His interrogator, her lecturer. A chance letter connects a modern Russian prisoner to a Soviet dissident, linking generations of repression

Antonina Zimina to Maria Bovenko

We were being trained as future officers of the court and law by the very man who had investigated Natan Sharansky in Lefortovo: Yuri Ivanovich Suchkov. He was a senior investigator for particularly important cases for the Soviet KGB, and he was our lecturer. It’s interesting that in the post-Soviet years, he followed his former detainee’s fate in the media, and at times it even seemed he was proud of Sharansky’s political success in Israel. The investigator would talk about his cunning, how much trouble the prisoner had caused him, how he forced him to be constantly on guard and to always have his wits about him. He told it all with a smile. I wonder, does Natan mention him, and if so, how?

Here’s a story from Yuri Ivanovich about Natan that I remember well. “He was a cunning Jew,” he’d say with a laugh. “One day, I summon him, and he comes in looking pleased with himself and says: ‘Well, Yuri Ivanovich, you’re in trouble now!’ And he shows me a packet of pills. He was taking medication for his stomach. They’d given him his medicine, but it was six months out of date. I was terrified. The case was attracting a huge amount of attention, even outside the Soviet Union. What was I to do? I needed some kind of document stating that the drugs were safe and that he couldn’t have been poisoned by them. I went to the head of the medical service, and he had no idea what to write.”

Yuri Ivanovich then recounted his ordeals, his treks through the corridors of the Ministry of Health and his endless requests. “In the end,” he said, “I got a document from the deputy minister of health himself, stating that all medicines produced in the USSR do not lose their properties for six months after the expiry date and are completely safe. I came back and proudly showed him the document, and he said to me: ‘Well, Yuri Ivanovich, you’ve wriggled out of it again’.”

It’s strange, but it was only when I found myself in Lefortovo that I often recalled Suchkov’s stories, which had seemed so detached and boring in my student days. In detention, they helped me understand how these people in uniform think, what their logic is. It turned out to be an invaluable lesson the old lecturer had passed on to his lazy student. Masha, I am also desperate to read Natan’s memoirs.

Antonina Zimina to Maria Bovenko

The book is so vivid! The idea is very close to my heart—or rather, not just close, it’s something I also put into practice. In Natan’s text, it’s a moral imperative, maintaining a spiritual distance from one’s jailers. This is the absolute foundation.

Once, during a prison transfer, my guard was a woman from the senior ranks of the FSIN, the Russian prison service. She told me that when officers are trained, they are forbidden from seeing prisoners as people. They are supposed to see a “special contingent”, not human beings. But she said this is impossible, as staff and prisoners see each other for years and inevitably grow accustomed to one another. She told me that in one of the camps she met a former classmate among the convicts, and they both avoided each other for over a year. But I am a proponent of spiritual distance from those trained to see the beast in a person. Here, that’s almost all the staff, with rare exceptions. Did I maintain that distance in Lefortovo? Yes.

And when they, breaking many rules, tried to be supportive? That was a rare exception, largely because I was a woman in a men’s pre-trial detention centre. Despite the investigator’s demand that they be tougher with me, the male guards, most of them ex-paratroopers, had their own code of right and wrong. To “beat up” or “terrorise” a woman is wrong. One day, an officer was doing the rounds with the daily register, and I was asleep. When I woke up, they brought me the book. Usually, the signatures are in order, but I saw the spaces above and below my name were already filled. The officer said he had seen through the peephole that I was sleeping and didn’t want to wake me. This was astonishing. It broke every pattern, a small act of humanity defying the investigator’s demand for maximum strictness. It meant there were some who still showed decency. In the prison camps, or any other detention centre, it’s completely different.

Antonina Zimina to Maria Bovenko

In the chapter “Aliyah”, Natan is in East Berlin, and he writes: “It is interesting that only this morning I was re-reading Goethe and Schiller, not imagining that in a few hours I would be in their homeland.” It’s funny, but before one of my transfers to court from Lefortovo, I was reading Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”. It was a 1932 edition from the prison library. You pick it up, open it, and the first stamp reads: “Library of the Lefortovo Prison of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD”. The inventory number was written in corrosive ink, with a dip pen. You could trace the history of the state through the stamps. Inside, some long-gone prisoners had created their own secret correspondence, underlining letters with the charcoal from a matchstick. I even told my investigator about it, wondering what had become of the people who whispered to each other in the book’s margins. He thought for a moment and said: “Ah, they were all shot.” If I ever return to Lefortovo, I will take out that book again. It’s a living museum exhibit.

Antonina Zimina to Maria Bovenko

Masha, my dear, to continue yesterday’s letter: I was thinking what Yuri Ivanovich Suchkov would say if he knew how much his advice had helped me. He’d probably say: “And that’s what you get for teaching them!” Or perhaps he would have found it interesting.

I remembered so much while sitting in solitary, my thoughts racing. Professor Suchkov taught us that we couldn’t lie to a suspect, since he was training us to be investigators, but that no one had abolished investigative cunning…

He would share techniques from his own rich experience: it’s vital that the suspect believes their case is hopeless, that the evidence against them is overwhelming, so they decide to confess. “You walk in with a huge folder of papers,” he’d say, “with the case name and the suspect’s surname on the cover. You say, ‘Ooooh,’ and give them a meaningful look. The folder might be full of nonsense, but they don’t know that!” Every time I saw my own investigator using these old KGB life hacks, I would smile knowingly, but inside I was roaring with laughter. I almost wanted to discuss all the tricks with him, but, of course, I didn’t.

It’s funny, you never know what knowledge will prove useful. Sitting in Lefortovo, I was so grateful for Suchkov’s stories, things I was sure at university would never apply to me. I remember them suddenly throwing me into solitary confinement for no reason, and I recalled what he had taught us: “If you have no evidence, and the suspect is silent, which is their right, you can’t beat or insult them. So what do you do? You go to the head of the isolation block, informally, explain the situation, and ask for a solitary cell. After three days, that suspect will see their investigator as their closest friend.”

I thought: “Thank you, Yuri Ivanovich!” And I stopped talking to my investigator altogether. If only he knew… :))

Antonina Zimina to Maria Bovenko

Before my walk, they brought letters: yours and one from Vladimir Raevsky. In his was a scan of a New Year’s greeting from Natan Sharansky. Wow! Just wow! Natan, whose book my cellmates and I read aloud, whose investigator had taught me law. He knows about me and has written such a warm, touching greeting from Jerusalem. He wished me strength, and I was filled with happiness!

Natan Sharansky to Vladimir Raevsky

Thank you for forwarding this correspondence. It is sad to read of the fate of Tonya, another victim of the system. At the same time, it is gratifying to see that my book is fulfilling the purpose for which it was written. I remember Suchkov’s name. He was one of 17 investigators on my case. I most likely met him while reviewing my case files, a process that went on for months, when all these men had to sit with me in turns. I don’t recall the incident with the medicine, though it sounds very plausible given my relations with them.

And Suchkov’s lessons do act as a reminder of their behaviour during my own interrogations.

Thank you again. I can offer Tonya one more piece of advice: see every day you endure in prison as another day of your victory. It helps one’s overall state. May God give her strength in this struggle.

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev