How We Kept Warn
In the big cities, all houses were heated by central heating: by
hot water going through the batteries. The more batteries, the
warmer. The government tried to save money, so there was supposed
to be only enough heating to keep the temperature to 18 C. However,
18 C is rather chilly, we wanted the rooms to be warmer. So, before
the colds come, my parents would go to the plumber, give him 25
rubles, and he would install an extra battery, so that we would be
warm all winter long. In Spring, he would come for inspection, and
say: "You have an extra battery, this is not allowed." So, he took
this battery away until the late Fall. This way, everyone was
happy: we were warm, and he had extra money to get drunk.
How We Dressed
How my father learned to make clothes
Clothes were difficult to buy, and those we could buy did not look
good. When my Dad was a student, one of his friends managed to buy
a nice-looking Chinese raincoat -- so all of the friends were
wearing this raincoat in turn when they went on a date.
At some point, when I was little kid, my Dad decided to take the
matters in his own hands, and to learn the art of tailoring. After
all, his grandfather was a tailor. He started with making pants for
himself. He made his first pair of pants, they were not very good,
but he learned from his mistakes, so he make another better pair,
then the third one, and finally he made the fourth pair that looked
good. So, he started wearing the fourth pair of pants and decided
to bring the first three pairs to the used-clothes store. Since not
too many new clothes were available in the stores, used-clothes
stores were very popular.
The salesman at the used-clothes store looked at the first pair of
pants and said: "These are self-made, not good, no one will buy
them, throw them away". Then he looked at the second pair and said:
"A typical Soviet sh-t. I will give you 5 rubles for them". Then he
looked at the third pair and said: "There is no label, but I can
tell these are German-made. Only Germans make it neat not only on
the outside but also on the inside. So I will give you 15 rubles."
My Dad was very proud of this compliment -- and extra money did not
hurt either.
The Beatles Jacket
When I was in high school, we all LOVED the Beatles. We tried to
grow long hair -- this was only possible in summer, during the
school vacations, in other times, teachers forced us to have
haircuts. We sang their songs, we LOVED their songs -- and our
English teachers used their songs to teach us English. I saved
money from lunches until I had enough to buy a photo of the Beatles
on the black market.
Once my parents learned how to make clothes, they made me a
collar-less jacket exactly like they were wearing; we called it
"bitlovka" in Russian. I loved it, and I was periodically wearing
it year after year (for the most festive occasions), even 15 years
later when big holes appeared in it -- the first ones were patched,
but after a while, it became impossible to patch them.
My Mom, upon seeing that it is no longer possible to wear this
jacket, combined it with other worn-out clothes, and exchanged a
certain number of kilograms of old clothes for a decent quality
lipstick -- in the Soviet Union, everything was difficult to get,
so the only way to buy a good book like Dumas' Three Musketeers was
to exchange it for 20 kilograms of waste paper, and the only way to
buy a good lipstick was to exchange it for some amount of used
clothes.
I was somewhat upset with this loss of my favorite jacket, and it
took me some time to fully forgive my Mom.
Suit in Which I Emigrated
At some point, my old pants and jacket got worn out, I realized it
was time to buy a new one. So I start suggesting, to Olga, what
kind of suit I would like to buy. Olga said: "Vladik, you don't
understand", and brought me to DLT, the big department store. In
the men clothes' department, we could not find anything of my size
(46, a pretty average size) at all. I could not believe it, so I
tried to ask the salesladies. It was difficult to get their
attention: as it was typical in the Soviet Union, they talked to
each other and paid no attention to the customers. When they
finally paid some attention, they confirmed that there was nothing
of my size. So I told Olga: whenever you see something of my size,
buy.
And in a few months, she did. This was a suit in which I left
Russia. It all worked well but when I was giving a talk at Yale,
the zipper on my pants broke. I did not know what to do: in Russia,
it would have been a catastrophe, you could not just go and buy a
new zipper or new pants. However, my colleagues suggested that I go
to the nearest store. I asked the salesperson for some pants that
would more or less match my jacket. He went to look for it and came
back with pants of exactly the right color and right size! I could
not believe my eyes. Then he took a razor to cut off the label --
and accidentally cut through the pants! I was thinking: "Oh no, I
was lucky to get the only pants in the US that fit with my jacket,
and they are ruined". But the salesperson told me not to worry, and
brought an identical pair! When Olga joined me in the US in a few
months, she did not at first believe my story, since the new pants
looked exactly the same as the old ones -- but the remaining small
label was in English!
Money
How Much Money We Earned
Never enough. In my family, everyone worked, but we never had
enough money. We had to literally count every kopek, every day we
wrote down how much we spent, and counted what remained. One day I
came up 1 ruble less, I was upset, my parents were upset, until I
remembered that I spent this money on membership dues to some
obligatory nonsense like Volunteer (as if) Society for Helping the
Army.
As a result, every time we needed to go on vacation, we never had
enough money, so my parents would bring my grandfather's golden
watch to the pawnshop to get the needed money. In the Fall, they
would pay back with interest and get the watch back until the next
year.
Who Controlled the Money
Definitely, the mistress of the house. In our family, it was my
grandmother; when I got married, it was my wife. You get a salary,
you bring it all to you wife, and then every morning, you ask for a
ruble for lunch. My Dad was an exception: he had a special
agreement with my Mom that while he would bring her the whole
salary, he could keep half of his bonus to once in a while go drink
beer with his friends. Bonuses were not big, but enough to get some
beer. This was unusual, all his friends were envious of him, since
they had to plead with their wives for their beer money every time.
When we came to the US, I quickly realized that in the US husbands
also have a say in how to spend money. A few months after we
arrived, Olga's sister called Olga and asked about some financial
issues, to which Olga, already being Americanized, replied: "I have
to ask Vladik". I still remember her sister's shock: "What does
Vladik have to do with this?"
Money and Kids
In Russia, the usual attitude was that you are not supposed to talk
to children about money, since that would make them stressful. In
my family, the attitude was always different: from early childhood,
I knew that I cannot get expensive toys since we could not afford
them, and I had to write down -- up to a kopeck -- where I spent my
lunch money. Sometimes I cheated: once, instead of having a full
lunch, I bought a photo of the Beatles, another time I bought
cigarettes -- to impress girls, but that was rare.
We followed the same policy with our son Misha. Honestly, I was a
little but afraid that this would make him stressed, but he seemed
to be OK with that. This was very unusual. I remember how friends
visited us, when Misha was probably 6 years old, and it so happened
that we explained to them our open children-and-money policy. They
thought we were joking. So I asked Misha how much cheese costs. To
the horror of our friends, he replied "3 roubles a kilogram",
exactly what the standard cheese cost. And he replies casually,
while continuing to play with his toy cars.
Money and I
Many years ago, when still in Russia, we learned that there is a
cocoa shortage in the world, and that the price of chocolate was
supposed to be increased soon. People rushed into the stores to buy
all the chocolates they had. I also went and bought 10 bars of my
favorite Skazki Pushkina (Pushkin's Fairy Tales) chocolate bars.
A few days later, the new prices were announced. The prices on all
chocolate bars indeed became higher by 50% or more. There was only
one exception: Skazki Pushkina. This was a chocolate most beloved
by little kids, so they decided to keep its price artificially low.
I did not get any money smarts in the US. For example, when I
attended a conference in India in 2013, I had some rupees left at
the end. I knew that another conference will take place there in a
few years, so on changing them to dollars and then back during the
next trip, I kept Indian cash. This amount was in 500-Rupee notes.
In 2018, I came to India again to attend yet another conference. On
arrival, I was informed that two years before that, since many of
such notes turned out to be fake, there was an exchange, all old
notes were to be exchanged at the bank for the new ones after
checking for fakes. After a short period of time, the old notes
became invalid. As the local guy explained to me, these are now
even less valuable than paper: on a piece of paper, you can write
something, but on these notes, you cannot even write.
This shows that I do not have a good money instinct :-(
People's Attitude to Communists
Kilograms and Pounds
Before communists came to power in 1917, Russia used feet, inches,
miles of different type, etc. Communists introduced kilometers,
kilograms, etc. People used to hate these units, just because these
units were forced upon them.
When I was a kid, in late 1950s, my grandmother would often take me
with her to the farmer's market. More than 40 years have passed
since the communist takeover. The scales are in kilograms and grams
only. Still, when my grandmother asks an old farmer lady selling
chicken: "How much for your chicken?" the answer would be something
like "8 roubles per pound". They will both spend a lot of time
translating into pounds, but none of them would utter the dreaded
"k" word.
In the countryside, when you asked for a distance to the next
village, the answer would be in versts (Russian miles), practically
never in kilometers.
Khrushchev changed it all. Being of a farmer stock himself, he
started using these pounds and poods (1 pood = 40 pounds) in his
speeches, so it was no longer illegal to use them. And then, I
guess, people realized that the new units are not so bad, they are
easier to use, so the old units kind of died out.
Old Names Never Died
When communists came to power in 1917, they changed street names,
city names, etc. But people continued to use the old names, and the
communists had to live with that.
For example, St. Petersburg, the city where I was born, was first
renamed Petrograd (russified version of this name) and then, in
1924, Leningrad - after the late dictator. People called it Peter,
for short, and even the communists talked in their newspapers about
the revolutionary traditions of Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad.
Same with the street names. The street on which I lived was
originally called Kirochnaya, because on this street, there was a
Kirche - a German church. The communists renamed it into
Saltykov-Schedrin street, after a 19 century satirist. Actually, he
was not a bad satirist, but people hated this new name anyway. Of
course, we had to use it on official occasions, but between friends
we called it Kirochanaya street.
My parents told me that when I was born in 1952, 35 years after the
communist takeover, they brought me to the polyclinic near our
home, to sign me for medical service. "What is your address?" --
asked a lady behind the counter. Well, they knew it is an official
place, so they said "Saltykov-Shchedrin street". To their big
surpsise, the lady writes down: "Kirochnaya street" and files my
file under the letter "K". Of course, I do not remember that, but I
have seen my file later many times, it did say "Kirochnaya", and it
was filed under the letter "K".
In 1980, 63 years after the communist takeover, we bring our
newborn son Misha to the same polyclinic. There is a young lady
filling the forms. "What is your address?" -- again, this is an
official place, so we answer: "Saltykov-Shchedrin street". She
writes down: "Kirochnaya street" and files Misha's file under the
letter "K"!
Religion
How I Was Baptized
When I was born, both my parents and my grandmother worked, so
somebody needed to take care of me when they were at work. At that
time, it was easy. People living in villages -- where there were
not many things to buy and not much entertainment -- were not
allowed to leave, with few exceptions, and being a babysitter or a
maid was one of the legal ways to leave (for boys it was also
joining the army). As a result, there were plenty of young girls
who could be hired and they came cheap, so everyone could afford
them. My babysitter was supposed to take me to the nearby
Tavrichesky Garden, so that I could breathe healthy fresh air, but
instead, she went with me to the nearby barracks, where she flirted
with the young soldiers.
She felt guilty that she was ruining my health, so she decided to
compensate that. First, she spent a significant part of her meager
salary to buy me a big teddy bear. She put in my bed when I was
asleep. According to my parents, when I woke up and saw a horrible
bear lying near me, I was scared almost to death and started crying
in horror.
She also decided to save the soul of the Jewish boy -- in the
villages, most people were still religious. So, she brought me to a
local church, lied to the priest that I was her son, and convinced
him to baptize me -- the priest was clearly very brave since
without documents, that was strictly illegal.
Judaism
No one in my family was religious. My grandfather Rafail was
bar-mitzvah'd, but never went to the synagogue after that. To him,
like to most people in Russia, religion was opium for the people.
My Dad remembered that when he was little, he would get Chanukah
gifts from his grandfather Yakov.
But some cultural traditions remained. Every Spring (as I
understood later, at the Passover time), my parents would dress me
nicely, get dressed nicely themselves, and we would go to my Mon's
godmother for a festive feast, whose central point was the
delicious matzo ball soup.
As a teenager, I got interested in Jewish traditions, and went to
the synagogue several times. In general, religion was, to put it
mildly, not encouraged. Parents were deprived of parental rights if
they taught religion to their kids, kids were expelled from
university if they were seen entering a church, a mosque, or a
synagogue -- and there people photographing everyone entering. I
was lucky, I had my photos taken but my University was liberal,
they did not penalize us.
During the Simchat Torah, when many Jews came to the synagogue to
celebrate, I stood in the line to carry the Torahs. When my turn
came, I told the guys that I know practically nothing about the
Jewish traditions, so I am not sure I am eligible to carry the
Torah. There were three guys there, two of them started very loudly
arguing in Yiddish, all I could understand is one of them saying "A
Yid" (that I am a Jew), while the other one replied "Nicht A Yid"
-- not a Jew. The third guy listened for a while, then showed me
that they are both crazy and gave me the Torah to carry.
At Passover, I would go to the synagogue's bakery to buy some
matzos. In St. Petersburg, we were lucky, because in many other
cities, it was simply impossible, so Jews would got to Petersburg
or Moscow. It was not easy, since no one -- neither we nor the
synagogue -- were allowed to buy big amounts of flour, even small
amounts were difficult to get. So, to buy matzos, you needed to buy
the flour somewhere -- which usually meant going to many stores and
standing in long lines -- and bring it to the synagogue. My
relatives who emigrated to Israel quickly learned that these
Petersburg matzos -- made of non-kosher flour -- were not kosher,
but they tasted good. We will love matzos. To many American Jews,
this is a boring taste that they have to endure to honor their
tradition -- but to us, they continue to be a rare feast.
How Olga's Grandfather Tried to Convert the Baptists
Olga's grandfather Nikolai was always full of energy. When he
retired around 60 years old, he was still full on energy, so he
asked for some volunteer work. He lived in Krasnodar, were they
were many Baptists. The Communists actively fought the Baptists,
since they did not obey the authorities. At first, they arrested
and jailed them, but then they realized that it does not help, so
they decided to educate them. So Nikolai was advised to go and
lecture to the Baptists.
At that time, the usual Communists' argument again religion came
from astronomy -- the astronauts flew in space, and they did not
see neither God, nor angels. So, Nikolai started lecturing them on
astronomy. Most of these folks did not even go to high school, to
them it was very interesting. They, in their turn, tried to teach
him the word of God. At that time, it was practically impossible to
get a Bible or a prayer book, so what the Baptists did they bought
anti-religious brochures -- there were plenty of them and many of
them had citations from the Bible (with a following critique),
covered everything but these citations by glued-on white paper, and
these were their prayer books.
They also liked to sing, and their tradition was to use popular
melodies that everyone knew, but use religious words instead of the
original secular texts. For example, we had a very popular pilot's
song, with a cheerful melody and words Still higher and higher and
higher -- they sang Still closer and closer and closer to God.
Olga's grandfather became good friends with the Baptists. He saw
how eager there were to learn new things, so he gave them a gift --
an expensive and difficult-to-buy book on astronomy (translation
from English), with beautiful color pictures of planets, galaxies,
etc. In return, they have him an even more expensive gift -- the
Bible printed on very thin paper. Such books were smuggled by
Western tourist into the USSR.
This was the most expensive thing Olga's grandfather owned in his
life: he bragged about it, he carried it everywhere with him --
and, as a result, in a few days, it was stolen from him :-(
Easter Movies
Easter in the Orthodox calendar is often at the end of April,
around May 1. In Christianity, this is the main holiday.,
celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ - and thus, his
victory over Death, the victory showing others that death is not
the end.
This is the time for the all-night service. This was the only day
of the year when the communists routinely allowed the priests to go
outside the church with the crosses - they blessed the people, they
blessed the colored eggs and a special cake - kulich - traditional
for Easter, that people brought in for this blessing. Thousands
would flock to the services.
In contrast to Stalin's time, there was no explicit prohibition
from attending these services, but to discourage people from
attending them, the government would show American and French
movies on the TV all night long - movies that otherwise, one would
never see. That the TV worked all night long was also unusual,
because usually - with the exception of the New Year eve - TV would
stop a little after midnight. (There was a daily all-night program
on the radio Dlia Teh Kto Ne Spit (for those who are Not Sleeping),
people joking called it Dlia Teh Komu Ne S Kem Spat' - for those
who do not have anyone to sleep with, but it was mostly pop songs.)
By this unusual all-night TV program, we knew when is Easter -
otherwise, there was no official announcement of religious
holidays.
How I Learned My First Foreign Words
How I Learned My First French Words
In the 19 century, noble people in Russia spoke French to each
other, Russian was the language of slaves. Even in 1825, when some
officers tried to start a revolution and were arrested, some of
them asked for official interpreters at their trials, since their
Russian was not very good.
Noble people also woke up late -- often after middy -- and went to
bed late, way after midnight.
When I was a kid, I live with my parents and my grandmother in a
room in a communal apartment -- ten families sharing one kitchen:
this is how most people lived. Our room was actually half of the
original bigger room, it was separated by a very thin wall, so we
could hear everything in the other part of this original room. In
that other part lives an old lady who somehow survived the
revolution, and who still retained the old habits. So, when at
about 11 pm, we would go to sleep, she would have visitors until 1
or 2 am, and they would speak French with each other. They were
old, their hearing was not good anymore, so to hear each other,
they shouted. So, while we were trying to sleep, they yelled: --
Bonjour! -- Bonjour! -- Comment ca va!
How I Learned My First English Words
Before my Mom married my Dad, one of her suitors was a sailor who
used to visit her when on shore. Even when I was a kid, he would
come to visit us, usually at daytime when my parents were at work,
and I was alone with my grandmother. He was always drunk, he could
barely walk. He started teaching me English -- the international
language of sailors, called me boy. I was scared of him. My
grandmother would always ask: "Sasha, why don't you come when you
are sober". I was puzzled by that too, but later on I realized that
when on shore, he was never sober: for several months, he was at
sea, with no possibility to get drunk, so when he came on shore and
got his salary, he immediately started drinking -- until his money
ran out and he would have to go to sea again.
This was not my only source of English, I also went to an illegal
kindergarten. When I was a kid, official kindergartens were only
for party bosses. However, pensions for old people were very small,
so many old ladies had small kindergartens in their rooms. As
practically anything in the Soviet Union, it was illegal. Our lady
tried to teach us English and good manners. Some English I learned,
but good manners I could not. I still remember, with horror, how we
were supposed to eat a soft-boiled egg with a spoon from a special
device -- other kids mastered that art, but I had egg all over me
and all over the table :-(
How I Learned My First Hebrew Words
This was much later, when I was a freshman at the university. At
that time, people were who wanted to emigrate were not jailed as
before, but they were still fired from their jobs -- and not
allowed to emigrate. Some of them knew some Hebrew, so the Soviet
government allowed them to teach Hebrew to interested folks. This
was a very liberal step, since for many decades, Hebrew was
officially considered a reactional language -- used for religion
and for Zionism -- and it was illegal to teach it.Even l'Humanite,
the newspaper published by the French Communist Party, had an
article about our Leningrad Ulpan.
I volunteered to study. All private activities were heavily taxed,
to make them ompletely unprofitable. So while our teachers were no
longer afraid of the KGB, they were very much afraid of tax
inspectors.
To study, we use photographed copies of pages from an Israeli
textbook, a very pro-socialist one. Haver (comrade) was how people
in this textbook talked to each other -- which never happened
between friends in the Soviet Union, only in silly and boring
government-published novels about how we are all good friends
living happy lives in the communist paradise.
It all ended really fast, since in a few months, another
liberalization came, and our teachers were allowed to emigrate.
For several years, I kept the textbook, waiting for an opportunity
to study some more -- until I met Olga, my wife. We started
studying Hebrew together, this turned into a romance, we got
married, other problems surfaced, and the textbook again went back
to its secret hiding place -- secret since Hebrew was still,
legally speaking, a reactionary language :-(
Culture Shock
Many movies show a culture shock that immigrants from the Soviet
Union experienced when they came to the US. But to us, culture
shocks came much earlier.
How Olga Had a Culture Shock
My wife Olga had a culture shock in 1976, when she first came to
St. Petersburg. Most of her life, she lives in Novosibirsk, where
stores did not even have meat departments, and where before every
major holiday, she stood several hours in line to get some sausage.
In St. Petersburg, when we walked along Nevsky prospect -- the
city's main street -- I showed her Eliseev store, the main city
food store. On the walls, there were two tableaux, each almost 10
by then, one for cheeses, one for sausages. At each of the almost
100 cells, there was a name of the cheese or sausage; when the cell
was lit that meant that this particular cheese or sausage was
available in the store. When we walked in, about half of the cells
were lit. And you could see all these cheese and sausages, and
people were buying them -- without standing in a long line.
This was a shock, but this was not all. In the middle of the store
was an older man who was very loudly complaining: "Communists have
ruined everything, there is absolutely nothing to eat!" -- and no
one arrested him!
How I Had a Culture Shock
My culture shock was when I was first allowed to travel abroad, to
Bulgaria in 1988. To people outside the communist block, Bulgaria
may have seemed like a province of the Soviet Union, but to us,
going there was -- until perestroika -- an almost impossible dream.
Every time I would go to a new place, Olga would prepare a list of
things of buy if I see them. This time, our son Misha needed some
shirts, and it was not possible to buy them in the stores. So, she
wrote down the desired size, the desired color (if there is a
choice), what size to buy if there are no shirts his size -- the
usual preparation for shopping in the Soviet Union. So, I get to
the Central Department Store in Sofia, to the children clothes
department, and I give Olga's cheat sheet to the saleslady. She
looks at the size, at the color, and asks a question that would
have been impossible in the Soviet Union: "How many do you want?" I
think I was brave enough to say "two", so she sold me two shirts of
exactly Misha's size and exactly the colors that Olga wanted.
Well, eventually I brought these shirts back to Misha, but it
turned out to be not so straightforward. When I went to Sofia
airport for a flight back, I saw a big sign that since children's
clothes are subsidised by the state, it is prohibited to take them
out of the country. My heart fell, but I got lucky. A few people
before me in line to a custom's officer, there was a Soviet lady
who got upset when she was asked to open her suitcase: "I am on a
business trip from the Soviet Union, how dare you ask to check my
luggage". To this, the customs officer loudly replied: "This is not
Sofia region of the Soviet Union, it is an independent country of
Bulgaria!". He was so proud of himself that, instead of inspecting
any more folks, he waved us all in, and started going from one
colleague customs officer to another repeating this story. So I
brought my shirts.
There were many other culture-shocking things in Bulgaria. For
example, there were copy shops everywhere where you could go and
make copies of anything you want. In the Soviet Union, copy
machines were heavily controlled by the KGB, to make sure that no
one makes a copy of Solzhenitsyn's novels or, God forbid, of the
Bible. Olga's engineer Mom had high security clearance for only one
reasons: because she had access to a copy machine.
Another culture shock was attitude to the Jews. In the Soviet
Union, Jews were not very welcome, but here, in every kiosk, you
could buy a postcard with Sofia synagogue, and there was even the
Museum of Jewish culture -- which I could not resist visiting.
Nothing like that existed in the Soviet Union.
Sofia was the place where I first tried Coca Cola. In Soviet Union,
we only had pepsi. I took two bottles of Coke with me to the Soviet
Union, so that all my friends could taste it. Interestingly, when I
came to the US, I did not recognize the taste: what we had in
Bulgaria was the New Coke, a short-time experiment of the Coca Cola
company to change the taste.
We also ate frog legs for the first time, adding to the impression
of Bulgaria as almost West. And at the local university, there were
advertisement for students of tours to Greece and Turkey -- in the
Soviet Union, even going to a "socialist" country was difficult,
and going to a capitalist country (like Greece or Turkey) was
practically impossible.
Also different was attitude to the leaders. Our conference was at
Golden Sands, a resort on the Black Sea. A rather small part of the
beach with a house in it was surrounded by a see-through fence. We
could not go there, and the locals explained that this was a place
where Todor Zhivkov, the country's communist dictator, would
sometimes swim. In comparison with the Soviet Union, where there
were kilometers of protective zone between us and the leaders this
was very unusual: one could easily shoot him at this distance.
Not everything was perfect. Before I left for Bulgaria, one of my
colleagues asked me to bring fish oil to his newborn son. All the
kids in St. Petersburg ate fish oil, this was the main source of
Vitamin D that we did not get from our weak Northern sun. Usually,
it was easy to buy, but this time, as often happened in the
communist economy, it disappeared. I went to a local drugstore in
Bulgaria, but it disappeared in Bulgaria as well. A local friend --
one of the conference organizers -- encouraged me that Bulgarian
economy is not so bad as the Soviet one, that it will appear in a
week or two, and he will buy and send me some. In two weeks,
instead of fish oil, I got a letter from him that explained what
happened: he did buy it and he did try to send it to me, but it was
turned back by the Soviet customs, and the explaining letter from
the Soviet customs was attached. This letter explained that to
import a medicine into the Soviet Union, it is necessary to attach
ten documents: a doctor's prescription, an official letter from the
Soviet Ministry of Health confirming that this medicine cannot be
bought in the Soviet Union, etc., etc. It all sounded reasonable if
one forgets that this was about fish oil :-(
My Family
Grandfather Boris
Boris Melnikov graduate from an Agriculture College after 1917. The
new regime trusted people from poor families more than people who
were prosperous under the Tsar. Since Boris was of a poor family,
he was promoted several times, and his family lived a reasonable
prospering life. My Mom (born in 1925) went to a special privileged
Capella school where, in addition to the usual subjects,
professional singers would teach kids how to sign, professional
dancers - how to dance, etc.
The Communists always promoted specialists from poor families who
were educated after 1917. At first, there was not enough such
specialists so they had to tolerate those who serve in the Tsarist
times. By the end of 1920s, there were already enough post-1917
educated specialists, so the Communists decided to replace all the
old cadres.
For that, in late 1920s and early 1930s, they staged several
"processes" in which well-known members of the intelligentsia would
be denounced by their colleagues and they would denounce themselves
as saboteurs and wreckers. Each such process would follow by a
summary dismissal of all the old specialists. After a PromParty
process in which several top engineers were denounced (some shot),
most of the old-time engineers were dismissed, many of them
arrested. Now was the turn of agriculture specialist. The need was
acute because the country was in the middle of a disatrous hunger
caused by Stalin's ruthless collectivization policy, and the
government needed scapegoats to blame for the hunger and misery.
To the Communists, since Grandfather Boris was of poor origin, he
looked like a perfect candidate to become a denouncer. Boris
refused to become a false witness against his friends and
colleagues, and since he refused, he immediately became an enemy.
He was arrested and sent to Gulag where he stayed for more than 20
years, until Stalin died in 1953 and Khrushchev freed the surviving
Gulag slaves. He was not the only one who refused, and, as a
result, the communists gave up on the idea of an open political
process - but they arrested all the old-guard specialists
nevertheless.
As was the habit under the Communist regime, Boris's wife and
daughter had to publicly denounce him as the enemy of the people.
My Mom was immediately expelled from the special Capella school and
sent to a regular public school, they were sent to smaller room to
live. However, these were more liberal times: in late 1930s, they
would arrest the whole family, but as early as 1931, they allowed
the family to be free. They did not even search my Grandmother
thoroughly, so she managed to keep his photo and an amateur small
oil painting of the house in which Boris was born - and she kept it
with her, as her most precious possessions, when she was evacuated
during the Second World War and when she came back.
They were free, but this "freedom" was relative, they came after
her every night. There were rules on the books that when you arrest
someone and search his or her room, there should be an impartial
witness present to make sure that all is done legally. In
principle, they could grab anyone and make him or her serve, but
people tried to find excuses -- and if they could not avoid, talked
about the arrests. Since Bulia was a wife of the enemy of the
people, she could not resist too much - otherwise, they would just
arrest her as all other wives of the enemies. KGB arrested people
at nights, and every night, they would wake her up and keep her
awake for a few hours while she saw her friends and neighbors led
to concentration camps and often death. And she could not talk
about that in the morning, and she could not explain on her work
why she was always sleepy.
Even in the early 1960s, when they stopped arresting people in
mass, KGB still had a grip on my grandmother. A scoundrel in a KGB
uniform (black suit and tie) would come and bring her to a place
where they could be overheard (in our communal apartment, the only
such place was a bathroom), and ask her questions on who said what
and who met whom. We grumbled but we could not stop them.
Boris survived. After 1953, when Stalin dies, he was released, but
20 years in a concentration camp ruined his health. He was
officially proclaimed disabled, and in a year or so after becoming
free, he died in a special nursing home for the disabled in a year
or two. I never saw him. All I remember is a small postcard-size
painting of the house in which he was born.
Grandmother Bulia
Maria Vasilievna Mel'nikova (born Vasilieva), my Mother's Mom, wa
born in 1895 and grew up in an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia.
We called her Bulia -- short of "babulia", a tender word for
grandmother.
She did not know who her parents were. I inherited my Jewish nose
from her (my Dad's nose was straight), so people often took her for
a Jew, but who knows, 23andMe listed my heritage as half Ashkenazi
Jewish and half unidentified European.
In addition to school education, the orphanage prepared girls for
life: they learned how to cook, how to sew clothes, and how to take
care of expenses. All her life, she kept detailed daily records of
all her expenses, and at the end of the day, made sure that the
remaining amount of money matched with what she spent. She always
had to save every kopeck. In the late 1960s, when she was already
in her 70s, she confessed to us that she always wanted to buy
herself a green dress. We have it to her as a present, and this was
the first frivolous purchase that we had.
Her orphanage was a progressive institution that believed that all
the problems in the world come from the fact that people are
divided by religion and by ethnicity. So, to avoid such divisions,
at the age of 16, every girl was given for adoption to a completely
different family: Bulia, with her black hair and brown eyes, was
adopted by a blonde blue-eyes Finnish Halinen family, an Armenian
girl was adopted by a Russian family, etc.
She lives with them until 1918. By that time, Bulia started working
for the government, and in 1918, when the Whites (anti-communist
forces) were approaching St. Petersburg and all the government
offices moved to Moscow, she moved to Moscow as well.
People from all over the former Empire came to Moscow. Bulia always
told us stories of unusually dressed newcomers from the Central
Asia who were not accustomed to having public toilets in their
desert life and thus, used the back streets as toilets.
In 1917, the Halinens ended up on the Russian side of the border.
In 1944, after the war, by an international agreement, they had a
chance to go to Finland, but decided to stay -- a decision they
regretted often. After the Soviet borders re-opened in the late
1980s, they moved to Finland.
The Halinens really felt like a family. They lived in Karelia, in a
small town on Gimoly close to the Finnish border -- so close that
in the Communist time, a special KGB permit was needed to visit
them (so we never had a chance to visit). Every Fall, they would
come to St. Petersburg to sell cranberries on the market, to
supplement their small salaries. They usually stayed with us. We
did not have enough beds in our room to host them all, so we had to
cram: e.g., the three Halinen girls had to sleep in one bed during
their visits. Still, that was much better than staying at the dirty
and expensive marketplace dorms, and few existing hotels were both
too expensive and impossible to get. They gave us some juicy
cranberries as a gift. I really enjoyed them.
Girls who were in an orphanage with Bulia always felt like sisters
to her -- I called them aunts. Aunt Zhenya -- Evgeniya Yakovlevna
Lemishevskaya -- live in Moscow, we stayed with her when we went to
Moscow, and Aunt Zhenya and her relatives stayed with us when they
visited St. Petersburg.
Aunt Shura -- Alexandra Andreevna -- was a barber, she became my
personal barber, cutting my hair so that I will have some peyses
left.
Another Aunt -- Maria Faddeevna -- had a tragic history. In 1918,
after she moved to Moscow (like Bulia), she started working as a
waiter in the Kremlin cafeteria. There she met a young and
attractive Commissar Aaron Perel'man who came from the front, they
fell in love, got married, and moved back to St. Petersburg to work
there. In 1937, during the Great Terror, he was arrested and shot,
together with many other folks who fought in the Russian Civil War.
Bulia felt responsible for his arrest. A few days before his
arrest, he asked her advice: "Marusia (short of Maria) -- he said
-- my boss has just been arrested, should I run away and hide?"
"Let us wait", Bulia said, "they will see that you are innocent".
Well, that did not work, he was shot, and his family was sent "to
the 101th kilometer" -- to a village at least 100 km away from the
big cities, without the right to come back. After Stalin died, she
could visit St. Petersburg again, but she had no place to stay, so
she continued living and working in the collective farm. When I was
young, every Fall, she would bring us a sack of homegrown potatoes.
At that time, there were no potatoes in the store, and at the
market they were too expensive, so this sack of potatoes helped us
all the way through the winter.
But back to Bulia. She used to tell us funny stories of how she got
adjusted to the life in Moscow. At that time, before radio and TV
that levelled all accents, there were different accents and even
different words in different cities. For example, in St. Petersburg
a pen (at that time, people used fountain pens) was called
"vstavochka", meaning something you insert (into a cover). To the
great embarrassment of Buila, in Moscow, pen was called "ruchka"
(from "ruka", hand, meaning something you hold in your hand), while
"vstavochka" was a slang word for a penis.
I was reminded of this when a few years ago, a visitor from Germany
asked our department's secretary whether she had an extra rubber:
in British English, "rubber" means an eraser, but in the US, it is
a slang word for a condom.
Back to Bulia. In a few years, she got married to Boris Mel'nikov,
they moved back to St. Petersburg, and in 1925, my Mom Galina was
born. Boris started working as a surveyor ("zemlemer", which is
exactly what "geometry" means in the original Greek) with the
regional agriculture office.
In 1931, the Communists started one of the public trails against
so-called Agrarian Party -- mostly innocent researchers and
practitioners in agriculture. Mainly it was aimed against the
agriculture workers who were educated before the Communist
revolution. Boris was educated after the revolution, so he was not
one of the original targets.
Instead, the KGB wanted him to testify that his bosses were enemies
of the people, plotting bad things against the peasants. Later,
when everyone knew better than to resist, he would have no choice,
but these were more liberal times, so he said that did not want to
lie, he could only tell the truth -- that his bosses were
hard-working people trying their best to help the peasants. What he
did not realize that this was the beginning of tightening the
screws.
Boris was arrested and sent to the Far North. These were still
relatively liberal times, so while Bulia had to divorce him and
publish an official letter in the newspaper that she and her
daughter officially renounce this enemy of the people, they were
allowed to live in St. Petersburg -- a few years later, this would
be impossible. Boris also was lucky: a few years later, he would
have been shot; instead, he survived, he was released after Stalin
died. He was completely disabled by then and he did shortly after
that, so I never saw him. Bulia kept a few of his photos (a big
no-no at that time).
While she was sent into exile, this was a threat that she lived
under until Stalin died. During the mass arrests in 1937, the KGB
folks retained a letter of the law that a civilian witness had to
be present during an arrest and search. As a wife of an "enemy of
the people", eligible for deportation at any time, she could not
say "no". So almost every night, she had to spend half of the night
officially "witnessing" someone else's tragedy. (Even in the 1960s,
I remember that a KGB guy came to see Bulia. In a communal
apartment, it is difficult to find a place where one can talk
undisturbed, so they locked themselves in the bathroom.)
During the Siege of Leningrad, when more than a million people died
from hunger, the only food that non-menial workers got was 125
grams of bread a day; this was guaranteed death. Menial workers got
250 grams a day, which gave a chance to survive. Bulia asked her
friend -- who was working in a regional Communist Party committee
-- to get her a menial job. She got such a job and in exchange, she
gave her friend the only valuable thing that she owned -- her
piano. This was barely enough for her and for my Mom, but they
survived for a year until they were evacuated to a countryside.
Bulia's birthday was on April 30. She loved sweet things,
especially good eclairs, so in the morning, I would go to Nord -
café on Nevsky Prospect where they made great eclairs -- and stand
in a long line to buy them. The official name of this café was
Sever, the Russian version of Nord, it was Nord until 1940s when
Stalin decided to Russify all the words, but people still called it
Nord.
On April 30, there was always a very long line, starting outside
the store, since there was no place for so many people inside:
people were preparing to celebrate the May 1 holiday, the
International Workers Solidarity Day, an official holiday in the
Soviet Union. On May 1, all the stores were closed, so they had to
go buy eclairs the day before (not much earlier: these eclairs did
not last long).
I did not mind standing in the line, it was nice to make Bulia
happy, and the weather was usually good -- around May 1, in St.
Petersburg and Moscow, the government seeded the clouds to force
possible rains to come outside the cities and to keep the weather
sunny during the May 1 celebrations. However, I was embarrassed
that my friends would see me in this line and think that I decided
to celebrate May 1 (in my family, we never celebrated communist
holidays).
Sometimes I would see friends passing by -- the store was very
close to Mathematics Institute where many of my friends either
worked or went to seminars -- and I would explain to them that this
was actually for my grandmother's birthday. Many of them joked my
standing in line to celebrate May 1 showed that I was a true
communist sympathizer only pretending to be anti-Soviet.
Our Own Rich (?) American Uncle
In the beginning of the 20 century, many people from Russia
emigrated. Some of them became rich (at least rich by Russian
standards), and they would seek their relatives back in Russia and
give them royal presents. There is a special expression in Russian
language, "Rich American Uncle". The Kreinovich family had our own
"American uncle", although it never became clear whether he was
rich.
A few years before 1917, my grandfather Rafail got a letter that
some Kreinovich has died in the USA, and Rafail, as his closest
relative, was his legal heir. The American Kreinovich has left some
money, but he has left some debts, and it was not even clear that
there was more money than debts. Rafail had two choices: he could
accept -- and risk inheriting debts -- or decline. My grandmother
Riva was more of an adventurist nature, she nudged him to accept,
but he was a more cautious person, so he declined. For a few years
after that, Grandmother Riva would nudge him for missing a chance,
but in a few year, the 1917 revolution came, and it turned out that
his decline saved their lives: even if they ended up rich, they
would probably have been shot.
His reluctance to take a risk served him well later on. He was an
accountant, and he was promoted to the status of the accountant of
Central Asian Military District. My grandmother Riva would nudge
him: "Rafail, join the Communist Party, you will be promoted, we
will live better", but he could not be moved. And this saved his
life: in 1937, most of the Communist officers and staff were shot
as enemies of the people, but he survived.
Our Neighbors
Most of our life in the Soviet Union, we lived in so-called
communal apartments, where several families lived together.
Party Member Neighbor, or What We Used for Toilet Paper
Toilet paper was difficult to get, so we usually used newspaper.
This way, it is not so boring to be in the restroom: you can also
read.
For a while, we had a neighbor who was the member of the Communist
party, so she was required to subscribe to the central Pravda
newspaper and to a local communist newspaper. She was generous with
us, so in the restroom, there were always enough newspapers. These
newspapers were not much fun reading, but still.
Then came something more interesting. Our neighbor was also
requires to subscribe to collective works of Lenin, Stalin, etc. At
the 20th Congress, Stalin was denounced, so she brought all his
collective works to the restroom. I started reading out of
curiosity, but it was even more boring that current newspapers.
Then the Moscow communists quarreled with Mao, so she brought
collected works of Mao to the restroom too. These were more
interesting. I still remember the article in which Mao explained
the Marxist thesis that practice is a criterion for truth: two
soldiers argued whether ducks could swim. They could not agree, so
they asked their commander to help. The commanded did not know
himself, but to resolve their dispute, he placed a duck into water
-- and the duck started swimming. The question was resolved.
Fearless Zina Gaifutdinova
Once in a while, there were elections. Communists allowed only one
candidate for each position, so there was no chance of electing
anyone else. You could, in principle, vote against, but to do this,
you would need to go to a special cabin, and there was only one
reason to go this cabin, so you will be immediately marked by the
KGB. So, once people come to the voting place, practically everyone
would vote For. The problem was to get people to the voting place
in the first place. The communists liked 99.9% numbers, so local
bosses were reprimanded if many people did not show up.
One way was to attract people -- usually, some usually deficit
foods were sold at the voting places. If that did not work, KGN
would come and threaten you.
One of our neighbors, Zina Gaifutdinova was fearless. Every
election was all observed the same spectacle. She would call the
elections office and tell them that she would not come until some
leak or something else that we all wanted to be repaired for weeks
would be repaired. Every time the same thing happened. First, a KGB
man would arrive, in a usual KGB uniform: suit, white shirt, and
tie, and in the presence of the whole apartment start shaming and
threatening her. But, with our silent support, she stood her
ground. And every time, a plumber -- or whoever else was needed --
would come with his instrument and repair what was needed to
repair, after which she went and voted. Worked every time!
Unfortunately, elections were rare.
A Former Prostitute
All ten families living in our apartment shared the same bathroom.
There was only one lady who we did not allow to use it: a lady who
lived in a room near the balcony. It was known that she was a
former prostitute, she had skin sores, and we were afraid that she
had syphilis and we could be infected by it. She was already over
60 but rumors were that once in a while she continued to get
clients. One night, we learned that it was true.
One night, the whole apartment was woken up by men's loud cries for
help coming from her room. One of her windows was facing the
balcony, so we could all see a drunken man standing there in his
underwear yelling for help. It turned out that our neighbor locked
the door and took away his pants until he would pay. He did not
want to pay, he wanted to get out. We advised him to open the
window and step into the balcony, but he was too drunk to think, he
kept repeating that he would fall down and die. At the end, he
stopped yelling, I think he decided to pay. There was not much
entertainment around, so we all had a lot of fun.
Yakov Kreinovich
These are recollections of Yakov Kreinovich ("deda Yasha"),
Vladik's father.
Kindergarden years
When deda Yasha was little, his father was the main accountant of
the Central Asian Military District (it was then called Turkestan
Military District) located in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He went to the
kindergarden of the Military District Headquarters, where he was
with children of general, commanders, etc., so whatever he did not
learn from his Dad, kids at the kindergarden told him. He started
school at age 9, so they were big kids.
Two events he remembers. One was when Lazar' Kaganovich, a big
Party boss and a Politburo member, visited Tashkent: they changed
his bedsheets every night, which at that time was very unusual.
Another was when Nikolai Dybenko visited, the leader of the Baltic
Fleet sailors (and a husband of Kollontai, one of the important
revolutionary heroines); Dybenko asked for a new girl every
two-three days. Girls went willingly, they considered it to be a
great honor to be with the revolutionary hero.
Uzbeks and Russians
While the armed revolts were forcefully suppressed in the 1930s,
Uzbekistan was still dangerous. Graffiti "Rus, go home" covered all
the walls and fences in Tashkent. Areas where Uzbeks lived where
considered dangerous. For example, it was cheaper to rent a room in
one of these areas because of the dangers. On the other hand, those
who rented these rooms were considered to be kind of local, so it
was not that bad. The situation was slightly better for non-ethnic
Russians, e.g., for Jews, but still it was dangerous.
Deda Yasha remembers that at some point, he was dating a Jewish
girl who was renting a room in the Uzbek-populated district. that
time, because life was dangerous, a gentleman was suppose to
accompany his date home to make sure that nothing bad happens to
her along the way. When deda Yasha accompanied this girlfriend
home, he felt more or less OK, because the locals knew her, but on
his way back home, he always felt very scary.
There were certain regions in Uzbekistan where it was not
recommended for ethnic Russians to enter. When it was necessary to
send people to these areas, ethnic Russians were usually not
included. Local guerillas (called "basmachi") basically controlled
these areas. They would require each family to give them a few
sheep to eat; if you do not give them the sheep, they may kill you,
and if you report on them to the communists, they may kill your
whole family.
Once, their neighbors' daughter was sent to one of these remote
areas with a geological expedition, in search of minerals, she was
raped and killed, and it was a normal every day event, not
something extraordinary.
During the war, many people from Moscow were evacuated to Central
Asia, but most important people went to Alma-Ata, the capital of
Kazakhstan, and not to Tashkent, because Tashkent was known to be
too dangerous. There was another reason: Tashkent is much warmer
than Alma-Ata, because it is further to the South than Alma-Ata and
also because Tashkent is at the sea level and Alma-Ata is high in
the mountains. For people from Moscow and Petersburg, Tashkent felt
too hot while Alma-Ata felt much more comfortable.
School
At the age of nine, deda Yasha entered school and studied at school
until 7th grade. He was studying very well, he had many As. He
finished the 7th grade in 1941 when the war started. First, all the
schoolkids were sent to gather a cherepashka ("little turtle")
beetle that was damaging the crops. After they came back, the
authorities decided to mobilize most kids for the "work front", to
work on factories producing important things for the war. Several
of deda Yasha's friends like Semen Dubrovksy had influential
parents who got special exception for their kids, but deda Yasha
was one of those who had to drop school and work at a factory.
Youth communist league (Komsomol)
When we were young, everyone starting with age 14 was made a member
of the Youth Communist League (Komsomol), just like before that,
everyone was a member of the Young Pioneers. In deda Yasha's time,
only few students joined Komsomol, in his class, they had maybe
four Komsomol members.
Factory
At the factory, deda Yasha found his talent of being able to do
things with his own hands, and come up with technical ideas that
would improve these things, something that he is still doing.
Shady connections
Many young people working at the factory were engaged in
not-exactly-legal and plainly illegal activities as a way to
supplement their semi-starving income. For example, they used their
access to factory equipment to do some repairs on the side in
addition to their work for the state.
Since deda Yasha turned out to be one of the best technicians, he
was often asked to repair and do things. Due to his skills, he was
highly respected by the informal leaders of these shady gangs. This
even sometimes caused envy from other young people. The public
garden attached to the Officers Club was the main place for young
people to hang out: there were regular dances, movies, etc. Several
times over there, young people threatened to cut him with a knife
because they felt that his respect was undeserved -- they believed
that their own stealing, selling, etc., deserve more respect, but
the bosses knew that skilled people are rare, so he was protected.
For example, in the 1930s and 1940s, the main emphasis in sorts was
on patriotic sports related to the country's defense. One of these
sports was target shooting. Deda Yasha was very good at target
shooting, he things one reason is that he is cross-eyed. He even
made it to the Uzbekistan youth team who was selected to go to
Moscow for the shooting competition. Target shooting was what kids
did when they had spare time, there were special shooting stands,
etc. ("tir"). However, access to these shooting stands was limited
and cost money, so all the kids wanted to own a gun to practice
shooting. On a more serious level, in a dangerous atmosphere, a
good way to protect yourself was to carry a gun.
Guns were strictly illegal, but many people had them, because
during the war, guns were plentiful. Guns in working condition were
difficult to get, but since few people knew how to repair a broken
gun, it was rather easy and cheap to buy a broken gun. Deda Yasha
was given two broken guns with a promise that if repairs both he
would be able to keep of them. This was a good incentive, deda
Yasha repaired both guns successfully, and became a proud owner of
the Nagant revolver. He was not the only one with a gun, he and his
friends would place some bottles in the yard as targets and
practice shooting them with their guns.
Sometimes, when deda Yasha's parents were both out (e.g., on a
business trip), he and his friends would have a party in their
house and shoot into the ceiling to celebrate, or just to emphasize
the rhythm of music; for example, they would dance Lezginka, a
fiery dance from the Caucasus very popular at that time, because
everything from the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin, was very
popular. Lezginka's melody has short melodic lines with sudden
interruptions in between, so they would fire the guns during these
interruptions. Everyone knew a humorous Russian text to accompany
this melody, deda Yasha remembers: "Ukusila mushka sobachku",
meaning "a little fly bit a little dog", then the melody disruption
is naturally explained as the jerk of the dog that was just bitten
by the fly. This home-shooting practice would leave holes in the
ceiling, so baba Riva, deda Yasha's Mom, would later wonder what
causes these holes.
Owning a gun was strictly illegal, in principle, one could go to
jail for main years for that. The police did not specifically
target kids practice-shooting with guns, they had more serious
criminals to catch, but if they would get caught, they would most
probably go to jail, in war time, justice was swift and severe.
Some of deda Yasha's friends and neighbors were not only target
shooting, they also used sometimes used their guns to rob
passers-by.
Deda Yasha's parents did not know much about his shooting activity,
but they realized that he is running with the wrong crowd, and that
many people in the factory were involved in something illegal.
However, they could not do much. As the war started, food prices on
the market became astronomical, so people would eat what they grow
themselves and what they got for their food rations. Since deda
Yasha was working at an airplane factory, and doing a menial labor,
his bread rations were higher than his parents, so they had no
control over him. Baba Riva took it philosophically: maybe it is
even better if deda Yasha gets caught and goes to jail, this way he
had a good chance of surviving the war, while if he gets of age and
gets drafted into the army there is a very high chance that he will
get killed at the front.
This all stopped when deda Yasha had to move to St. Petersburg with
his institute, in Petersburg, the control was much harsher, so he
left his gun with his friends.
About a year after deda Yasha moved to Petersburg, ded Rafail (his
Dad) managed to get himself a business trip to Petersburg (it was
not easy to travel those days, right after the war, you still need
special permission to buy tickets), his main objective was to check
whether deda Yasha was still hanging out with the wrong crowd. When
he saw deda Yasha's more respectful classmates, he calmed down.
When deda Yasha came back to Tashkent after graduating from the
institute, he learned that after the war, the control has tightened
in Tashkent as well. Many of his former friends and neighbors were
in jail for stealing, robbery, gun possession, etc.
How deda Yasha became a student
A few years after deda Yasha started working on an airplane
factory, Voronezh Aviation Institute was evacuated to Tashkent.
They needed students because otherwise they were afraid that the
institute would be disbanded, so they started recruiting. This was
not easy since most young people were drafted into the army. Deda
Yasha, who was working -- and working very well -- at the airplane
factory, naturally became one of the folks that they wanted to
recruit as their students. They set up special preparatory classes
where they would prepare future students for entering the
institute. The idea was that the exit exams for these classes would
serve as entrance exams to the institute. Deda Yasha was eager to
join, but there was a problem: they needed a certificate of
graduation from high school, while deda Yasha only had 7 full
classes of education. There was some material that he never
studied, e.g., topics like logarithms in math, some fiction books
in literature classes, etc. Deda Yasha decided that since he was a
very good student and clearly smart -- he got excellent grades
without spending too much time studying -- he was able to catch up
(and he did, of course). But to get into the preparatory classes,
he needed a formal certificate.
Luckily, in Tashkent, during the war, one could buy anything on a
market: a gun, a diploma, a document. Semen Dubrovsky, who later
became Vice-Minister, made deda Yasha a diploma: a blank of a high
school diploma could be bought rather cheap (it was not in big
demand), and they had another friend Yura Yaroshevky who was good
in making fake stamps. Deda Yasha warned Semen not to put too many
As in the fake diploma since he was planning to study all the
material in a few months, there was not time to get his knowledge
to the A grade level. So, deda Yasha got in the preparatory
classes. Of course, this was only to get in, he still needed to
study hard to pass the exams. He concentrated on the most important
things: mathematics and physics; there was supposed to be also an
exam in Russian literature, but deda Yasha did not have time to
attentively read all the fiction books that they were required to
study. Luckily, the Voronezh institute professors were not very
picky, and they also decided that literature is not that important,
so they gave him a passing grade in literature as well. Thus deda
Yasha became a student.
While he passed the exams, he had a lot to catch up when a student,
since he never had the drill in all that mathematics like
logarithms. Luckily, he had a good physical intuition, which helped
him in physics and engineering classes -- and helped him understand
the corresponding formulas, although the derivation of these
formulas from first principle was tough for him at first.
How they moved to St. Petersburg
No matter how hard the professors from the Voronezh aviation
institute tried, they did not recruit enough students, so after the
war, the Voronezh Aviation Institute was merged with the Leningrad
Aviation institute that was also evacuated to Tashkent during the
way. People also realized, based on the war experience, that it is
no longer just the plane itself which is important, what is even
more important is what instruments one has on the plane. During the
war, instruments progressed a lot, so it was decided to transformed
this joint school into Institute for Aviation Instruments (LIAP).
To move to Petersburg, all the students and faculty and all the
equipment was placed on a train. Students were packed tight in a
freight cartridge, so right that there was no room to turn, so what
they did is during the night someone would command "Turn" and they
would all turn from one side to the other. To support themselves in
the first months of their study at the new home, they brought
apples: apples were plentiful in Tashkent, but rare in Petersburg,
so they could sell them and get warm clothes (which no one needs in
Tashkent) and cheaper food. The institute administrators had the
exact same idea, so not only they brought apples with them, they
sold all the desks and other stuff in Tashkent, bought apples for
all this money, expecting to sell these apples in Petersburg and
buy some furniture there. This did not work well: the train was
inspected mid-way, and when it turned out that the state-owned
furniture was missing, several administrators were arrested.
The students sold apples at the market. At that time, people from
Petersburg mostly saw local apples, which come in two types: sour
apples called Antonovka and sweet apples called Belyi Naliv. When
they saw Tashkent apples, they asked: Is this Belyi Naliv? Tashkent
students had no idea what type of apple it was, so they came up
with a fake name for these apples: Black Nail (Chyorny Gvozd').
What helped was that most students had an experience of selling and
buying things at the market. In Tashkent, in contrast to Petersburg
where most things were sold in the stores were prices were fixed,
in Tashkent, stores were mostly empty, things were mostly bought
and sold in the market, so kids learned the art of bargaining from
early age.
How he survived the student years: food
The student stipend was small, food rations for students were
small, so for out-of-town students who could not eat with their
parents, it was difficult to get enough food. Food parcels from
parents helped. Deda Yasha's parents sent him cotton oil, one of
his roommates was from Belorussia, his parents sent him potatoes,
so they fried potatoes in cotton oil. For fuel, they did what many
people in St, Petersburg did those days: they looked for pieces of
destroyed fences, etc.
Their successful experience of selling Tashkent apples at the
market gave them an idea of a supplementary income: many people who
brought food and clothes to the market did not have selling skills,
did not know the demand for different products, and sometimes did
not have time to stand all day, while the Tashkent students had
good marketing skills and plenty of spare time. This turned into a
win-win situation: the students would help sell the stuff for a
higher rate that the seller would do on his or her own, and the
students would get a portion of this extra profit for their selling
work. Another advantage of having students as sellers was that, in
contrast to Tashkent, police in Petersburg were constantly checking
sellers' documents to make sure that all the sales were legal. In
the communist times, there were so many restrictions that almost
every sale was, strictly speaking, illegal: for example, a peasant
from a collective farm, even if he grew his own food stuff, was
supposed to work for the state on the collective farm 24/7 and not
go to Petersburg to sell stuff. Having students selling stuff
helped.
Tashkent students became know at the market, they mostly went to
the market closest to their institute called Haymarket "Sennoy" --
because it started in the 19 century as place where they sold hay.
This market was one of the largest in Petersburg, all Russian kids
learned, at school, a famous poem by the Russian 19 century poet
Nekrasov about a peasant slave lady who is being beaten at the
Heymarket; this was one of the poems that turned the Russian public
opinion against slavery. This market is now gone, there is a metro
station with that name now ("Sennaya").
Deda Yasha was known at the market as Black Yasha ("Yashka
Chernyi"): not only he had black hair and black eyes, he also had a
black leather coat. Police understood that students needs to eat,
so they usually let students operate. Deda Yasha still remember the
police officer in charge of the market, his first name was Pavel,
everyone called him by his short name Pashka. In return, students
helped police: once in a while Pashka would ask students to go to
the morgue with them, to see if they recognized recently killed
people, who they frequented, etc. A market was a place to visit for
a criminal: this is where one can sell stolen good, and this is
where one can buy stuff -- and spend the ill-gained money. Deda
Yasha remember that the police was not very much interested in
regular crime, they were mostly interested in "political" cases,
when someone expressed disagreement with the communist rule.
Students spent their stipends and their hard-earned money in
different ways. Some students were mature enough to save this money
and spent it for necessities only, but not deda Yasha, he was known
as a "restaurant type" because once he got his stipend, he would
then bring his girlfriend to a restaurant (and restaurants were
very expensive at that time), spend all the stipend in one night --
and then subsist on potatoes fried in cotton oil until next month.
The most fashionable restaurants in Russia at that time where
Georgian restaurants, but they were only in big cities, they were
unheard of in Tashkent. Deda Yasha remembers that the first time he
went into a Georgian restaurant, on the menu there were lots of
exotic dishes and he had not a clue what they were. Since he did
not have too much money, he ordered the cheapest things on the
menu: sulugini and tsitsaki. Suluguni turned out be goat cheese,
but tsistaki is a Georgian version of very spicy pepperoncini,
which neither he not his girlfriend were able to eat.
How he survived the student years: clothes
Clothes were difficult to get. Deda Yasha and several of his
roommates managed to buy a Chinese raincoat, it was too small for
all of them, so they did not wear it, they would take in turn when
they would go on a date and take it with them, to make sire that
their dates notice the fancy raincoat.
How he survived student years: studying
Most students also worked and partied, so it was difficult to wake
up in the morning. For deda Yasha, this was especially difficult,
since he always had trouble waking up in the morning: as long as I
remember, he always sets up two alarm clocks with 5-10 minute
interval because one alarm clock was not enough. He was known in
the institute for his ability to sleep through everything in the
morning, not being bothered by any noise. His friends made fun on
him, but they also helped him wake up by carrying his bed with his
sleeping on it into a restroom -- there, the sound and the smell
would wake him up. His fellow student Nadezhda "Nadia" (now
Tovmach), mother of Vladik's friend Yuri Tomvach, was an active
participant in -- and often an intiator of -- these daily
processions, she later bragged that if it was not her persistence,
he would not have graduated.
Diploma defense
Deda Yasha was advised, before his defense, to shave off his
mustaches, because the professors thought that students with
mustaches were more interested in girls than in studies and
routinely have them one letter grade less. He dutifully shaved off
his mustaches, defended his diploma, and then grew it again.
Wine state farm where deda Yasha's Dad worked after the
war
Ded Rafail, deda Yasha's Dad, after the war started working as an
accountant for the wine-producing state farm (sovkhoz) Kibrai The
boss of this state farm was in full control of everything. He
argued with ded Rafail that there was no need to pay workers
salary: they have water, they have grass, they have fuel (they were
given dry branches remaining after cotton was collected), so they
could grow sheep. Sheep was the main source of living for the
Uzbekistan population outside big cities: working on a state farm,
even if they pay you salary, did not bring much money, but you grow
sheep and you have food and yourself and wool and meat to sell at
the market.
Workers used to call ded Rafail a bad man: their salaries were low,
and they thought that this was because he was stealing all their
money. He did his accounting with a mechanical device called
arithmometer, in this device, to do the computations, you rotated
the handle back and forth, so the workers used to say "He rotates
three time in one direction -- to him, to him, to him, and only
time in the other direction: to us".
After grapes were collected, they were placed in big open barrels
where the fermentation was taking place, they were 10-15 meters
across. One day, students were working on this farm, including a
female friend of Galia Egmenova, one of deda Yasha's and baba
Galia's friends. Galia and that students were both studying wine
making as their majors. That student accidentally fell into this
open barrel, and started swimming. Everyone encouraged her to swim
back to shore, but she was probably getting intoxicated by the
alcohol fumes, so instead of coming back she was swimming in the
middle of this barrel, enjoying herself. In deda Yasha's circle of
friends, this became a synonym of getting drunk: instead of saying
that someone is drunk, they would say that he or she "started
swimming".
Working at a defense factory
In Petersburg, deda Yasha was in charge of a shop at a factory that
produced instruments for the airplanes. He would often go on
business trips to different factories and military bases where the
planes were built, tested, and stationed.
First time he went on a business trip, the pilots took him on a
test flight, so that he would get a feel of how the instruments
work during the real flight. The plane was supposed to climb into
high altitudes where it is very cold, and there was no heating on
the plane, so, to stay warm, pilots and passengers were given warm
overalls with a fur collar. The person who have deda Yasha his
overall told him not to sh-t over the collar. At first he took it
as a joke. He put the overall on, and after the plane into all kind
of aerobatics typical for a dogfighting fighter plane, he felt such
a big urge to defecate that he ran into the restroom immediately
after landing as fact as he could, lowered the back of his overall
to be able to do his job -- and nearly did what he was warned
against.
These test flights, with tested equipment on a new not-well-tested
plane, were often dangerous. Deda Yasha was lucky, even when some
things malfunctioned when he was in air, he was never hurt. The
only time he thought he might die was during one flight back to
Petersburg on a civilian plane. On that plane was a movie actor who
was well known at that time. When that actor saw deda Yasha -- who
was rather handsome in his youth -- he assumed that he also comes
from making movies at some distant location. Deda Yasha denied that
he was in the movies but he was evasive about what exactly he was
doing, because he was supposed to give out information about his
classified work. So, the actor became further reassured that deda
Yasha was participating in making some movie -- because artistic
folks often hides things form each other, to avoid rivalry. When
they were talking, deda Yasha -- who was an aviation engineer after
all -- noticed, when looking out of the window, that a hose
bringing fuel to the engine broke, and fuel was spilling all over
the plan fuselage. This is a very dangerous situation, because in
this case, a little spark can ignite the plane. He quietly knocked
into the pilots' cabin and told them about it. The plane
immediately changed course to go into emergency landing into the
nearest airport. To avoid panic, one of the pilots went into the
passenger cabin and started entertaining the passenger with
interesting stories. When the plane safely landed, the movie actor
finally agreed: Yes, you are not in the movie business.
This job was not without some perks. During business trips, factory
representatives were often carrying classified documents and/or
instruments, so they were officially issued weapons to protect
these classified things. At that time, the only people who were
allowed to carry weapons were either in uniform (army, police), or
KGB, so when people saw a group of weaponed guys in civilian
clothes, they assumed that they are with KGB. Because of this, deda
Yasha and his colleagues were often given first-class service at
restaurants and other places; he still remembers a khinkali place
which they frequented on such trips -- khinkali is a Georgian
version of Russian pelmeni, boiled meat dumplings; the main
difference is that khinkali is larger in size and spicier.
Another perk came during Khruschev's time when the leadership
decided to produce more civilian goods. In particular, every
defense factory was required to produce something for civilians.
For the airplane instrument factory where deda Yasha worked, the
factory that produced radars and other instruments, a natural idea
was to produce TV sets. These sets were difficult to get, but for
every tube and other electronic part that fit within the
tolerances, there were quite a few that had to be discarded.
Workers at the plant could purchase these discarded parts, and with
a good knowledge of electronics, one could assemble a TV set out of
them. This is what deda Yasha did, so we got our first TV when few
people had them.