»…Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938. At the time, the reasons for his return were unclear; some claimed that he was simply homesick, while others believed that he had been kidnapped by Soviet officials. Beryl Campbell, one of Theremin’s dancers, said his wife Lavinia « called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio » and that « some Russians had come in » and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country.
Many years later, it was revealed that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States. However, Theremin himself once told Bulat Galeyev that he decided to leave himself because he was anxious about the approaching war. Shortly after he returned he was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated and published, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system), together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev, and other well-known scientists and engineers.The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956. »*
Contributo di
Juan Pablo Macías