Nicholas Daniloff's arrest by the Soviet KGB in the fall of 1986 made worldwide headlines, but the roots of that story ran
deeper than was generally known.
Daniloff's imprisonment as an alleged American spy supporting anti-Soviet dissidents was in fact an echo of his own family past. His great-great-grandfather, Alexander Frolov, had also been a prisoner of the Russian state, accused of treason by Tsar Nicholas I's gendarmes and sent to a harrowing Siberian exile as a participant in the abortive "Decembrist" revolt late in 1825 during the problematical succession of Nicholas I after Tsar Alexander I's enigmatic demise. The parallel stories, told in alternating chapters, have all the color and drama of a good novel. In the modern story, a detailed account is given of author Daniloff's time in Moscow's infamous Lefortovo Prison, with a politically commmitted interrogator, Colonel Sergadeyev, determined to prove that he was an American spy. The nineteenth-century story is fascinatingly told by a relation of author Daniloff's efforts to unearth his ancestor's tale from then-hidden archives...and is part treasure hunt, part odyssey. Both stories speak eloquently about the frightening powers of a totalitarian state while they form part of the universal urge to find personal roots in the past. Even in these post-Soviet days, this is compelling reading, due largely to Nicholas Daniloff's deep understanding of the Russian culture of his personal heritage and his skill as a writer. Indeed the circumstances of his release from prison during the Soviets' diplomatic wrangling with the anti-Soviet administration of American President Ronald Reagan, reflects the depth of his understanding...reciting in Russian Mikhail Lermontov's "Farewell, unwashed Russia" to Russian television crews as he was escorted to a departing plane (see his pp. 289-290 and my mention on pp. 46 of my RUSSIAN THROUGH POEMS AND SONGS). It would make a good movie.