Alexander Godunov

defected, August 23, 1979

when i was growing up, attending the Bolshoi Theater was an almost unimaginable treat. Of course, when I was little I was taken to see The Nutcracker, but this was followed by a rather long dry spell. Getting tickets was not easy. Then acquaintances turned up who – by hook or by crook – knew how to get us into the Bolshoi.

One of my parents’ classmates – a quiet and rather uninteresting gentleman – had two amazing traits. First, he was a direct descendant of Pushkin and, as if that were not enough, he was less directly related to Gogol. Second, he saw all the ballets at the Bolshoi several times each. It was simple – he just gave the ticket-taker an old ticket with a ruble tucked underneath. Nothing to it – we were able to make our way to the balcony, where everyone knew him and let us be. But Pushkin’s posterity had rather conservative tastes, so we usually wound up seeing things like Giselle and Swan Lake.

Around the same time, another even more exotic source of tickets came our way. My aunt worked for the committee that selected recipients of the Lenin Prize, the bureaucracy that decided which works of art deserved the state’s highest honor. Once a year the members of the committee, which primarily consisted of “party bosses” from the literary and art worlds, convened in Moscow to have a look at the paintings, books, and plays that had been nominated. They were also sent to see whatever else was “hot” in the arts. Each of these bosses was allotted at least two tickets, but not all of them actually wanted to drag themselves to the theater. As a result, those fortunate enough to have a friend or relative on the committee staff would occasionally find themselves suddenly attending some swank premiere.

This is how I, occupying a seat that had been meant for some big-shot writer or artist who had better things to do, happened to see (several times each) the most amazing performances by Maya Plisetskaya dancing in Anna Karenina, The Carmen Suite, and The Death of the Rose.

At first, we thought of these outings as “going to see Plisetskaya” and later “going to see Plisetskaya and Godunov.” At some point, many ballet fans started to just go “see Godunov.”

During the years when I attended his performances, Alexander Godunov was around 25 years old. He had graduated from the Riga School of Choreography, danced in Igor Moiseyev’s ensemble, and, after some ups and downs, managed to make it to the Bolshoi, where he immediately fell prey to infighting and wound up getting on artistic director Yury Grigorovich’s bad side for having been favored by Maya Plisetskaya. The ballets that Plisetskaya had begun to put on were rather shocking for the conservative Bolshoi. For audiences of the 1970s, accustomed to ballets like Swan Lake, her and Godunov’s strange, avant-garde contortions in The Death of the Rose were absolutely unfamiliar and left a striking artistic impression.

Today, it is hard for me to judge what I saw 35 years ago, but one thing I know for sure is that I will never forget the meeting between Vronsky-Godunov and Anna-Plisetskaya in Anna Karenina. How on earth Godunov was able to defy the law of gravity is something I cannot explain, but the entire audience had the distinct impression that Vronsky, whirling around Anna, suddenly flew up and paused mid-air. To this day, I have never seen anything like it.

Godunov did not enjoy good fortune for long. Grigorovich did not want to use him in his ballets, and for a long time he was not allowed to travel abroad. Eventually, things seemed to get better. Then came 1979. Alexander Godunov, who was touring America with a troupe from the Bolshoi, decided to ask for political asylum. There are a number of first-hand accounts of what happened next.

The poet Joseph Brodsky (who had been expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972) helped Godunov during those first days: I hadn’t known anything about Godunov. Before me stood an extraordinary figure in the full sense of the word: imagine this mass, the heavy jaw, blue eyes, blond, long hair – the sixties aesthetics incarnate. I have to admit I didn’t really like what I saw. But you get used to things. Later I concluded that, in Godunov’s case, you can’t separate the art from the individual. He just enters the stage and that in and of itself is an event. It was the same way in life. He didn’t just sit in an apartment – he was a presence. When he stands up, you understand that this itself is a happening. But in all this there was one thing that should be remembered: both then and later, Godunov conducted himself with amazing dignity. Of course, on the one hand, that’s part of his public face. I’m not even talking about the stage, but about life… A person with Godunov’s mass moves majestically, there’s no getting around it. And it’s exceptionally interesting to observe this. On the other hand, Godunov had been a star since his youth. Consequently, to a certain extent he was corrupted by success and adulation. When he defected, he was absolutely alone – no mother, no wife, no friends, no one. There was absolutely nobody he could count on. And wherever he turned, the only thing he was likely to find were booby traps.  Given this situation, Godunov’s behavior was particularly remarkable – I’m referring to his dignity.

Lyudmila Vlasova, a Bolshoi ballerina and Godunov’s wife at the time of his defection: Now there are a lot of people who think that his classmate Misha Baryshnikov helped him defect. But it seems to me that Misha would have been the last person to want Sasha to stay in America. There was a whole clan of people there who needed Godunov. Misha was a fantastic dancer, but he was short. He envied Godunov his height, his beauty, and his talent. And they were not such good friends. The contract with the American Ballet Theater was soon terminated on Baryshnikov’s initiative, however it was not Misha who ruined his career, but Sasha himself. He was never in it for the money, while Misha always knew what he needed.

Joseph Brodsky: This is more or less how it went. Godunov had gone to visit someone and, in the course of their conversation, he started to ask with whom he should get in touch if he decided to make a run for it. He was told that of course there were plenty of names that could be mentioned, but there was one problem. What was it? “You say ‘if.‘ And there’s no possible answer to ‘if.’” In other words, names couldn’t be named, addresses couldn’t be given, and so forth, just like that. Meanwhile, Godunov continued to insist, “But what if I at least wanted to… just talk about it.” “Well then,” my friend replied, “you can talk to me!” Then he heard Godunov say, “Well, that’s what I’m doing.” My friend went into the next room and called me.

Lyudmila Vlasova: I immediately understood who had taken him away. It was the photographer [Vladimir] Bliokh. He had emigrated to the States some time before, and even back in Moscow he had often visited us, taken a lot of pictures, and talked about leaving. “Mila, you’re so beautiful, in America you could become a fashion model.” He came to see us in the hotel in New York. Incidentally, later, after the scandal, he made a fortune on our photographs. Later I found out that at Sasha’s funeral, Bliokh’s photographs had been hung all over the place, and he himself was sobbing, “It’s all my fault!”

Lyudmila Vlasova was immediately isolated from everyone else and taken to the airport under KGB guard. The State Department prevented the plane from taking off, since Godunov had warned them they might be taking his wife away by force. The dancer demanded that he be allowed to meet with his wife in person and talk to her, but he never managed to do that. Godunov asked that he at least be able to give his wife a note.

Joseph Brodsky: We put this note in extremely clear and rather private, so to speak, language. We gave it to [the lawyer Orville] Schell, and he gave Godunov’s note to [U.S. United Nations Ambassador Donald] McHenry. Time passed. Schell came back: “She said ‘no’.” We were all crushed. We gathered up our things and then I said, “Yes, but what was her reaction to the note?” Schell replied, “The note never left McHenry’s pocket… He didn’t give it to her.” I wanted to cry. In fact, I think I did cry. Godunov had to calm me down. It’s painful to remember. I had gotten too emotionally involved. After all, it was as if I was the mouth through which Godunov was speaking. Not just his mouthpiece. In the end, something was going on in my mind too. I had understood something and was trying to explain it to the Americans. It was very tense. It was exhausting. I snapped.

Lyudmila Vlasova: I was in shock; all I could think about was Sasha – could it really be that we would never see one another again? Also, that I could not stay in America, there was just no way. I had to return to the Soviet Union. After all, my mother and brother were there. The Americans didn’t believe that I really wanted to fly back home: a high-ranking UN official came to talk to me with Sasha’s lawyer, a doctor who was supposed to check that I hadn’t been doped with tranquilizers, and about ten other officials. If I stayed in America, Mama would never have held it against me in the least, but it would have been the end for her. What happened with Rudolf Nureyev was that he was only given permission to come home after several decades and only when his mother was on her deathbed.

Joseph Brodsky: In the end, Godunov was artist first and husband second. I think for any artist the most important thing is what you’re doing, and not how you’re living aside from that most important thing. When a woman has to choose between the known and the unknown, she prefers the known. Let’s set aside the romantic, emotional aspect that might have persuaded Mila to stay. From a practical, purely professional perspective, Mila’s thinking might have gone something like this. Godunov is a star. Given the quality of her talent, life for her would not be a bowl of cherries. She was seven years older than Godunov. If Sasha were a success in the West – if we again set aside romantic feelings – there would be nothing holding him back. So Mila might well have concluded that her life in the West would not turn out terribly well. Her ultimate decision would depend on how attached she was to Godunov. But given the situation at Kennedy Airport, her attachment and other romantic emotions were forced into the background and fear came to the fore. Sasha – even though the situation for him was very tense, very unusual, far from normal – was nevertheless surrounded by people who were sympathetic to him. For him, the love he felt for his wife was not forced into the background. Quite the opposite – everything else was. For Mila, evidently, it was the other way around.

Three days later, the plane with Lyudmila Vlasova departed New York for Moscow. The ballerina continued to dance for the Bolshoi – although Godunov’s admirers tried to put obstacles in her way. In any event, her career in ballet did not work out. Today she is a choreographer working with figure skaters.

Alexander Godunov was a sensation in American ballet – but not for long. His contract with ABT was terminated due to a conflict with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He tried to find himself as a film actor, but, despite his stunning appearance, the only roles he managed to land were as a mute farmer and a psychopathic terrorist.  His divorce from Vlasova was finalized a year and a half after his defection. Godunov’s personal life was fraught with problems. He died alone, sitting in a chair, apparently of chronic alcoholism.

Will we ever know what really happened in 1979? Did Lyudmila Vlasova want to stay with her husband or did she truly long to return to the motherland? What would have happened if they had stayed together? Would Alexander Godunov have been happier? Would he have lived longer? Would he have danced more roles? Or perhaps the couple would have parted ways in America as well, unable to bear the pressures of their new life?

But, oh, how he flew across the stage of the Bolshoi, how he soared… as if he did not want to return to Earth…