Denouncer by Paul M. Levitt Read Free Book Online Page B

examiners. Irrespective of the speaker or his position, Sasha shook his head in agreement, hoping to encourage his professors to continue their parsing of sentences and squaring of circles: Who did and did not engage in reprisals and theft? Who provoked whom? Who was more to blame: kulaks, Cossacks, or commissars?
    Eventually, Ivan Vyazemskiy, a stolid, chunky man with a pencil mustache and a mole on his right eyelid, exclaimed, as he lit a cigarette and delicately blew the smoke in the air, that he had not yet examined the honors candidate. Displaying a full set of white teeth except for one gold incisor, he revealed just the slightest aroma of spirits.
    Running one finger over his mustache, he pursed his lips and began. “The intervention of the fourteen other nations unnecessarily prolonged the conflict. Their expeditionary landings in Archangel and Murmansk and Vladivostok, to say nothing of incursions from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine, brought with them the necessaries of war: troops, money, and supplies. I would go so far as to argue that without foreign intervention, the Whites would have been crushed by early 1918. Instead, the terrible conflict dragged into 1923. Just consider the results: millions dead through fighting, disease, and starvation; social revolutions in other countries thwarted . . . Finland, Hungary, and the Baltic states; devastating pogroms; the near loss of Siberia to Japan. I could go on but will rest my case there. Anyone who thinks that the so-called Allied Intervention did not change the course of history and stifle democratic movements in Eastern and Central Europe is unfamiliar with the historical sources. Yes, Germany was a major player, but not as major as some think.” He inhaled, forced a smile, and, through the smoke flowing from his mouth, said, “But then I am speaking for you, Sasha Mikhailovich Parsky. What do you think?” A persuasive speaker, though not an eloquent one, Ivan Vyazemskiy had silenced the other examiners, except for Feodor Simyonski.
    “I would direct my colleagues’ attention,” Feodor said, “to the fact that Sasha Parsky’s thesis neither trumpets nor slights the German role in the civil war. Rather he argues that for far too long the role of the Central Powers and their allies has been misread, and that the intervention exacerbated the carnage and accelerated the financial bankruptcy of Russia.” Feodor shook his head. “And to what end? Principally to keep the revolution from spreading, as Professor Vyazemskiy said.”
    Ivan smiled contentedly.
    Simyonski concluded, “I would add, though Mr. Parsky does not, that we are suffering the repercussions of the civil war to this day.”
    A somber quiet pervaded the room. Feodor looked around the table and, not seeing in his colleagues any wish to continue the discussion, was prepared to ask Sasha to wait in the hall while the committee deliberated. But at that moment, the security officer, Igor Likhachov, pulled his chair up to the circle.
    “Professor Simyonski, in my capacity as chief of security for the college, permit me to question the candidate.”
    Everyone present knew Chick-Chick, one moment jolly, the next lugubrious. A veteran of the civil war, he had returned from the Upper Don with a lame arm and a gimpy leg. A short man and a strong one, he could, even with his disabilities, have wrestled larger men to the ground. His dark skin suggested Kalmyk blood, as did his wide, black eyebrows that ran straight across the bridge of his nose. He opened his large mouth and from its recesses came the words that Sasha feared most: kulaks, parents, arrests, murder, police, alibi, and accusations.
    With all the examiners silently tensed, Chick-Chick paused, reveling in the effect of his pronouncements, and then, to everyone’s amusement, hatched from a pocket another hard-boiled egg, which he shelled, arranging the detritus on the table in a letter S. Reaching into a second pocket, he drew