Mes chers espions (2020) - full transcript

It had been two years since maman died
when I brought to my brother Pierre

a suitcase I'd taken from her house
whose contents I hadn't dared to sort.

I hoped to find there
the family mysteries

that had excited my imagination
since childhood

with their mixture of
the Paris of Russian immigration,

the Spanish Civil War,

Soviet officers,

and secret agents.

My mother, Svetlana, had kept
vague memories of all that.

Those of the 14-year-old girl
she was in March 1948,

when her family
was deported from France.



MY DEAR SPIES

In '48 we were...

deported from France.

I can't remember the exact terms,
but I can find it for you.

Something like... they were
politically dangerous for the state.

- For the French state?
- Yes, the French state.

So we followed.

Mother told me
that she'd looked out the window,

and the whole neighborhood
was surrounded by the police.

Mother was deported immediately,
within 48 hours.

She was taken away, to rue des Saussaies,
I remember now.

She was taken for questioning.

She spent a night
in what she called a dungeon.

But I'd be surprised if they
really had dungeons



at the rue des Saussaies.

But mother really enjoyed

TEN YEARS EARLIER

employing strong words.

AT THE HOME OF SVETLANA,
OUR MOTHER

I'm sorry,
it took me a while to find them.

- Shall we sit over there?
- OK.

- They're all jumbled together.
- That's OK.

They're old pictures...

that we rarely look at.

Here's the Kochetkov family.

My father's family.

His family name was Kochetkov.

How many children were there?

Two brothers
and six sisters, I think.

- That's father.
- I noticed him up there...

- In his uniform. He's quite handsome.
- Yes.

- He's young, isn't he?
- Sixteen or seventeen.

Graduation from military academy.

Lost in his thoughts.

- Ah, this is my mother!
- The actress.

That's mother.

- In the first trousers for women.
- When she was a model?

No, it was already the war.

- What's written there?
- Oh my!

- It's a whole saga.
- I wrote a whole saga!

Did you write this?

Yes, look. It was just before...

It was '47.
Just before we left.

The last Christmas.
How did I...

And here's mother as a model!

- Wow.
- The dress was burgundy, if I recall.

I never saw it, but someone said so.
I can't remember who.

Ah, this is my sister.

This must be in '43,
when my little sister was born.

I'm as proud as father
when he got married.

As if she were mine.

- What's your sister's name?
- Nina. Was. She's gone now.

That's her again,
but it's hard to tell.

- There you are with your mother.
- It's a whole series with her.

- Where are you?
- It must be the Bois de Boulogne.

The two sisters.

I like this picture,
both of them.

The two sisters.

Oh! That must be...

- That's the Union you mentioned?
- Yes.

That was just before...

Before you were deported to Russia?

Yes, exactly.

- '48?
- Yes, '48.

There's also that gentleman,
with the dark hair.

He was the Vice-Consul
at the Soviet Consulate.

He helped us to get

our Soviet passports.

He was a great friend of my mother,

because she was always great friends
with everyone...

Anyone who might be useful.

I wonder how these got here.

- A gentleman named Dorian.
- Who was he?

I don't know!

A friend of my mother.

He was...
an officer in the German army.

They saw a lot of each other...

See? This was '42.

He was a great friend of my mother, and...

I don't understand.
Does that mean...

You mentioned the Resistance earlier.

We think...
Mother told me much later, of course...

That he was a double agent,
that he was...

in the German army
while also being an agent

for the British.

I know he was in love with her,
because she was beautiful.

I know he never came to our house.

I know she saw him frequently.

I know he offered

to take mother, Nina, and me

by submarine to England.

There you are...
That's all I know.

- Your mother told you?
- It was probably my mother who told me.

It's all a mystery.

I just don't know.

- What are those?
- We saw them.

"Rue Traversière, totally destroyed by
bombs from our dear allies, March '43."

That's right.
It was heavy bombing.

The first time I ever saw
bodies in the street.

But I didn't know they were bodies.
They were burned.

Father said: "Don't look!
It's just wood, it fell from the houses."

And you believed him?

I don't know.
I was so afraid, in such a state...

- This is nothing.
- We saw it already.

- That's it.
- Wonderful. Thank you.

I have my diary, too.

- Your diary?
- Yes. Look at the thing.

Nice, huh?

It's impressive.
When is it from?

Look.

48 to '50.

I started it in '48.

- You were still in Paris.
- It was before we left. Look at that!

"My life, my sorrows, my joys,
my passions, my portrait."

It's wonderful.
Can I look at it?

Please, go ahead.

There are notes
on everything and nothing.

- There are songs.
- Even songs.

It's in French.

- Oh, some Russian!
- It's the Soviet anthem...

The Soviet anthem in between
a poem by Verlaine and one by...

Those are movies.

- The movies you'd seen?
- Yes. Amusing, isn't it?

- I saw a few!
- And Errol Flynn!

Underscored twice!

Is this your private diary?

It's my diary.
I suppose you could call it private.

It's all a muddle.
There's a bit of everything.

- I wouldn't presume to read it.
- Oh, please, go ahead.

- Shall I read a few passages?
- If you're interested, yes.

"Until now, I've lived quietly
in a small apartment...

in Boulogne-Billancourt?
It's crossed out.

I don't know why I crossed it out.

"Very cozy and very...

- "quiet."
- Tranquil.

"Father and Mother often talked about
leaving for the USSR,

"but it was so distant and vague

"that I barely worried
and almost didn't believe it."

That's true.

- Shall I keep going?
- As you like.

"We left on a Thursday afternoon.

"What precipitated our departure
was that my parents

"were arrested when they went to visit

"an ailing gentleman,
Professor O."

Yes, Odinets.

"Eleven people were present,
and they were arrested."

"Mother couldn't..."

- It's hard to make out.
- "Mother couldn't even say good-bye.

"She was sent directly to the camp."

"Father was given three weeks to pack...

"and then we left."

"When we took our train,
a dozen people came to bid us adieu.

"Grandmother amazed me.

"She controlled her emotions so well.

"But when the train left,
she cried her eyes out, and me my heart."

It was hard.
Really hard.

"I'm leaving not only grandmother,

"my cat and my friends, but something
greater and more powerful,

"more able to hold me back:
Paris, with its films and monuments,

"the sets of my favorite books,
The Three Musketeers and more.

"The old Paris that remains,
despite everything.

"Adieu Paris, my old Paris.

"But no, not adieu. Farewell.
I plan to see you again soon."

"We left Paris on
Thursday April 8, 1948 at 1 p.m.

"and arrived Friday April 9th."

If this interests you...

you're not going to read it now.

Do you want to take it?

I wouldn't dare, but...

Really. I swear it's...

There's nothing really private in there.

And at 14, private things
aren't really that private.

It's mostly about the journey.
Would you like to take it?

- Gladly!
- Then take it!

Thank you.

JUNE 2018
MY BROTHER PIERRE'S HOUSE

I don't know.

I'm glad you're the one who got it.
I'd have thrown it away.

But for no real reason.

But I would like to know what's in it,
of course.

It's because of you.
Not thanks to you.

I wouldn't have...

I wouldn't have gotten involved.

I wanted to show you this,
so you'd know...

Those are pictures...

This is the picture

of our grandfather's family.

That's him, Constantin.
With his father.

And this...

I think it was maman who wrote:

"I know neither where nor when."

And what do we know
about that grandfather?

His name was Constantin,

Kostia to his family,

and Dedunia, "grandfather",
to me and Pierre.

Born in Kovel, in Volhynia, in 1896.

Is was then the Russian Empire,
then it became Poland,

then the Soviet Union,
now Ukraine.

In 1918, during the Russian Civil War,

Constantin enlisted
in the White Russian army.

When the Reds won, he fled across Europe,
working every kind of job.

Maman writes: "I think it's Bulgaria,
the landscape looks life Sofia,

"as father was making his way
to France in '23."

Like many of his comrades in arms, he
chose France as his land of exile in 1924.

There he met his wife,
our grandmother,

Lily, whom he married in 1931.

She's doing Marlene.
Is there no date?

Our grandmother's a little plump...

Raisa, known as Lily,
or Balia, as Pierre and I called her.

was born in Odessa in 1913.

Her father,
a captain in the merchant marine,

had also fled revolutionary Russia,

and, like Constantin,
found work at the Renault factory

in Boulogne-Billancourt.

Lily and Constantin had two children,

our mother, Svetlana,
and Nina, our aunt.

Just after the war,
Lily and Constantin

ran an association,
the Union of Soviet Citizens,

that worked to send to the USSR
Russians in France who wanted to return.

Seen as too pro-Soviet,
the association was banned by the police.

Lily, Constantin,
and little Svetlana and Nina,

then ages 14 and 4,

were deported by
French counter-espionage, the DST,

in 1948.

Russian immigration...

She annotated everything.
We know what's in here.

That's why it's funny...

She wanted us to look.

What strikes me,
looking at these documents,

is that things are annotated
to make it easier.

She's simplifying it for us.

"This is uninteresting."
"This I don't know."

What I really can't make out -

and I have started looking -

are the hand-written documents.

If you have time, can you look at
our grandfather's hand-written documents?

It's all his accounts...

OK, I'll look.

- These are our grandmother's notebooks.
- I'll pile them here.

And this is even stranger, you'll see.

We come to the Spanish Civil War.

You read it,
it's handwritten Russian...

I made it out,
but maybe you'll understand better.

I couldn't make out the name.
Indeed, it's very interesting.

- I'll just translate the beginning.
- Please do, I'm not sure...

I don't understand everything, but...
The Spanish Civil War...

"Kostia...

"often meets - it's hard to read
the name - Sergei Yakovlevich Efron...

"Both of them want to go fight in Spain."

Efron was married to Marina Tsvetaeva,

and we know he was an agent of the NKVD,
later the KGB...

That's well established.

He returned to the USSR in '37
and was liquidated soon after...

Read what's next -
that's what I don't understand.

Then it says: "Later...
Efron disappeared from our horizon..."

In '37, when he was exfiltrated to Moscow.

"I ask questions...

"but Kostia refuses to answer,
his face in a painful frown.

"Don't ask me about that, darling,
it's too painful."

"Don't ask, darling.

"It's too painful

"to have been mistaken...

"about a man like Efron."

That's what he says.

"How could he have!
Such a wonderful man..."

I think I get it.

"with whom he... became close.

"Is it true?"

But what is our grandfather
disappointed about?

That he's a spy.
It could be that.

Cheers! With vodka...

To the Leon family...
And friends!

The extended family.

It's actually not the Leon family.

We've already talked about them,
though we could say more...

- What was Svetlana's family name?
- Kochetkov.

- Not spying. She was in the Resistance.
- She says there was spying.

Spying is not in the family history.

- Family history? That's not reality.
- I don't know what the reality is.

I think that's an important question.

I read in Kolyma Tales
that lots of people

returned full of hope
and were sent straight to the camps.

80% of those who arrived

were immediately sent away.

- Why?
- They were suspect.

It was crazy to go back.

They didn't know.

Maybe some knew.

Regardless...

- How do you know, Serge?
- From Shalamov's Kolyma Tales.

He writes about people
who ended up in Siberia,

often in completely arbitrary ways,

including sincere communists.

For the people who returned,

just having been abroad
was grounds to suspect them of treason...

I believed their story for a long time.

And then a journalist
familiar with all that asked me:

"They weren't sent to the camps
when they arrived?"

I said: "No.
They were sent far from Moscow,

"they ended up in central Russia,
in Kirs,

"then on the Volga, in Cheboksary,
but not in the camps."

"That's bizarre.
Your grandfather was in the White Army?"

"Yeah."
"You are aware..."

That's more than enough
to get them sent off.

He said: "Lots of White Army officers

"were turned by the Soviets
in the 20s and 30s."

"Where did they work?"
"At Renault."

"You do know that Renault
was a hotbed of spies.

"You never wondered..."

Can we stop with the parents?

I came here to talk about my kids!

Paul's playing ping-pong, and he loves it!
I'd like to discuss ping-pong.

No one forced you to have kids,
but they had us.

No, I was forced to.

So, back to Efron...

We know officially that he was
an NKVD agent. It's clear.

He was an active agent,
recruiting other agents for the network.

And he participated in special operations.

And he recruited grandfather...

You're talking in the affirmative now?

It's what I just saw.

- It's not what I understood.
- Of course it is.

From what you read earlier?

I understood that
grandfather was...

recruited early by the Soviets

to find volunteers
for the Spanish Civil War.

That was already pretty...

I've got proof, it's written down.

- But this business isn't clear.
- You can say that again!

What's not clear
is when Efron leaves

without telling his friends.
And my grandparents clearly adored him.

Efron was a great guy,
we know who he was.

I'm really, really, really drinking
to the health of the Leons!

And the...how again?
The Kochetkovs!

And all that riffraff!

To all that riffraff!

What would he go back for,
aside from material gain?

Some guarantee of survival?

It's weird that this guy
who headed a network

was exfiltrated and the others stayed.

Did you really not know this
when you were young?

That's what the Russians are like,
while the French...

A broader "us".

You don't write it down
if you want to hide it!

Vladimir, you asked where the lie is.
But whose lie?

Fields of wheat, the sky, cornflowers:
she'd tell me about marvelous things.

What the fuck!
I want to say something!

France stinks,
but France stinks less than the others.

It stinks less than the others.

How long have you had
a drinking problem?

And I drink...

to the health, as always,
of the Leon brothers.

What a mafia.
I can't take anymore.

Friday April 9, 1948.

I'm finally writing about our journey.

It went very well.

There are lots of titmice here.

We're in Germany,
in the Soviet zone.

The country is very marshy,
the soil quite sandy.

We eat well here.
So well, in fact, that I'm a bit ill.

We sleep well.

And, O! Delight!
There are mice.

Mother faints each time she sees one.

But I'd like to tame one.

Monday April 18, 1948.

The lilacs in Paris
have surely blossomed already.

Here the buds are barely emerging,
violet or pale green.

But I hope by Easter
it will all be in bloom.

No, that's not a train.

The guy's in shorts.

Russians!

They're boxer shorts, actually.
He must have been in bed already.

No, thank you.
I don't want...

What does the lady want to give us...

No, thank you!

It's lovely, but no, thank you.

They were Russian.

They were among those Russians

who emigrated
during the Revolution.

And in France,

they had contacts
with the Soviet Union.

Is that our train?

Don't leave us here.

June 1948.

I was hit over the head
with a brick.

My mother told me we're leaving
in two or three days

for some backwater in the Kirov region.

Fine.
I'm very pleased to travel.

We're leaving.

KIRS, KIROV REGION
959 KILOMETERS NORTH-EAST OF MOSCOW

We arrived in Kirs.
What a place!

All of the houses are wood.

There are two churches,
one library, one movie theater.

The country is very backwards.

People believe in evil spirits,
witchcraft, and the evil eye!

We have quite a big apartment,

with two rooms, a hallway,
and a tiny bedroom.

As for modern comforts,
electricity is it.

No gas, no running water.

But we manage.

A village woman brings us water,
and saws and splits wood for us.

Life is quiet, and boring.

The only pleasures
are the cinema and the library.

I'll see my favorite actors:

Errol Flynn,

Tyrone Power,

Gary Cooper.

Svetlana, our mother,
wrote about the endless winters,

the wolves in the streets,

and the wooden sidewalks of Kirs.

in the region of Kirov,
just before the Urals.

That's where her parents,
Lily and Constantin

newly arrived from Paris
in June 1948,

were sent to work
after a brief stay in Moscow.

It is where Pierre and I return,
70 years later.

At the cultural center,

a meeting was organized with
Svetlana's childhood friends.

But before we meeting them,
we are offered a tour of the local museum.

The Dnieper glacier was advancing.

The flora and fauna were changing.

At the time there were

mammoths and
woolly rhinos.

This is a waffle iron.

As you can see,
there is a coat of arms.

Batter was poured in,
and you got biscuits, waffles...

You can go into the other room for now.

You can wait in our office.

Someone will meet you there.

This is the Communist Youth section.

Were you in the Komsomol?

- We were too young.
- I was a "Little Octobrist".

I was a Young Pioneer.

I joined the Komsomol at 14.

- At 14!
- Already at 14?

You could be a member
from 14 to 28.

- You're planning to renovate?
- Yes.

This is the current production
of the Kirs Kabel factory.

That is a cable
thinner than a human hair.

It's even more diversified now,
but this shows our production.

'46.

Everyone reading Pravda.

Constantin was an engineer

at the Kirs Kabel metallurgical factory.

Lily found a position
at the factory library.

Like any Soviet worker,

she had to provide the authorities with
a personal and professional autobiography.

A retiree from the factory found it

and suggests a complete reading

in the company of Svetlana's classmates.

This is your grandmother?
You confirm?

Absolutely!

I'll prove it to you,
even if you hadn't agreed.

- I will read you this long document.
- Yes! With pleasure.

Oh, my, it's long!

Then don't listen!

"I organized and led,
with my husband,

"the section of
the Union of Russian Patriots,

"later the Union of Soviet Citizens,

"in the working-class town of
Boulogne-Billancourt,

"where we lived.

"My husband and I were arrested
on 17 March 1948

"at the home of the president of the
Union of Soviet Citizens.

"Nearly 300 police officers participated.

"The French secret services
placed us in isolation cells

"and subjected us to constant
questioning all night long.

"And again the next day.

“We were accused of pro-Soviet activities.

"After another night of detention,

"they informed us of our
immediate administrative deportation.

"My husband had three weeks to follow
the required procedures for the children."

That's what she wrote, by hand.

It's interesting.

Look...

And me! Can you find me?

She wasn't there.
She's not in the picture.

- That's you, isn't it?
- Keep looking!

There's a lady in Kirov
who wants to meet you...

We'd been to a party.
Look at us!

I was 13 years old.
Look how we're dressed

- And her. She's so pretty...
- Yes, she is.

- Let me look at Svetlana.
- Please, be my guest.

That was in 1949. In April.

The 1948-1949 school year.

Did you know they were from Paris?

We knew they were French,

and that was enough for us.

At 13, who needs to know more?

Children are children.

We weren't as advanced then
as children are now!

It didn't surprise you?

Why should it have surprised us?

- There were not so many French people.
- We were children.

They came from abroad.

- They gave us colored pencils.
- I don't remember that.

And chewing gum, for everyone.

Their house was here.

Across the street was the church.

That's where we saw movies.

And where we went dancing
when we were older.

The church was no longer functioning.

In 1936, the church was given
to the factory.

To our factory, Kirs Kabel.

- It became the club.

- Yes, for all of our activities.

Being so far from Moscow,

was it calmer
from a political point of view?

We were very far removed from politics!

Even as adults?

Politics had an impact here.

But up to the end of school,
no one was interested in politics.

Shall we talk a bit more about politics?

Here, politics and arrests in the 1950s...

Were there arrests here?

- Of course.
- Where didn't they happen?

My husband's grandfather was arrested,
in 1952, I think.

Because...

It was under Stalin then,
and it was because...

Why did they arrest him?

- Well, at his work...
- I had no idea those things happened...

Of course it did. There were
many victims of the repression.

I left Kirs in 1953.
In Uzbekistan, no one was arrested.

It happened everywhere.
They did it discreetly.

There were victims here.
Not far away.

They've received attestations now.

I thought it was earlier.
In the 1930s.

It was enough to wrap something
in a newspaper

that had a picture of Stalin...

I didn't know that happened in Kirs.

It did, it did.

I'm not so sure.

Apparently he said something...

“What business of it is ours?”
Or something like that.

And someone denounced him.

He worked for the railroad, I think.

And they came and arrested him.

- His family received an attestation.
- That he had been rehabilitated?

- He was rehabilitated, but he died there.
- I see.

No one saw the grandfather again.

And all those years...

You've heard of such things before?
Not me.

Aunt Vera, who lives in Kazakhstan
and was in school with your mother,

it was her father
who was arrested.

The grandchildren filed a request.

They were informed about
the place and time of his detention.

I have to pick up my great-granddaughter,
at 4 o'clock.

She gets out of kindergarten.
Her mother is working today.

- Are you going to tell us about Svetlana?
- Of course!

- You're holding out on us.
- Of course not, but if we start talking about ourselves...

Please forgive me, but at 4 p.m.
you'll have to clear the room.

And now we're getting kicked out!

- Tell us, we don't have much time left.
- Right away!

Hold on, I'm going to sing you a song.

- Please!
- What a treat.

The dreamy voice of Yves Montand

Floats over the short waves,

The branches of the chestnut trees
On the boulevards of Paris

Lean toward my window.

When a dear friend sings,

The air grows warmer,
And all is more gay,

And the great distances grow smaller,

When over there
My distant friend sings.

- Encore!
- Thank you!

And the song that grows closer

Floats and resounds
Above Moscow

Full of thoughts of Paris,
Of the smile of Paris,

And the loving voice of her people.

When over there
My distant friend sings.

The air is warmer,
And all is more gay,

And the great distances grow smaller,

When over there
My distant friend sings.

Pairs of lovers pirouette

Youth is friend to the singer

And the Boulevards of Paris
Resemble those of Moscow.

This is where your house was.

It was that wide.

And you lived over there.

There were windows onto a courtyard.

They were big apartments.

From your windows,
you could see the factory.

If I look, will I find anything?

October 20, 1949

Life is not very lovely.

No money.

This Kirs is breaking my heart.

People turn in the streets
to watch us go by.

Quickly, quickly away from here.
I've had enough.

Mother has the blues,
yells at all of us whatever we do.

Father wrote to the Central Committee
to request our transfer.

What answer will we receive?

After one month of work,
in early September 1948,

I asked the director
if my evaluation was going well.

"Everything is fine"
he answered shortly.

But my wife and I
sensed a change of attitude

among those in our entourage.

At best, relations have become distant.

At worst, they have become vulgar.

On the eve of the celebration
of the October Revolution,

I was received by the director,
who told me:

"In the near future,
you will have no prospects here."

Spiteful attitudes towards us

have turned into a boycott,
a veritable exclusion.

This situation of being pariahs,
seen as potential criminals,

is particularly painful here,
in our homeland.

Svetlana has symptoms
of a primary infection,

with a high temperature.

Nina, following a very long cold,
almost went deaf.

The cause of all of this is the file
that followed us to Kirs.

A decision must be made rapidly
about our family,

in accordance with what was decided
when we arrived in Moscow.

Place of residence: either a large
provincial city, or in the Moscow area.

For the children,
there must be a good school

where they can continue studying
music and languages.

Vigilance is required,

and we should be monitored.

But that would surely be done better

by people more qualified
than here in Kirs.

We can easily be monitored

without being subjected to such ostracism.

And our intellectual capacities
can be better utilized.

Finally, it mustn't be forgotten
that our fate is of concern abroad,

among friends as well as enemies.

Our stay in Kirs
can produce but one effect.

The perplexity of our friends,
and the jubilation of our enemies.

The interests of the State are perfectly
aligned with those of our family.

Kochetkov.

He wrote that in '48?

It's in a different pencil,
so maybe it was dated...

A little dram?

I wouldn't say no.

Once again we have to imagine a little...

Or interpret anyway.

He put in writing
every possible argument.

That's exactly it.

So maybe that one will actually work.

Do you think he believed it?

That people were...

Were people abroad really
paying attention to them?

In Kirs!
Such small town...

I don't know.

- Anyway, to Paris.
- To Moscow!

Dedunia knew Efron for a long time.

Efron was recruited in '31.

At the same time Dedunia

was working with
the post-revolutionary committee...

- He was setting it up...
- The club.

Was that its name in French?

- Post-revolutionary.
- OK.

I didn't immediately understand
the Russian: "po-revoliutsionny".

Post-revolutionary.

I remember asking our grandmother...

- I should read it to you.
- What did she say?

- That she didn't know what it meant.
- Really?

I asked... and she said:
"post-revolutionary".

She thought it was a club.

She knew it was a political club, but...

But I asked about "post-revolutionary"
since I didn't know what it meant.

The concept was invented in...

as early as 1917,
even before October.

Shirinsky-Shikhmatov created the term.

People understood it easily.

Shirinsky-Shikhmatov,
who died in a Nazi camp...

That's another subject.

It all ended badly for a lot of people.

It ended pretty well
for our grandparents.

- It's true that his complaints...
- We mustn't forget it.

They didn't know,
they had no idea it could end badly.

Even the history
of the repression of '37 and all that...

Did they not know?
Was it all just in the past?

I mean, Stalin was still in power.

- They liked Stalin.
- True...

So in your view, ideologically,
despite their...

contact with all kinds of Russian
immigrant milieus in Paris,

they were trusting, thinking
maybe that the trials in '37 were fair,

they were enemies of the people
and no mass crimes had been committed,

or mass assassinations,
or unwarranted deportations?

There were people who didn't know.

I don't know, but it's...

But really, a lot of people didn't know.

- The few books that...
- Our mother didn't know.

The few books written in the 30s,

the things that happened,
no one read them.

No one read or believed.

Today, for the first time,
I thought

there had to have been
a part of them that thought:

"Did we make a mistake coming here?"

It doesn't seem possible otherwise.

What are you laughing about?

To the motherland!

- It is our motherland all the same.
- Uh, no.

I saw some interesting stuff
in the documents.

I didn't know when Balia's father died.

- With everything we've read?
- I didn't know he died in '36.

- His mother...
- Did you know...

Did Balia tell you this?

His father died at the movies,
watching a Tarzan film?

They went to see it and he was
so frightened by a cannibalism scene

that when they got home
he had the attack.

She never told you that?

It's such an extravagant story,
that Tarzan killed our...

- Especially when you imagine his face!
- Weissmuller's?

No, Piotr Immanuelovich's!

That's what I'm imagining!

That huge guy, with that face!
I was imagining...

- He wasn't her father, but anyway...
- That's a whole different story.

And her mother wasn't her mother either.

- I know what her father's name was.
- Really?

I found it.

- Shall we?
- We can't leave it.

Where did you find it?

I came across it by accident.
because at some point...

KIROV

The apartments aren't indicated.

- Is there a code?
- Yes, but all I have is...

- Children, do you know...
- It's OK.

- Hello.
- I was asked to let you in.

Thank you.

When the head of the class
brought in that little girl...

We were young girls, of course!

Now

I see her differently:

a young girl,
a bit fragile, a bit shy.

And she wasn't wearing a uniform.

I wondered:
how is that even possible in class?

For us, the uniform was mandatory!

And she was very tall compared to us.

She was given a seat in the back row.

We all started feeling sorry for her.

When recess time came,

the two of us hit it off right away.

She wasn't shy with us.

And so we got to know each other.

During breaks we would sing together.

When we walked to school,

we were never all by ourselves.

Lilia left first,
and the second house was ours.

I would go,
and after me it was Tamara,

and then Galia.

We would walk together
to get Svetlana,

and walk to school together.

We always walked around in a group.
Never alone.

What can I tell you?

- Tell me about your families!
- We'll tell you everything.

What's your life like over there?

Come to live here, in the Kirov region!

- It's too late now.
- Is it?

Our family has just kept leaving,
returning, leaving again...

It's enough.

You've got to settle somewhere.

Kirs was very proletarian.

Life was hard back then.

We lived on what we could grow.

We helped as best we could.

After milking our cow,

mother would give me milk

and bread to bring to them.

And I would go.

We always helped each other out.

We didn't leave them to themselves.

- Let's toast to our meeting.
- Yes, to our meeting!

And may we meet again
while I'm still alive.

To your health, and yours,
and good health to all.

What's this...

I've got an answer from the FSB.

FSB; EX-KGB; EX-NKVD;
EX-GPU; EX-CHEKA.

To the letter we sent from Paris?

"Your request has been examined

"by the central archives
of the Russian FSB.

"Refer to the reply in the attached."

Let's have a look.

"Re: Léon P. and Léon V."

"Central Archives,
Grand Lubianka Street,

"Your request dated 9 October 2018,

"received via the FSB website,
has been examined.

"As previously communicated,

"under the reference NI-10-AL-11-12-4
dated 30 June 2009,

"The central archives of the Russian FSB
possess no documents

"regarding Raisa Manukova
and Constantin Kochetkov.

"They therefore are not in possession
of the requested information.

"Assistant Director of the Archives,
N. A. Ivanov."

And that's that.

They're referring to their reply
to my request in... was it 2009?

There are no archives in the name of
Kochetkov at the KGB or FSB.

Yes, 2009.

They archived my letter,
but the Kochetkov archives are gone.

They don't have them
or they don't want to say...

They refuse to let me see them.

The summer before
Pierre and I went to Russia,

the DGSI - French counter-espionage -
refused me access to their archives.

Curiously, several years earlier,
I was allowed to see them.

DGSI; EX- DCRI; EX-DST

"However, file 48-77 -
in accordance with article blah-blah -

"may not be communicated
within 50 years

"of the most recent document

(which is 1977)
"included in the file.

"Classified documents
may only be communicated to persons

"authorized to see..."
I'm guessing the contents.

Super strange.

In Levallois-Peret,
HQ of the French intelligence service,

I saw the expressionless faces
of Lily and Constantin,

frozen in the head and side poses
of anthropometric photographs.

At the time, I had been allowed
to note the conclusions of the DST.

I told maman about it,
and she was amused,

especially regarding her own mother,
whom she always thought of as birdbrained.

"Top Secret File: Military Secret XX.

"DST internal notes.

"Constantin Kochetkov

"Member of the Communist Party,
Beck cell, in Boulogne-Billancourt.

"Maintains friendly relations with
Yakovlev, vice-consul.

"Appears above all answerable to his wife,
an important Soviet intelligence agent.

"Raisa Kochetkov,

"Extremely active.
Very likely a Soviet agent.

"Ministerial decision:
immediate deportation.

"In addition to working with
the clandestine Union of Soviet Citizens,

"she carries out special missions
for the Soviet consulate and embassy.

"The Union of Soviet Citizens
has local and departmental sections,

"as well as a women's section
and paramilitary groups

"based in several regions
in so-called shock groups.

"The groups were trained
by Soviet officers

"and were particularly important
in the regions of Toulouse,

"Perpignan,
Bordeaux,

"Marseille,
Nice,

"Grenoble,
Annecy,

"Lille,
and in the Seine department."

The documentary “Mes chers espions”

has been filming in Cheboksary
with a crew from Paris.

The film tells the story
of the Kochetkov family,

deported from France after WWII
for their pro-Soviet activities.

The title of the film can be translated:
"My Dear Secret Agents".

The Kochetkov grandsons, Vladimir
and Pierre Léon, are making the film.

They told the incredible story to
our correspondent, Olga Petrova.

The brothers are interested in
1950s and 1960s Cheboksary,

when their grandparents, Raisa and
Constantin Kochetkov, lived here.

Pierre visited Cheboksary as a boy.

He still has a picture of their apartment
on Yaroslav Street.

Suffering from life
in a backwater like Kirs,

the Kochetkovs
requested a transfer

to a city with theaters and museums.

They settled in Cheboksary in 1950.

Constantin Mikhailovich,
who worked for Renault in Paris,

was hired at the radio-electric factory,
and was very respected.

The Kochetkovs
lived in Cheboksary for 15 years.

They then moved to Moscow,
where their daughter Svetlana lived.

I remember the Volga,
especially its sandy yellow banks.

I remember that.

My grandmother took me there for picnics.

That should be enough about your family.

Your mother's name was Nina, right?

- No, our mother is Svetlana.
- Ah! Svetlana.

Nina was her sister.
There were two daughters.

I see.
I thought there was only one.

No, two.

- OK, so...
- We'll set up the tripod.

- We'll walk a few steps.
- You saw how talkative I am!

It was perfect.
You were very concise.

Last time it was much longer.

It's a long story.

And with lots of things aren't clear.

Yes, some elements aren't clear.

Victor!
Do you want us to go further away?

Let's move a little
for the long shot.

CHEBOKSARY, RIGHT BANK OF THE VOLGA
600 KM EAST OF MOSCOW

When you look at it from here,
it seems small.

In fact, there were several
small neighborhoods here,

with gardens and parks,
and the dramatic theater,

a lot of old merchant residences,

and many simple wood houses.

Streets full of them.

When the hydro-electric plant was built,

the water level rose,

and all of the old city center
was flooded.

A whole part of our heritage was lost.

The churches survived because
they were used for other purposes.

There were used as museums,
as grain silos, for vegetable storage.

Until 1995, it was marshland here.

The houses were torn down,
the trees cut.

Everything was very well prepared.

- There are no houses underwater?
- No, no houses.

If you looked into the depths,
you wouldn't find any.

There's no Atlantis.

There is! The history is there.
You can't drown that.

Guides tell all of that to the tourists.

If the historic part of the city
seems too small,

the guides tell them that,
though little if left of old Cheboksary,

the history remains.

When they hear about this "Atlantis",
the tourists' eyes light up.

I remember,

just before they flooded
the city center

she brought me here,
and in that hotel...

Of course our grandmother,
ever the star,

only ever took the "luxury" rooms
in those Soviet hotels.

We met people,
a local party leader I think...

Who? Do you know who?

I remember the name Isliukov.

I remember a man, very "apparatchik"
in his manner.

Even though, as a child,
I didn't know what he did,

the way he looked and spoke...

- "Head's up - this is the Party."
- He was the regional boss.

No more no less, Isliukov was the...

was the Regional Party Secretary,

which means he was the boss.

Those were our grandmother's friends...

Luxury hotel, luxury room...

And luxury apparatchik...

- There it is.
- You've already got a big suitcase.

That I do.
It's definitely Cheboksary,

in 1965.

Do you think it's the same suitcase
I brought you from maman's house?

- It's the same...
- Are you sure?

It looks the same,
and I remember that suitcase.

When you brought it over,
I remembered it.

You can tell, the way it fits
with the background, those houses...

There's construction...

- Zoom in.
- OK, but then it gets...

I like it.

- No, that's can't be it.
- It had a balcony.

Those have balconies.

I don't think that's it.

Do you remember the courtyard?

I want to see
if it reminds me of anything.

So that gray building over there,

that was the KGB back then.

- That one or the one over there?
- The one... Don't point!

RECORDING OF NINA,
SVETLANA'S SISTER, 1993

We went into the
Ministry of the Interior building.

It may also have been the KGB.

I didn't know how
to tell their uniforms apart.

We went into this man's office.

He got up and shook Father's hand.

He gave me sweets,
which I was thrilled about.

Father said: "She's a good little girl,

"but she lost her keys."

The man said:
"Why would we have your keys?"

Father said:
"I'm not sure you don't have them,

"but I noted traces of your visit
to our apartment."

The man was uncomfortable.

"Well, Constantin Mikhailovich,
it's good of you to inform me...

"I know nothing about it,
but why would we search your home?

"You know how much we respect
and appreciate you."

When we left,

I asked Father
how he knew they came to our house.

He explained it to me.

"I put a small thread
on the dictionary,

"the one on the desk.

"You didn't touch it, did you?"

I said I hadn't,

and he said the thread was gone

when we got home at night.

MOSCOW

LENIN

Tuesday, June 1st, 1948.

I'm in Moscow at last!

I pinch myself,
I bite myself,

but I can't believe I'm in Russia,
in Moscow...

In five minutes,
we leave to see the Kremlin,

Lenin's Mausoleum,
Red Square,

and in real life,
not pictures or film.

We saw the famous Moscow Metro.

It has forty stations,
and they're so beautiful!

The trains themselves,
yellow or blue,

have upholstered seats in every car,
and nickel-plated bars to hold onto.

Moving staircases operate
in every station, in both directions.

When you enter a station,

it's like entering a lavish ballroom
in a palace

where a metro has stopped by mistake.

One of the painter's responsibilities

was to paint the numbers
of the camp prisoners.

Do you see here?

These are detainees going off to work.

It's a very beautiful series.

- Powerful. Magnificent.
- Very powerful.

These here are childhood memories.

His family was a victim
of the peasant repressions.

He was between three and five at the time,

and he never forgot it.

The men are searching, taking
the children's belongings from a trunk.

The seated man is checking the children's
books, their school primer...

That's his mother, despairing.

SEAT OF THE ASSOCIATION "MEMORIAL"
IN MOSCOW

We also have the dishes from the camp.

And clothing from the camp.

All of these objects are authentic.

So, we have things like this.

This is what was known as a
"third-sentence" coat.

"Third sentence"?

Yes, it meant that it was
the third prisoner to wear it.

That is from a hard-regime camp.

Does this remind you of anything?

As for this vest,

- Do you see this?
- Yes.

This vest was made
by the detained woman herself.

Our country advocated atheism, right?

And yet...

Look at what she did.

When you open the lining,
you find pieces of fabric like this one...

on which, in ink,

in Old Church Slavonic.

she copied prayers.

And here's something
that takes us back to Paris.

There was a certain
Irina Ugrimova...

- Did you know her?
- Not personally.

This is from her collection.

She was a prisoner in the camp.

She worked at the camp theater.

She was a stage designer.

She did not want to return
to the Soviet Union at all.

But her husband,
Alexander Alexandrovich,

absolutely insisted on coming back.

It was the time when all that
glorious propaganda began.

People were encouraged to return.

She was already a prisoner in the camp

when she started collecting objects.

She was a very smart woman.

She started her collection there.

This is also from her collection.

"The Drunk's Payday"

"Moonlight Serenade".

It's in French?

This is also Ugrimova.

"Urchins of Montrouge"

- Did she bring this from Paris?
- No, it was made in the camp.

The Bois de Boulogne, where little
Nina and Svetlana took family walks,

emerges from the gulag archives,
and with it, the fate of the Ugrimovs.

Alexandre Alexandrovich
was a hero of the French Resistance,

and like thousands of other Russians,
he wanted to return.

Like our grandparents,

the Ugrimovs obtained Soviet passports,

passed through
the Brandenburg military camp,

and found themselves affected
far from Moscow, in Saratov.

In June 1948, they were arrested.

In late 1948,

Alexander Ugrimov was sent to the
hard-regime camp in Vorkuta

north of the Arctic Circle.

A portrait of Blok.

These are Blok's complete works

copied by hand...
on cigarette paper.

Unbelievable.

- What's unbelievable?
- That anyone would do that...

- Can you imagine reading it.
- It means he knew it by heart!

- That shows they knew it by heart!
- Of course.

Someone copied it from memory,
a whole book.

- Pierre translated Blok into French.
- Really?

This is very moving.

Particularly moving,
you see?

- I'm sure you understand.
- Of course I do.

In France, people don't imagine
that family history

is a dangerous subject.

Dangerous, and therefore
it's better not to bring it up.

It's better not to ask your grandmother

who your grandfather was.

It's possible he had
a bad background.

Maybe he was a priest, or a nobleman,
or a merchant...

What was one supposed to be?

Proletarian.

Those were the proper origins
for the Soviet system.

If you had family abroad,

or in any occupied territory,

or refugees in Germany,

or concentration camp survivors,

or prisoners of war...

None of that was good
in a Soviet biography.

So we learned not to ask questions,

and not to tell any stories.

There was also the question
of the fake documents

that the government gave people.

About deaths, for example.

They would be told a family member
had been sent to a distant camp,

and it was a lie.

In fact, they had been shot,

but no one would say so.

People would wait ten years.

They would ask and ask again.
Over and over.

And they would only ever get
snippets of the truth.

When they did receive
a death certificate,

the cause of death might be
listed as pneumonia,

or a heart attack.

That was also a lie.

It was torture not to know the truth,

to learn that the death date

you'd been commemorating
for years

was fake.

They were painful disappearances,
difficult choices.

Your mother might write to you
that you should join the Komsomol,

a tool of the Party,

but your mother
is an enemy of the people.

Who should you love more?
The Party or your mother?

That was the choice.

It was always a double life.

Someone might be with the Komsomol,

and hide a letter from their mother,
sent from the camp,

terrified their friends might find it

and learn that their mother
had been deported.

It was a double life.

An impossible choice,

or a life juggling a dual reality.

And that also leaves scars.

If someone tells you
that in their family

no one,

ever,

was affected by the repression,

they just don't know.

There's always the grandmother's brother

you know nothing about.

Or the grandmother's brother's
mother-in-law.

In one way or another,
it affected every family.

But we didn't talk about it.

A gentleman came here recently...

Forgive me,

I just recalled
this wonderful story.

The gentleman was 89 years old.

And we were able to find some documents.

We sent him a photo
of his father

at age 27.

It was the first picture of him
he'd ever seen.

You can't imagine his reaction.

It's astounding.

Stories like that bring you
a tragic joy.

But it is joy!

He saw his father.

He discovered
that he looked like his father

that his great-grandson
looked like his father.

Stories like that keep you going.

Not a day goes by
without the archivists of Memorial

receiving new accounts,
and new requests for information

about those who disappeared
under Stalin's Terror.

The organization also defends
human rights in Russia,

and was recently qualified by
the authorities as a "foreign agent"

because it receives international funding.

"Foreign agent",

an anachronistic term
with a whiff of the Cold War,

appeared after Vladimir Putin
was elected

President of the Russian Federation
in 2012.

RUSSIAN STATE ARCHIVE
OF SOCIO-POLITICAL HISTORY (RGASPI)

Don't forget your comb.

Follow me.

I've got a spot for you.

This is a good place.

My brother's over there.

What do you think of the reply
I got from the FSB,

saying that there's no record?

In their first letter,
I can't remember how they put it...

"We are submitting your request
to the Social History Archives."

That's it.

That's all they wrote back.

Let me tell you a story.

My grandfather,
during and after the war,

worked for the KGB.

He was the head of the KGB
in the city of Mytishchi,

near Moscow.

When I also made a request
to the FSB Archives...

I was refused access.

The only thing I found here,
in the Archives where I work,

is a form with his service records,

but with no details.

The post-war period was no longer
the Great Terror,

thank God.

But there were also problems.

I fear that my grandfather
could very well have

sent one of those French emigrants

beyond the Arctic Circle.

If you please!

After a first archivist received us
and gave us access to the documents,

we continued our research under the
surveillance of a young employee.

We immerse ourselves in lives
much like those of our grandparents.

White Russians
desperate to return home,

fighting with the Spanish Republicans,

joining the French Resistance,
Gaullist or Communist.

But Lily and Constantin?
Not a trace.

At the front desk, I'm surprised that
our table is the only one being watched.

replacing the usual
mosaic of surveillance cameras.

We are forbidden
to film the documents.

Pierre devised a subterfuge

when he found the picture of a former
member of the Union of Soviet Citizens.

who returned to the USSR
on the same train as our family.

I've got my library card.
It took a while.

I'm trying to make out the names.

A certain Kachva.

- Oh!
- That's him.

He was among the first deportees,
those from December.

The deportees...

Maman mentioned meeting him
at the Brandenburg camp.

- Exactly.
- I'd forgotten.

She hated him, I think.

So this guy,
based on what I know for now...

but I'm not absolutely certain...

had been an NKVD agent
for a very long time.

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
HOUSE OF RUSSIA ABROAD

- 1938, I only have one issue...
- What's the date?

- 1932...
- The Latest News as well.

At the immigration archives,

our grandfather's name,
Constantin Kochetkov,

appears in journals published
by Russian in Paris.

Here to found a literary circle

"for instructional and leisure purposes",

there for participating
in the Post-Revolutionary Club

promoting a rapprochement with the Soviets

across ideologies, in the name
of the immortal Russian Fatherland.

The assassination of Ignace Reiss.
That I'm interested in!

Later, it's Sergei Efron,

Constantin's friend, who resurfaces,

suspected of organizing the murder,
in Lausanne,

of a Bolshevik opponent of Stalin.

ASSASSINATION OF IGNACE REISS

- Didn't the Efron hypothesis come later?
- It's related...

Was Efron really involved,
as French police claimed?

It's quite unclear now.

And Nikolai Kachva,

whose picture Pierre studied
at the Social History Archives.

Was he really the NKVD agent
suspected by French investigators?

"Verify all collaborators
of the Union of Soviet Citizens."

As we examine his personal notebook

we find the same Soviet life
our grandparents lived,

humble and forgotten.

We come across our grandmother's name,
"Kochetkova",

listed among the deported members
of the Union of Soviet Citizens

gathered at Brandenburg, Germany,
in Red Army Camp 226.

Our mother Svetlana recalled the pleasure
of eating potatoes there,

after the hardships
of post-war Paris.

"What marked this little French girl most

"was that the Russian soldiers fed her.

"For the first time in a long time,

she ate as many potatoes as she wanted.

"Tasty and satisfying.

"An ordinary memory, surprising,
but very specific.

"And devoid of pathos,

"as is often the case
in stories from the War.

"Here, the point of view
is simple, direct,

"without any distancing.

"Simply, between point A, Paris,

"and point B,
at the time Moscow,

"a new place emerged,
the one of tasty potatoes.

"And that place was where she met

"the Red Army.

"Did that change my attitude
toward historical evidence?

"To the brutal strategy of war?

"I don't think so.

"But this story about potatoes

"transcends the mythology of war.

"The mythology of patriotism,

"the mythology of the Russian soul.

"But that is not the point.

"It is that war and violence

"do not completely change soldiers,

"or even ordinary men.

"They are only taken up
for a given period of time

"in a state of war and violence.

"It turns out that human beings
are more flexible,

"and that everyday life
takes on new meaning

"in such a context."

And so the potatoes
from the Brandenburg camp

that our mother so often described
with fondness,

are presented
in a contemporary art catalogue

by my friend Natasha Smolianskaya.

Her studio and kitchen irresistibly
evoke for me the Brezhnev period,

when my Aunt Nina brought me
as a child to see artist friends

for endless conversations

the transgressive nature of which
I vaguely understood.

But yet another past haunts the place,

that of Natasha's grandfather.

A leader of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party,

and then the Communist International,

he was a victim of the purge of 1937.

When my grandfather was shot,

as an enemy of the people,

the following day
they came for my grandmother.

And then my father was taken
to an orphanage.

There were two portraits in our room

I knew they were my grandfather
and my grandmother, and they were dead.

One of those things you hear...

that something happened,
and they died on the same day.

But what is death to a five year old girl?

And then, little by little,
I started to understand,

but it took a long time,
because no one said anything.

But later, somehow,

I think by the time I was in school
I knew, I'm not sure how.

When was that?

It would have been the 70s.

When I...

But how could you...
Forgive me for asking...

I know a little - though less well
than Pierre - the USSR of the 1970s.

I was really quite small.

But even in hindsight, I think...

what can we understand about
the history of deportation under Stalin,

about Stalin's Terror...

What could you grasp about it
in the USSR of the 70s?

All the more so when you're...

a child or young girl.

Where did the information come from?

From person to person.

But first, I read Solzhenitsyn...

- Right!
- When I was maybe 14 or 15.

Me too.

- That's right...
- Of course!

Because I had friends, because...

How did you pass it around?

We handed the book around...
Isn't that how you read it?

Yes. It was "samizdat".

Of course.

I'd been told that I shouldn't go out,

but I remember very well -
and I was completely stupid -

that I read Solzhenitsyn in the metro.

But you were brave!
Was it recklessness, or courage?

Did you...

For me, anyway, I was so stupid
that I only started being afraid

just recently,
in fact only a few years ago.

Before, I wasn't afraid!
But I don't know what that means.

My history is completely different
from yours,

but I was completely clueless
when I was 15, in Moscow...

My friends and I handed around
The Gulag Archipelago in class!

My father told me I was crazy.

Of course!

And he was a communist journalist
with L'Humanité.

I know.

Friends of Natasha
joined us for a drink.

One of them is a specialist
in Moscow Artistic Actionism.

Pierre and I mention Pussy Riot

and their action in the Cathedral
of Christ the Savior in Moscow in 2012,

to howl their punk Te Deum.

The young women's action is still a source
of scandal, anger, and incomprehension.

They've paid the price though:

three were sentenced
to two years in prison camp.

It was afterwards
that the new law was voted...

on blasphemy.

It's still on the books
and we don't know what to do with it.

Currently, the law is like
a sword of Damocles.

It can be applied to
any kind of expression.

Blasphemy is above all a strategy
of the government.

A tool for greater control
over the population.

Do you feel that control?

- I feel it very strongly.
- Yes, of course.

Natasha and I have talked about fear.

We talked about periods of repression.

Do you think fear exists
now in Russia?

I can tell you about when I was 15,

a teenager walking in the streets,

and I passed some police officers.

I suddenly felt a chill down my back,

and I immediately started
walking more erect.

Afterward I wondered: What? Why?

As I grew up, I analyzed it.

I don't know if it's in
our genes or our blood.

The fear of the government.

It emerged from god knows what part
of my brain,

like some genetic memory.

Yes, there is fear.

How many generations
have lived since 1937?

I feel like we're born with fear.

- Do you feel the fear?
- Yes, there are concrete things.

A lot of laws were enacted
after the demonstrations in 2011-2013,

and then after the conflict with Ukraine.

The government used it as a defense
against foreign aggression.

There are laws forbidding demonstrations,

or limiting them severely.

I feel fear when I publish my writings.

I start to worry.

I would write differently if...

Does it come through in your writing?
Like self-censorship.

Pasha, let's not exaggerate.

The way you talk about it,
it seems horrible.

But people do say
what they think nonetheless.

Times have changed.
If we think of Brezhnev...

We can always
think of times that were worse.

I agree.

And the Brezhnev era wasn't the worst.

I just didn't want to go back to 1937.

Is there self-censorship now?

- Yes, there's self-censorship...
- There shouldn't be!

All of the national museums
are censored.

That's a reality.

They censor themselves!

It is impossible to openly debate
the conflict in Ukraine.

- In any museum.
- That's true.

We cannot debate LGBT issues.

It's impossible.

A lot of things are impossible.
It's real censorship.

We are hostages of this situation,

with a lot of things that are imagined,

but with very real consequences

for people's futures, their bodies,

their freedom, etc.

It's more complicated
than self-censorship.

It's something different,
I think.

I have the impression

that the problem with
contemporary society,

the problem of political violence,

is that memory is gone.

It has really been eliminated.

When you were telling
the story of your family,

I was thinking about my own family.

Of course, there's a great-grandfather

who was also taken from his family,

who was tortured,
from whom everything was taken...

- In 1937?
- Yes, in the late 30s.

In 1936, 1937.

He was able to come home.
I don't really know how.

But I have to say that the story

remains quite concealed
in the family.

Not far from the Moscow art gallery

where she works as a curator,

we meet up with Karina Karaeva,

a long-time friend of Pierre.

As someone more representative
of the younger generation,

I'm less worried about
my own freedom

than about the liberty
of the small community

that preserves that memory.

I fear the invasion
of new territories

that none of us need.

I'm afraid I will be made
to take on that responsibility.

For example, to defend that territory.

That I'll be forced to make a choice.

As is the case today.

Everything is so raw now
that we have to censor what we say.

You can't express yourself
completely, like...

My father is from Dagestan.

He's Dargin,
one of the ethnic groups in Dagestan.

It's a territory that's part of Russia,

of the Russian Federation.

But the same questions
are always in the air.

About separation, about resistance,

about separatism...

There's a fear growing inside me,

of finding myself placed, artificially,
before a choice.

We can't do anything about it.

We're a lost generation.

Absolutely.

And our ruin
is that no one can help us.

Of course we go out, we talk,
we exchange ideas, we write about it.

We're not afraid to say it.

But up to a certain point.

At any moment,

any or all of us could end up being
Oleg Sentsov.

By chance.

Even as a result
of a private conversation.

The things that frighten other people

are very elusive.

I don't know why,
I haven't thought about it.

But no one can speak honestly.

Completely honestly.

There's always some reason to hold back,
to avoid.

And as long as that's the case,
the place of fear only grows.

But here, it's a question of choice,

a question of honesty.

Our mother, Svetlana,
came to Moscow to study in the 1950s.

She joined
an amateur theater troupe

that acted in French.

Pierre was a boy
when he saw her here

in Le Malade Imaginaire,

Cyrano de Bergerac,

and Marie Tudor.

In 1958,

Svetlana worked as a translator
for a French communist journalist,

Max Léon.

Then they married.

Max stayed in the USSR for 17 years

as a correspondent
for the daily L'Humanité.

Like any Soviet citizen
in regular contact with foreigners,

our mother had to report regularly
to the KGB

what happened in our home.

She always mentioned it to me
as something almost banal.

Your grandparents
were given jobs,

and they were authorized
to live in the Soviet Union.

They weren't under house arrest,
were they?

That means your grandfather
made it through all of the verifications

with success.

That says something.

But it leads one to believe
they had dealings

with the Soviets
while they were living in France.

After trying, in vain,
to meet any agents specialized in France,

the intelligence press service gave me the
name of historian Vladimir Markovchin,

a specialist on Soviet actions
within Russian émigré communities.

I met with him near Moscow University,
where he teaches.

My grandmother told me
that my grandfather wanted to go to Spain,

but that he was told
he would be more useful in Paris.

Probably because half of Spain
was Soviet at the time!

So what could your grandfather
have contributed?

Let me provide you with some facts.

In Franco's army, there were
barely a hundred Russian émigrés,

Militia and Legion combined.
A hundred.

There were four times as many
with the Reds.

Can you imagine?

What caused the former Whites
to go fight for the Reds,

in the International Brigades?

It was to return to their homeland
after the war.

Even in a zinc coffin.
By any means possible.

They would fall on that dusty earth
to atone for the past.

That desire inspired more than 600 people

to join the International Brigades.

Not Franco,

even though it looked like
a continuation of the civil war in Russia.

Try to find any rhyme or reason...

without a glass of vodka.

Even with vodka.

Whoever understands
the logic of the Russians

will be able to defeat them.

But no one has ever defeated the Russians.

Why?

Because the improvisation

the Russian soul is capable of

works wonders.

I don't believe that all of the emigrants

traded on their relationships
with the Soviet services.

Some people acted completely unselfishly.

Why?

Because people sincerely believed

they were working for their homeland,

regardless of the government.

They were working for the future.

Stalins come and go...

I can very well imagine your family

participating in a "legitimist" movement,
which were popular then.

They accepted the old regime and,
in part, Soviet authority.

They could very well have helped
in a completely disinterested way.

I saw the file on the Efron investigation.

I saw the last photograph of him.

And the one of his daughter.

I saw all of it.

I don't have the impression
that they were enemies

worthy of the firing squad.

But their proximity with your family

might indicate that their relationship

went beyond a simple friendship
between émigré families.

They may have been used
without their knowledge.

People don't always say
what they expect from someone.

I'm not asking you any questions...

Sometimes you just ask, as a friend,

to bring or find something,
to take an interest in someone,

to find out
what they think about something.

That doesn't seem strange among friends,
especially longtime ones.

Why not take an interest?

It's using someone under cover.

They may have been unaware
that someone was using them

for a specific purpose.

My grandmother was in contact
with a strange character.

I don't know who it was.

A certain Dorian.

He worked in Paris
for the Propagandastaffel,

the German Propaganda Bureau.

But my grandmother told me

that he also worked
for the British Intelligence Service.

So this Englishman...

- He was Georgian.
- No matter. He was an English agent.

He was no fool,

maintaining contact with people
who worked for the Soviets.

Before attempting it with your family,

he certainly communicated
information to England.

And the English decided
whether it was worthwhile

to make contact
with those former Russians.

He was certainly under surveillance,

if not by the Gestapo,

then at least by military intelligence.

By definition the Germans
mistrusted Russian émigrés.

They saw a Soviet spy in every
Russian noble or officer.

If they did work with the Soviet services,
it would have been for whom? At what level?

I can answer that very simply.

- When they came back in 1947...
- In 1948,

When they came back
to the Soviet Union in 1948

where did they go?

- Kirs...
- Kirov.

Kirs in the Kirov oblast.

If they had been really involved,

where would they have gone?

Any idea?

To Liège, or to Morocco...

I don't understand.

If they had been as involved
as we are imagining here,

they would have continued their work

under a different cover.

A family is fantastic.
And one that speaks good French.

Legalizing them would have been easy
in any French-speaking country.

But they didn't go.

What could they do?

It wasn't even offered to them.

Do you think the Soviets had
that many people to send abroad?

With knowledge of the language
and all the rest?

I can assure you

that if things had gone that far,

we would certainly have used them.

Aunt Lena, or "Tiotia Lena",
as I called her when I was small -

though we are completely unrelated -

met the Kochetkovs
in Cheboksary in 1950,

before her daughter Marina was born.

It was a lifelong friendship.

Lena and Marina

were present for every chapter
of our family's life.

When Lily and her daughter Nina
moved to Moscow.

When Svetlana and Max,
our parents,

took us to live in France
in 1975.

During a dinner,

Marina told me she'd written a history
of the Kochetkov family.

I was surprised and curious.

At a time when we rarely went to Moscow,
she recounted the last years

of our grandmother
and our Aunt Nina,

who shared the small apartment
at 3 Radiator Street.

"Lily passed away peacefully
from lung cancer.

"on June 13, 1994.

"The diagnosis was hidden from her.
It was the right choice.

"Lily did not use the word cancer.

"If necessary, she replaced it
with a term she invented:

"the prawn.

"Prawn,
a crab-shaped animal.

"Three of four months before she died,

"she stopped inviting us over.

"On the phone she would just say:
"Talk to you soon".

"Nina survived her mother
by eight years.

"Six months after Lily died,
Nina invited me over for our birthdays.

"We were in the kitchen.
I didn't know all of the guests,

"though there weren't many of us.

"The evening unfolded in Lily's style,

"with her late hours.

"But without Lily."

It's very muddled for me, too.

I've erased some things, but...

It didn't surprise me at the time,
and I don't think it's shocking now...

Maman didn't want to come back,

neither for her mother's funeral,
nor for her sister's.

We didn't come for Balia at all.

For Nina we came,
but something like a week later...

Curiously, what remains
is a sense of normalcy,

that we did what had to be done.

But for everyone else it seems...

- Shocking.
- Very shocking!

Maybe it is.
I have no idea.

- When Balia died, and we knew...
- She was sick.

But she didn't die from the cancer.

- The cancer was stable...
- Really?

She died from a heart attack.

Right! She ate an apple
and her heart stopped.

- It was cottage cheese.
- Really?

- Nina told me it was an apple.
- That's Nina inventing again.

She said she wanted
to eat some cottage cheese,

so Nina brought her some,
and she died.

Balia didn't die from cancer.

She was old enough
that it didn't really develop.

Though she did cough her guts out.

Tomorrow we return to Paris.

As if to collect
a few last unspoken words,

a few forgotten moments,
a few hidden truths,

I read my notes from 25 years ago
to Pierre.

From when I questioned
our grandmother Lily

about her life in Paris
and her deportation.

Even now I still can't decide

whether some oddities in her story

result from her complete naivety,

or her desire to share clues
to a secret history.

- What was it?
- Asking if I need the minibar refilled.

- They noticed I'm here?
- Could be!

So, Dorian...

I'll start with what Balia said
when she told me the story.

Dorian, who speaks Russian with no accent,
German with no accent,

likewise French and English.

What was Dorian up to
under the Occupation?

He was working with the Germans!

She told me something preposterous:
she never saw him in a uniform,

at the very most,
the occasional red mark from a cap.

Dorian took Lily
to an office of the Propagandastaffel,

where there was a nice piano to play.

- Naturally, the Propagandastaffel...
- Everyone knew their pianos were...

This is the German propaganda office,

the perfect place to find
good pianos in Paris in the 1940s.

Before '43, this Dorian
offers to take Raisa and Svetlana

to England by submarine.

The last encounter with Dorian
was in 1944,

right before Normandy.
He knew he was in danger.

They met on the Champs-Elysées,

and he told her:
"You must get your children out of Paris.

"The Allies will be landing soon,
and life will get extremely complicated."

Then he disappeared
and she never saw him again.

Curiously, she told me he was tortured,
and she gave me details about it:

"They jammed his monocle into his eye."
Of course he wore a monocle.

I asked her where she heard that.
"Who told you that?"

Then she made contact with the Resistance,
via Jean Le Ramey...

Distributing tracts and liaising
were her missions.

- That was '43?
- It's what she said.

Why don't they talk about it?

- Because...
- Why don't they?

All of the Russian
members of the Resistance

who wrote their autobiographies
when they returned to the USSR

wrote specifically about
everything they did with the Resistance.

Why does Dedunia say:
"We did almost nothing"?

Why doesn't he say in his autobiography,
on the subject of his wife's activities,

that as early as '43 she joined
the underground Communist Party?

That changes everything if it's true!

She might be wrong about the dates.

She told me...after '43.

Her reference is her daughter's birth.

She doesn't say it was at the Liberation,
whereas he does.

He says:
"I joined the Communist Party in '45."

But who does he say that to?

- To the people before whom he'd like...
- To the Soviets?

Exactly.

He can also say
whatever is most useful at any given time.

They can lie at any time.

I cannot take at face value
a document written by our grandfather

to the Soviet authorities.
He's being very careful.

He's no more reliable
than what she told you.

I don't know the context well enough.
What can or cannot be said?

And remember that
she wasn't the type to brag:

"I was a major Resistance fighter."

She said: "I distributed some tracts,
made some contacts."

"And I was a communist in '43."

It's true that was a risk,
though she might have underestimated it.

But he couldn't have met Efron in 1938
on his return from Moscow.

Why would he say that?

I don't buy
the failing memory argument.

That story is too...

- What do you think?
- I don't think anything.

I don't understand a thing!

So we know that Efron,
when he returned to the USSR in 1939

he was arrested as an enemy of the people
and shot.

Maybe Dedunia wanted...
But why would he say that?

He could have said nothing at all!

She only talks about the Union
of Soviet Citizens starting in 1945.

That's it. She told me about '45.
Not before, nothing else.

That holds together.

Then she talks about Bogomolov,
the ambassador, who she...

The consul, Yakovlev...

- The spy?
- Yakovlev?

Yes, Yakovlev.
His name was Yatskov.

- I have Anatoli Anatolievich Yakovlev.
- That's his alias...

- So he was a spy.
- A very important spy.

He worked on the Manhattan project

- in the U.S.
- The atomic bomb.

Nothing less.
If I understand right.

It's awful reading that.

His autobiography saying:
"It's not OK. We were promised...

"We were promised...
We did it for you...

"Where have you sent us?
What are you doing to my daughters?

"How am I to raise my daughters?

"What will they eat?
We have nothing to eat..."

I never knew that.
No one ever...

Balia never told me that.

Maman never told it that way...

She said it was hard,
and all the rest...

But never that way.

I don't know, but I think it's true.
We saw people there...

We saw a lot of people their age
who said: "It was just fine!"

It's almost like there's hopeful note.

They were parents,
and they weren't completely stupid.

They protected their children from things.
I didn't know that.

Discovering that now...

It's not especially painful,
but...

I just realize it's...

It's a bit much.

To fight for something like that...

Something that crushes you.

'17 was not a beautiful revolution.

I can't say otherwise.

It was the end of one world,
with no start of a new world at all.

There were only the dead.
Millions of dead.

Sadness, humiliation.

And throughout there were
splendid and sublime people

who did splendid and sublime things.

That yes.
As happens everywhere.

I hope I'm wrong,
that things will be different one day.

But no, no.

THE APARTMENT OF LILY (BALIA)
OUR GRANDMOTHER. MOSCOW, SUMMER 1989

Lily, we're here with you in Moscow

since this is where you live now.

This is truly a shared pleasure.

It is.

- You're sure you're not thirsty?
- No, thank you.

If you don't mind, I'll serve myself.

- You live in Moscow.
- That I do...

When did you return to Moscow?

It was the month of June, in 1948.
A beautiful June day.

So...

You'd like to hear
my first impressions?

I had three, to keep it simple.

Three, each quite different.

The first one was from the heart,
my feelings.

It was the impression,
when we crossed the Soviet border...

The train stopped for a moment,
between two stations...

in the middle of some fields

It was magnificent.

The fragrances of spring and early summer
are exhilarating here.

It was a beautiful night.
A nightingale was singing!

You'd have thought it was staged...

What is more beautiful than nature?

But we had it all:
the moonlight, the nightingale,

intoxicating perfumes of grass
and flowers and forests...

It was unforgettable.

The second impression

is quite logically of Moscow itself,
the city.

We were in a dream, in fact.

I'd never seen Moscow before.

- Really?
- I'd left from Odessa...

I was very small,
and I'd never in my life been to Moscow.

And goodness, the third impression
was just as wonderful.

But neither sentimental,
nor lyrical,

nor aesthetic in any way.

But it was absolutely
stunning and extraordinary.

I'd never seen anything like it.

We stopped over
at husband's sister's home.

And the first thing the Russians do...

She lived in a communal apartment.

It was in an old building
with immense rooms

and an enormous kitchen,
but with no modern comforts.

No bathroom.

So everyone went to "the baths".

Mayakovsky wrote a poem
about the baths.

Right away she said: "Off to the baths!
Take Kostia and the two girls."

One of them was still very small.

We went in, and were told to undress,
in a sort of antechamber...

We undressed and the attendant quickly...

We didn't realize, but it was 1948,
and there wasn't...

The Soviets were quite badly dressed,
since it was right after the war...

So our clothes, arriving from Paris...

We didn't have much, we were only allowed
200 kilos for the whole family.

That's not much for four people.

Still, it meant we had
changes of clothes, and dresses...

I noticed her picking up our clothes,
mine and my daughters' -

and putting them away,
under lock and key.

Then she whispered:

"Your garments are lovely.
We don't see any like these.

"I prefer locking them up."

It was nice of her,
but a bit surprising.

Then she said:
"You should remove your slip, too."

We had a long way to walk,
so I said: "Already?"

I was surprised,
and the girls stared at me.

I'd often been on the beach in a bikini,
but never with the nudists!

Walking naked among all those women...

We still had to cross
the enormous antechamber...

It was a bit unpleasant...

So all three of us,
in our birthday suits,

like little ducklings...

Then the doors opened...

on the place where people washed,
all together, collectively.

I recalled the words from Dante,

written above the gate of Hell.

The fog! The steam!
The shadows moving through the mist.

And then my little one, Nina,
slipped and fell!

And I couldn't pick her up because
she was naked and wet and slippery.

I tried to pick her up by her hair,
but it was too short.

Luckily Svetlana was there,
and the two of us got her on her feet.

And then we left the way we came in,

as clean - or as dirty! -
as when we entered.

I swear I've kept that image
with me my whole life.

Those were my three first impressions.

A shame that you and I

never managed to say

the things that really matter.

But that is what happened.

But that is what happened.

You can call it what you like.

To some it may seem

just clear skies ahead,

but really it's a farewell to love.

To some it may seem

just clear skies ahead,

but really it's a farewell to love.

Gentlemen,
that is the third call.

Please leave the room.

Subtitles: Jennifer Gay