Goodbye to the Nevsky

Peter Roberts is the former Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Beginning in 1955, the Soviet Union’s worldwide publicity campaign
called “The Return to the Homeland” told emigrants that it was safe
to come home. Incredibly, families returned to Khrushchev’s brave new
world. For most it was an immense tragedy.

This novel purports to be the story of a Canadian-born child, who was
dragged back from Toronto by a father drunk on ideology and nostalgia.
Most families wound up on collective farms, but this fictitious one (or
is it?) found itself in Leningrad.

As a novel, Goodbye to the Nevsky is simply dreadful. It takes the form
of a diary kept by Viktor, who, when his father dies, becomes a dealer
in the black market. Scenes of high realism indicate that there may be
authenticity in this material. The diary is read by a KGB colonel, and
then it’s downhill all the way to an appalling ending, artistically
speaking.

There are questions about this book. Its author is called both Arkady
and Archie Povzikov, but there is no information about him. Did he
experience all this, or make it up? Or get it second-hand? Nothing to
tell us.

And then there is the episode at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow. Viktor
is told by an embassy officer that he may not return to Canada because
his father was a Communist. Not possible: any Canadian citizen may
return to Canada if he can leave the country where he is. These scenes
cast doubt on the probability of the rest.

Most puzzling is the disastrous condition of the text. Every page is
littered with gross errors: whole lines are omitted; others are
repeated; pronouns, verbs, and articles are missing; wrong endings
appear on participles; and there are numerous misspellings and
inconsistencies (Loginov, then Loganov), as well as serious errors in
the nomenclature of Soviet officialdom. Why, from a Toronto publisher?
It’s a pity, because there is good material here. The
return-to-the-homeland campaign is little remembered, but contains great
human drama. Perhaps Povzikov should try again, but with a new
publisher.