Shimkevich, Andrei Mikhailovich

Andrei Shimkevich was born in 1913 in Paris ^{[1] [2]} .

His father - Mikhail Vladimirovich Shimkevich (1885 ^[3] - 1937 (?) ^{[4] [note 1]} ) was an officer of the Russian army ^{[1] [4]} , writer and playwright ^[3] , the son of the first marriage ^{[5] of the} famous Russian zoologist Vladimir Mikhailovich Shimkevich (1858-1923). For revolutionary work in the army as a socialist-revolutionary, Mikhail Vladimirovich served a prison sentence and exile in Russia ^{[1] [3]} , then fled abroad and ended up in France . There he met the poetess and artist Berta Kitrosser . They got married, their son Andrei was born.

In 1915, Andrei's mother met with the sculptor Jacques Lipschitz . They officially married only in 1925 and lived together until the end of World War II ^[1] .

Mikhail Vladimirovich returned to Soviet Russia in 1917 ^[1] and enlisted in the Red Army .

In 1929, Andrei decided to see his real father and on November 5, 1929 ^[4] left Paris in the personal carriage of A. V. Lunacharsky ^{[1] [2] [4]} . Father wanted Andrei to stay with him. He assigned him to the Soviet school and in every possible way prevented his return to France ^[4] . Relations with his father and stepmother, Andrei did not develop, and he ran away from home ^{[1] [2]} .

On January 12, 1931 ^[4] , Andrei Shimkevich was arrested. During interrogations, Andrei was beaten and forced to talk about his father and his friends, about the people he saw with his father at the French Embassy ^[4] . Andrei was charged with espionage and convicted under article 58-6 ^[4] .

Andrei’s father was arrested and shot in 1937 (?) ^[4] .

In 1947 ^{[1] [4]} A. Shimkevich was transported to Moscow, to the Lubyanka, to review the case. There he met the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg ^{[1] [4]} .

From 1931 to 1957, Shimkevich made eight attempts to escape ^{[2] [4]} . His case was reviewed fourteen times ^[4] . And each time he was given a new term, “until they“ wound a full coil “- 25 years.” ^[2]

In 1957, Andrei ^[4] (1956 ^[1] ) released Andrei.

In 1958, ^{[1] [2] [4]} he went to his mother in France. On the way to Paris, Shimkevich drove to Stockholm to meet with Raoul Wallenberg's relatives.

In 1981 ^[4] at the invitation of the Swedish royal family ^[1], Shimkevich participated in the tribunal in the case of R. Wallenberg. At that time, Shimkevich was the only living witness to the stay of a Swedish diplomat in a Soviet prison after 1945.

Andrei Shimkevich died in 1999 ^{[1] [6]} , in the Russian House in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois ^[1] .

As for the date of the arrest and the article, Semyon Badash’s recollections coincide with a small share of differences, as well as two more sources - Shimkevich’s interview with L'Express magazine and Pierre Rigulo’s book “The French in the Gulag”

However, it must be borne in mind that Pierre Rigulo, when he wrote about Andrei in his book, apparently used only data from an interview with L'Express magazine. Semyon Badash only met Andrei in 1949 at a camp in Ekibastuz ^[2] . In his story “Kolyma, you are my Kolyma ...” in the chapter dedicated to Shimkevich, Badash writes: “Of small stature, quiet and calm, Andrei did not tell anyone about his biography. We, the old prisoners, learned about everything only in Moscow, when Andrei was released ” ^[2] .

Therefore, it is necessary to state the version of Ilya Ehrenburg from his sixth book of memoirs “People. Years. A life".

He writes that after escaping from home, Andrei contacted homeless children (here all sources agree with each other). He was caught during the raid and returned to his parental home. He stole a revolver and maps ^{[1] [2]} from his father and fled with two school friends to the Turkish border ^[7] . There, after a shootout, he was captured and arrested. He was sent to a children's exemplary colony in Bolshevo ^[7] . He returned from there in 1934. ^[7] And the second time he was arrested already in 1937. ^[7]

I. Erenburg also writes that he met with Shimkevich personally after Andrei returned from Bolshevo.

The discrepancy in the description of Shimkevich’s escape to the border with other sources is very serious, but more on that below. Ilya Ehrenburg 's data on the release date do not coincide with other sources either . He writes that Andrei turned to him with a letter asking for help “in the year 1953 ” ^[7] . He wrote to the prosecutor, and Shimkevich was released (how much time has passed from the letter to Ehrenburg is not indicated until his release) ^[7] .

But, according to Shimkevich, he was released only in 1957 ^[4] (according to Ariela Sef in 1956 ^[1] ) in a stream of thousands of prisoners returning from camps after Stalin's death.

L'Express Magazine, No. 31-1-1981. Interview with J. Derozhi with Andrei Shimkevich :

In the camp, you quickly learn to get food from anywhere, count calories in the smallest bud of a plant, sleep while walking, describing circles in cameras, make fire using friction and cotton wool.

- Andrey Shimkevich

In total, Andrei Shimkevich was imprisoned for twenty-seven years - from January 1931 to December 1957. During this time, he changed many camps: Solovki, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Magadan, Karaganda, Pechora. Twice I went to prison in the Lubyanka . His case has been reviewed fourteen times.

Andrei Shimkevich made eight attempts to escape. Four attempts nearly succeeded. In the first year of his imprisonment, he managed to escape from the Solovetsky Islands , where they were sent on foot, accompanied by an equestrian detachment. He crossed the whole country to the border with Turkey , where he was captured. Another time, he was able to get to the French embassy, ​​but lived there only a few days, after which he was extradited to the authorities.

The prisoners judged the events taking place in the country, in the world by the waves of regular arrests and executions. Andrei Shimkevich recalls that before the war, during the anti-Trotskyist campaign, when a new stream of convicts poured into the camps, prisoners were shot according to alphabetical lists. He believed that he managed to survive only due to the fact that his last name began with "sh". In 1940, soldiers and officers who failed in the war with Finland arrived in the camps. In 1945, the winners were accused of too close contacts with the West.

Among the prisoners there was also oral memory. So, Shimkevich learned that in 1933, the writer Maxim Gorky , a friend of his mother, visited the construction of the Belomorkanal , where convicts worked. Among the prisoners, it was believed that a group of 120 writers and artists, led by Gorky , was greeted by soldiers dressed as enthusiastic workers.

Shimkevich particularly recalls the four war years: “What could be the difference for us between a German who kills and a Russian who kills? In the camps located near the front, if there wasn’t enough transport to evacuate the prisoners, they were eliminated. ”

Oddly enough, but during the war there were happy events that softened the lives of prisoners. So, in the camp, where Shimkevich was, got American food aid, which free Soviet citizens had never seen - ham and white bread.

Andrei Shimkevich recalls the busy cultural life of the camp, the prisoners' desire for self-education. Convicts passed on to each other their knowledge, learned from each other. In the library of the camps there were many books that were banned freely for ordinary Soviet citizens. The prisoners were even shown American films. And after the death of Stalin in 1953, cameras began to walk around the camp. The prisoners themselves made a film for them from the contents of the camp first-aid kit. In general, a lot of personal things had to be done independently. So, for example, it was possible to make a needle out of a fish bone.

Andrei’s camp nickname was “Conspirans”, and when asked what nationality he was, he answered: “Russian”. But he always spoke Russian very poorly and never tried to learn the language - he was afraid to forget his native French.

L'Express Magazine, No. 31-1-1981. Interview with J. Derozhi with Andrei Shimkevich :

New Year. I had occasion to meet him, hanging the only available piece of sugar on a makeshift string over a soldier's bowler, with a risk heated under the very nose of the overseer. The only thing that shone for us a little in complete darkness, like a star, was this piece of sugar, which was reflected in the water. And this reflection was enough to give her a sweet taste. At least we inspired ourselves. It was the same in the infirmary, where I was undergoing treatment after a brutal bayonet strike after another attempt to escape. Then we convinced ourselves that we were eating a chicken, while we chewed the potatoes thawed on the stove tile.

- Andrey Shimkevich

Throughout the conclusion, the NKVD- MGB- KGB offered Andrei Shimkevich freedom. For this, he had to become their agent. These proposals alternated with threats, punishments, attempts to escape and endless revisions of his case. Shimkevich recalls that for a total of seven years he spent in the so-called “stone bag”: “This is something like a cesspool, flooded with rats, in the depths of which it was necessary to slap through the mud in complete darkness. Feet day and night. For weeks. For months. And you become limp or hardened - depending on temperament. "

L'Express Magazine, No. 31-1-1981. Interview with J. Derozhi with Andrei Shimkevich :

I recall my interrogation in Moscow, which was conducted by Abakumov .... From the window of the office, which was somewhere high, a view of the street was opened. “Do you see these passers-by? Who do you think they are? - Free people. - No, these are the persons under investigation. And here are only the convicts, the same as you. ”

- Andrey Shimkevich

Andrei Shimkevich was released only in December 1957. Then he was in Kazakhstan. On one of the trains crowded with freed prisoners, where even the police did not dare to go, he reached the capital. A chain of mutual assistance among the masses of those released helped Shimkevich get documents that remove the ban on staying in Moscow. From the telephone box he managed to get through to Paris. The phone did not change, and before the connection was interrupted, and Shimkevich was arrested by the local police, he managed to talk with his mother.

All the years, Berta tried for him, tried to find. She wrote to Khrushchev , appealed for help to Aragon, Elsa Triola , Ilya Erenburg , Ekaterina Peshkova . She made acquaintance with General Katra, with Zhoks from the Orsay embankment, with the workers of the French embassy in Moscow.

During World War II, she and her husband and stepfather Andrei Jacques Lipschitz left for the United States . After the war, in 1946, they returned to Paris. Lipschitz soon returned to America , where he married a second time. Berthe remained in France to wait for her son.

Andrei was offered a Soviet passport and citizenship, but he refused. For about a year he worked at the Progress Publishing House, as he said, as a “reader” and translator ^[1] .

In 1958, a French passport was returned to him from the KGB archives. With him, Shimkevich went to the embassy of France . There, in honor of him, they arranged a big dinner, to which he did not even touch, since he no longer knew how to behave at the table.

For about two months, Shimkevich was preparing his departure, still fearing that at the last moment everything would break. It was only in March 1958 that he left for Paris through Finland and Sweden. Shimkevich was escorted by his friend, whom they met in Karaganda, writer, translator, children's poet Roman Sef .

In 1958, on the way home to France, Andrei Shimkevich drove to Stockholm to meet with Raoul Wallenberg’s relatives ^[1] .

In 1947, Andrei Shimkevich was in Lubyanka , where he was brought for review. There, he met Raoul Wallenberg , a Swedish diplomat in Hungary , who during the Second World War , having shown personal courage, saved several tens of thousands of Jews.

Raul Wallenberg was arrested in January 1945 and taken to the USSR. The government of the Soviet Union recognized the arrest only in 1957. Then they announced the official cause and date of death. Wallenberg allegedly died in prison from a heart attack on July 17, 1947 ^{[note 2]} .

Various sources describe the details of the meeting between Shimkevich and Wallenberg in slightly different ways. Ariela Sef - the wife of Shimkevich’s close friend Roman Sef , writes in his memoirs: “A Swede sat in his cell next to him [Shimkevich], who did not know Russian at all. He and Andrei, banging, spoke in French. It was Raul Wallenberg . Wallenberg, realizing that he might not be able to get out of the Soviet prison, asked Andrei, if he could escape, to tell everything to his family in Sweden . Andrei fulfilled the request as soon as he could, and on his way from the Soviet Union to France in 1958 he drove to Stockholm . "

• It should be noted that the memoirs of Ariela Sef were not completed and finalized, she died on December 23, 2008. Published as a result in 2011 by the publishing house AST / Astrel they were not properly prepared for publication. So, for example, historical dates and facts set forth in the book were not specified.

Shimkevich himself in an interview with the French magazine L'Express in January 1981 says: “In a cell, in a fortress or in a camp, you always find signaling signs that let you know what day and time it is to compose a daily log in your head. That's why I know for sure when I saw Wallenberg: our meeting took place a few days before the New Year 1947. "

In the same article in the preface accompanying the interview with Andrei Shimkevich, journalist Jacques Derozi writes: “Among the circumstances refuting the version of Moscow, according to which the disappeared diplomat died in July 1947 in the infirmary of the Lubyanka prison, there are testimonies of this unknown surviving prisoner of Soviet camps : 68-year-old Frenchman Andrei Shimkevich, ... Shimkevich for the first time publicly confirms that he was in the same cell with Walenberg for five months after the imaginary death of a diplomat. ”

In 1981, Andrei Shimkevich was invited by the Swedish royal family to participate in a kind of tribunal in the Wallenberg case. At that time, he was the only living witness to communicate with Wallenberg after 1945.

After returning, Andrei and his mother lived in the workshop, which the famous French architect Le Carbusier built for Jacques Lipschitz and Berthe and where Andrei spent his childhood. Shimkevich eagerly reread all the magazines that his mother had put in the basement for twenty-seven years. Andrei found it difficult to adapt to a new life. It seemed to him that he was expressing himself in Old French, so the language had changed in that time, in his opinion. He got married, but the marriage did not last long. He was not a very successful insurance agent, tried to teach, translate, but everything very quickly ended, was upset.

Мать Андрея умерла в 1972 г. Она прожила в доме более пятидесяти лет, охраняя все ценности, ведя европейскую переписку и дела Жака. Липшиц умер год спустя. Он оставил Андрею содержание — 100 долларов в месяц, дом же перешёл к его второй жене и её семье. Андрей продолжал жить в доме своего детства в нищете, не справляясь с расходами и содержанием дома, отбиваясь от многочисленных покупателей (новые владельцы приняли решение продать дом). Пособие Андрею потомки Липшица перестали выплачивать, ссылаясь на неспособность платить. Деньги на содержание дома они также не давали.

Пенсия с надбавкой, как узнику концлагерей, медицинское обслуживание, льготы появились у Андрея только после 1981 года, когда он стал известен, благодаря истории с Валленбергом . До того он боялся обращаться в пенсионные органы, так как очень мало проработал во Франции и ещё, будучи давно разведённым, платил налоги как женатый кормилец семьи. Тогда же многие издательства предлагали Андрею написать мемуары, предлагая хорошие гонорары, но он отказывался, объясняя, что многие участники тех событий ещё живы, и он может им навредить.

Много вещей Андрею пришлось продать; знаменитый портрет его матери с Липшицем, написанный Модильяни , семья второй жены Жака забрала для выставки и не вернула; часть ценных вещей, в том числе оригинальные светильники, станок Липшица пропали при переезде.

Около двадцати лет Андрею удавалось держаться в своём доме, несмотря на намерения второй семьи отчима его выселить. В конце концов, город нашёл ему небольшую однокомнатную квартиру, и он покинул особняк.

Андрей Шимкевич умер в 1999 году ^{[1] [6]} , в Русском доме в Сент-Женевьев-де-Буа ^[1] в возрасте восьмидесяти шести лет.

• Сеф А. Я., Рождённая в гетто. М.: АСТ: Астрель, 2011. 302 с. ISBN 978-5-17-073924-0 (ООО «Издательство АСТ»), ISBN 978-5-271-35384-0 (ООО «Издательство Астрель»)
• Cf. L'Express, № du 31-1-1981. Interview de J. Derogy.
• Петров Н. В., Сорокин К. В., Кто руководил НКВД, 1934—1941: Справочник/ Общество «Мемориал», РГАПСИ, ГПРФ; Ed. Н. Г. Охотина и А. Б. Рогинского. М.: Звенья, 1999. 504 с. ISBN 5-7870-0032-3
• Pierre Rigoulot, Des Francais au goulag 1917—1984., Fayard, 1984. ISBN 2-213-01464-7
• Туркельтауб И., «Вьюга» в Малом театре, «Лит. газета», М., 1930, № 28 (65) от 10/VII.