since her mother’s death, she felt loved again and time went by half peacefully compared to the summer before. Yet, when she graduated from pharmacy school, she wondered whether to go to Minsk. It would be too easy to marry Oleg Tarussin, and she did not think she could stay in Leningrad, not when memories were sharp knives. Besides, she was still seeing Eddie and he told her to go. She fell in love too easily, he said, and he feared she would get herself into real trouble if she remained. Soon after, another soccer player tried to rape her, and she didn’t get home until nine in the morning. She borrowed the ten additional rubles she needed for train fare, packed a bag, and left to go live with Valya and Ilya. It was true, she had decided. Leningrad was not the right place for her.
PART II
OSWALD IN MOSCOW
1
King’s English
From Oswald’s diary 1 :
October 16, 1959
Arrive from Helsinki by train; am met by Intourist Representative and taken in car to Hotel Berlin. Register as student on a five-day Deluxe tourist ticket. Meet my Intourist guide Rimma Shirakova. (I explain to her I wish to apply for Russian citizenship.)
Rimma loved to speak English. Rusty now, she could say, but she would conduct, if you will, every word of this interview in English, and she could tell the gentlemen who were speaking to her now that back then, for the Soviet people, 1957 had been an exciting year. After much preparation, Moscow had opened at that time a festival to establish human relations between foreigners and Russians in Moscow. It was the greatest event for changing life in the Soviet, she explained. Rimma was twenty in 1957, a student at Moscow Foreign Languages Institute, and she met a number of new people and spoke to foreigners and taught English to children.
Freedom was very great in that year, you see. There were so many young foreigners and young Russians all together. Foreigners heard about it and wanted to come for visits. So, in 1959, Intourist was started to arrange all the work for tours and visas, and Intourist took on many guides, which is how Rimma would say she got into it.
First of all, new employees took courses on how to become good at their work. That was connected to studying relevant material that guides should use. For example, Rimma took examinations on how to show their Kremlin Treasury. That was in June of 1959, and those who passed were offered a job in July; most of them were her fellow students at their Foreign Languages Institute.
In September, most of these people, to use King’s English, were sacked. Only those like herself, who showed excellent retention of facts, were accepted for permanent work.
Come autumn and winter of 1959, there were few tourists, but in general, through 1959, there had been a good number of Americans, and a big business exhibition came and went in August. Rimma had worked with seventeen “boys.” That was how they introduced themselves: “boys.” They were governors from seventeen Southern states of America, seventeen big boys, all of them with cameras. And Russian people in those days had a picture of Americans never being without their cameras.
Rimma was slender then and had blond hair and was good-looking. Besides English, Rimma spoke Arabic, and one time she worked with a high delegation from the United Arab Republic. They were pleased with her, high ministers, very high level, all of them, and they kept telling her how she was very good.
At the end of this United Arab Republic tour, she took them one evening to see the Bolshoi, and their evening ended at eleven, time for Rimma to go home. Time for those Arabs, too! But suddenly they began asking where they could go next. She was shocked. “What do you mean?” she said. “Evening is over. You go to bed.” But they began saying maybe there were some restaurants (some late restaurants with women). She began to reprimand them: “How bad of you. You have shown me pictures of your wives, your children,
PART II
OSWALD IN MOSCOW
1
King’s English
From Oswald’s diary 1 :
October 16, 1959
Arrive from Helsinki by train; am met by Intourist Representative and taken in car to Hotel Berlin. Register as student on a five-day Deluxe tourist ticket. Meet my Intourist guide Rimma Shirakova. (I explain to her I wish to apply for Russian citizenship.)
Rimma loved to speak English. Rusty now, she could say, but she would conduct, if you will, every word of this interview in English, and she could tell the gentlemen who were speaking to her now that back then, for the Soviet people, 1957 had been an exciting year. After much preparation, Moscow had opened at that time a festival to establish human relations between foreigners and Russians in Moscow. It was the greatest event for changing life in the Soviet, she explained. Rimma was twenty in 1957, a student at Moscow Foreign Languages Institute, and she met a number of new people and spoke to foreigners and taught English to children.
Freedom was very great in that year, you see. There were so many young foreigners and young Russians all together. Foreigners heard about it and wanted to come for visits. So, in 1959, Intourist was started to arrange all the work for tours and visas, and Intourist took on many guides, which is how Rimma would say she got into it.
First of all, new employees took courses on how to become good at their work. That was connected to studying relevant material that guides should use. For example, Rimma took examinations on how to show their Kremlin Treasury. That was in June of 1959, and those who passed were offered a job in July; most of them were her fellow students at their Foreign Languages Institute.
In September, most of these people, to use King’s English, were sacked. Only those like herself, who showed excellent retention of facts, were accepted for permanent work.
Come autumn and winter of 1959, there were few tourists, but in general, through 1959, there had been a good number of Americans, and a big business exhibition came and went in August. Rimma had worked with seventeen “boys.” That was how they introduced themselves: “boys.” They were governors from seventeen Southern states of America, seventeen big boys, all of them with cameras. And Russian people in those days had a picture of Americans never being without their cameras.
Rimma was slender then and had blond hair and was good-looking. Besides English, Rimma spoke Arabic, and one time she worked with a high delegation from the United Arab Republic. They were pleased with her, high ministers, very high level, all of them, and they kept telling her how she was very good.
At the end of this United Arab Republic tour, she took them one evening to see the Bolshoi, and their evening ended at eleven, time for Rimma to go home. Time for those Arabs, too! But suddenly they began asking where they could go next. She was shocked. “What do you mean?” she said. “Evening is over. You go to bed.” But they began saying maybe there were some restaurants (some late restaurants with women). She began to reprimand them: “How bad of you. You have shown me pictures of your wives, your children,
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