MEMORANDUM

student had conveyed a very positive opinion of him and he was released shortly
afterwards. 54
The most serious incident which led to the arrest of Leontief and many other students
took place in 1922. After unrest and a teachers’ strike at the university in the spring of
1922 some professors were banned from teaching, one of them Leontief’s teacher Pitirim
Sorokin. The unrest continued and the government prepared retaliatory measures to
suppress “the influence of anti-Soviet groupings of the intelligentsia.” The majority of
students supported the teachers. Leontief took part in mounting large posters on military
building walls. He was arrested together with an older girl student carrying posters and a
pail of glue.
“We called for freedom: freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom in the
state. We protested against the suspension from teaching of our professors. We went
with the posters at three at night. But probably they knew about us in advance. We
were followed almost from the very beginning. We went and stuck up the posters, but
half a verst away some people followed us, then they overtook us and arrested us. We
were sent to the Gorokhovaia.” 55
This incidence resulted in long imprisonment (for a student), perhaps three months.
The experience left very vivid memories which Leontief told and re-told with many
intriguing details. He described the cell (or one of them) as having 4-5 meters to the
ceiling with a very weak bulb (10 watts) high above him. His parents were entitled to bring
book and he had requested a book about Rodbertus as he was then preparing a paper about
Rodbertus at the university. But he could read the book only by “standing on one foot on
the plank bed, to be a little closer to the light … so in this manner I prepared that work.” 56
Leontief’s account had descriptive feature known from other accounts, such as being
held much of the time in solitary confinement, “in half-dark, verminous, cold cell” with
interrogations at night, beginning say at three o’clock. “Usually there were two men …
they scare you, they say, you know, we can shoot you. 57 But when you are fifteen, one
cannot, doesn’t imagine.” Leontief’s version of the interrogations he was exposed to was
much less sinister. He tended to give a rosy and somewhat naïve account of the whole
affair, e.g. that the interrogators were intellectuals with whom one could have long
discussions on Hegel, Marx and Russian philosophy. Leontief was, however, not aware of
54 Kaliadina (2006, p.349).
55 Kaliadina (2006, p.350).
56 Kaliadina (2006, p.351).
57 From autobiographical notes by Leontief 1954.
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