World: SVETLANA SPEAKS

When I left Moscow last December in order to convey the ashes of my late husband, Mr. Brajesh Singh, to his home in India, I fully expected to return to Russia within one month's time. However, during my stay in India I decided that I could not return to Moscow.

It was my own decision, based on my own feelings and experiences, without anyone's advice or help or instruction. The strongest struggle was going on in my heart all that time because I would have to leave my children and not see them for quite a long time. I did everything to force myself to return home.

But all was in vain. I went instead to the United States Embassy in New Delhi, hoping for help and understanding. I have come here in order to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia.

Since my childhood I have been taught Communism, and I did believe in it, as we all did, my generation. But slowly, with age and experience I began to think differently. In recent years, we in Russia have begun to think, to discuss, to argue, and we are not so much automatically devoted any more to the ideas which we were taught.

Also religion has done a lot to change me. I was brought up in a family where there was never any talk about God. But when I became a grown-up person I found that it was impossible to exist without God in one's heart. I came to that conclusion myself, without anybody's help or preaching. But that was a great change because since that moment the main dogmas of Communism lost their significance for me.

Instead of struggling and causing unnecessary bloodshed, people should work more together for the progress of humanity. This is the only thing which I can take seriously—the work of teachers, scientists, educated priests, doctors, lawyers, their work all over the world, notwithstanding states and borders, political parties and ideologies. There are no capitalists and Communists for me, there are good people, or bad people, honest or dishonest, and in whatever country they live people are the same everywhere, and their best expectations and moral ideals are the same.

My late husband, Brajesh Singh, was a wonderful man and my children and I loved him very much. Unfortunately the Soviet authorities refused to recognize our marriage officially because he was a foreigner and I, because of my name, was considered as a kind of state property. Even the question of whether I should be allowed to marry a citizen of India was decided by the party and the Government. Moreover, we could not travel together to see his homeland, or anywhere else outside of Russia. The Government refused to allow me to take him to India, his homeland, before he died. After he died the Government finally allowed me to take his ashes home. For me, it was too late. My husband's death brought my long repressed feelings about my life to the surface. I felt it impossible to be silent and tolerant anymore.

The publication of my book will symbolize for me the main purpose of my journey here. The freedom of self-expression which I seek can, I hope, take the form of additional writing, study and reading on the literary subjects in which I am most interested.