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Popular Culture Review
other. She reported he was kidnapped and that he seemed to fear for her safety.
During the time that Theremin was missing, Lavinia reportedly died in Haiti of
food poisoning (Glinsky 190). Natasha, however, participated with Theremin in
his interview with Mattis. She said that Lavinia and Theremin had stayed in
touch, and that she still had a dance studio in Hawaii, which Mattis corrected to
Haiti (Mattis 9).
Theremin’s friend, and disciple, Clara Rockmore tried in vain for years
and years to find out what had happened to him—^through her connections in
Washington—but kept hitting dead ends. Finally she got word that he was dead.
A German book on modem music reported that Theremin had been executed
after being brought back to Russia, and that there had been a published obituary.
Russian articles on electronic music development failed even to mention
Theremin’s name. Accepting his death, Rockmore continued doing Theremin
recitals, and became better established than ever as a Theremin virtuoso (Martin
documentary).
Seven years later Clara Rockmore and her husband journeyed to
Russia. They happened to encounter a Russian scientist and strike up a
conversation with him. She asked if he knew anything about what had happened
to Theremin— since he was also a scientist. They were startled to hear that the
scientist had Just met Theremin for lunch. He was alive and well. A meeting was
arranged between Rockmore and Theremin in a subway station, a place too
noisy for eavesdropping, and Theremin told her that he had been in a prison
work-camp called Magadan (Martin documentary). In an interview that
Theremin did later in life, for the film Theremin: an Electronic Odyssey, he
claimed some people in prison had done something bad, some had stolen
something, and some were just politically different. This is consistent with the
comments he had earlier made to Mattis.
Theremin stated that he had officially worked in a special ministry for
the KGB, “the people that arrange different kinds of political investigation.
Looking into changes” He said he worked for the Ministry Of Social Affairs,
and his specialty was cleaning up audio tapes. If a recording wasn’t good
enough to hear clearly it would have to be cleaned up acoustically. Theremin
said he invented Buran—^the bug, or the RFID (Martin documentary).
The mystery of Theremin’s life and work is further compounded by his
great niece, Lydia Kavina who claims that Theremin was eavesdropping on
Joseph Stalin and the Kremlin, and that Stalin was even aware of this. She
states, on film, that whe n Theremin was about to win the prestigious second
level Stalin Award—^the highest honor in the country, that Stalin crossed out
“second level” and wrote in “first level,” a lesser honor, because he was
suspicious of Theremin. She says the paper is locked up in the most secret vault
of the KGB. If this were true then the question arises whether the KGB was
spying on their own man, or whether Theremin was actually a double-agent. The
story is doubtful, however. Stalin was totally ruthless. He never showed any
reluctance to destroy anyone about whom he had the slightest suspicion, and he