The Communists hated “Ivan Kuznetsov.” The whole world knew that he could not reveal his real name for fear that his work would be suppressed, and this made the Kremlin leaders look like the Philistines they were. Every time his work was mentioned in the Western media, people pointed out that it had never been published in Russian, the language in which it had been written, because of Soviet censorship. It drove the Kremlin mad.

“Nixon’s trip was a big success,” Tanya said to Dimka. “In our office we get news feeds from the West. People can’t stop congratulating Nixon on his vision. This is a giant leap forward for the stability of the world, they say. Also, his poll ratings have jumped—and this is election year in the United States.”

The idea that the capitalist-imperialists might link with the maverick Chinese Communists to gang up on the USSR was a terrifying prospect to the Soviet leadership. They immediately invited Nixon to Moscow in an attempt to redress the balance.

“Now they’re desperate to make sure Nixon’s visit here is also a success,” Dimka said. “They’ll do anything to keep the USA from siding with China.”

Tanya was struck by a thought. “Anything?”

“I exaggerate. But what did you have in mind?”

Tanya felt her heart beat faster. “Would they release dissidents?”

“Ah.” Dimka knew, but would not say, that Tanya was thinking of Vasili. Dimka was one of a very few people who knew of Tanya’s connection to a dissident. He was too cautious to mention it casually. “The KGB is proposing the opposite—a clampdown. They want to jail everyone who might possibly wave a protest placard at the American president’s passing limousine.”

“That’s stupid,” said Tanya. “If we suddenly put hundreds of people in jail, the Americans will find out—they have spies, too—and they won’t like it.”

Dimka nodded. “Nixon doesn’t want his critics saying that he came here and ignored the whole issue of human rights—not in an election year.”

“Exactly.”

Dimka looked thoughtful. “We must make the most of this opportunity. I have a meeting tomorrow with some people from the U.S. embassy. I wonder if I can use that . . .”

• • •

Dimka had changed. The invasion of Czechoslovakia had done it. Until that moment he had clung stubbornly to the belief that Communism could be reformed. But he had seen, in 1968, that as soon as a few people began to make progress in changing the nature of Communist government, their efforts would be crushed by those who had a stake in keeping things just the same. Men such as Brezhnev and Andropov enjoyed power, status, and privilege: why would they risk all that? Dimka now agreed with his sister: Communism’s biggest problem was that the all-embracing authority of the party always stifled change. The Soviet system was helplessly frozen in a terrified conservatism, just as the regime of the tsars had been sixty years earlier, when his grandfather had been a foreman at the Putilov Machine Works in St. Petersburg.