​

 

Consular guards quickly called for  help. Meanwhile the Local policemen called their commander.

 

The young man continued to shout. “svoboda”. He took a breath between each syllable. The flag rippled  aloft in the brisk wind of early December.

 

Within minutes consular officers, dark suited and genteel, were at the fence. The young man attempted to speak to them but was shouted down by the policemen who were also pulling at him in the hopes of pulling his arm through the manacle.

 

“They are going to rip his arm off, john. We must do something,”  one effete officer lisped to the other. The  other,a taller and older gentleman, approached the guards.

 

He shouted, “yego. let him go.”

 

The senior policeman countered, “No. he is sick. He is a danger to amerikanski and to opasnost,how you say, to him”.

 

The young man pleaded with his captors, “I am the son of Geroy, a great man.” 

Another policeman, wearing a sash on his arm, frowned and punched him in the stomach. He winced and continued, 

 

“He prison. He gulag”.

 

Both  policemen now pull harder on the young man’s arm. 

 

The young man pleads, “I write solzhenitsyn. help me.”

 

The consular officers approach the crowd of police. The consular guards, ordered to avoid an incident, remain at the gate.

 

The older man gestures toward the young man, “gents, can we just bring him in. clearly he wants to talk to us”.

 

The policeman counters, “no. he is sick. He ours to zverstvovat”. Both cops pull harder as  the man cries. 

 

“stop beating him” the younger consular officer yells.  

 

“we no beat”, the sash wearing officer sneers. 

 

“Certainly they beat me”, the man whimpers. 

 

At that moment  the Embassy’s Ambassador comes to the gate.

 

“Now what is all this”, he asks.   

 

The younger consular man replies, “Sir these men are going to kill him.”

 

On sight of the ambassador the policemen straighten up.   They let go of the chained man.

 

“svoboda”, the young man shouts.   He opens his jacket to reveal an american flag sewn into the lining. 

 

The Ambassador asks, “Now, young man, why are you handcuffed to my embassy fence?”

 

The young man speaks at length once a translator arrives.  

 

The translator relays the man’s  tale to the ambassador.

 

“He says his father, Mikhail Ignatievich Bordovsky, had been tortured in mental hospitals for 20 years. He wants the embassy to help him.  

 

The translator continues to listen to the young man.   He tells the Ambassador “that his father had been arrested for a demonstration in Red Square during 1972 during Nixon’s visit to Moscow.  He went on a 31-day hunger strike which "had as good as killed him." He says his father’s whereabouts are still unknown”.

 

The ambassador listens carefully.   He orders the young consular officer to fetch the bolt cutters.

 

The young man’s story becomes increasingly convoluted.   He asserts he had written to Solzhenitsyn and attempted to telephone Sakharov.   He also suggests that his father is waiting on the outskirts of Moscow hoping to bring the whole family to America.

 

The Ambassador asks, “So would you like to come to America? 

The young man concurs.  He continues through the translator to say “He had written a petition which he wished to present to the embassy, but that the police had confiscated it with other documents before consular officers arrived on scene”.  As Bordovsky speaks, a policeman begins  tearing through his  pockets , checking that they  had not missed something.  He pulls out several scraps of paper and an unopened bottle of Armenian Cognac.

 

The young man shouts, “My wife and three children are  waiting across the street”. But when the ambassador looked there was no one there. .

 

The  conversation is now punctuated by repeated struggles by the  policemen to free Bordovsky.  Their efforts caused him considerable pain.  The policemen largely ignore the consular officers and Ambassador’s gentle entreaties to "take it easy”. 

"

The police are utterly baffled by the extremely sturdy fastening device and resorted for the most

part to merely tugging and twisting both man and manacle.  A police hacksaw breaks  after barely scratching the manacle.  Approximately 20 minutes have elapsed in this manner, a second consular officer arrived and in an effort to cooperate with police in ending the disorderly incident,soon produced a hacksaw and metal cutter from the embassy workshed and requested he be allowed to free bordovsky. The police's response was to grab tools and begin first sawing at the loop and later, in a two-man all-out effort, to cut 1/2-inch the thick loop.

while policemen at first had made only half-hearted attempts to prevent consular officers from speaking to bordovsky, after approximately 30 minutes and the gathering of a least 14 uniformed and two plainclothes senior officers, they began to push and shove, ordering consular officers to return inside the embassy.