After a few months, he was given a 10 x 16 flat in a communal apartment. These kommunalkas were suites of apartments with a common bathroom and kitchen. Each family had one apartment room, and all shared housekeeping duties of the common areas. This was a perfect atmosphere for gossips and busybodies, as the crowded conditions meant that everyone knew everyone else's business. Termen was also given a safe at the Archive of the Academy of Sciences to keep his historical materials.

He continued his job as acoustics technician at the University, trying to develop his instrument so that it would play polyphonically, and teaching groups of students to play it. His supporters tried to get him official recognition of his past achievements, but as there were no official documents of them, any official award or decoration was impossible.

In 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, spurred in part by the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the government's initial silence on the issue, called for perestroika ("restructuring of economic and political conditions") and glasnost ("freedom of speech"). One result was that in 1987 and 1988 the Moscow News published a series of articles on Termen in which he spoke out about his time in America, his prison tenure, his bugging devices, and his secret Stalin prize.

Sensing a new opportunity, the organizers of the International Festival of Experimental Music in Bourges, France, made efforts to bring Termen to Europe for their 1989 festival. This was no small feat diplomatically. Robert Moog recalled, "After several months of daily phone calls, some of which actually managed to penetrate the Kremlin, Theremin received official permission to leave the Soviet Union little more than a day before he was due to speak." The symposium was themed "Rejects from Utopia -- Pioneers and Inventors in the History of Electronic Music." Following a distinguished list of speakers that included Oscar Sala, J.L. Martenot (son of Maurice Martenot), Don Buchla, Robert Moog, Jon Appleton, and Sydney Alonso, Termen was presented as the honored invitee. Suddenly, it was like a flashback to 1927. Termen was toasted and decorated at a champagne reception.

Particularly poignant was the late delivery of a letter that Edgard Varèse had written to him in 1941, hoping they might continue the collaboration they had enjoyed when Varèse had used theremins for Equatorial in 1934. It was a sort of time capsule embodying the unfulfilled dreams of two men.

In 1990, Termen was allowed to travel to the Stockholm Electronic Music Festival, with approval arriving, again, just days before his scheduled appearance.

In 1991, he received his Communist Party card, a lifelong dream that had been impossible following his time abroad and in prison. He stated that he had finally fulfilled his promise to Lenin after many years. Within eight months, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Communist Party became all but obsolete.

In 1990, American filmmaker Steven M. Martin, who was making a documentary on Termen, travelled to Moscow to conduct a series of interviews. After filming many of the major places in Moscow (Termen's apartment, the subway where he first reunited with Clara Rockmore, and so on), Martin became determined to bring Termen to New York so that he could film him revisiting the sites of his glory days in the 1920s and 1930s. John Chowning had also visited Moscow in 1989 and invited Termen to California for Stanford University's centennial celebration in 1991. Chowning leveraged Stanford's clout to obtain a visa, and Termen returned to the United States in the fall of 1991. He was honored with a concert themed "Technology and Music: The Beginning and Now," along with Max Mathews. Mathews performed on his Radio Drum/Baton, and Termen performed on his instrument. Mathews declared that his radio baton was a direct descendant of the Theremin. In California, Martin also played Termen the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," which Termen had never heard. Despite the rigors of the years, Termen remained youthful in spirit -- as he left Stanford for the airport, he had composer Paul Lansky promise to arrange for a young woman to be waiting for him when he returned for his 100th birthday.

Following his stay on the West Coast, Martin brought Termen to New York, where he brought him to his old neighborhood. Music technology students at a demonstration at NYU were in awe of the invention and of being in the presence of one of the founding energies of their field. A musical soirée was held that was reminiscent of the elite drawing room recitals where he had performed in his heyday. Among the guests were performers from Saturday Night Live, Steely Dan's Donald Fagan, and Wendy Carlos. Once again, Termen was the toast of the town.

Martin also reunited Termen with Clara Rockmore, despite her trepidations -- she suspected that it might be best for the both of them to live with their memories of each other in their youth. But they were reunited once again in her apartment, which had changed little in decor or furniture since the 1930s. There, she played the instrument he had given her, which, after many years of disrepair, had been brought back to life by Robert Moog.

Termen spent his last years working at the Moscow University and living in his communal flat, which was filled with a few books, photographs, mementos, and a variety of electronics tools. He continued to dream up new inventions even if he could not realize them: a surveillance device that could spot anyone carrying explosives into a crowd, polyphonic dance floors, an instrument operated by human brain waves, a device to maintain male potency at advanced ages.

Termen made one more trip abroad in 1993, to the Municipal Museum of the Hague, where he spoke about his early Illuminovox (a theremin that produced combinations of light and sound), and was inducted into the International Academy of Light. On his return, he found that his apartment had been vandalized -- his instruments had been destroyed, papers ransacked, photo albums stolen.

His daughter took him back to the two room apartment to live. On November 3, the day after Martin's film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey premiered, he died peacefully in his sleep at the age in 97. His life was remarkable in that he witnessed first hand most of the major events of the twentieth century -- the Russian aristocracy, World War I, the Russian Revolution, New York in the roaring 20s, the Great Depression, Stalin's purge, the Soviet gulag system, World War II, the Cold War, and perestroika. Along the way, he influenced countless scientists and musicians.

SOURCE:
Albert Glinsky, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, University of Illinois Press, 2000.
http://www.thereminvox.com/