The author's father, when he was a senior Communist Party member in Belorussia, could have been implicated in the assassination of Mikhoels, the popular director of the State Jewish Theatre in the Soviet Union. This was carried out on the orders of Stalin in 1948 when Vladimir was twenty three years old. His own life is headed towards the theatre rather than politics-and subsequently, 'shaming his father's grey hairs,' into the Moscow dissident movement. Early years are sheltered and privileged, but a psychotic outburst in a restaurant against the tyranny of Stalinism results in him being incarcerated in the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, where he comes across an aristocratic English spy. Gusarov himself has a keen interest in the West and expresses particular admiration for the British Labour Party as well as the Queen. Further deviations, run-ins with the KGB and Soviet psychiatry pattern a failing stage career. But he does at one point find himself the uneasy star of a film about Soviet railways ordered by Kaganovich. During all this time father, for his own sake as much as that of his son, saves Vladimir from being sent to a labour camp. Perhaps that is what allows him to write with such cynical humour about his slow descent into chaos and oblivion. His accounts of a multitude of encounters with people from all walks of Russian life (including colourful episodes with Voroshilov and Solzhenitsyn-as well as his marriages and wayward sexual adventures) are enormously enriched by the actor's power of speech recall.

By Vladimir Gusarov - Translated by Clive A. Giller and Yuri A. Popov

The translators; acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1
PrologueAbout HomerAbout fatherTo age seventeenAbout mamaChildhoodIdeology8First deviation
Papa's friendsPityThe whole countryAll-Saints and SokolReflectionsBoy with a cockSverdlovskKabakov's black catPerm; it's also MolotovHe and SheThe theatre20The other grandmother
ColleaguesIgnoramus22nd June 1941EvacueesCommissar ZavirokhinA fighting friendAntselovichTo the frontThe frontGerman leafletsDon't be a white crow!My universitiesA situationA pass to all locationsMistakesAgain the theatreCrisisNovember celebrationsInternational Organisation for the Assistance of Casualties (MOPR)The crisis developsNot comrade Stalin, but Iosif Vissarionovich!Seriozha ShteinDust, dust, dust...The role of LeninVerkhovsky46Internationale

Part 2

In the remand cell (KPZ)FridayAloneThe martyr's crown of the Russian intelligentsiaA twilight state of the spiritThe commissionOne floor higherTaganka - every night filled with fireBalashikha prisonThe stolypinKazanThe Russian nationalist SoldatovThe Anthem of the Soviet UnionHe is dead, dead, dead ...The doctors' plotEmperors and presidentsBeria - enemy of the peopleTo the gallows of the Bolsheviks!The British subjectOn the side of the partyFilm director KapchinskyIntellizhens ServisSR LapshovThe dictatorButyrka72With your things

Part 3

How life treated me when I was freeAmorous business RumoursThe American exhibitionTwo more yearsMy little white pigeonFrom my diaryA death and a funeral Ivan DenisovichWorking daysChapaevsky Street UnemployedTomskGrandmother FeniaNikolia-the-foolTelevisionZaochni Narodni Universitet Iskusstv90Kashchenko
In the homeland of a great writerI love youAt the Ministry of CultureAesop and the GPU (State Political Administration)A page from my diaryPages from my diaryIn the Kremlin hospitalThe Klyazma sanatoriumThe last lines of a confiscated diary100 Vasili Ivanovich Chapaev and Petka
101 Yakir
102 Epilogue

Chronology

Glossary

Bibliography

Index