Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE – THE DIPLOMA AND GORBACHEV
So, unexpectedly, I began to prepare to move to Moscow. It was heavy artillery. The whole my family had to move. I was losing my “penguins” (students) – the source of our financial well-being, Lilya changed her job to a less interesting one, my daughter was not losing anything. But we yet didn’t complete but just started preparing this move.
Now it seems like a no-brainer, but back then it was necessary, firstly, to have a place to live, and, secondly, to obtain a residence permit. Well, thank God there was no big problem with the first one. The father-in-law and mother-in-law, lovely people, really missed their daughter and granddaughter and were happy to accommodate us. The main problem was residence permit.
No one in the Soviet Union could live where he or she wanted, but only where it was allowed. This permission in the form of a stamp in the passport was called residence permit. A daughter had no right to return to her parents just like that, and even more – with her family. However, there were workarounds. The daughter had the right to return and obtain registration after divorcing her husband. We promptly, before the birth of the child and while the pregnancy was not noticeable, filed for a convenient divorce. The registry office did not delay this: we didn’t have children, both spouses asked for a divorce, we added fifty rubles for the official’s good mood, and after half an hour two passports are returned back with divorce stamps.
My father-in-law was very worried about this. What if behind the divorce lies some kind of fraud on the part of the son-in-law? But we just laughed. Of course, there was a wagon and a small cart of shenanigans, but not between us. And… did we come up with these stupid laws?
My wife, officially already an “ex-wife,” registered with her parents. And after some time, a daughter was born. Despite any suspicion, it was impossible not to give a residence permit the newborn daughter together with her mother. How about me? We could change our minds again and get married. And then, as a husband, I would receive a residence permit in my wife’s living space.
It turns out that our time has come! Laughing and kissing like a few years ago, we again went to the registry office and registered with pleasure, but this time we decided to unify the surnames in the family. Now my wife has changed her maiden name to mine. And only our daughter so far bore her grandfather’s last name, which was written into her document at birth. This still had to be fought for. But we expected not only this struggle ahead of us. We had to remember that we want to return back to our city and our apartment and must somehow restore our registration there. Is it really a fake divorce again? How everything in that country was “through the ass”!
So, I successfully passed the stage of State distribution to the workplace and was preparing for the state exams. Of course, if some government structures wanted to stop my progress towards an excellent diploma or residency in the capital, this would be the ideal stage. It was enough to get one good, not excellent, mark on a state exam, as an honors diploma and all its privileges immediately disappeared. But I had no reason to believe that fate was sneaking up on me from the first unsuccessful visit to the walls of the medical institute, when they refused to accept my documents. Even if we assume that the vengeful Vice-Rector Avaliani would not be averse to punishing the obstinate young man, it was difficult to imagine that he would lose his dignity by turning to professors and heads of departments with a request to lower my grade at the state exam. No, I never thought about him that way. On the contrary, I understood that he would not lose his dignity in the eyes of his colleagues. And finally, I relied on my knowledge and strength to pass the exams perfectly.
Well, I had brought my wife and daughter to Moscow, memorized everything I wanted to refresh and… successfully passed all the exams with excellent marks.
The Academic Council of the Medical School decided to issue recommendations for admission to graduate school and residency to all graduates who earned excellent diplomas, and there were several dozen of them out of several hundred medical graduates. It would seem that the path to Moscow is open. And then thunder struck!
Vice-Rector Avaliani summoned all the excellent students. He congratulated us,
“I address you as the best of the best. The day before I had a meeting with the first person of the Republic. Not just a meeting, but the Official meeting where he asked me, “Tell me, my friend, how can your guards help the country in these difficult times?”
And it dawned on me,” the Vice-Rector continued, “That this is the finest hour for all of you! And I gave the First Secretary of the Republic a solemn promise that all excellent students, as one, would go to the mountainous regions of the Republic to improve the health of the population. I am sure that you share my patriotic feelings and will not let my lofty words turn into a theatrical farce.”
There was deathly silence in the hall. Everyone understood perfectly well that this was in fact a farce, not even theatrical, but a rather a circus one, which our “Clown” wanted to turn into something significant. How familiar was this desire to create good out of nothing, or out of someone else’s good!
“And for your feat,” boomed the voice of the Vice-Rector, reveling in his wisdom and greatness of actions, “We will take care of you. After working for three years, you will be accepted into the most prestigious medical institutions of the republic, sent to the best graduate school and residency in the country, of your choice!”
There was no applause. The young doctors were depressed, and judging by their confused looks, they were looking for the right move.
“I would like to know your positive answer,” Avaliani said, “I’ll ask everyone to speak out. Let’s start with our oldest graduate. Neiman, you have the floor.”
“Unfortunately, I will not be able to support this action,” I said in a mournful tone, “In the fall I will turn thirty-five years old, the extreme age at which the USSR is still allowed to enter residency and graduate school. Therefore, I must enroll this summer, and the Scientific Research Institute for Surgeons Improvement agrees to accept me.”
Avaliani was filling himself with red. No wonder I called him Lord Tomato. He shouted phrases like shots,
“I thought you were smarter, Neiman! You didn’t understand anything! Laws have nothing to do with this! This is an action of heroism and patriotism! Everything is retreating before it! I myself guarantee you that in three years I will personally send everyone to residency and graduate programs.”
I was starting to get excited too,
“And who guarantees us that in three years you’ll still occupy your place?”
Avaliani simply turned black,
“That’s it, Neiman, you won’t have a residency this summer! You will receive your excellent diploma only through my corpse!”
“So you signed your own death warrant,” I said as if in a trance.
The surrounding youth looked at this verbal duel with fear and delight. Everyone has understood that they could resist, there was no need to give in to every extravagant desire of the tyrant. Excellent students began to give valid reasons why they would not be able to go to mountainous areas to work…
The vice-rector’s action failed. But we were all left without diplomas. After the meeting, the Vice-Rector Secretary shown us a new magazine with a new distribution of our workplaces. It was only for excellent students, which listed places of work remote from the capital.
“Whoever does not sign this will not receive a diploma!” order of the Vice-Rector the secretary told us.
A new, final stage in graduating from medical school has arrived. Nobody could advise anything. People were not familiar with such a situation. Long gone are the days when those who resisted were simply arrested and exiled. Still, the shoots of freedom were sprouting, but… to what extent?
To begin with, I decided to go to a small town in the mountains where I was sent to work. Since I was an orthopedist, it was simply impossible to send me to the village. The place was supposed to be some kind of hospital where operations are performed. And, indeed, it was called the Regional Trauma Center. Three doctors worked there – the head of the Center and two surgeons, a general, that is, abdominal, and a traumatologist (“a bone fixer”).
They greeted me warmly, but with surprise. It turned out that they had a vacancy, but they did not make any request for an additional doctor and did not need one. In fact, this doctor’s salary was shared by two others, receiving one and a half times the rate. And my presence immediately reduced their wages.
“Decide for yourself,” said the head physician, “It’s your right to come, since you have a direction. But you will immediately earn two enemies. Who will you be friends with? Who would want to rent you a place? Where will you settle your family here? I don’t understand why you need this war for a shitty place?
“Are you kidding?” I grinned. “I’m completely agree with you on this issue. I don’t need this place, but opposite, I want a certificate that you don’t need me to be freed from official distribution.”
“You should have said so from the start! Givi, Tamazi, this is a good guy, and not our enemy!”
Stocky, unshaven men in stale white coats, smiling shyly, took turns in squeezing my hand until my joints cracked, and we celebrated the peace treaty with huge local khinkali.
Alas! My hopes turned out to be unrealistic. The Vice-Rector’s secretary looked blankly at the refusal from the regional trauma center.
“I do not know anything! The Vice-Rector ordered not to issue diplomas to those excellent students who did not sign his special distribution to workplace.”
I wonder how he will fulfill his word in relation to such excellent students as the son of the Prosecutor General of the Republic, the daughter of a minister and the children of party bigwigs. But I couldn’t trace how and why exceptions would be made for them, and I didn’t want to. I had to somehow solve my problems, and here a big trap would have awaited me, if not for new times – the very Perestroika that Gorbachev started.
Suddenly, the news flashed in the newspapers and on TV – following the example of America, Gorbachev was opening a hotline for one hour – answers to questions on the problems of university graduates and graduate students. This was exactly what I needed!
I launched a frantic activity. Firstly, I called my wife in Moscow and instructed her where to call and what to ask. Secondly, I was looking for how to call to hotline myself. “Why in this order?” you might ask. Because we didn’t have a telephone at home, and there was always a crowd of people at the local calling center, the lines for the booths were huge, people, get inside the booth talked for a long time. Therefore, getting through to a special line within one certain hour from the province could have been a problem by itself.
And then our neighbor, a technician at the regional telephone communications center, helped me. Remember footage from old movies, where young ladies in crepe de Chine dresses or girls in military uniforms connect telephone sockets with plugs? In the modern world, our neighbor-technician replaced at least one hundred such telephone operators, managing an automatic telephone exchange. This technician was the younger brother of my friend, who defended his dissertation in biophysics in Vaalishvili’s laboratory. The friend was (and is) a very knowledgeable and modest guy with a good sense of humor. His younger brother was nothing like his elder brother, except for his sense of humor. He studied very poorly, everything except history was boring for him, and even at the school essay in literature he managed to write the shortest composition I ever knew, shorter than its title “How I will spend my summer.” And the essay itself said: “We’ll live – we’ve seen!”
And so, I turned to this primitivistic philosopher for advice, is it possible to somehow arrange the call I need?
“As easy as pie!” said the wit. “You go to the automatic telephone point,” this is where the pay phones for long-distance calls were, and where I spent one or two hours every day, spinning the disk and talking with my wife, “At a certain time I will turn off the connection. All booths will stop working. Let’s give people spin the disc and argue. After fifteen minutes, everyone will get tired of doing this, and they will wait under the fan while the technician adjusts the line. Then you will go into booth number one and dial Moscow. And at exactly this time I will give a connection only to this line – turn the disc until they answer you.”
That’s how it all happened. Exactly at three o’clock in the afternoon I was standing in line when the “damned connection” disappeared. One by one people tried to dial their numbers, but the lines were dead. After ten to fifteen minutes of fruitless attempts, everyone was tired of standing in hot booths without ventilation and communication. Then I went into booth number one.
“It doesn’t work for everyone,” the fat man joked, “Are you incredulous?”
“I’m lucky,” I smiled, “When luck is falling out, of course…”
But now I was lucky. The phone started working, the dial tone went through, and the other end of the line they picked up the receiver,
“The executive secretary of the Academy of Sciences for postgraduate studies, Professor Chesnokov, is listening to you,” said the voice.
And I rattled out the memorized text,
“I, Nikolai Neiman, graduated with honors from the Tbilisi State Medical Institute this year and have been directed by the Academic Council of the institute to enter residency and graduate school. The Moscow Central Research Institute for Surgeons Improvement agrees to accept me for residency, my documents are waiting there. However, they won’t hire me without a diploma, and the Vice-Rector of the Tbilisi Medical Institute, Avaliani, will not issue me a diploma.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand,” said the voice, and began to list everything point by point, demanding my confirmation.
“Your first and last name…”
“Nikolai Neiman.”
“You graduated…”
“Tbilisi State Medical Institute.”
“This year?”
“Absolutely right.”
“With honors?”
“Absolutely right.”
“Congratulations! And they don’t give you directions to residency?”
“Thank you, they do! The Academic Council decided to issue all excellent students with directions to residency and postgraduate programs.”
“So you are calling the hotline because your documents are not accepted at some institute?”
“No, they are accepted in Moscow, at Institute for Surgeons Improvement.”
“Gush! Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that the Vice-Rector of the Tbilisi State Medical Institute, Avaliani, does not hand over my diploma to me, and I cannot submit documents in Moscow.”
Some kind of mooing and slapping of lips was heard in the receiver.
“Young man,” said the secretary of the Academy of Sciences, “This doesn’t happen. I would rather believe that you are playing a prank on us than that the Vice-Rector of the medical institute has lost his mind. How do you explain Professor Avaliani’s unusual attitude towards you?”
“I don’t undertake to explain the Vice-Rector’s actions, but this has nothing to do with me, he refused to issue excellent diplomas to all excellent graduates!”
The breathing in the receiver became heavier,
“This issue requires special action. Tomorrow Academician Druzhinin will fly to Tbilisi on business. We will ask him to understand this unusual story. If the information is confirmed,” – the secretary of the Academy of Sciences still did not believe me, – “Comrade Druzhinin will find a way to contact you personally and help. All the best.”
I left the booth, dripping with sweat, and people were already squealing around me, calling to other cities.
“Really lucky!” the fat man summed up, fanning himself with his hat, “After you, the connection was restored in all booths! Did you have a good conversation?”
“Not bad. My uncle is coming to visit, I’ll go get ready for the meeting.”
That evening I impatiently called my wife. She was happy,
“It’s okay, Nika! I managed to talk with Gorbachev’s assistant. He promised to sort it out and contact you one of these days.”
I also boasted about a successful call,
“I just don’t understand how they will find me? Will they, like police come home with witnesses?”
And this is how it happened. The next day, around 6-7 pm, my classmate, Eric, also an excellent student, who also was not given a diploma, came to see me. My course mates rarely came to visit me. I was “overgrown” and had little contact with them outside the walls of the medical institute.
“They’re looking for you,” he said, raising his eyebrows high, “Do you know who it is?”
“Do not tell me that this is Gorbachev,” I joked.
“You almost guessed it!” he exclaimed, and his eyebrows went even higher, “Academician Druzhinin came to see the director of the Institute of Cybernetics for their business. However, it turned out that in addition to the business, he had an assignment from Gorbachev to find out what was going on at the Medical Institute with excellent students: are they being given diplomas or not? The director called my father, from whom he heard about these problems, and he confirmed everything. Now Academician Druzhinin wants to talk to you personally. He is waiting for you tomorrow at eleven o’clock in the director’s office with all your certificates and awards, starting from the first grade of school.
Eric wasn’t kidding. It was that way. Well, if to boast, then to boast well! And I went to the meeting. I can’t say that it was a meeting of old friends; the academician carefully examined my documents and was amazed at my physical past, but my story convinced him. He was pleased that I did not scold the Vice-Rector and did not treat him as a sworn enemy.
“Today I am meeting with the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, as an envoy of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev. I think that soon you and all the other graduates will receive their well-deserved excellent diplomas.”
“Thank you very much,” I said, shaking the academician’s big hand, “And thanks to Mikhail Sergeevich. But what should I do if no one calls me and they still won’t give me a diploma? I understand that my assumption is unbelievable, but have you encountered such a situation before? It’s also unbelievable.”
Druzhinin looked at me intently, but he was still a technician – a cybernetician, and could not deny the logic.
“Okay, here is the personal phone number of the Secretary of the Central Committee, with whom I will talk today. Promise me not to bother him for a week. If there are no changes, call him in seven days.”
“I promise,” I nodded, and we said goodbye.
For a whole week I sat in ambush, holding my breath, but no one called me anywhere, and diplomas were still not issued. That is, I cannot say about everyone; many children from high-ranking families studied with us. I was sure that none of this concerned them anyway. On the eighth day, I called the secretary of the Central Committee of CPG on his personal phone. A tired voice asked who it would be.
“The excellent student Neiman from Tbilisi State Medical school, who was not given his diploma.”
“And you have the audacity to call the secretary of the Georgia Central Committee?”
“But what remains for me?” I asked, “I already called Comrade Gorbachev himself. And if necessary, I will call him again.”
“No,” said a tired voice, “Do not call. Go to the medical school tomorrow. I promise that you will be given a diploma,” and a beep sounded on the phone.
I didn’t even have time to thank him…
The next morning I stood in the Vice-Rector’s reception room. It was already the thirty-first of July, and there was only a month left before the start of residency on the first of September!
“Congratulations,” the secretary grinned, “The diplomas are ready for issue, but the Vice-Rector locked them in a safe and went on vacation, but no one has the keys.
They could only be fought with their own methods. And I launched disinformation,
“Then I’m really finished,” I said in a fallen voice, “If I don’t bring the documents to Moscow before August 3, I won’t be accepted into residency this year, and according to the law, I’m no longer eligible for next year!”
“What are you saying?!” the secretary feignedly clasped her hands, “Come in every day, what if the locksmith manages to open the safe one day?!”
And I started going there every morning. I knew that all this was nonsense, officials don’t carry any keys for their safe on vacation, but I had to play the role of a gullible fool, counting down the days to a fiasco every day. And indeed, three days later, on August 4th, as I expected, the locksmith “managed to open the safe without a key and remove our diplomas.”
“It’s a pity, Neiman, that you’re late,” the secretary said goodbye.
“It’s a big pity to me too,” I confirmed, hiding my glee.
Still, perestroika was not a bad thing, no matter what anyone says!
And a couple of days later I was enrolled in residency at the Central Research Institute for Surgeons Improvement, and my family and I went on vacation… That’s right, to the sea!”
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