182 Chapter 8a high level of risk for little or no reward, especially in the former USSR and
the current Central Asian states.^7 Granting an interview is an absolute gift
of goodwill and trust on the part of subjects with very little benefit for them.
Simplicity in the interview pro cess maintains a greater re spect for the
subjects’ life conditions, the structure or lack of structure in their lives, and
their point of view. In the former USSR, a researcher arriving to or ga nize
and structure an interview would only give the impression that this “ses-
sion” was in fact a KGB/FSB interrogation.^8 The end result would be an
empty interview wherein the subject repeated verbatim a po liti cally correct
version of history. In the case of the el derly Soviet Koreans, I recall three
interviews where the subjects told long, painful stories about the repression
of their relatives and, after giving their consent for the interviews to be
used, stated, “I’m not going to go to prison for this, am I?”^9 Despite the end
of the Soviet Union and the passing of eighty years or so, their fears from
the 1930s had never gone away.^10
In my experience, I found that the initial fifteen- to- twenty minutes
after meeting el derly Koreans was crucial to how the interview would turn
out. It was during this first period that subjects felt some anxiety and tried
to decipher what the interviewer wanted and whether they were capable of
providing it. This pre- interview period is an opportune time to answer all of
the subject’s questions with as much depth and sincerity as pos si ble. In
many cases, the researcher will find that his level of frankness and distance/
proximity (in a metaphysical rather than spatial sense) will be reciprocated
by the subject throughout the interview.^11 Most people reveal diff er ent lay-
ers of truth and qualitatively distinctive truths one at a time.^12 Also, develop-
ing a comfortable rapport with the subject will help elicit the most complex
aspect of oral history— multivocality. This occurs when subjects speak in
voices or patterns that reflect the vari ous people, roles, identities, influences,
and temporal stages of their life and living environments. Multivocality of-
ten operates naturally, without conscious effort, much like habitus.^13 Often,
the subject is unaware of the switch from one voice to another. But it is typi-
cally family members and friends who react to the changes in the narration
or narrator. These people provide a needed guidepost for the researcher. Oral
history, through its layering and multivocality, offers an unmatched histori-
cal depth all within one narrator that can be very difficult to understand
after only one interview.^14
An interview with Elizaveta Li produced a stunning example of mul-
tiple voices and temporalities. I had asked her to recall her life with her
father before he was arrested when she was seven in the spring of 1937. She
grinned with a broad smile, and her entire body language changed (she re-
laxed) as she recalled with physical gestures how she had sat on her father’s