best she could with Aleksei, who was often ill. She did not want to call on Simonov for help, so her parents took care of the child. Simonov’s parents also helped. In 1947, they took Aleksei on an extended seaside holiday to help him recover from TB.89
Simonov himself had little time for Aleksei. He saw him only once or twice a year. His mother Aleksandra needed to remind him to write to Aleksei on his birthday. In 1952, on Aleksei’s thirteenth birthday, a telegram from Simonov had failed to reach his son, so he later wrote to him:
Dear Alyosha!
I have been feeling unwell, and was not in Moscow, and only today did I realize that, by some misunderstanding, they did not dispatch the telegram which I wrote to you on your birthday… I believe in your future and I hope that with the passing years you will grow up to become a little friend. Another year has brought you closer to that… Twice a week I pass by the new building of Moscow University, and I always think that you will study there some day, and then you’ll start on your working life – going where the state sends you. Think of that with joy, and work joyously towards the happy calling that waits for you and millions of children just like you…90
Aleksei was not offended by the formality of this letter: all his relations with his father were like that, and since there were so few communications he treasured each one of them. His father’s letters were usually typed, meaning they had been dictated to a secretary. Pedagogical in tone, they were more like the letters of a Party functionary than those of a father to a son. This one was written in the summer of 1948, when Aleksei was eight years old:
Dear Alyosha, I received your letter and drawing. As far as the drawing is concerned, it is not bad in my opinion, especially the cockerel. But there is no cause for pride. Remember, your father at your age could draw better than you can, so you must work even harder to catch up. I hope that your promise to get top marks will be true not just on paper but in reality as well. I would be very glad of that.91
Aleksei recalls his father often telling him that ‘ties of blood’ had no special significance for him: it was one of his ‘democratic principles’ to treat his family on the same terms as colleagues and subordinates. Aleksei paid the cost of his father’s principles. He could not understand why his famous father, who was so popular with everybody else, had so little time for him. On the few occasions when his father came to take him out, Aleksei felt awkward, there were long silences, but his father never noticed his unease. In the spring of 1947, Simonov sent his son a suit (brown jacket, brown shorts and a cap) which he had brought back from a trip to the USA. Aleksei did not like the shorts – the boys in the yard would laugh at him and even beat him when he wore them – so he put them in a drawer. Several weeks later a government car turned up at the house on Zubov Square to take Aleksei to visit his father. He had not seen him for a year. Berta, Aleksei’s grandmother, made him wear the brown suit to show his father that he liked the gift. In front of all the other boys, who had gathered in the yard to inspect the limousine, Aleksei walked out and got into the car. He was driven to the Grand Hotel, where Simonov had taken a private dining room to entertain his friends. The seven-year-old boy was presented to the company and called on by his father to give them a ‘report’ on how he had fared during the past year at school. Having been informed of his son’s success at school, Simonov had planned a surprise for him: a cook in a white suit and a big white hat came in carrying a ‘surprise omelette’ (made of ice cream) on a silver dish. Aleksei was left to eat the ‘omelette’ on his own while his father went on talking with his friends. To Aleksei, his father seemed ‘all- powerful and almost magical’. At one point Simonov turned towards his son and asked him if he liked his suit. Aleksei gave him a polite response. Shortly afterwards Aleksei was driven home – ‘to wait’, as he recalls, ‘for the next meeting with my father, maybe in a month, maybe six, depending on how busy he was with his work for the government’.92
Apart from his mother Aleksandra, Sonia was the only person who
Samuil and Berta, Sonia, Aleksei and Zhenia,
dared to criticize Simonov for neglecting Aleksei. In October 1947, Sonia wrote to Simonov. Aleksei had been ill and needed food and medicines which the Laskins could not get:
It is distasteful to have to remind you for a second time (only the second?) of your obligations to your son. You allow yourself to ignore him to a degree that I find astonishing. Believe me, neither I nor Zhenia would approach you if it was not necessary for your child, but it is wrong to make Alyosha suffer because we feel uncomfortable about asking you for a favour – a feeling which is wholly the result of your behaviour. If things were different, I would write you off, I would stop your son from loving a father who cannot even spare two hours for him. I have told you this before.93
In May 1950, Sonia was arrested and held in solitary confinement in the Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where she was interrogated in connection with the Stalin Factory Affair, in which the Jewish workers of the car plant were accused of spying for the USA. The origins of the affair went back to 1948, when some of the factory’s workers had begun organizing group trips to the Jewish Theatre in Moscow. The Stalin Factory had a large contingent of Jewish workers, mostly engineers and administrators, who were supportive of the JAFC and the foundation of Israel. Their cultural activities were encouraged by the deputy director of the factory, Aleksandr Eidinov, who also gave a tour of the car plant to the American ambassador. This was enough for the MGB to fabricate an ‘anti-Soviet group of bourgeois Jewish nationalists at the Stalin Factory’, which, it claimed, was passing industrial secrets to the USA. The initiative for the investigation came from Nikita Khrushchev, the Moscow Party boss from December 1949, although he was probably following instructions from Stalin, who by this time was seeing ‘Jewish spies’ and ‘plotters’ everywhere. Convicted by a military tribunal, Eidinov was one of fourteen ‘leaders’ who were later shot. More than a hundred other Jewish workers from the factory, and several hundred more from factories across the Soviet Union, were sent to various labour camps.94
Sonia was sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labour in the camps of Vorkuta in the Far North. Fania and Zhenia concealed the length of her sentence from Samuil and Berta, telling them that she had been given just five years, because they feared the truth would kill them. Sonia was sent to the brick factory in Vorkuta, where she worked with her usual energy and initiative. Even in the Gulag she was entirely dedicated to the cause of Soviet industry. Sonia was rewarded with a privileged position as a librarian in the labour camp, but in her letters home she frequently expressed her frustration that she could have served the country better as a senior industrialist than by filing books.
Sonia’s arrest took a heavy toll on Samuil’s health. Throughout her absence he seemed to be weighed down by an immense sadness, according to Fania. Samuil was seventy-one when Sonia was arrested. He had always been a sprightly man, full of life and energy, but after her arrest he became old and frail. He could no longer work at the same pace he had worked before. Still, traditions continued. Every Sunday for the next five years the family and friends would meet as usual for the famous ‘Laskin suppers’, when Berta would prepare delicious Jewish dishes and Samuil would hold his kitchen parliament. Simonov was never there, but his parents often were. ‘They were different people, from a different class,’ recalls Fania, ‘but they got on well with our parents, and they loved Zhenia and Aleksei.’ The opening toast would always be the same: ‘To the return!’ If a letter from Sonia had arrived during the previous week, it would be read out and the assembled guests would discuss her news. There would always be some tears. Everyone would give their greetings to Sonia for the reply which Zhenia would write.
By the early 1950s, conditions in many of the camps had begun to improve, as the administrators of the Gulag looked for ways to get the prisoners to make greater efforts, and weekly letters were not unusual for star workers like Sonia. Censors still read the correspondence, but the rules were more relaxed, and it was possible for prisoners and relatives to write with a new openness. There were even occasions when Sonia was allowed to call her family on the telephone – occasions when emotions ran too high for proper talk. ‘My dear girl,’ Zhenia wrote to Sonia after one such call,
You cannot understand what a joy it was for all of us, but especially for Mama and Papa. It makes it easier for them to wait. Papa was trembling and could not say a word for the first minute. I cannot tell you how happy they are to have heard your voice… Aleksei – he has grown up so much that you would not recognize him – he was very nervous when he spoke to you, that’s why his voice sounded strange. He said something stupid about
