KGB

The KGB is recalled by Masha as part of the state pressure surrounding her and her husband’s departure from the Soviet Union. In her account, a summons to its office turns the practical business of emigration into a period of acute uncertainty, while the memory of people who never returned makes the threat feel larger than the immediate facts known to her.

The summons during emigration

While Masha and her husband were in the middle of their application process to leave, a card arrived instructing him to report to the KGB office. He told her not to worry and said it would be fine, but Masha knew that in the Soviet era people had received such cards and never come back. His reassurance could not remove the fear attached to the summons.

Masha drove him to a tall, grey building. He kissed her and told her to go home, but she stayed in the car for five hours, waiting. When he eventually came back down the street, smiling, the immediate fear gave way to relief. The episode is remembered through this contrast: an ordinary instruction to report becomes a possible separation, and his return resolves the uncertainty without making the danger she feared unreal.

Departure and lasting memory

Only a few months later, Masha and her husband were at the airport preparing to leave with American dollars hidden in their socks. A customs officer searched their carefully packed suitcases, treating their departure as betrayal of their country. During the search, Masha’s grandmother’s necklace broke and its beads scattered. The KGB summons and the airport inspection belong to the same emigration history, but the account distinguishes them: the KGB office is the feared unknown, while the customs search is the visible hostility of a state confronting those who leave.

The memory helps explain why Masha later contrasts her own experience with the apparent ease of the lives she associates with Australia. Her recollection does not establish that the KGB harmed her husband; he returned safely. Its significance lies instead in the uncertainty the summons created and in the wider political context that made a routine card terrifying. For Masha, the knowledge that a person could be called in and fail to come back remains part of what emigration meant.