ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...
ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...
ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...
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word that he was going to come to apply <strong>for</strong> a visa. Somebody from the AFL/CIO tipped<br />
us off that this was going to happen. I was the junior officer <strong>and</strong> my boss was a more<br />
experienced consular officer so we sat down <strong>and</strong> we thought about this <strong>for</strong> a minute.<br />
Right away we realized that he would need a waiver <strong>for</strong> Communist Party membership,<br />
which applied to anyone who had ever been in the Communist Party, as Solzhenitsyn had<br />
been in his youth. We thought, well, this is Solzhenitsyn, a renowned writer <strong>and</strong> dissident<br />
<strong>and</strong> very much of a hero to the Western world. We phoned Washington to ask if we could<br />
get around the waiver requirement in some way, <strong>and</strong> the answer was no. We had to go<br />
through the whole process of him filling out all the applications, sending these to<br />
Washington, <strong>and</strong> getting approval <strong>for</strong> the visa issuance.<br />
I remember my boss was very worried about how Solzhenitsyn would take this.<br />
Solzhenitsyn had a reputation of st<strong>and</strong>ing up to bureaucrats, <strong>and</strong> we could imagine him<br />
getting fed up with the <strong>for</strong>ms, walking out of the Embassy <strong>and</strong> denouncing American<br />
bureaucrats as no better than Soviet ones. Well, Solzhenitsyn came in with his wife<br />
Marina, who was his second wife, <strong>and</strong> was very polite <strong>and</strong> friendly. I did most of the<br />
talking with him even though I didn't know Russian at the time but I did know German.<br />
He spoke German quite well, <strong>and</strong> that is how we communicated. I explained to him that<br />
he had to fill out these <strong>for</strong>ms, <strong>and</strong> his reaction was the opposite of what my boss had<br />
feared. Solzhenitsyn took the process more seriously than almost any other applicant I<br />
had processed. He sat down with these <strong>for</strong>ms <strong>and</strong> began filling them out meticulously.<br />
There was one st<strong>and</strong>ard question asking <strong>for</strong> a list of all places where the applicant had<br />
lived <strong>for</strong> more than six months since the age of 18. He started filling this out <strong>and</strong> then he<br />
turned to me <strong>and</strong> said, “Do I have to fill in all the labor camps?” And I said, “No, you<br />
don't have to. Just cover the period. You don't have to fill in all the labor camps.” He was<br />
immensely conscientious about the entire process. I thought about it afterwards <strong>and</strong><br />
concluded that his behavior actually made a lot of sense, given his experiences. If you<br />
spend your life fighting a bureaucracy, your first thought is not to make a mistake in an<br />
official document that the bureaucracy can use against you. So he took the matter very<br />
seriously. We obtained the waiver from Washington overnight, <strong>and</strong> he came back the<br />
next day to pick up the visas. I know the exact date, which was May 21, 1975, because he<br />
also autographed <strong>and</strong> dated a first edition, in Russian, of the Gulag Archipelago <strong>for</strong> me.<br />
That was the date of his first visa to the United States, although he subsequently came<br />
many times.<br />
Q: He eventually settled in Vermont, I think.<br />
PERINA: Yes. He eventually settled there but then returned to Moscow after the collapse<br />
of the Soviet Union.<br />
Q: In that period of the ‘70s <strong>and</strong> during our involvement in Vietnam there were a<br />
significant number of young Americans males who entered Canada to avoid the draft.<br />
Did that affect you at all?<br />
PERINA: Not in general, but there was this amazing coincidence where I met a classmate<br />
from the University of Chicago on the street in Ottawa. He was in Canada because he had<br />
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