controls of a Mig he earned one of the highest marks in the annals of Soviet military aviation. Graduated with the rank of lieutenant, he served in the Korean War, officially as a military observer, though his real mission was to work as a flight instructor for the inexpert North Korean pilots. The VPK, the commission for Military-Industrial affairs, sold war planes to China and North Korea, but the contract included training in the handling of modern reaction equipment. However, this period remains, for obvious reasons, very obscure and there is little completely declassified information about it. Whatever his real activity in Korea was, the outcome is that Istochnikov returned to Moscow with an excellent record, which would earn him promotion to captain. Guided by his superiors, who had accepted his application to move to the space programme, he signed up at the Zhukovsky Academy of Military Aviation and Space Engineering. During these exclusive studies, a lecture would take him to Novosibirsk, his father's native town. Kruschov had erected the Akademgorodok ("Academic City") there, with the aim of culturally and technologically advancing Siberia, but mainly in an attempt to cure the wounds inflicted on the system by Stalin's personality cult. This trip was important because he would cross paths with Irina Yurievna Kudasheva, a young physicist who was preparing her doctoral thesis, and who would end up becoming his wife. Irina came from Leningrad (now Saint Peters-burg), where she attended the Physical-Technical Institute, centre of the fundamental physics applied in the USSR. She continued her studies at the Moscow Energy Institute, under the eminent physicist Alec Galeev, and she moved to Akademgorodok with him. Akademgorodok had become an intellectual and scientific oasis in the middle of the Siberian steppes, to which many intellectuals from other Soviet universities and research centres had "fled". There she was admitted to the Institute of Nuclear Physics under the tutelage of Andrei Budker and she decided to concentrate her research on controlled fusion, based on the magnetic confinement of hot plasma. These studies had an enormous importance for aerospatial navigation because the plasma refers to electrically charged gases; the plasmas permeate space and surround the planets in continual currents of solar origin that are known as "solar winds". From the fifties, plasma physicists around the world were influenced by the prediction made by the North American theorist David Bohm about the final behaviour of plasma in a magnetic field. According to Bohm, a magnetic field would never succeed in creating the necessary control: the plasma would escape and become diffused through the magnetic barrier of the field too rapidly to reach the necessary temperature in the heating process under oscillating parameters. Irina was a creative rather than an experimental scientist, and her line of work was aimed at the physical ordering of chaos. But Budker noticed her brilliant intuition and asked her to help the house team formed by Leonid Rudakov and Roal Z. Sagdeev among others, supervised by the academic Mijail Leontovich. Soon they were able to formulate quite a plausible theory to explain Bohm's mysterious diffus-ion, proposing that the cause was the frequency shift of the wave, that is, the fact that a slight but sufficient torsion of the magnetic field might eliminate or forcibly contain the frequency shift of the wave. Irina's congeniality and modesty were greatly appreciated by her colleagues, but her participation in this discovery won her intellectual status at the campus and the affectionate nickname of Spasitielnaia volna ("Wave lifesaver"). Mijail Lavrientiev, president of Akademgorodok, was particularly satisfied. At the beginning of each term all of the departments and laboratories had to make what were called "socialist promises and commitments", indicating the number of finished products that would be handed in above and beyond the established plan. And as this could not be sausages or bolts in this case, Lavrientiev obliged the Institute of Nuclear Physics to produce one world class scientific disco-very, two national class discoveries, and three Siberian class discoveries. The frequency shift of the wave was the lifesaver for the promised quota. Ivan and Irina met each other by accident, but in a highly original manner, at the dining room of the Institute of Nuclear Physics: they bumped into each other's trays spectacularly, spilling tea, apple cake (his) and bilberry cake (hers) on the floor. Submerged in a sea of poorly disguised laughter, the two red-faced youngsters apologized to each other, introduced themselves, and ended up drinking their tea at a table in a corner together. It was the beginning of a true romance. Irina was a typically Slav girl: blonde, pale skinned, slender, and with eyes that showed a lively and quick intelligence. Ivan was more southern in his looks, showing mixed breeding: average height, dark complexion, hirsute, with pitch black hair, dark eyes, big eyebrows (like the kind that Brezhnev later popularized) and an ironic smile. Perhaps it was the difference that attracted them to each other: but the truth is that the sophistication and aristocratic pedigree of old Saint Petersburg, together with a highly strung temperament, were not in tune with the rustic and quiet character of that Russian-Ukrainian-Georgian-Cossack (to count just two generations back) branch. But, as Irina said: "The Russian and the bear, the more hair, the more beautiful". A rainy start to the Siberian autumn of 1962 and a landscape of birch trees on the outskirts of Novosibirsk were witnesses of the couples' passionate exchanges destined to lead to marriage. Ivan was generous in his trips to Novosibirsk taking advantage of the fact that he had some uncles and cousins living in the area, but with the primary concern of seeing Irina while she was still finishing her course and preparing to return to Moscow, to Zvezdny Gorodok, where the couple had been assigned an apartment in a block of cosmonauts' quarters (owing to the fact that Ivan had already begun his period of training for the Soyuz programme). Irina demanded that the ceremony take place in the City Council of Leningrad, as the orthodox wedding ritual that her family had so fervently wanted was out of the question. If even a hint had reached the ears of Ivan's superiors it could have cost him his career. The Kudasheva family, though not openly dissident, publicly admitted to following the semi-clandestine patriarch of all Russia and criticised the communist system. So much so that they prevailed upon Ivan to change his military uniform for a civilian suit. Ivan gave in, he had no wish to upset the family of his future wife, but the truth is that he was annoyed at missing the opportunity of displaying his stripes and medals. Irina continued to study at the headquarters of the Zurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow while her husband was trained to live in micro-gravity conditions and to bear acceleration equivalent to a number of times earth's gravity. Life in Zvezdny Gorodok was peaceful and quiet, and until Ivan was launched into space they lived happily for five years, upset only by the sudden loss of her parents in an accident in June 1965. Irina never became friendly with the families of other cosmonauts, whose wives were nothing more than patient house-wives, "the space programme's flower pots" she called them mischievously in private. She half-heartedly took part in their social meetings and in official acts where attendance was compulsory. She felt proud of having her own career, and, though she was interested in what her husband did she had no intention of being overridden by his work. Even if he had all the factors needed to become a future "hero of the Soviet Union"! She was from Leningrad where classes still existed (even if the communists only accepted one, the working class). She made few efforts, therefore, to earn the title of "the hero's wife". One of these efforts, was to travel to the Baikonor cosmodrome on 23 October 1968 to wish her husband luck in the most important venture in his life. Two days later, from the observation platform, she witnessed the spectacle. The Soyuz 2 launched into the sky, through the enormous flames and thick smoke that accompanied the ignition, with Ivan Fiodorovich aboard. It was the last time she ever saw him. Irina did not know it then but these were fateful days for her. She returned to Zvezdny Gorodok, from where mission control was carried out (a few years later, in 1973, the Kalingrad complex, near Moscow and better equipped, was exclusively set aside for this purpose). The news went from optimism to uncertainty, to complete depression. Information was still confused. Irina bore the bad news with strength of mind, the only consolation she received was the solidarity of the cosmonaut community she had previously rejected. Deep down she had the feeling that she was not going to be the hero's wife, but rather the hero's widow. On the 28th she was visited by General Kamanin, commander in chief and highest ranking officer in charge of the cosmonauts, to bring her the official notification of her husband's death and guarantee that an enormous effort was being undertaken to find out what exactly had happened. He instructed her to control her desperation and act with discretion, as this was classified information. He also warned her that she should be ready for any act or appearance that the VPK or the affected ministries might require of her. Irina took "act" to mean euphemistically "funeral". Afterwards, the doctor V. I. Yazdivsky, the cosmonauts' medical officer, paid her a visit and in a more paternal tone, tried to calm her. Irina took a sedative to sleep. When she woke up she found that two men had entered her apartment. They wore leather jackets and looked like KGB agents. They ordered her to accompany them immediately, and not to ask questions. They got into a black Volga and drove to Moscow, entering the grounds of the Kremlin. In a section of the Ministry of Defence, she was met by political commissioner Andrei S. Marchuk. There was a brief conversation which left her stunned; the reconstruction of this conversation, omitting the formal introduction with expression of condolence, was more or less as follows: "I have received orders to read you a communiqué. It says this: For reasons of state, the official version which will be circulated about the events concerning the Soyuz 2 mission is that: One, comrade Colonel Istochnikov's death was caused by accidental food poisoning which occurred on 24 October. Two, the Soyuz 2 was part of a robotic space exploration programme, its navigational controls were completely automatic and, as such, it is absurd to assume that it should have a human crew. Third, the only thing that travelled in the ship was a dog, for biological experimentation, as well as scientific test instruments. Fourth, the Soyuz 3 ship with comrade Lieutenant Colonel Beregovoi as pilot was launched the following day to intercept the Soyuz 2 and carry out a docking test which we recognise has partly failed. Having accomplished all the other objectives, we consider the rest of the mission has been a complete success that shows our supremacy in space". Irina protested, but to no avail, Marchuk did not improvise, every move had been carefully planned to minimize the risks: the date of death, the place, the small amount of people who had known Istochnikov's last movements. In Zvezdny Gorodok one lived an almost monastical life, unaffected by the exterior, heightened by the military character of the institution: discipline and secrecy were easily imposed. But, even so, people knew about the project, even foreign powers knew about it. Marchuk's cynical explanation anticipated her question. "American propaganda has been blaming us for a fatal accidents since the beginning of the sixties. Many of our first capsules carried voice recordings in order to make transmission tests, and the American secret service thought they were real pilots who, they imagined, disappeared afterwards. When we wished to avoid this confusion we simply put recordings of the choir of the Red Army. It would have been very difficult to imagine an entire choir inside the capsule; they realized their had made a mistake taking the bait and making fools of themselves. After all these mistakes , no one would dare connect the Soyuz 2 with the death of cosmonauts in space. That is, no one would if there isn't any proof. And there isn't any proof, is there, dear Irina Yurievna?" Irina was terrified under the inquisitive gaze of the commissioner, but turning weakness into strength she plucked up courage and said: "And what about me!?" "Yes", he replied menacingly, "This is both our problem and yours. But there is always an answer. You are alone and what is best for you is to be allowed make order in chaos without being disturbed. Very good, in that case we will move you to a sharaga(1) where we will set up a magnificent laboratory so you can work in peace and quiet. Your in-laws have not followed the event very closely and will believe our version. We'll look for a good excuse to justify notifying them so late about his death. We demand silence and are ready to intimidate. Nothing more." "And if I say anything?" "We are concerned about your anti communist background and your anti patriotic attitude, comrade doctor. What is the honour of one man, compared to the shame of an entire country? Now, though it deeply pains us, no one can bring your husband back to life. So accept our solution or prepare for the consequences. We would be very sorry if you, or one of your friends, were to have an unfortunate accident. You are an intelligent scientist, don't oblige me to send you to the Lubianka"(2). Irina Yurievna Kudasheva was confined and isolated at the sharaga at Irkutsk until 1984. Taking advantage of a lax in the system, on 14 April she fled to Saint Petersburg, and later found shelter in Finland. Since then she lives in the cell of the Russian-Orthodox monastery in Vanha Valamo, in western Karelia in Finland. (1) A special kind of gulag or prison for intellectuals, where the inmates worked on defence projects. (2) Name by which the general headquarters of the KGB was popularly known.

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