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  Marina’s living room looked like something out of a European magazine: oriental rugs, Scandinavian furniture, and even a bar with tall swivel stools. Through the glass bar front I saw bottles of imported Scotch whisky, Italian liqueurs, and French brandy. A big Japanese tape recorder sat next to their color television set. When I’d peeked in the kitchen, I had seen a tall refrigerator with double doors. Nobody that I knew lived this way.

  The men on the survey crew had joked scornfully about the shishka, the Party “bosses,” whom you found at the top of any organization. Whenever the crew’s work orders were fouled up or a piece of equipment was late in arriving, the men would blame the shishka, who were probably all too busy stocking their apartments with luxury goods to sign the paperwork. Now I was standing in one of those apartments, which I had only imagined were the fanciful subject of frustrated jokes before.

  Marina offered me a whisky, but I settled for a stick of American chewing gum instead. She showed me her French and Italian fashion magazines, then told me she attended a special school where all the classes were taught in English.

  “All the classes?” I asked. “Even physics and chemistry?”

  “Yes,” she said proudly. “We speak, read, and write English all day.”

  This was amazing. I wondered how far she had to travel to attend such a school. “What do your parents say about your going away?”

  She seemed confused but then answered nervously. “Sasha,” she said, “the school is here in Samara.”

  When you learned foreign languages, there were lots of interesting professions open to you. “How do you apply for this school? What’s the exam like?”

  “The school,” she said, “is not like you think. Your parents have to have the correct position for you to enter.”

  I took in the silk Kirghiz carpets, the bar, and the Finnish furniture. “What does your father do?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she said, “he is on the city’s Party Committee.”

  Riding the commuter train back out to my neighborhood, I felt a moment of regret that my mother did not have the blat needed to secure me a place in one of those special schools. The devil take all of them, I thought. I would become an electrician, land a good job in one of the aircraft factories, and make money on the side repairing the shoddy work the State construction enterprises did in all the new apartments.

  But when I went back to School Number Two to collect my academic records before registering at the electro-technology school, I found Rema had locked up my files. She was gone for vacation. Then Coach Karanov called me down to the Spartak center. He explained that Rema Alexandrovna had asked him to talk sense to me. Apparently students in the vocational school were not encouraged to compete in sports competitions within the Russian Republic.

  “Sasha,” he said, “you’ve got a real chance at the 170-pound championship. The team needs you.”

  Once more I sensed my mother’s hand in this conspiracy. But the chance of traveling to Moscow and winning a weight-division title was a lot more appealing than earning money as an electrician. I had struggled too hard to throw away my chance at a title. Most of the boys I knew wore their hair long, fashioned after the pictures of Western rock stars we sometimes saw in magazines. That was how you got the girls. But wrestlers could not wear long hair because that just gave your opponent another handle to grab. It wasn’t fair, but I knew you had to give up one thing you wanted to have something else you wanted more.

  That September I began the upper form of advanced academic courses to prepare students for professional institutes and universities. But my first love was still wrestling. I traveled with the Spartak senior team now, coached and refereed the juniors. Because I correctly assumed Rema had conspired with Coach Karanov to keep me in the academic program, I thought she would not mind if I missed a few days’ classes traveling with the team. I was wrong. My homeroom teacher, Ludmilla — “the Rat with Glasses” to me and my friends — turned me in to Rema for unexcused absences.

  Once more Rema dangled the dread wolf’s ticket over her desk blotter. “It’s not too late to throw you out.”

  I got her point. From then on, I had to be a student first and a wrestler second.

  All ninth- and tenth-year boys were required to attend twice-weekly military training classes at the school. Our instructor was a rather indecisive retired Army lieutenant colonel named Nikolai Gusev. I didn’t care for the mindless drill ritual in the school yard, but I enjoyed handling Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades and studying famous battles like Stalingrad and Kursk. Still a rebel, however, I made it plain to the good comrade lieutenant colonel that military training was not my favorite class.

  The next summer I was not eager to sweat through another vocational camp, doing the same work as the men but earning only twenty rubles a month. Oleg, a friend of mine, said his father could get me in as a summer replacement worker at a local machine-tool factory that produced precision boring and milling machines and lathes for the aircraft plants and for export. When I took the job, I hoped to make contacts that might lead to an apprenticeship at the plant. Skilled professional toolmakers earned 500 rubles a month and had access to cheap vacations on the Black Sea or Baltic.

  Even as a summer replacement, I would earn 150 rubles a month, a great salary for a kid of sixteen. Maybe I couldn’t yet afford real blue jeans, but I had already ordered my first pair of bell-bottom slacks from the girls at the fashion design school.

  A master tool and die maker named Alexander Konstantinovich was my mentor in the export shop. I had heard a lot about the high-quality work at the plant. Machine tools from this factory were exported around the world, where they earned hard currency and compared favorably to similar products from West Germany or America. So I was shocked the first day on the job to find the assembly floor practically silent with Inen lounging around in groups playing cards and dominoes.

  My mentor explained the situation. It was the first workday of the month, in this case July. All the factories that supplied us parts and raw materials were also beginning the month. They would not be required to complete their month’s quota under their ministry or directorate’s all-important Plan for thirty days. Neither would we. So all across the industrial heartland of the Russian Republic, workers like these sat around the factories, watching the clock, smoking to kill time.

  But at our plant the men eventually got bored with card games and used expensive machine-tool steel to make kitchen knives for their wives. Konstantinovich taught me how to weld beautiful stainless-steel anchors that I could peddle to men with small fishing boats on the river.

  Then, in the third week of the month, our regular quota of metal stock and electrical supplies began arriving. Things got busy. But still the tool and die makers and assemblers only completed ten machines a day. That was the norm. They were paid the maximum rate to meet that norm. If they completed more than that number, they risked having the norm increased by the factory bosses. So we worked slowly to produce only ten machines every workday.

  By the end of the summer I had lost any illusions about a satisfying career in Soviet industry.

  But I certainly wanted to pursue some kind of profession to match my interest in technology. One Sunday that autumn I watched the weekly military television program, I Serve the Soviet Union. The entire hour was devoted to the Air Force (VVS) and the Air Defense Force (PVO). The program focused on young officer cadets undergoing pilot training at an air base in the Transcaucasus. Guys not much older than me were strapping themselves into the cockpits of jet trainers and taking off into the clear southern sky. That looked interesting. The next week’s program was devoted to Soviet Army engineers, and my mother encouraged me to think about applying to a military institute specializing in construction engineering. But I couldn’t forget the image of those young cadets flying jet aircraft.

  I went down to the Army komandatura headquarters and inquired about the process of applying for an opening at a military aviation academy. Havin
g done some preliminary research, as I usually did before approaching bureaucrats, I’d learned that this was the first day that application forms for aviation academies would be available. But the bored administrative officer I asked said there were “no more openings.” Apparently he thought I wanted to try for a place at the military helicopter academy in nearby Syzran. I then realized that you even needed blat in the military. Only boys with influential families went to that academy, because there was plenty of high-paying work for civilian helicopter pilots after they finished their military obligation. And I learned that the Air Force’s Kacha Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots near Volgagrad, which was nearest to home, was also inaccessible without blat. But the officer finally conceded that there were still openings at the PVO Higher Military Aviation Academy at Armavir down in the south of the republic. The PVO flew supersonic jet fighters, not lumbering transports or fighter-bombers. That prospect appealed to me.

  In October 1977 I approached Lieutenant Colonel Gusev, my military training instructor at School Number Two.

  “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel,” I said respectfully, “can you spare the time to help me with my application to the Armavir Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots?”

  He was obviously shocked. “Zuyev,” he exclaimed, “you are interested in the military?”

  But he quickly overcame his shock, realizing that, even if I wasn’t selected, my application was a sign of his good example and diligence.

  Rema, the principal, was even more skeptical when I requested a formal transcript of my academic records. “Young man,” she said scornfully, “you will never make it.”

  But Lieutenant Colonel Gusev was the secretary of the school faculty’s Party collective. He was determined to see me placed at Armavir. In quick order, I became a member in good standing of the school’s Komsomol aktiv, at least on paper. Then Rema got to work on the written evidence of my fine academic career. Her resume of my academic record was a monument to bureaucratic cunning. To read her words, I was a brilliant, dedicated young Communist scholar and athlete, whose only fault was accepting too many challenges (which explained my less than stellar exam grades).

  I discovered that over 100,000 tenth-year boys from the entire Soviet Union were preparing applications for the twelve aviation academies, 20,000 for Armavir alone. It was estimated that only about 2,000 would pass the physical and aptitude examinations, and from that group, only 300 would eventually be selected for the class beginning in September 1978. All that winter I worked on the tedious application process. Finally, in February 1978, I was ordered back to the komandatura to take my initial physical examination. I had passed the first hurdle. But I still had to pass a battery of written tests and at least three more increasingly rigorous physical exams.

  In mid-February my energy and determination were shattered with the news that my father had died of a sudden heart attack. I was staggered by grief, and by remorse that I had not been able to understand him better.

  After my parents’ divorce, I had finally learned about my father’s childhood during the war. As a boy of eleven, he had been caught in a Nazi round-up of villagers near Smolensk and shipped to Poland to work as a farm laborer. Luckily the family he worked for were kind. He ate at their table and was able to read a few Russian books from their library. But when he finally was freed by the Red Army in 1944 and found his way back home, his village was devastated. He somehow traveled to Samara, where he had relatives. My father had never told me about all this because of the stigma the State placed on anyone who had been captured by the Germans and taken West. With typical paranoia, Stalin was convinced all former prisoners of the Germans returned as imperialist spies.

  My mother had made sure I made no mention of his captivity on my academy application. And my father was gone before I could ever talk to him about his experience.

  Only three weeks before, I had seen him standing outside a State liquor store one afternoon, like so many other Soviet men who had lost their way, waiting to find two others so that they could pool their money to “go three on a bottle” of cheap vodka. I had wanted to tell him of my plans to become a military pilot, but the shame of the circumstances kept me from approaching him. It was the last time I saw him alive.

  I was still in emotional turmoil from my father’s funeral when I took the second physical examination, this one designed to eliminate all but the fittest applicants from the Kuybyshev Oblast. The cardiologist discovered an irregular systole beat on my EKG. I explained that my father had just died and asked to be retested. Once more, Coach Karanov came to my rescue by arranging the EKG at a friendly sports-medicine center, where I passed the exam ten days later.

  But I was not so lucky with the vestibular balance test, designed to provoke vertigo. I had to sit on a revolving chair with my eyes closed and swing my head back and forth. I immediately broke into a clammy sweat and the woman doctor stopped the test. I told her I had been training too hard and requested another test.

  When I came back at the end of February, I brought with me a foil-wrapped block of dark chocolate from the city’s best confection factory. This, I told her, was a small prezant, a gesture of thanks for her patience. It was the first bribe I ever gave. I passed the test. But the act left a bad taste in my mouth.

  The written examinations were draining. And when I received the news I had passed them, I was almost too exhausted for elation. Which was just as well: These exams were simply a ticket to even more rigorous tests and interviews to be administered at Armavir itself in June.

  I still was not certain of acceptance at the academy. But at least I had made it through the first two selections. And in the process, I had grown absolutely determined to become a fighter pilot.

  CHAPTER 4

  Armavir Higher Aviation Academy

  1978-82

  Over two thousand candidates for the academy arrived in Armavir by train in late June 1978. For me the three-day trip was pleasant and exciting. I had certainly been proud to visit Moscow the year before, but the idea of traveling to the South enticed me. Armavir was in the valley of the Kuban River, part of the Krasnodar Territory in the far southwest corner of the Russian Federation. And my Spartak teammates who had visited the city spoke highly of its grapes and cherries — and the pretty girls at the local nurse-midwife school.

  Armavir’s buildings were handsome stone, with red tile roofs. The city’s name was Armenian for “valley of wind.” And the residents included many wealthy Armenian and Kazakh merchant families who had somehow retained their wealth after the Revolution.

  On Spartak road trips I’d learned the trick of using local taxi drivers as unofficial guides to a new city; they were always in the know, and seemed proud to share their inside knowledge with young guys from out of town. Riding the taxi from the train station to the candidates’ reception camp with several other candidate cadets I’d met on the train, the taxi driver showed us the large nursing school and teachers’ academy.

  But it would be a long time before any of us could visit these girls. My train had carried boys like myself, mostly seventeen, with a few as old as nineteen. I had ridden in the same compartment with six young guys from Samara. At home we probably would have been rivals, but as the train rumbled south, we quickly became “Samarskiye,” as the sons of Samara proudly called themselves.

  I shared a huge tent with several of my new Samarskiye buddies and over a hundred boys from all over the Union. Anatoli Savelyev, one of my new friends, had a brother at the academy who was a cadet sergeant in his fourth year. His name was Valery, and he came to visit us with another, older Samarskiye cadet soon after we arrived. As new candidates, still dressed in civilian clothes, we were certainly impressed by these fellows. They wore their uniforms well and had an unmistakable disciplined confidence about them. Valery Savelyev was a husky, open-faced gymnast who had won many athletic prizes, but was also one of the academy’s best students and the chief cadet sergeant. Yuri Krasin was tall, lean, and handsome. He
had been selected for the academy from the ranks of the Kremlin detachment that formed the honor guard at Lenin’s Tomb.

  They quietly briefed us on the selection process. There would be four weeks of physical, psychological, and academic examinations, interspersed with less formal interviews. All the time we would be observed and ranked. At the end of the month, only 300 of the 2,300 candidates in this camp would be selected. The successful cadets would then undergo a month of tough basic military training.

  “Be sure to obey every order immediately,” Valery said. “And never answer back or argue.”

  Yuri warned us about trying to leave camp without permission. “That’s a quick ticket home,” he said.

  I kept their advice in mind as we sweated through the endless tests, physical exams, and interviews.

  The physical examinations and strength tests were our first hurdle. Although all the candidates had been screened by doctors in their home cities, the PVO aviation medical staff physicians had their own high selection standards. We had to have absolutely perfect vision and show no predisposition for eye problems. My EKG showed no irregularities, but other boys were disqualified for problems undetected earlier. I found it interesting that several of the real musclemen from the bodybuilding clubs were washed out; apparently they had used steroids, and the drugs had damaged their hearts. Our bones and muscles were carefully probed and examined to make certain we had never suffered from a poor diet. Overall, the guys from the country were in better condition than the city boys, both because there was more fresh food on the farms and because hard outdoor work had built them up. These honest, unsophisticated country kids were really eager because becoming a military officer was a chance to escape the dead-end drudgery of the State farms.