At around this time the Hungarian revolution occurred. After all the exposures, denunciations, and posthumous rehabilitations, after all the assurances about the impossibility of repeating the past, we were now presented with corpses, tanks, brute force, and lies all over again. Just one more convincing proof that nothing had changed at all. Boys just like us, fifteen or sixteen years old, were perishing on the streets of Budapest, rifles in hand, in defense of their freedom. Which was our side now, and which theirs? This was no longer a movie or a game of war, where it was always our side against the Germans and we were always on our side. On one hand, there was our side—the Russians, who were being cold-bloodedly sent in to kill. And on the other hand, there also was our side, for I would have done exactly the same thing if I had been in the place of those young Hungarians. In peaceful boring Moscow, maddened by our quiet humdrum life, how we itched for some action! It seemed to us that at any moment a dusty khaki truck would pull up outside our yard: “Time to go,” they would say, and start handing brand-new machine guns over the side. And we would swoop like a whirlwind through the attics and backyards, where we knew every rafter and every turn blindfolded, toward the center, to the Kremlin’s red stars. But the dusty trucks clattered past us over the cobbles, pedestrians walked uncaringly up and down, and women lazily exchanged insults. The kingdom of the dead. The days dragged by agonizingly, one after another, until it was all over and Hungary was strangled. It was clear that we couldn’t wait any longer, we had to act. But how? I was ready for anything. When some of the boys in school began to drop cautious hints about some new sort of organization, I didn’t even allow them to finish, I was so overjoyed. This is it, it’s started, I thought. At last! Now for the machine guns and we’ll get going! And so I became a member of an illegal organization. To my great sorrow there were no machine guns in sight, and no one even talked of such things; on the contrary, the older boys who were our leaders said that the organization had no political aims at all. But this was said meaningfully and with a knowing, conspiratorial look: it was clear that this was simply something that had to be said, just in case, in case someone talked out of place or gave way under interrogation, or in case we were being bugged. It was taken for granted that we were simply waiting for a signal to start, for the right moment, which one of our chiefs would recognize, and then…. If someone started talking about communism or Hungary, he was stopped immediately: why talk about that? It has absolutely nothing to do with us. Do you think you have to convert us? The message was: a clever person should understand. We didn’t even circulate forbidden literature, and we weren’t advised to try to get it. It was considered that we already understood the situation perfectly well and needed no further persuasion. From various hints dropped in passing, one was led to believe that there were very very many of us, that virtually half the country was caught up in our network and only waiting for the signal. At one gathering in a forest about twenty-five miles from Moscow, I saw twenty people, and among the trees there were lookouts posted. At other meetings I noticed new boys I hadn’t seen before, but according to our rules we weren’t supposed to know one another, and it was even suggested that we should make a habit of using aliases. In fact our entire activity consisted of conspiring and recruiting new members. First of all, it was explained, telephones and apartments could be bugged, and on the telephone we should use only prearranged phrases that would sound innocent; in apartments it was better not to talk at all. We also learned how to recognize a “tail” and get away from him. A member you didn’t know would take on the job of tailing you. You might have no warning, but you were supposed to be on the qui vive at all times. It was considered a great disgrace not to spot the tail, and afterward you were told what you had done all day and where you had been. Similarly, you too might be given the job of tailing someone without being noticed. If you were discovered, you weren’t supposed to show you knew, and you still had to prevent your target from getting away. But if you were the one being tailed, you had to try to find a way of giving your tail the slip and escaping. All these methods were carefully worked out and studied. We were instructed on how to behave during an interrogation: never admit anything— above all that you are a member of the organization; don’t recognize other members if they are shown to you; conceal your views and pretend to be a loyal Soviet citizen; feign surprise, perplexity, indignation, and use other psychological tricks during the interrogation. Unfortunately, no one explained the legal side of interrogations to us. Generally speaking, the omniscience and omnipotence of the KGB were greatly exaggerated. It was held that there was bound to be torture, beatings, and intimidation, and that the KGB would produce false written statements by other members, and so on. To a certain degree this was subsequently borne out as true, and my training stood me in good stead. But at the time no one paid us any attention. The recruitment of new members was entrusted only to very few—you had to prove your abilities first. On the whole it was recommended to keep people under close and sustained observation at first, without getting too intimate with them. Talking politics was categorically forbidden. Future members of the organization had to be selected not on the basis of their attitude or expressed beliefs, but according to quite different criteria. The person must be taciturn, reserved, bold, and reliable. You had to establish that he had no particular vices or criminal connections, and that he was not overly trusting or stupid. Finally, when you had established that he was suitable, you had to introduce him to one of the leaders, and if he approved of your choice, someone else was nominated to recruit him. Your task was merely to make the introduction and then vanish. There were many recruitment methods. The most common one was to recommend the organization as one for cooperative mutual aid. It was explained to me as follows: We are all in school at the moment and don’t have any particular problems, but later we shall be living in more complicated circumstances and will have to overcome certain obstacles in order to make our way. It is very difficult to do this alone: you need reliable, confidential friends who, unexpectedly for outsiders, will give you their support, and you will correspondingly support them. If such an organization grows big enough, we will prove very strong and will be able to accomplish practically anything. And that was about it. A completely innocent undertaking, and if a person didn’t understand what we would be able to do, he was never told more, and he continued in the belief that he had been invited to join a mutual-aid organization in order to further his career. Such was the state of our minds and such the atmosphere then prevailing in the country, however, that the very mention of the word “organization”, with the word “secret” on top, would cause your interlocutor’s eyes to light up joyfully, and it was immediately apparent that, like you, he had just been waiting for the truck with the machine guns. Naturally he at once sounded you out about the possibilities, and you gravely and meaningfully gave him to understand that intelligent people didn’t discuss such nonsense; that the organization didn’t have any political aims. “Aha!” he would nod enthusiastically, hastening to make it clear that he too was an intelligent man and realized you couldn’t talk about such things aloud. Afterward, at the next assembly, you had to recommend him and present him to the others under an assumed name. If no one objected, he became a member of the organization and joined in the common work. Only once did I come across someone who seemed to fit all the particulars but didn’t understand the organization’s true aims. He was a radio enthusiast and was totally absorbed in his hobby. I don’t think he had ever heard of Hungary and was totally indifferent to which country he lived in. He swallowed the idea of mutual aid entirely at face value and was constantly begging me to get him radio parts—he thought he had joined a secret club for radio amateurs. He used to regard our conspiratorial fussing with the indulgent air of a grown dog watching puppies at play. Naturally I reported my failure, but such was the generally accepted atmosphere of ambiguity and understatement that it was impossible to explain what it was in him that was unsatisfactory. He was accepted and I felt discouraged. I could imagine his bewilderment if tomorrow they suddenly handed out machine guns or we were all summoned to the Lubyanka. In fact, the game was conducted with such caution that if any of us had been arrested, we couldn’t have said anything, even if we had wanted to. No matter where I went—to a Pioneer camp or simply to a country cottage on the outskirts of Moscow, or to another school—I was always told in advance which of our members were already there, how to get in touch with them, and what to do. It was out of the question, of course, to refuse an assignment or refuse help to someone, just as it was to ask the purpose of the assignments you were given. Asking questions was in general frowned upon. Your knowledge was supposed to be sufficient only to carry out the assignment, and then you were supposed to wipe what you had done completely from your memory. There was a whole system for checking whether people talked too much, and if even the leaders later asked you how things had gone, the done thing was to remember nothing and express surprise at the question being asked at all. Needless to say, our parents never suspected what we were up to. Whoever failed to carry out an assignment was disgraced, and no excuses were accepted. To arrive even five minutes late for a rendezvous was an ineradicable blot. It was held that for a man of mettle there was no such thing as an unfulfillable task. Our stern warning to the headmaster to stop his punching had been sponsored by the organization, and was regarded as aid to a beaten colleague. On another occasion, when I was on holiday at a dacha just outside Moscow, I was told that some things had been stolen from our boys while they were swimming in the river. They suspected some local youths who had been sunbathing all day in the vicinity. I knew the local youths pretty well and was on friendly terms with them, so it wasn’t difficult to persuade them to give the things back. But they were astounded that I knew about it. Once as I was trying to give a training group the slip, I dashed into an entranceway. The group trailing me didn’t see where I had gone, but if they started looking into entranceways they were sure to find me at once. This would be a great disgrace and I wondered feverishly what to do about it. I had noticed a whole collection of cactuses in a window on the ground floor of one building, and losing no time, I rang the doorbell. An elderly woman opened the door, and I told her that I was a collector of cactuses, was very fond of them, and had happened to notice a number of unfamiliar species in her window. I must have looked pretty sincere, because she invited me in, treated me to some tea, presented me with a heap of cactuses, and for a long time wouldn’t let me go. With great difficulty I finally extricated myself from the hospitality of the garrulous cactus breeder, and when I emerged triumphant into the street, there was nobody there. My reputation gradually grew, especially as I was very successful at recruiting new members. Even before, I had had my own circle of friends who shared my views, and I now brought them all in with me. Furthermore, I put everything I had into it and was prepared to do anything to ensure our success. Of course, we didn’t devote much thought at this time to what our goal should be, and the curious thing was that we never thought of any possible adverse results or consequences. We didn’t plan to create some sort of new order to replace the old. We neither attempted to calculate the strength of the enemy’s forces nor even to imagine what we might do in the event of success, or, on the contrary, failure. We weren’t interested in how realistic our scheme was. What we needed was an explosion, a moment of maximum tension when it would at last be possible to exterminate all those vermin, when our side would suddenly rise up to their full height in every corner of Moscow and irresistibly storm all those prisons, Party committees, and ministries. On one hand calculating and sharp to the point of cynicism, we were yet totally irrational and careless when it came to the most important thing. How could these things be reconciled? The explanation was simple: each of us thirsted secretly—perhaps even unconsciously—for death. We had conceived a violent loathing for everyone older than us, who had been accessories to the monstrously vile deception. After those red-starred tanks, the pride and joy of our childhood, had crushed our peers on the streets of Budapest, a bloody fog blinded our eyes. The whole world had betrayed us, and we believed in nobody. We wanted to die shoulder to shoulder with comrades we trusted, with comrades we relied on more than ourselves in this sea of treachery. Our parents had turned out to be informers and agents provocateurs, our generals executioners—even our childhood games and fantasies were steeped in deceit. Only cynicism struck us as sincere, for noble words had become the small change of deception. We smoked and swore like troopers, made filthy jokes in the presence of women, and drank vodka—ahead we could see only a void. We children of the socialist slums were prepared one fine morning to machine-gun the apathy and bite the dust. Which of us did not feel that there was no chance of winning? And what kind of a future did we face anyway? Liberty, equality, fraternity, happiness, democracy, the people—all were vile words from the vocabulary of vile leaders and red posters. We preferred to substitute oaths. I don’t regret those times and am not ashamed of our foolhardiness. All my life I have yearned for people who will stand shoulder to shoulder with me, no questions asked. At last I was introduced to the leader of our “branch”. Several times we met in the street and then I visited him at his home. We talked at length and in great detail, and I kept wanting to get down to brass tacks. What were we doing, after all? He was twenty-seven, a postgraduate who didn’t in the least look like a leader of an underground organization. It wasn’t just that he was a lot older than I—that is to say, that he belonged to a leprous generation whom we detested—but his very appearance, his leisurely speech with its slight lisp, the piercing look he directed over the top of his spectacles, his ungainly figure, his balding forehead—in short, everything about him put me on guard and bewildered me. If I had been asked to try to recruit this fellow into our organization, I would have turned him down. “Society,” he said in his low, toneless voice, “is like an organism: it needs muscles and brute force, but it also needs nerves and a brain, eyes and ears.” He carefully hinted that he and I belonged to the brain, and I was supposed to be thrilled to be one of the chosen. He could be extremely persuasive and convincing, and never once strayed from the style of enigmatic ambiguity that dominated our organization. He remembered exactly who all of us were, with all our strong points and weaknesses, but this was all somehow superficial and without feeling. I doubt that he realized that he was the absolute master of a suicide squad. Our aspirations interested him only insofar as they helped him to exercise control. It seemed to me that he was interested in nothing but personal power, and I found it impossible to imagine him with a machine gun in his hands, under a hail of bullets, or even under interrogation by the KGB. I got on much better with his younger brother, who was only two years older than I and much livelier and more comprehensible. I sensed in him the same impulse that moved the rest of us. He was deeply attached to his older brother and idealized him. Eventually I came to an unexpected conclusion: there was nobody higher than these two; they were the leaders of the entire organization, not just one branch of it. But this didn’t discourage me in the least—from my point of view, even a few dozen people were a significant force. We just had to find ways of growing faster, of somehow attracting more people and infiltrating existing official organizations. We had to change our tactics. The main thing to emerge, however, was that our inactivity now became pointless—no signal could possibly come and our expectations ceased. As it was, this inactivity was demoralizing. It turned out to be far easier to recruit people than to hold on to them. After the training in conspiracy and so on, the first rush of enthusiasm gradually gave way to boredom. Man cannot live in constant expectation. People began to drift away. For any overt activity would inevitably put the KGB onto our trail. We were faced with an insoluble contradiction: the organization could become truly popular and effective only if it proclaimed its existence publicly and attracted allies and supporters, but that would also put an immediate end to its activities. The sentence for merely joining an anti-Soviet organization was ten years in the labor camps. But say we had announced our existence in some way, say we had discovered thousands wishing to join—how could we have established that they hadn’t been planted by the KGB? How could we have continued to trust one another? More probably, we ourselves would have been taken for agents provocateurs. The more we thought about it, the less we retained our faith in the possibility of illegal action. The situation was ridiculous: membership in an underground organization guaranteed harmlessness to the regime. Plotting behind the scenes and, let us say, joining the Party for the sake of camouflage, a man could comfortably live out the whole of his life; he could work, go to Party meetings, and in every way appear to support the regime. He might even go and work for the KGB to improve his camouflage! But, on the other hand, the slightest carelessness and the whole secret organization could be clapped in jail without having accomplished a thing. If a man wanted to act, he didn’t need an organization. On the contrary, it would only get in his way. Many years later, when I encountered various organizations in the camps, I understood that this was a key question we had been faced with, and I rejoiced that I had experienced these doubts while still a child. Indeed, the 1950s and 1960s in Russia saw a mushrooming of clandestine organizations, unions, groups, and even parties of different hues. It was forgivable for us youngsters to believe that we were doing great things, to conspire with our own shadows and bamboozle each other, making out that our side were everywhere and D day would soon come. But when you meet forty-year-old men in the camps, with a ten-year sentence for the same kind of activity, you can only shrug your shoulders. Even we boys had had the wit to grasp that you couldn’t unite the entire country into such an organization. The logic of all beginners is more or less the same—they all begin from square one, that is to say, the history of the Soviet Communist Party. We remember from the movies and books we saw and read in our childhood that the Bolsheviks began by founding a party, then beavered away deep underground to distribute The Spark and Pravda, then gathered fellow spirits around them and in the end made a revolution. Responding to the wise proverb that says you should learn from your enemies, we fall victims yet again to the wiles of propaganda. We forget that the Bolsheviks worked in conditions of relative freedom to establish tyranny, and not the other way around, that there was a high degree of freedom of the press and freedom of emigration, while the entire leadership sat in Zurich or Baden-Baden. We forget that there was a handful of professional revolutionaries, well supplied with money; that the entire Russian secret police force of that time was housed in a two-story building too small even for a district police station today; that even in spite of this they were catching Bolsheviks almost every day. But nobody gave the Bolsheviks ten years in jail for propaganda—they were simply sent into internal exile, from which only the laziest failed to escape. The basic propaganda literature, like Das Kapital and other “classics”, was freely and legally published in Russia and was even available in prison libraries. Their news sheets were published abroad and, since everything was so free and easy, were brought in across the virtually unpatrolled Russian border. And their circulations in any case didn’t exceed two to three thousand. How often are we taken in by Communist propaganda, forgetting that the Bolsheviks didn’t accomplish any revolution at all, but developed their activities only after the February Revolution, in conditions of absolute freedom and backed by German money. The Provisional Government had no secret police at all. How can grown-up people seriously believe that revolutions are the result of the activities of some underground organization? In a nation where many political parties exist, private enterprise flourishes and there is no internal passport system, what sort of an achievement is it to have an underground? Especially when you didn’t even get hard labor for it? The question is: What’s the point when you can do it legally? The upshot of these propaganda delusions is that for twenty years people have struggled to emulate a mythical Bolshevik revolution—even now not everyone has managed to clear his head of its smell. It needs no more than three confederates gathered together for them to start searching for a name for their party. After that they write a constitution, a program—and go straight to jail. I have met political parties consisting of two, of five, and of twelve members. The biggest of them all, the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People, added up to about a hundred. All they had time for was to write a silly program and read Berdyaev (as if half the country wasn’t reading Berdyaev anyway, without any parties!). The smallest party I ever came across consisted of one man, named Fyodorkov, and was called Direct Power to the People. He was a watchmaker from Khabarovsk, about fifty years old, short, stout, and very quick in his movements, like a cuckoo clock. At first he insisted on arguing with us, trying to prove the advantages of direct people’s power, but then he reconciled himself to us and simmered down—if it’s DPP, so be it, and to hell with the lot of you. For a long time the KGB racked their brains over what to do with him—you could hardly try one man for starting a political party! Then they washed their hands of him and stuck him in a loony bin. Thinking back on it all, I am proud that when I was only fifteen or sixteen years old, I and my friends started not only the largest but also the best concealed organization that ever was, which lasted longer than all the others put together and was never once given away. Our secret was very simple: We recruited only people of our own age—not only are there no KGB agents of that age but at no age are people sincerer or purer—and our biggest secret of all, however, was that we never did anything; we didn’t write programs, we didn’t swear oaths, we didn’t keep lists, we didn’t keep minutes of meetings; it was forbidden even to talk about politics or to have a name for the organization. And if other illegal organizations had lasted as long as we did and had reached their natural limits, they too would have understood how impossible and unnecessary illegality was. They would have come to it, so to speak, experimentally.