To All Survivors

By Yakov Avidon

Before that morning, I had only heard of prisons. After all, these had nothing
to do with my life. But now, bewildered and numb, I was standing in a small
hot room trying to keep from falling down, author Yakov Avidon describes
as he opens To All Survivors, an intense, gripping, and graphic memoir of
himself-a man who was there.
He didnt seem to remember much. All he knew was that he was in some
kind of prison with many beds, in blocks of eight, all welded together. Trying
to remember, he looks back at the circumstances leading him to his present
dilemma, beginning with his childhood and family. Jewish, he recalls fleeing
from his home, when Germany invaded the country. He mentions the painful
and bloody encounters, as well as many other heartbreaking and enduring
exploits he and his family had to undergo while trying to stay alive. How
the events unfold towards the narrators eventual redemption will touch the
readers hearts.
Not only an autobiography, To All Survivors also revisits a painful part of
history-pre and post Soviet Union, through the authors memories. Avidon
shares his story in this compelling read in an effort to share what actually
happened in the past, to settle with it once and for all, and to serve as an
inspiration for others. For more information on this book, interested parties
may log on to www.Xlibris.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453564950

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Yakov Avidon.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2010912685

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4535-6494-3

ISBN: Softcover       978-1-4535-6493-6

ISBN: Ebook            978-1-4535-6495-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a biography novel. Characters, places, incidents and names are based on actual events. There are names though that were changed to protect other people’s privacy.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

Chapter I.    Welcome to the Cage

Chapter II.    In the Beginning

Chapter III.    Off to School

Chapter IV.    War

Chapter V.    They’re Coming!

Chapter VI.    Peace

Chapter VII.    Lara

Chapter VIII.    The Knock on the Door

Chapter IX.    Life in the Cage

Chapter X.    Gulag Glubokoye

Chapter XI.    The Visit

Chapter XII.    Games

Chapter XIII.    The Accident

Chapter XIV.    The Miracle Doctor

Chapter XV.    A Nurse Named Masha

Chapter XVI.    The Pardon

Chapter XVII.    The Hospital

Chapter XVIII.    The Addict

Chapter XIX.    Wrestling the Devil

Chapter XX.    To Life and Death

Chapter XXI.    Disillusionment and Hope

Chapter XXII.    Exodus

CHAPTER I

Welcome to the Cage

Before that morning, I had only heard of labor camps. Truth to tell, I had only heard of prisons. After all, these had nothing to do with my life. But now, bewildered and numb, I was standing in a small hot room trying to keep from falling down. Then an old man with large yellow teeth drifted over to me.

I can see you played the piano already, he rasped.

I don’t know how to play the piano.

He grabbed my hand, turning up the fingers.

Look at the black, look at the black, you cocksucker!

I could see the black stains, but they meant nothing to me. But now a second man came over—shorter, younger.

He is saying you’ve had your fingerprints taken.

I don’t know, I said. I couldn’t remember. I didn’t seem to remember very much.

You, said a man in a uniform, through the door! The barber’s waiting for you.

Stinking hands, scissors, then suds splashed from a bucket, a razor scratching my skull.

You look wonderful, the barber said. In all your life, you’ve never looked so wonderful. Here, look in this mirror. It’s a miracle as God is my witness.

I stared at a familiar but strange face. I had seen it before. Where? Bald, much older than me, with yellow skin, like tallow. The ears were huge—wings. The eyes were huge too and dull, flat, covered with a sheet of isinglass, the eyes of a fish drying in the sun.

Look, look! the barber marveled. Isn’t he a new man now? Have you ever seen such a beautiful face? Smile for everybody, you son of a bitch. Yes, like that. Isn’t it a wonderful world? Suddenly you’re a new man, in a new world, with a new face. Look. Look how nice the smile. My god, if we could shorten that Yid nose, he could be one of the saints. Would you like to be one of the saints, Yankel? Two strokes of the razor and you can join the world of the goyim. Yankel, would you like to be a fucking goy?

He pulled my ears. They were all laughing now, even the two or three men in green uniforms. I couldn’t understand the joke. I didn’t remember that my name was Yankel. Maybe it was. I thought I remembered that I wasn’t a goy. Maybe I was. I couldn’t be certain exactly what I was. My thighs grew warm. They saw and smelled the steam stain. They cackled, slapping their legs with sheer delight.

One of the men in a green uniform took my arm firmly and dragged me down a corridor, narrow and very long, into a dim square room. Every inch was crowded with iron beds, huddling together in the dank chill.

Here, said a man in green uniform. Stand near the first bed and wait. They’ll come in a minute. Don’t sleep, just wait. They’ll hurt you if you sleep. He left.

I stood at the edge of the bed, dimly aware of the room and of my standing there. I was dizzy and swaying, and my shoulder struck iron. Now I realized that there was a second tier of beds.

Suddenly, it was all fun for me, a new game. I even forgot I must have been in some kind of prison. I looked around, casually, almost as if I had simply sauntered into a new place. There were so many beds, in blocks of eight, four in each of two tiers, all welded together—so they didn’t wander away? Four blocks on one side, three on the side with the door.

All were empty now. On each, there was a mattress no thicker than a slice of bread stretched on rusted steel springs and grayish sheets, and on each, a single blanket of this same colorless color, frayed and stained. But where were the pillows? How does a man sleep without a pillow? And windows? There were only two tiny openings, almost hidden, close to the ceiling. And that disgusting barrel in the corner, the one without a cover? The stench! Only one barrel for all prisoners in the room.

I sat for a long time, waiting, not knowing why I was waiting, wondering whether I was in condition to use the barrel. Then one metal door opened, and into the room filed body after body after body. Soon, every one of the beds had a sweaty reeking body on it. And in every mouth, there was a stub of a cigarette or a pipe or tobacco or leaves. One prisoner showed me my bed. It was near the barrel, in the upper tier. It had been his till I arrived. A dozen of the men ran to the barrel. Four used it at a single time while they were talking, while they were smoking, while they were sweating. And the noise, the stink, and the heat. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out.

I have to leave, I said with lunatic calm and sincerity. I don’t really belong here. Please, I have to leave.

And for the first time, some of the others noticed me.

And where will you go? asked one.

I want to go home.

Home? This is home.

No, I want to go where I live.

This is where you live.

‘Please, it’s so hot. I’m so dizzy."

I must have fainted. I could feel my head strike something as I fell. When I woke, there was sawdust in my mouth; hammers were striking my head. I was sick to my stomach. Someone was looking at my split brow. He used black electrical tape to draw the gash closed. The best I can do, the man said. Try to keep it clean. Don’t touch. In a few days, remove the tape. It will heal faster. You hear me? You must keep your shitty fingers away from it.

Thank you for helping me.

He nodded and left.

No one stopped me from resting. There was a pillow here. How good! And then I remembered my father reading to me from a very old book. It was a story about a man who wakes up one morning as a bug. I remember feeling so sorry for that man, and now, suddenly, I began to feel so terribly sorry for myself. How could it be? Only a week before I was with my wife and my son. There was food and it was clean, and people liked me, and people respected me. How could all this be? I hadn’t done anything. Prisons and labor camps, I remembered, had often to do with crimes. But I had never been involved, not even remotely. Surely I had killed no one. I was the sort who even went out of his way to avoid insulting people. My mother thought that I was of a remarkably even temperament. My wife often spoke to me about what a gentleman I was. And my son, when he looked at his father, did he not see only love and not a monster? But how does such a thing happen?

◦◦◦◦

I was lying in my upper bed, staring at the ceiling, which I was able to touch by stretching out my arm. It was very hot and noisy. The prisoners on the floor were talking, screaming, and swearing. The smoke rising to the top of the room made me dizzy. The pain from my wound made the dizziness even worse. I grabbed the metal rods of my bed to keep myself from falling down.

I had been taken away from my busy life, from my family and friends. The constant question in my mind—why?—made me crazy. The reasonable voice within me was telling me that there is nothing I can do. To calm down, I had to think about something pleasant. I closed my eyes. I was floating. After a while, from the chaos in my head, pictures from my happy childhood slowly started to emerge.

CHAPTER II

In the Beginning

The faces of Mama and Papa. Sometimes at a distance, sometimes so large that even these faces looked threatened and overwhelmed. The features in focus, then blurred, then recognizable again, familiar. Heads. Disembodied. Now close, then far away. Dark spots, light spots, sable darkness, blinding brightness. How to make sense of all this.

In and out, round and round. Small, large, huge. Cavernous pores edging a giant nostril. A nose. A gaping mouth. An ear, an eye, then a whole face. Mama suddenly soaring away. Papa growing a neck, shoulders. Walking toward me. He stops. He sits. He beckons.

Hello, Papa.

He sits on a straight wooden chair, legs spread, feet flat on the floor, the high boots, as always, gleaming. Everything about him is clean, fresh, smelling of outdoors. Nothing is out of place. The posture is completely his—commanding, disciplined, masculine. The eyes are on me. They reach out, but they look through and beyond me. I am incorporeal. He is in control, self-contained, the very man I remember from very earliest childhood.

Neither one of the sons was ever fully unafraid of him. There was only his way. Infractions—real or imagined—were treated immediately, sternly. He was the father, the boss. We made him Papa, the Father. He was the order and structure of our existence. He was a colossus, and we quaked before him. Mama did too.

The soft brown eyes were hurtfully deceptive. They seemed to want to play, but the man who owned them never played. He hardly ever spoke to me and my brother, Isaak, when we were children. We learned early that we were nuisances to him. There was nothing lighthearted about him. He was a presence, palpable and controlling, even when he was away, and we never forgot that we were intruders in his world. He always seemed so busy, always to come home so late, when we were long supposed to be fast asleep. Sometimes, we’d complain to Mama and she would simply tell us that Papa was a very busy man, a member, after all, of the Communist Party, and, as such, one who had many more important things to do than make himself available to us. We’d soon learn to understand, she assured us. It was to her that the children poured out their feelings, to her they told, and from whom they heard entertaining and heartwarming stories. She was the soul of our existence.

We thought that she must have loved him very much, but even then, the love struck us as one-sided, unequal. Sometimes, she seemed much more his servant than his equal. Maybe it was because she had very little education. We knew—we thought we did—that she was not his intellectual equal. Whatever it was, he spoke to her very little. Even when he did, he was disparaging. Sometimes, we thought we could see how frustrated and angry she was in his presence because she really was alone even when he was with her.

Sometimes, when he would come home earlier than usual and we had not yet fallen asleep, we could hear her talking to him softly, complaining that he did not pay enough attention to the children, and then we would strain to hear words barely whispered, which seemed to be saying that he barely paid attention to her. He hardly reacted to this, and then she would keep on, her voice still soft but growing more and more emotional. She would talk about things that we didn’t understand, about him not needing her anymore because of some other woman He would get up and walk across the room. You couldn’t miss his boots. He’d fill his pipe and sit away from her, but she’d move close to him again. He couldn’t escape her whispered words, not unless, as sometimes happened, he’d leave the house.

In the daytime, we tried to make sense of this other woman. Maybe she was just another friend, an acquaintance. Only later did we come to discover—once during an argument they had—that this was no friend, but a lover, one he’d had for a long time, a younger woman who consumed his energies and warmth and charm. When he came home to the family, he was different. He never denied it. He never lied.

That’s the way it is, he said.

That’s the way it must be? she answered.

Yes, he said.

So, she answered.

And so it was. Perhaps, in their private world, they more than tolerated each other, but it was an adult world too difficult for me and my brother to understand, especially complex because it was the world of our parents. Maybe, also especially, because in appearance, to others, the house must have seemed so happy, was so often full of people and good sounds.

And those parties. How we loved them! We got ready long before the guests were scheduled to come. Mama would tell us to go to sleep, and we would go to our bedroom but not even try to sleep. We listened hard and heard every word. We’d open the door just a crack, or we put our ears to the floorboard. What fun to listen to Papa’s friends—young, old, men, women—coming, going, drinking, singing, and dancing. Some of the guests had great big red faces, maybe from all the excitement. Everything was alive and tasty and exciting, and sometimes we could hear stories and anecdotes about the government. Some of the guests would criticize the great Stalin, and some people would tell jokes about how short he was—two centimeters taller than his pipe—and people would laugh, but then Papa would put a stop to it all. He simply wouldn’t tolerate jokes about Stalin or the government. I also hated these people who made these jokes.

Papa was right. They were unpatriotic.

Some of these people, despite their differences with Papa, would come to his parties over and over. I never understood why they would come or why he’d invite them. Was it because they really couldn’t believe that he was what he seemed to be, or maybe they just liked the music and the dancing and the vodka and he enjoyed watching them carry on? But even at the parties, Papa was in control.

He was also a man of great energy. I never saw him sit still for very long.

He was forever doing something or planning to do something.

A very small and marvelous invention called the radio had entered our lives. I remember that Papa had bought a kit, pieces and parts and a brochure, and that he then sat down and made a radio set by himself. I remember that some of the parts were missing and that he fashioned these himself using lead from an old battery. He improvised here, borrowed from there, and he worked at it with total diligence and concentration. When he was done, it worked exactly as it was intended to work, as we knew it would.

Those busy, nervous hands made models of wood—all kinds of marvelous shapes. Sometimes he would fit a thousand different tiny pieces of wood together and make a glorious mosaic out of the remains of all kinds of boxes. Was there anything these hands couldn’t do? He would let us watch him work, but we were not to interrupt him. He was so handsome and smart that we worshipped him. He smoked his pipe just the way our leader smoked his pipe. The high shiny boots all the way up almost to the knees always impressed us. We never saw mud on them when he was in the house. And he wore a leather coat. He looked like a mighty commissar.

Our living room, large and gracious, was enjoyed by all. It had one area that was very special because Papa had made it so. On one of the longer walls there hung a large board. And on this board had been pinned pieces of paper—short sayings, parts of speeches uttered by Stalin and Lenin and Marx. Only Papa was in charge of this board with these great sayings. Sometimes, he would remove one piece of paper and replace it with another, but always, dozens of pieces of paper with what must have been the collective wisdom of the modem world hung on this board, which dominated our discussions. As we learned how to read, he encouraged, pushed, forced us to memorize some of his current favorite sayings on the board, and I remember how I struggled to memorize ideas I couldn’t begin to understand. Sometimes, I’d almost have something memorized when he’d change the slips of paper, and I’d have to start all over again. But I was glad when I had taken the time because Papa was sure to check that we had memorized the assigned words. These great philosophical thoughts were engraved in our memories, and some sixty-five years later, they are still in my head, exactly as they entered, ready to emerge at any moment.

And there was another holy spot, the shelf of books containing the works of Marx and Lenin, the pages dog-eared. He spent hours studying every word while his fingers played with his sleeve or his pipe. We used to discuss how Papa really knew everything worth knowing by memory.

◦◦◦◦

My father, Nohim Lazarovich Avidon, was born in 1901 of Orthodox parents and grandparents. He was properly circumcised on the eighth day. This direct descendent of Abraham and Sarah was one of the most dedicated Communists in all Russia. This grandson of a devout rabbi, this Nohim Lazarovich, was a confirmed atheist.

His world view was clear and distinct, unambiguous and absolute. In such a world, there was hardly room for his children or for his own wife. His heart belonged to Stalin and the party—and to some unknown woman who made him different.

It was 1932. I was five years old. He came home from work earlier than usual and announced with great pride and satisfaction the stunning news that the party committee at the plant had voted to give us a new apartment.

My father had long worked as a master carpenter in the railroad plant, finishing passenger cars for the trains, and when this plant was expropriated during the Revolution, he continued his master carpentry for the state.

My father’s serious political activity coincided exactly with the expropriation of the plant in 1917, when he became a Komsomolets, a member of the Young Communist League. He found Lenin’s ideas about a new society to be just and exciting, and he threw his energies into listening and learning, trying to become a part of this great new hope sweeping the country. In the Komsomol, there was for him an organization of young people dedicated to adopting Marxist ideas for improving the world. He considered it a great privilege to help build this new society, especially because it would be the poor who would most profit from the Soviet world. He felt this way even though, or because, he had not come from a poor family. Marxism already had a hold on him before the Revolution. In 1921, he became a member in good standing of the Communist Party.

It was the party that drove an irreconcilable wedge between my father and his father, or maybe it only refined and brought into sharp relief the political differences between them which had long existed.

Grandfather Lazar, the first master carpenter in the family, was an owner of a very large shop and had many people working for him, as many as seventy. They produced the best quality furniture in all Belorussia. He had tremendous ambitions for his son, almost all these focused on the thriving business. Six girls were born before my father, a single brother after him.

But Grandfather Lazar’s hopes were never to come true. The reasons were many and varied. In many ways, it was the classic confrontation, ostensibly in political terms, between father and son. In my father’s newly idealistic world, his ideas now shaped by the two Germans, Marx and Engels, and by Lenin—and by the man many considered the greatest Jew since Jesus, Trotsky. Grandfather Lazar was now seen to be the bleeder of the people, the great exploiter. It was the son himself who began to unionize and organize the workers in his father’s shop, bitter gall for Grandfather Lazar to swallow.

Every day, the confrontation between these two grew hotter until a wide chasm separated the revolutionary son from the reactionary father. They exchanged millions of words. It mattered little, if any, how persuasive these words were, how passionate, how sincerely felt. Always they fell on four ears of stone. There was no compromise. There couldn’t be. Once more it was Turgenev’s Bazarov and Pavel. Labels had changed, but it was still the new rejecting the old, and not just in our hometown of Gomel, of course, but throughout the restless motherland. There were those who felt they knew it all and saw limitless possibilities in the new Russia and those, older and obdurate, beyond teaching who had already passed that time in life when they could accept anything fresh, especially if it meant sharing with upstarts what they had worked so hard to achieve—solvency, security, respect.

Once, my father brought home a rifle and hung it in Grandfather Lazar’s bedroom, proclaiming to all the world in his bellicose voice that no one was ever again to be allowed to exploit the working people. The gauntlet had been thrown. Grandfather Lazar might well have been tempted to accept the challenge, at least have argued about who exploited whom, but his bitter disappointment in his son depressed and enervated him. Besides, how does the older world—any world—overcome the shock of a son threatening a father with a gun? Grandfather Lazar had neither the will nor energy to fight back. Besides, to what end? This new Russia knew all about him and his kind, these leeches. There was no longer room for exploitive enterprise.

Late in 1921, Grandfather Lazar gathered his large family about him—all except my father—and announced simply but firmly that there was no room for craftsmen in Soviet Russia. The very next week, every other member of my father’s immediate family left for Palestine.

Mama was born in 1903. Both her parents had been very Orthodox and kept all the Jewish traditions and celebrated all the holidays. They prayed twice daily. Taller than my father by almost half a head, she was as quiet and soft as he was overbearing and hard. She was a round woman—not fat, but round. Sometimes, we thought she was beautiful. She had very dark eyes and long brown hair, which she would often plait. Her nose was not small. What we loved about her face most was that it was kind and comforting. It seemed at peace, except for those times when she would be whispering to my father or thinking deep thoughts.

She was a giving, generous mother who so coddled us that even as children we sensed that she needed to fill to overflowing a void in her heart. The focus of our lives was Mama, our receptive and responsive security blanket. We liked nothing better than to sit near her and have her tell us stories. Sometimes, our friends would join us and we’d form a little circle, fascinated and enchanted by Mama’s reminiscences of the old days. Maybe she communicated so well with children because she had the soul of a child. Maybe part of it had to do with the fact that she’d never had enough education to confuse her and complicate her simple and direct language. The words were clear and sweet, rarely hurtful. They were honest, and we reacted in kind. They were unconsciously symbolic When even God was cold not in a way that adults would especially appreciate, but there were hints and suggestions in her words. She painted verbal pictures, and these immediately drew us into what she was describing.

And this woman gave freely of her honesty and wisdom not only to the children but to all others who called upon her. Neighbors would come with their problems to this surrogate rabbi. She would hear them out with great respect. Choosing words carefully, trying always to be fair, she would offer advice. I remember how often the neighbors would not leave before hugging her and praising her. To the children and to the neighbors who knew her, she was an outgoing and forthcoming woman. But she was never that when she talked to Papa.

A terrible change would come over her then. The animation gave way to passivity, a docility that made her seem someone else. She became a vessel into which the master poured whatever it was he needed to get out of his system. To this day, I’m not sure what there was about him that so intimidated her. But did the details really matter to us then? We simply resented him bitterly because of the change he brought upon her. He changed our mother. And then, there was that business with the other woman. How could he do anything with another woman and hurt Mama?

But despite all this, everything at home was run according to her decisions, not his. He hardly had time or inclination to involve himself in the mundane affairs of day-to-day living. All the decisions that really counted she made. And by the time of the war, when we were evacuated to the Ural Mountains and to Sverdlovsk, and Papa was away, she managed everything for two years. She kept us together. And she kept us loving life in a world that had grown alarmingly uncertain and harrowing.

◦◦◦◦

In those days, Jews comprised about 30 percent of the population of Gomel because of the Pale of Settlement, created by Catherine the Great in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The Pale defined a limited southern and western part of the empire where Jews were to live and beyond which they could not contaminate the motherland. There was no need for thousands of miles of fencing. Invisible, the border was as real and restrictive as any material barrier. The Jew world included Belorussia and the Ukraine, and to the south, it extended to the Black Sea, all the way to Odessa. To settle even here, Jews needed permits, and when these were granted, they were dated and marked to indicate an address where you were expected to stay forever until, God willing, you would disintegrate. To change an address and move to another settlement, a fresh permit was needed but not often granted. This usually required a bribe the petitioners could ill afford. There was total control of where a Jew lived and, because of this limitation, almost total control of how he lived.

It was a simple, brutally effective system, which explains why, in certain towns and villages within the Pale, the percentage of Jews was so high and why, in these same towns and villages, state-encouraged anti-Semitism raged. It gave the czars pleasure to have all their stinking herrings in so tight a barrel. Yidtowns. Cages guarded by savage keepers—debilitating, dream-destroying, enervating, filthy, bleak. If this was not enough, those who ruled the Yids had carefully selected certain areas for the use of these Internationalists. Almost inevitably, the Jews were forced to live in the very worst area of the town of hell within hell within hell.

In Gomel, the Jews lived in a canyon. It was their lot to build their homes on both sides of the canyon, through the bottom of which ran the sewer system. As always, a merciless hierarchy established itself. The poorest of the Jews lived closest to the bottom of this canyon, where the stench could remind them of the shit they were. Those best off lived closest to the top. Looking from top to bottom, you could immediately identify the status of the residents. Grandfather Lazar’s house was on the very top of the canyon. This was the house he sold in 1921 when he left Russia for Palestine, leaving my father behind.

My father, tough and resilient, enjoyed his new freedom. He felt a perverse pleasure in sticking his tongue out at the fates, in going it alone. There had always been a streak of intense individualism about him. Why should things be different now? He was ready, at twenty, for the new world.

He decided that this would be a good time to complete his formal education, which had been interrupted at the age of fifteen when he had been dismissed from cheder, Hebrew school, because he refused to stop tormenting one rabbi he particularly disliked for reasons, I am sure, were absolutely clear and justifiable to him at the time. He was now readmitted on a promise that he would behave, and he kept his word. He worked by day, studied at night, and applied himself until he could pass a rigorous examination indicating that he could read and write.

In 1922, while still studying, he met and married my mother.

If her looks and manner were striking as his memory and the photographs indicated, imagine his reaction upon discovering that she was the only daughter of the cantor, a devout and respected man in the only synagogue. At the time, her mother ran a small bakery famous for its breads and cakes. It was a religious, responsible, and conservative family. Their house was also located on the very top of the canyon.

It is hard to imagine how my mother could ever have disobeyed her father. How chagrined must the cantor have been by the young and fiery revolutionary who came calling on his daughter. But she was young and very deeply in love. They would sneak off in the evenings and say what young people in love always say to each other.

My father, using his power as a member of the party—perhaps even waving the rifle he had once hung on his father’s wall—managed to have the appropriate papers drawn in a hurry, and they were married without parental blessing. Mama was sorely wounded by this. Papa hardly stopped to notice. They immediately rented an apartment consisting of a single room near the middle of the canyon—on the other side—and began to live life as husband and wife.

◦◦◦◦

The economic situation in the country in the years following the Revolution was disastrous. Large businesses had been expropriated. Small businesses only rarely survived, for a time. Workers had been told that everything in the country belonged to them. How could they be blamed for hating those who deprived them of what was rightfully theirs and demanding all the benefits to which their political leaders had told them they were clearly entitled?

The aim of the Revolution, as expressed by some of its spokesmen, was pererastanie, a growing over of the bourgeois into the proletarian revolution. The Bolsheviks wanted to eradicate the old society—to raze it to the ground and to build a new one, owing nothing to the past, a social order of security and brotherhood. In effect, this meant that the major benefits were to first be achieved by the poorest citizens, the cobblers and laborers of the proletariat who were essentially without resources or advanced skills or education. Having achieved their aim of overthrowing the simultaneously archly reactionary and moribund monarchy of Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks needed to develop in the liberated masses the administrative and industrial and political skills to build and sustain the new egalitarian system while imbuing in these masses proletarian culture.

Pervasive in the air was the relentlessly inculcated notion that only the poor were honest and trustworthy. The old intelligentsia—untrustworthy and belligerent—was the enemy, not a resource that could be exploited. How, then, to avoid failure? One of the thousand of slogans contained a realization and a hope: We need our own intelligentsia! Education was the answer.

Throughout the country, members of the proletariat were sent to spread the Word and, at the same time, to gain the necessary expertise and education. These messengers were the vidvizhenets, and my father was one of them despite not being poor enough to qualify. His political activism served instead.

He gloried in his new assignment. This master carpenter was put to work as a foreman in the railroad plant. His on-the-job training would be frantic and brutally demanding.

The apartment my parents had rented belonged to Aaron Meyerovitch Lapidus and his wife. He was an old man, and a decent one. Before the Revolution, he had owned a factory that made shoes so exceptional in quality that they had become internationally famous. He had also made a small fortune. When the government expropriated the factory, he was, of course, immediately out of business. He went into the only one available to him—renting rooms in his big house in Gomel. He kept only one for himself. My parents occupied another, and the other five were soon filled. It was here, in 1924, that my brother, Isaak, was born, and where, three years later, I made my entrance. It was hardly a propitious time.

It is difficult to imagine the chaos and hardships in the Russia of 1927. Things were inestimably worse than 1923, a benchmark for debilitation and demoralization. Nothing seemed to move or function. It was a time of mass confusion and mass sluggishness. It was a time when the Soviets were finally compelled to ask the help of foreign governments to get the moribund Bear on her feet. The response was prompt and positive, especially from the United States. In 1928, many technically skilled industrial engineers came to reconstruct the industries that, by now, were in such straits that they were, in effect, nonproductive. Younger Soviet graduate engineers, carefully selected, were sent to the United States to learn, from the ground up, how to build and rebuild industry. The enormous reservoir of experience and skill that had existed in Russia before the Revolution was still available, but being politically tainted, it was ignored or disparaged until it dried up.

The Americans worked hard in Russia, and they taught well. They stressed a level of quality that was new here. (On a trip to Moscow in 1962, I examined the electrical power systems that the Americans had helped build in 1928. These were still in perfect working order, a lasting tribute to the skill and perseverance of our friends.)

My father came home from work with a bounce to his step. He told us that the new apartment that had been promised was ready for us. It was on the outskirts of Gomel, part of a big house that had been expropriated. Tears of pleasure covered Mama’s broad cheeks. There were kisses and hugs for all.

Before this pronouncement, we had accepted our living conditions as normal, without seeing them for what they were—atrocious. For instance, with each rain, the porous and brittle roof invited the water to seep through, forming puddles and small pools, which required constant mopping and bailing. Pots and bowls of every shape were strategically placed to catch the water. The effort was worse than futile. We kept tripping over the obstacle course. To negotiate the room became a logistical nightmare, especially after dark, like trying to evade two dozen invisible cats. Nor would the water be substantially absorbed even after the rains had stopped. The ground was primarily clay. We lived in this wetness for most of the year. When the frost came, the dampness would crystallize and sear the throat.

I must have been something like Papa, at least so far as discovering pleasure where others could not. I liked the rains because they left me a gift, a small lake that formed outside the apartment and spread almost to the very entrance of the house. There were neither trees nor grass, just the yellow clay—and my private ocean.

Wading in up to our knees and sometimes up to our thighs, my friends and I would make battleships out of pieces of paper and wood, and we would play naval commanders. Some days we were so busy fighting elaborate naval engagements that we forgot that we should be hungry and that it was long past time to get something to eat. Mama, of course, grew furious enough to venture to the very edge of our lake and deliver her one-word military order: Home!

Sleeping in our old apartment was not the same now, not with the anticipation of the new house. It was an exciting time and confirmed that the promises of the new society were about to come true. It was clear to me now that everyone would really be equal and happy. This was not going to be just a new place to live; it was the tangible beginning of the new world, the blossoming of the Promised Land. Two days after Papa’s startling pronouncement, Mama had already packed. There was little furniture to worry about. Everything had mildew or rot. We left the plank beds exactly as they were. There were some feather pillows and just a few bags. When Papa came with a porter and his horse and a cart, we were thrilled. We helped load our treasures. Some neighbors came and helped themselves to a good cry. Mama cried too because, she said, we were leaving a part of our lives behind us. Surrounded by neighbors, my brother and I sat on the cart waving to everyone, feeling very much on top of the world—regal. My father and my mother walked alongside the cart as it moved slowly up the rutted dirt roads.

Never had we had such a ride. We beamed