Work Text:
My Story by Illya Kuryakin
Up until now, I’ve been very light-lipped about my background and life history. I didn’t feel it was particularly relevant to the present, and it’s not a particularly fun story to tell. I also didn’t want to garner “sympathy” or “pity” from those I told. However, now that I’ve retired from UNCLE, I’ll share it this once.
My full name is Illya Nikolaievitch Kuryakin and I was born March 21st, 1932 in a village on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. My father, Nikolai Ivanovitch Kuryakin, was Russian, but the family had lived in Ukraine for several generations. His father, my grandfather, was a land Baron before the Revolution, who owned a thousand-acre wheat farm, and the serfs who worked the farm. He gave up when the Soviets took the farm and “collectivized” it at the beginning of the Great Famine (1930-1933), and went on a decade-long bender. Yes, I come from a long line of alcoholics. My father and both his brothers (Ivan and Pyotr) were all drinkers.
Ivan, who we called Vanya, ran the farm when I was born. He was the oldest. My father was the middle kid, and Pyotr (who we called Petya) was the youngest. Petya was a self-published poet who had his own very small printing press.
My mother, Sonia Yakoshenko, was Ukrainian, and, as I found out when I was 60 years old, a Jewess! I was never told this, and although this technically makes me Jewish, I was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church as a Christian, even sang in the choir. Mom never practiced Judaism. I think she was probably an atheist, since she was a scientist. I never met or knew my mother’s side of the family, which now makes sense. She married outside the faith and was cut off. Mom was a professor of chemistry at the University of Kyiv until the war. She was amazing! She could have been MacGyver’s mother. You could lock her in a kitchen, with only duct tape and a Swiss army knife, and she could blow her way out, using only what you could find in a well-stocked kitchen. This came in handy during the Nazi occupation, but that’s for later.
I had two older brothers (6 and 7 years older than I), and my parents thought that was going to be it. Then my mother got a flu that just wouldn’t go away. When she finally went to the doctor, he told her, “It’s not flu, it’s morning sickness. You’re pregnant.” The timing could not have been worse. I was born in the middle of the Great Famine, when Stalin was starving out Ukrainians by collectivizing farms and requiring farms to give everything to the Soviet government to feed those working in his factories. Mother considered me “a surprise”, father considered me “a mistake”.
I never got enough food when I was young. In my youth and ignorance, I very selfishly kept demanding more food at the dinner table, which angered my father especially. My Grandmother Kuryakin was living with us, and she would always scrape a bit of her food onto my plate, even though my father told her not to. Grandmother (Babushka) and I were great buddies. Because of starving as a kid, I was always very small for my age. I believe that is why I ended up only 5’ 7” tall as a grownup. Although, my father was 5’ 11” and my mother was 5’ 3” or so. So, maybe I’m just in between those heights.
After starving for the first nine years of my life, the Nazis marched in and started killing everyone. My best friend was a red-haired Jewish girl my age, and she quickly disappeared, along with her family. Then other people started disappearing. I kept hearing “ratatatat” coming from Babi Yar, a ravine just “down the road a piece” from where we lived, and wondered what was going on there. My parents warned me to not go anywhere near there, but being an inquisitive nine-year-old, I decided to check it out. I hid in a ditch and watched Nazis kill people in the ravine and cover them up with dirt. I must have let out a peep, because suddenly they saw me and came after me, with guns blazing and dogs. I took off like a “bat outta hell” and ran into a wheat field. Although I was nine, I was still very small and looked about four. The wheat was taller than I was, so I thought, I’ll just get down and they won’t find me. I dove into the ground, grinding my face into the dirt, and knocked the wind out of myself. I didn’t move. I was trying to breathe again. When I finally got my breath back again, I heard the Nazis and their dogs receding. I think they figured they had hit me with their bullets. I then passed out. When I came to, it was pitch black out. I crawled the rest of the way through the wheat field and came out at my village. I ran home and told my parents what I’d seen. They were shocked, horrified, and my mother oscillated between shaking me saying, “I told you not to go over there! You could have been killed!” and hugging me, saying, “Thank God you’re still alive!” The upshot of this experience was that I had to sleep with a night light until I was 50. I had constant night terrors and nightmares. Poor Napoleon got used to waking up suddenly from my screaming, and staying up with me until I could go back to sleep.
The war. Well, I lost most of my family, but not because of my mother’s Jewishness. Our family became a cell of the Ukrainian Resistance. My mother made what we called “shoebox bombs” (I was mommy’s little helper on this and was therefore a demolitions expert by the time I was 12.), and father and Vanya would place them in buildings into which the Germans had ensconced themselves. I don’t know if the bombs killed anyone, but at least they harassed the Germans. Petya used his printing press to print anti-Nazi flyers which were put up all over Kyiv. My older brothers were great saboteurs.
Vanya was killed as he rounded a building in which he and father had just placed a bomb, and ran smack into a German soldier. The soldier shot him dead and my father (after drifting into the crowd that gathered) was not even allowed to take Vanya’s body back for burial. It was taken to Babi Yar and dumped. Next, the Nazis found Petya’s printing press. Then they found Petya, and he was off to Babi Yar. Next, my two brothers were caught sabotaging a Nazi staff car, and they were carted off to Babi Yar. We don’t even know when, but when the Nazis cleaned up the city of Kyiv, my grandfather (drunk and sleeping in a doorway) was swept up and taken to Babi Yar. Finally, my Babushka went out to the market one day, and never came back. We heard from others that they had seen her in the back of a German lorry, headed for Babi Yar.
So, Mommy and Daddy, and baby makes three. I was the only one left.
After the war, we moved to Moscow, and I concentrated on school. I was considered very bright (one of the Soviet Union’s “Best and Brightest”) and since I had my mother’s brains and talent for science, I was shoved into becoming a physicist. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Moscow. Shortly thereafter, I was required to do my obligatory military service. The only advice I took from my father was to not let them draft me into the Red Army. The Red Army was known as the pits. Father’s advice was to enlist in one of the other services, and take the officer’s exam. So, I enlisted in the Soviet Navy and ended up a Lieutenant. I didn’t want to use my physics knowledge to create weapons, so I told them I spoke several languages, including English, and they put me in Soviet Naval Intelligence, as a translator… for a while. I enjoyed that. Then, they called me in and said they wanted me to use my physics… I told them that with only an undergraduate degree, I didn’t know enough to be of use to them. I hoped this would be the end of it, but, no. Next thing I know, I’m told to pack my bags (well, my Navy trunk), as I was going to get my advanced degree in physics from Cambridge University in England.
I actually loved my time at Cambridge. I could have stayed there and been a permanent student gladly. Once I received my degree, I expected the telegram from the Soviet Navy to tell me to come back and work on K19. But that’s not what happened. The telegram told me to pack my trunk again, as I was going to New York City, USA. I was to report to a man named Alexander Waverly, and do whatever he told me to do, remember I represented Mother Russia, and “don’t fuck up”, or I’d be put in a gulag. Have a nice day. Turns out my father, who was a minister in the Politburo by then, had put my name on a “short list” given to the UNCLE organization, from which Waverly was allowed to pick one (count: one!) person, to be in UNCLE, on loan, and on a trial basis. Apparently, I jumped out as the only one on the list that was not a KGB agent, and not a member of the Communist Party. Waverly also told me later that he thought I’d be a good match for Napoleon. Waverly was determined to have a partnership that illustrated détente.
Napoleon and I got off to a rough start as we are two very different people – chalk and cheese, in fact. However, as we worked out how to work together, we became quite successful as a duo. Waverly was pleased, as he wanted the Soviet Union to buy into UNCLE, and put an UNCLE headquarters in Moscow. Waverly hoped that my success would help make that happen. I did get medals every time Napoleon and I successfully completed an assignment in the Soviet Union (usually in satellite countries), but I don’t think the Soviet Union ever really bought into UNCLE, and then the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980s. At that point, I decided to become an American citizen. It was tough going there for a while. I thought Immigration was going to refuse me and send me back, but Mrs. Waverly pulled a few strings, and I am now an American.
***
There is more to the story, but it is small stuff: like my taking ballet from age six because I was such a klutz, and then getting an offer from the New York City Ballet when I was in my late 20's; or that I ran away with the circus when I was seven, but came back with both my arms and legs in casts; or, if it hadn’t been for the war, I’d have been on the Soviet Olympic gymnastics team in London in 1944; or how and why I went into the fashion industry.
Maybe I’ll share those stories some other time.
Иля Курякин