Russian Americans. Two fates (1996)

The stories of emigrants from the USSR "Second Wave" Valentina Sinkevich and Sergey Davydov

Archival project "Radio Liberty this week 20 years ago." The most interesting and significant from the air of Radio Freedom of twenty years ago. Incomplete story. Still living hopes. Could Russia go the other way?

On top of the barriers. Russian Americans. Two fates. Participants: Valentina Alekseevna Sinkevich - poet and publisher, Sergey Sergeevich Davydov - professor of Russian literature in the Middlebury -College. Alexandra Finkelstein - announcer, Ivan Tolstoy - host.

Ivan Tolstoy : Today's issue is dedicated to two human dramas and is called our program "Russian Americans. Two Fates." However, the conversation will not be about the American part of the biography, it is our heroes successful, calm, introducing, and therefore not so exciting. We will talk about adventures and misadventures in Western Europe, where the heroes of our program, by the way, were not related to each other, were not of their own free will. It's time to name their names. Valentina Alekseevna Sinkevich and Sergey Sergeevich Davydov. Valentina Sinkevich - a poet and publisher, lives in Philadelphia, releases a poetic almanac "Meetings". On September 29, she turns 70 years old. Sergey Davydov-Professor Middlebury-College, teaches Russian literature. We will start, of course, with a lady.

Valentina Sinkevich, USA, Philadelphia

The heroine of the first part of the program will be Valentina Alekseevna Sinkevich, which we congratulate on his birthday. On September 29, she turns 70 years old. Valentina Sinkevich is a poet and publisher, for 20 years she has published a poetic almanac. At first it was called "intersections", now - "meetings." For the anniversary of Valentina Alekseevna, a double room with a number 20 on the cover was released. Valentina Sinkevich made a legendary a lot to identify and unite the poetic forces of Russian abroad. Her lovingly published almanacs, invariably decorated with graphics by emigrant artists, is the best monument to the devotion of Russian culture, which is always the young soul of Valentina Alekseevna.

How the herbs are young.
How green is growing in the ground
Living land, wildlife.
There is no animal of such a breed
Not believing in the good news of spring.
And the temples of the Annunciation are full
News about Sunday.
About this birds flight,
Streams of heavy waters,
About these herbs flowering.
In April on Sunday
The bells call to the mature.

However, the poetic memory of Valentina Sinkevich knows something else - fear:

All boundaries are confused
Pages with heroes.
Before analia
Pages pray on the image.
Fear crawling into childhood,
The inheritance is hunger, war and flight.
The neighborhood of the traitor and saint.

It is with this part of the life of Valentina Sinkevich that we will meet today. Especially for "on top of the barriers" Valentina Alekseevna wrote her memories. The announcer will read them.

“My parents were called“ from the former. ” Father is the son of a priest, mother of the general, he was connected with the Kiev Cadet Corps. I don’t know how and when both grandfathers died, but then I knew that it was difficult to imagine the worst social origin at that time. Parents lived under the pain of arrest, since there was a lot of relatives in emigration. Before the revolution of the mother, everything was rich in the revolution, everything was rich in the revolution. And the mother and even her son from the first marriage, who left for the revolution, disappeared. criminal.

Father and mother did not hide from us, my older sister Irina and me, their sharply negative attitude to the Soviet regime, and we have never gotten away about the fact that my parents are religious, about their origin and about family conversations. I remember that my father always took off his cap and was mentally baptized. I knew for sure that he was doing this, passing by some closed church. The sister is seriously, as far as possible in Ore, she learned to play the piano. We have a cabinet piano, probably somewhere somewhere a miracle preserved from one of the Kyiv friends of the mother. He incredibly cluttered our cramped room, I immediately disliked him, and so there was nowhere to turn, and perceived the lessons of music as torture and, unlike a sister, was erased in every possible way. The family also kept an old album with photographs telling about another, completely different beautiful life that my sister and I did not know.

I remember that my father always took off his cap and was mentally baptized. I knew for sure what he was doing, passing by some closed church

Father died before the war, thank God, his death, he had a sick heart. After the death of his father, the sister, who had not yet graduated from the ten -year -old, began to earn extra money to music lessons. The mother, who worked at the meteorological station, received a meager salary, we needed.

From an early age, I loved reading most of all, I read from the age of five, imitating my sister, an older for three years. Poems began to write at 10. The parents vigilantly and reasonably followed our reading, giving good books, first children, then classics and not only domestic. I am firmly sure that love of reading fenced me from many wrong actions. I was left alone early. The Germans took me in August 1942, and 16 I was already in September already in Germany. You can rephrase Khodasevich and say that I went through the book. The first winter under the German occupation is remembered as a nightmare. We were starving, and there were no matches or salt. You can live without salt, but you can’t live without matches. Fierce frosts, you need to melt the stove, raw firewood, kerosene is also not even for primus. It became easier by the summer, vegetables from their own garden appeared, which they always treated themselves and almost everyone in the garden grew fruit trees. We have an apple tree, a pear and mulberry. In America, these berries eat only birds, and we, I remember, echoed them in incredible quantity at all times, and at that time with special appetite.

In the summer of 1942, a summons came to the name of the sister, she was obliged to go to work in Germany. In Ostr, the Germans first announced a voluntary entry to work in Germany, which did not give good results for the Germans. Then they began to send registered orders by mail and at the same time grabbed more or less able-bodied people directly from the bazaars and streets. Mother took out a certificate of Irinina of incapacity for work from a familiar doctor. I think that the doctor did not particularly risk it - Irina coughs. The doctor wrote that she has sick sick. She looked after that terrible winter and really tuberculosis. In August, a summons came to my name, I had to go to Germany. Nobody took it seriously: what is the benefit of me? A sort of skinny pale child. They assured that in Chernigov there would be a medical examination, which I would by no means go and they would immediately send me back to Oster, so no one really said goodbye to me.

However, everything turned out differently. For two days, we, 18 people, almost all the healthy peasant wonders from neighboring villages and escorted from new policemen, I don’t remember whether he was armed, walked to the Chernihiv railway, in my time there was not even a bus in my acor. If I am not mistaken, we walked for two days, spent the night along the road with the peasants. In Chernigov, we were sprinkled with disinfectant powder, loaded into commodity cars, and the first stop was somewhere in Poland, then we were landed in Gotenhafen, former Gdin. Here is a bathhouse and again disinfectant spraying. Then Danzig, where at some working point we were dismantled by the Germans, local peasants, Bauer.

In Chernigov, we were sprinkled with disinfectant powder, loaded into commodity cars, and the first stop was somewhere in Poland

In Germany, I first worked on the field, that is, at Bauer. Then, quite quickly, they got off from me, and I got to clean apartments at local burghers. They took for the hardest work - knocking out carpets, washing windows and so on. I wore the sign "Ost" until the end of the war. I accidentally hit the British zone of Germany, and this circumstance allowed to stay in the West.

But previously we survived the terrible period of violent repatriation. I think that certain anti -Soviet moods of parents influenced my firm decision not to return home. True, I did not assume that the mother was left completely alone, I learned about my sister’s death only in 1954, after Stalin’s death, when she wrote home, but by that time my mother had died.

After the war, I lived in the three Dipian camps of the British zone: on the outskirts of Flensburg, it is located at the Danish border, in Fishback near Hamburg and in Hamburg itself. A colorful population gathered in Flensburg - Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and Baltic. Russian and oriental Ukrainians were disguised as any other nationality, just not to fall into the clutches of Smersh. The commandant of the camp was a thick rescuer from the Army of Salvation, godlessly stole our dry rations that replaced the money. Dipians were given a certain number of American cigarettes and coffee in grains, for this scarce goods it was possible to exchange anything among the Germans, up to clothes. Then our commandant came across his divisions, he was removed, and they began to be placed on other camps.

The Russian Dipish camp Fishbek was likely to be a communal apartment, overpopulated to capacity. Usually, several families fenced off by army blankets were instilled in the barracks. Scandals, squabbles and even fights arose according to all sorts of trifles and without them. Many elders of barracks and some corridor, who did not give rest and now and then shouted: "Gentlemen, we will not be collective farmers, we will notice and wash the premises." Complaints and denunciations flew to the Kremlin, that is, the decent equipped Barak, where the camp administration lived. My husband and me (in Flensburg I got married) was sent to Fishbek in deep winter. Arrived, but there are no premises. They tried to inspire a shoemaker who met us in hostility to a large family. His profession was well remembered, since he shouted: "You are an artist (my husband was an anatomist and a watercolist), and I am a shoemaker, and we are not a couple." His wife oath promised every morning to shake the ashes from the stove right on my head. I had to sit for two days in the Kremlin’s office, as long as they fenced off a piece of the corridor, which became our haven for almost a year. But in the indefatigably noisy Fishback there was a church with almost daily services. A camp newspaper was printed on the rotator, it seems, “Fishbek news”, in which the Chaliapin memories of the “Mask and Soul” were seriously published. I first read this thing in Fishback. In the same newspaper, my first selection of poems appeared in the press, thank God, not preserved. There were lectures and concerts, but all this is at the home level.

In the late 1940s, the Dipians were not so much busy with thoughts about what was being done in Russia, as a desire to get away from its borders as soon as possible. They were mortally afraid of political changes that could influence the decision of the Allies to stop violent repatriation and take on the placement of the displaced. The opportunity to be sent home seemed too terrible.

There is nothing to say about my life by the end of the 1940s, since my daughter Anna was born, and I completely took up her. And in camp conditions, although the diplomatic camps cannot even be remotely compared with those others without water in the barracks, it had to be brought from a neighboring, with constantly extinguished electricity as a result of three electric tiles on the simultaneously included, on which we cooked, and I also needed hot water - all this brought almost nourished, we had to think about the child’s health.

We, like everyone else, signed up to leave where we could sign up - Australia, Canada, USA, South America, Africa. For obvious reasons, Europe was avoided. Canada was capricious, accepted young, healthy, even height and weight had a meaning. I tried not to take people with higher education. Some countries followed her example and then fantastic double professions began to appear among the diplomaticians: a philologist-farmer, a mathematician-ugly. Then they were finished from the first and before the puzzled officials of the next commission or before the consul itself there was some flimsy okard with an enviable work experience in the mine or in the field somewhere in Poland or Romania. A lot of such “Poles” or “Romanians” fell into the commission, but many were tortured by questions-answers and left for the overseas countries.

We got to America quite by accident. Personally, I least wanted to in America. American magazines and advertising in them did not excite the desire to constantly live in America. Now, almost 50 years later, my views on a lot have remained the same. But I gradually fell in love with America and is infinitely grateful to it. She gave me the opportunity to remain Russian, that is, she provided the opportunity to live in two cultures - Russian and American.

It turned out to be quite difficult to get out of the Campia camps. On the problem of departure from Germany, only the Tolstoy Fund vigorously bared from Germany, but not everyone could put on his shoulders, and therefore there was a very strict selection that Lev Nikolaevich himself would hardly have approved. It was necessary to enlist a good recommendation taken from the office of the local church. My husband Mikhail Ilyich Kachurovsky was not a church man, he did not even go to worship even on big holidays, and our marriage was not church, so we did not even apply for a recommendation to the priest. However, once we managed to get to the Australian consul - the last step of the election diplomatic procedure. With all our belongings, saying goodbye to camp friends, we went to the Bremen Harbor in complete confidence that we were leaving for Australia forever. But in Bremen, the consul threw us for an unknown reason. I had to return to my darling "zoological" camp. So our Australian epic ended.

After it, we began to study Spanish in the hope of resettlement to some Latin American lands. But at the beginning of 1950, representatives of the outlandish organization came to the camp, God forbid her health. This Protestant church mission did not find fault with either age, nor education, or religion. Most of all she was interested in whether we drink or smoke, and having received a negative answer, she took us to her care. In May 1950, in a familiar, not only by the Grimm Bremen brothers, we ascended the military transport vessel General Balu, and after three stormy weeks of sickening voyage at the General, overloaded with diplomians, we nevertheless reached the New York harbor. By car, we all went to Baltimore, where there was a mansion belonging to the Bratsk Church, one of the branches of the world church, as it later turned out, a rather strict Christian community. She was obliged to provide us with the first work in America.

The cruise on the “general” was free for all the diplomians, and for the maintenance of the Bratsk Church on land, she took a deer in a child-in a day only two dollars per person, and even in a debt, since we did not see dollars in the eye.

In America, until 1960, I was engaged in physical labor. Then, in September of the same year, she got a bibliographer at the University of Pennsylvania. The Soviet satellite helped me in this: when he took off, here everyone rushed to study the Russian language, the interest in which used to be at the level of some African dialect. But after launch, knowledge of the Russian turned into a specialty. I served 27 years in the library, for some time wrote reviews for the American newspaper to Russian books in English translation or to books with a Russian theme. Then she left this lesson, as she served, wrote poetry, essays and reviews, and published "Meetings".

Ivan Tolstoy : Our announcer Alexander Finkelstein read the memoirs of Valentina Sinkevich, written at the request of the program "On top of the barriers". Record September 26, 96.

With me in the studio, our second guest is a professor of Russian literature from Middlebury -College Sergey Sergeyevich Davydov. Although, to be historically accurate, the guest in Prague is more like me than my interlocutor, because Sergey Davydov was born in Prague. His family is an emigrant, moreover, famous for both the maternal and paternal line. Mother’s grandfather is a historian of literature, professor-educator Alfred Bem, and the ancestor’s ancestor is familiar to every Russian schoolchild, Partizan Partizan Denis Davydov.

Alfred Bem

Grandfather Bem, who came to Prague at the invitation of the Czech government in the early 1920s, was the reason that the grandson was born in Prague, and the Partizan poet, probably passed through generations an adventurous character to my interlocutor. Sergey Sergeyevich, let me start with the tragic fate of Alfred Ludwigovich Beham, the father of your mother. It is known that in 1945, when the Soviet army entered Prague, he was arrested and died under unclear circumstances. Do you know something more through family channels?

Sergey Davydov : Struve in a book about Russian literature in exile writes that he committed suicide - allegedly jumped out of the window during the interrogation. Which is unlikely - he was not an athlete. Lame, old man. Most likely, he died already during transport, maybe even never reaching Russia. I only know (this is the latest data) that back in August 1945, he signed some kind of petition to the Czech authorities about something. In August, he was still alive.

Ivan Tolstoy : Do you have any archive searches?

Sergey Davydov : No, this is the Slavic library in Prague, such a doctor Milusha Bubenikova is engaged in this. She found some notion, which he almost addressed the Czech Foreign Ministry, and there is August for his signature.

Ivan Tolstoy : And on the fate of your family, parents and your own, how was the relationship with your grandfather reflected?

Sergey Davydov : The father was also arrested in the same 1945, almost on the same day. And very soon we were sent from Prague to Slovakia. She is our Siberia. That is, Czech Siberia. There I lived in the small city of Zhilin. We knew nothing about my father. Five years later, my mother married a second time for the Prague German Jew of the raiser, who spent three years in German concentration camps.

Ivan Tolstoy : Tell me, how much did your mother tell you the story of your family, and how much did you begin to be interested in your roots?

Sergey Davydov : I was little interested in my roots, because in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and60s Russia was not a popular country. They spoke Russian at home, I also had a grandmother and grandfather Davydov, we spoke Russian with them. That grandmother instructed me more Russianness and taught me the roots.

Ivan Tolstoy : Was it your father's mother?

Sergey Davydov : It was my father Davydov, a hereditary noblewoman, she was very proud of this, from her I learned that I was a descendant of Denis Vasilyevich. Mom read fairy tales to us, at Christmas we were forced by aunt to teach Russian rhymes by heart. If we did not memorize, we were locked in the closet, which was very profitable, because in the closet there was already cooking cookies prepared - mushrooms from almond dough, all delicious. We picked up ...

Ivan Tolstoy : And, most importantly, in the closet it is always tastier.

Sergey Davydov : Everything is wonderful in the closet!

Ivan Tolstoy : Sergey Sergeyevich, but completely adventure stories are telling about you. For example, that you met unexpectedly with Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, and not only met, but this acquaintance sharply changed your own fate and the fate of your family?

Sergey Davydov : Yes. 1957, in Zhilina, after your 20th congress, when Khrushchev and Bulganin traveled to socialism to declare their new policy, and Czechoslovakia was still a Stalinist state. We went by train and stayed in different cities. Including in our Zhilin. And it took a pioneer and a pioneer for presenting a bouquet and reading speech. But they did not find a pioneer and a pioneer who could add two words in Russian. They turned to me. I was not even a pioneer, they didn’t even take me to pioneers.

Ivan Tolstoy : Because of the dad?

Sergey Davydov : Not only because of the dad, but also because of his grandfather-the grandson of the White Guard, the grandson of the executed, as some believe, the son of the human man arrested by Soviet troops. So I was completely outcast. But I spoke Russian. So I was sent to the rostrum. Found another girl. She was a Komsomol member, but she was small, a dwarf. She was also dressed in pioneering armor.

Ivan Tolstoy : Apparently, it would be a member of the party - they would also use it.

Sergey Davydov : Yes. And they sent to the rostrum with a bouquet. As a gentleman, I gave her to choose someone - Khrushchev or Bulganin. She chose Bulganin, he still looked like. I got Khrushchev. We stand nearby, read our outstanding speeches. And Khrushchev somehow interrupted me and asks me: "Why are you talking in Russian?" "I am Russian". "And who is your father?" "And you arrested your father in 1945." Blurted out. Khrushchev said: "Not I arrested." And then, after all greetings and speeches, he came up to me, called some of his secretary and asked everything that I know about my father. Saying goodbye to me, he promised me that if my father was alive, then I will see him. Then they got on the train, the train was already moving, and I don’t know why, or to remind him, or to appease him ... I had a wonderful thing, it was a gift from my friend, a boy who came to friends from Sweden. He left me amazing sunglasses from plastic - they could bend, stretch ... inexhaustible glasses. Imagine: 1957, Slovakia - they seemed to fall from Mars. Here I had only two days. They were in my pocket. I don’t know why, but when everyone gave some nonsense, some icons of little Lenin or Bolshoi Ulyanov, I gave the scarves, I gave him these glasses so that he would not forget. And he took. I came home, my mother had already widowed by that time, she had three more children from her second husband. The second husband, Rezer, died in England in 1957. For the first time, permission to leave Czechoslovakia was given to him to visit his son, who lived in England, whom he saw for the last time they were divided before transport in concentration camps by German, and he died there from a break of his heart when meeting his son. And I tell her what happened on the rostrum. As I remember today, her reaction.

... She put it from the largest suitcase with winter things, I remember the smell of Naftalin, wool ... hot summer! And she believed that they were about to come for us and all of us would be taken away. And so these suitcases stood ominously in the front

She took my hand, led me to the attic, and there she collected five suitcases and five boxes with woolen things. We brought them to the front, she folded them from the largest suitcase with winter things, I remember the smell of Naftalin, wool ... hot summer! And she believed that they were about to come for us and all of us would be taken away. And so these suitcases stood ominously in the front. And now, once, I come from school, go to my neighbors for keys to get home, and the magazine has a magazine on their table in pictures. I leafed through it and, looking, on the average reversal page - a huge photo: Khrushchev and Bulganin and the German president Wilhelm Picky marching along Alexander Plaz in Eastern Berlin. And Nikita Sergeevich in my glasses! I grabbed this magazine, sat on a bicycle and rushed to my mother. My mother was a doctor, she worked in the pestiality, where they open the corpses. I run there, there is some corpse on the table, and I shout: "Mom! Everything will be in order! Cookies can be unpacked!" And I show Khrushchev with glasses. And in fact, everything was the best.

Ivan Tolstoy : Nikita Sergeevich was also, in general, a gift from Mars. He also probably did not see such.

Sergey Davydov : Yes, I don’t know ... they were small for him. It’s like Pugachev, when the Grinev’s sheepskin coat put on his cursed shoulders and tore him at the seams. But wore it! And they invite me to the Soviet embassy, sent to Moscow. In Moscow, then there was an international youth festival, youth came with all the freshly exposed Africa, all in national costumes, that is, poples. Amazing! I was taken to VDNH, I saw the largest turnip, a cow named novice -2, yield - 42 liters! When I talk about this to American farmers, they laugh - what a disgrace!

Ivan Tolstoy : And the Americans - how much?

Sergey Davydov : At least three times more. And then from Moscow they send me to Artek, an international camp, I live there for another month, I live freely, because no one touches me. А не трогают меня потому, что я из Артека, недели через две, отправил открытку на такой адрес: "В Кремль, Никите Сергеевичу Хрущеву". И написал: "Спасибо, мне очень хорошо в Артеке, купаюсь, загораю. Но где же мой папа?". И после этого я как бы стал лицом неприкосновенным. Я не должен был соблюдать "мертвый час", со мной водились ребята, потому что они знали, что когда водятся со мной, они ненаказуемы. И потом, в один прекрасный день, приехал человек из Красноярского края, которого я узнал по фотографиям детства - это был мой отец.

Иван Толстой : Он приехал в Артек?

Сергей Давыдов : Да, приехал за мной в Артек. Так что Хрущев сдержал свое слово, за что я ему благодарен, и отец вернулся. Пять лет он провел в лагерях и пять лет на поселении, женился, дети у него были, и он остался в России, а я вернулся к маме, в Чехословакию.

Иван Толстой : Сколько времени прошло между краткой остановкой в Жилине хрущевского поезда и вашим свиданием с отцом?

Сергей Давыдов : Я бы сказал – год.

Иван Толстой : Сергей Сергеевич, как сложилась ваша судьба дальше?

Сергей Давыдов : Она еще складывается.

Иван Толстой : Но там тоже, кажется, были крутые виражи?

Сергей Давыдов : Я поступил в университет в Праге, учился в Карловом университете, изучал эстетику. По-моему, это были лучшие годы – Прага с 1965 по 1968 год. У нас курсы еще назывались "Диалектический материализм", но нам уже читали просто историю философии, там тогда преподавал философию Карел Косик - он сыграл свою очень важную роль в философском разоблачении марксизма. Ректор университета был кандидатом в президенты, но Свобода победил. Так что все это происходило на наших глазах. К тому же к нам в университет приезжали, после неудавшихся революций французской и немецкой, вот все эти студенческие волнения, внепарламентарная борьба с государством, приезжали вожди. Руди Дучке приезжал и учил, как надо бороться с нашими властями, приезжал Кон-Бендит, он французскими беспорядками руководил в 1965 году. Так что они все приезжали в Прагу и делились опытом, давали советы.

Иван Толстой : В те годы вы кем себя считали? Русским чехом?

Сергей Давыдов : Я не задумывался об этом.

Иван Толстой : Обучение было на чешском?

Сергей Давыдов : Обучение на чешском.

Иван Толстой : Дома разговор на русском?

...ухаживать за барышнями - это было по-чешски, ласковость детская - это было все по-русски, философия по-немецки лучше укладывалась. А теперь я уже живу 20 лет в Америке, и, по-моему, английский язык применим ко всем ситуациям, ко всем темам.

​ Сергей Давыдов : А мыслил я картинками, до их пор мыслю картинками. Хотя мне проще говорить на одну тему на одном языке, чем на другом. Скажем, ухаживать за барышнями - это было по-чешски, ласковость детская - это было все по-русски, философия по-немецки лучше укладывалась. А теперь я уже живу 20 лет в Америке, и, по-моему, английский язык применим ко всем ситуациям, ко всем темам.

Иван Толстой : Сергей Сергеевич, ну вот Пражская весна длится. Как же вы оказались в Германии?

Сергей Давыдов : Я решил, что не стоит дожидаться, введут ли «братские» страны «братские» войска, и отправил маму с братьями и сестрой в Югославию на лето.

Иван Толстой : У вас было ощущение и предчувствие, что введут?

Сергей Давыдов : Ну, конечно. То есть у нее было больше, а я все утверждал, что нет, не введут, они только закончили маневры, с грехом пополам, уехали, и Брежнев тогда заявил, что "это ваше дело", и как-то мне тоже показалось, что… А мама вязла младших и уехала в Югославию. А я остался выжидать, что будет. Ну, что было - всем известно. 21 августа родные братья пришли "освобождать" нас. From whom? От себя самих!

Иван Толстой : Вы были в этот день Праге?

Сергей Давыдов : Я был в Жилине в этот день.

Иван Толстой : Как эти события отразились не в центре, а в провинции?

Сергей Давыдов : Так же, как и в центре. Меня больше всего поражал патриотизм, который выражался совершено абсурдным образом. Например, молодые девушки как бы в пику отдавали себя с каким-то таким патриотическим азартом. Ощущение было как в пир во время чумы, ощущение, что все кончено, осталось немного, и надо устроить какой-то пир. И этот пир длился долго-долго. Потом, постепенно, от этого пира устали. Например, едут танки, ребята садятся на дорогу, чтобы не пропускать. Солнцепек, жарко, и девушки, чтобы раздражать танкистов, раздеваются и загорают перед танками. Я не знаю, откуда такая бравада появилась, но она была массовая.

Иван Толстой : И как же вы выбрались из Жилины и оказались по другую сторону границы?

Сергей Давыдов : Это произошло осенью, когда видно было, что войска ввели надолго, что ни к чему хорошему это не приведет. Я в один прекрасный день взял нужные вещи семейные, и с двумя чемоданами перешел вброд реку Мораву из Братиславы в Австрию. Там утром сел на поезд.

Иван Толстой : Это было так просто все?

Сергей Давыдов : Более или менее, да. Я знал, что чешские пограничники не будут препятствовать. Нужно было пройти через советский КПП. Но они не стояли на границе, они были в пяти километрах от границы. А тут я в Югославии нашел маму, братьев и сестру, мы приехали в Австрию, из Австрии перебрались в Германию, потому что у Австрии такой нейтралитет странноватый был, и там начали жить.

Иван Толстой : Что же было с Сергеем Давыдовым дальше? А дальше - родные колдобины кончились, начались немецкие автобаны и американские хайвэи. В Германии Давыдов защитил диссертацию. Его темой стали тексты-матрешки Владимира Набокова. Изданная в 1982 году в виде книги она стала первой по-русски научной монографией о Набокове. Затем Давыдов перебрался в США, стал профессором по русской литературе, известным пушкинистом и любимым студентами преподавателем колледжа в Миддлбери. Он часто ездит в Россию, где его ждут друзья, профессиональные интересы и яркие сюрпризы. Вот, например, последний из них. Петербургский театр Ленсовета поставил веселую пьесу Рацера и Константинова "Гусар из КГБ". О том, как чекисты подсылают своего агента за границу, под видом родственника, к одному эмигранту. А потом и сам эмигрант приезжает в Питер. Вы уже догадываетесь, что эмигрант – потомок легендарного поэта-гусара, и зовут его Сергей Давыдов. Когда мой собеседник, этим летом побывавший в Петербурге, узнал, что он ни с того ни с сего - главный герой комедии, он помчался в театр Ленсовета, купил билет, предвкушал много веселья и знакомство с исполнителем роли самого себя. На его беду Сергей Давыдов-фиктивный заболел, и спектакль был отменен. Как бы то ни было, оказываться вечно в истории, серьезной и легкомысленной, моему собеседнику не привыкать. Fate!

Музыкой, написанной в 1960-е годы чешским композитором Збынеком Востржаком, мы заканчиваем выпуск "Поверх барьеров", посвященный сегодня двум необычным судьбам русских американцев - Валентины Синкевич и Сергея Давыдова.