D
efection
Edvard Tchivzhel’s defection from the Soviet Union had all of the makings of a Cold War spy movie… clandestine calls from payphones to escape the ears of KGB agents planted inside the Soviet State Symphony Orchestra… to a thrilling car chase to freedom.
“Feeling one way and living another, being told to think one way and believing the opposite is difficult. I knew life was hypocrisy.”
Tchivzhel’s antipathy toward the Soviet regime has deep roots in a family tragedy. In 1937, his grandfather, Alexander Tchivzhel, was arrested on trumped up charges by KGB agents.
They never saw him again. It was only in 1954 that Tchivzhel’s family learned of Alexander Tchivzhel’s fate: After being arrested, he had almost immediately been executed, probably by a firing squad.
“He was falsely accused of being a Latvian spy,”
said Tchivzhel, who is of Russian, Latvian and German heritage.
“It was in 1937, during one of Stalin’s political purges. He killed millions simply because of their nationality.”
Tchivzhel said.
At the time of his defection, Tchivzhel was associate conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, a position that afforded him acclaim at home and the opportunity to travel. After each tour, he had to return home to the Soviet Union. But when a government official suggested he take his family on the month long American tour at his own expense, he knew his family had been offered an unusual chance.
When Tchivzhel had a chance to bolt in 1991, he took it, despite considerable risks.
“I was unhappy with the slavery in Russia. It was like you were in prison,” he said. “You were not master of your own life.”
Watch the USA tour perfomances
The night before the Greenville orchestra concert that would open the Soviet orchestra’s 24-city North American tour, Lena Forster, a Russian ballerina who was general manager of the Greenville Ballet, took the Tchivzhels to Chuck E. Cheese’s for dinner.
The night before the Greenville orchestra concert that would open the Soviet orchestra’s 24-city North American tour, Lena Forster, a Russian ballerina who was general manager of the Greenville Ballet, took the Tchivzhels to Chuck E. Cheese’s for dinner.
“I chose Chuck E. Cheese’s so Arvid and my kids could play,”
Forster said. Luba Tchivzhel asked Forster if she would help them defect… When her husband found out later what she had done, he was furious because he thought Forster could have been a KGB agent. An hour later, there was a knock on the Tchivzhels’ hotel room door. Fortunately, it wasn’t the KGB at the door. It was somebody from the Greenville Ballet.
She took the message to the late local attorney Larry Estridge, then with the Wyche law firm. “I thought of Larry because I had known him for a long time and had great respect for him,” Forster said. But Estridge, a commercial real estate lawyer, had never worked on a political asylum case.
“It sounded like a good cause for some good people,” Estridge said. “That started a rather exciting 30-day adventure.”
Weeks of secret late-night conversations followed as Tchivzhel toured the U.S. with the USSR Orchestra and Estridge prepared the legal papers necessary for the Tchivzhels to gain political asylum.
“We were able to work our way through the regulations and determine that they were entitled to refugee status and ultimately citizenship,”
Estridge said in 2011.
To avoid potentially bugged hotel rooms during the orchestra tour,and to evade the watchful gaze of armed KGB agents on tour with the orchestra, Tchivzhel, on his nightly jog, called Forster from pay phones.
“It had to be from pay phones because the KGB was everywhere,” Forster said. “There wasn’t a day we didn’t communicate.
The saga culminated in a Washington, D.C., airport on Feb. 10, 1991, with Forster and her brother assisting the FBI.
Having just arrived after the orchestra’s Long Island concert, Tchivzhel and family were to be spirited away by six FBI agents in a caravan of three cars, destined for a new life in the U.S. The FBI gave Forster a ribbon to wear on her sleeve. When she asked why, she was told that if something went wrong, the FBI would know who to shoot and who not to shoot.
The FBI had carefully planned the Tchivzhels’ escape. One entire lane from the airport had been closed for a quick getaway. Nevertheless, Soviet Embassy officials jumped into a car and chased the FBI caravan.
On the spur of the moment, the FBI agents decided not to travel to a Washington, D.C., immigration office but rather to one in Baltimore.
The Soviets trailed the caravan all the way to the Baltimore office. Once there, an FBI agent ordered the Soviet officials to leave official government property. It worked.That’s where Tchivzhel applied for political asylum.
Following some paperwork, Tchivzhel and his family boarded a plane for Greenville. Tchivzhel gained his freedom.
In 2003, Tchivzhel made a triumphant return to Russia to conduct a standing-room-only concert with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia. He recalled recently that advertisements for the event referred to “the American conductor Edvard Tchivzhel.”
Thanks to the unique experience together (the Tchivzhel family lived with Forster and her family in their Simpsonville residence for a period of time after the defection), the two can count current collaborations, such as the Greenville Symphony Orchestra’s live accompaniment of the International Ballet’s Nutcracker, or the International Ballet’s annual appearance in the Greenville Symphony Orchestra’s Holiday at Peace production, among some of the artistic benefits of the longtime connection.
Mozart: Marriage of Figaro Overture, Weber: Invitation to the Dance, Wagner: Lohengrin Prelude to 3rd Act.
Saint Petersburg Philharmonic
Mahler: Symphony #5 (2003)
Saint Petersburg Philharmonic
