On Both Sides of Transparent Glass

An artist trying to publish his story about the horrors he experienced in the camps. A writer who became a propagandist in the service of the Nazis. What do they have in common — and where did their different paths lead them?

A tram crawls along the Trinity Bridge — oh, excuse me, the Equality Bridge. In Leningrad in the 1920s, all they talk about is Equality, Brotherhood and Truth. November. A heavy, gray sky hangs over snow-covered Leningrad. Two young men sit opposite each other in the tram: both of them, let’s imagine, are reading books — and for a second their eyes meet, turning the pages.

A moment — and here they are again immersed in reading.

This probably did not happen — but it could have been. Our two heroes lived in Leningrad at the same time, until fate separated them on different paths.

The elder of the two young men is Boris Filistinsky. By the early 1930s, he had already become closely acquainted with the OGPU employees: in 1927, he was arrested in connection with the case of the “Society of St. Seraphim of Sarov.” Filistinsky got off with a light fright — only 2 months of arrest. And after that, he even graduated from the Institute of Living Oriental Languages, and then studied to become an industrial engineer.

However, all this did not save him from prison. In 1936, he was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet agitation. 5 years in the camps by the standards of the time — not the worst thing that could have happened. But nothing good.

After leaving the camps in the spring of 1941, Filistinsky settled near Novgorod; he was deprived of the right to live in Leningrad. By the end of the summer of 1941, when Novgorod was occupied by the Germans, Filistinsky decided to take advantage of the chance. Since 1942, under the pseudonym Boris Filippov, he collaborated with the newspaper “For the Motherland!” and between articles about the Fuhrer’s speeches and the fight against “Judeo-Bolshevism,” he wrote his anti-Semitic and anti-American manifestos. Years would pass, and in 1960, Filippov would paint a vivid picture of that period of his life in his story “Through the Clouds.” In this vein:

“No, the Germans, or Europeans in general, would not write such a thing as “The Song of the Gypsy”! What breadth, what scope! Only we Russians understand this,” Bergfeldt would say thoughtfully, and his Sonderführer uniform without shoulder straps looked somehow strange at the same time.”

Filippov would follow the standard path of a second-wave emigrant — Pskov, Riga, Munich, and then the United States; During the war, he would join the NTS. Together with Struve, he would publish Russian authors, from Akhmatova to Pasternak, work for Radio Liberty, and teach literature. He would be surrounded by nasty rumors that he had taken part in mass executions, collaborating with the Abwehr and Gestapo. Filippov would deny everything, and the Soviet authorities would demand extradition. Filippov, however, would live to see 1991 and die in Washington.

And what about his possible companion on the Leningrad tram? Mikhail Naritsa, an aspiring artist, was arrested in Leningrad in 1935. And he was also given 5 years in the camps. Ukhta. His family was exiled to the Arkhangelsk region. He was released and drafted into the army, where he fought against the Germans until 1943.

However, he was still not allowed into Leningrad, and until 1957 Mikhail was essentially in exile — sometimes in Luga, sometimes in Karaganda. Only after the 20th Congress did he return to the city on the Neva and was reinstated at the Academy of Arts. And he also wrote his book: about himself and his difficult path in life and art.

“The Unsung Song” by Naritsa is a difficult story to read, full of pain and fear.

“Two of those who entered were in military uniform. In a special uniform of those fighting with the population of their own country.”

At first, the author tried to publish it in the USSR, but even for Khrushchev’s fight against Stalinism, this was too wild. And Naritsa with a courier from NTS sent it to the FRG — to the publishing house “Posev”. It was published in the October issue of “Grani”. The story received an epigraph from Romain Rolland: “Thrice a murderer — he who kills a thought!”

Ahead were years of forced psychiatric treatment, requests for permission to leave, escape to Riga, the fight for rehabilitation.

And death in 1993.