Between Two Worlds: A Life Story of a Soviet Transplant

By Nadya Surikova-Klein

This book is about a child, a semi-orphan, with an absentee mother, who was a professional athlete. The child grew up in a communist system without much parental guidance or supervision. It is a story about a weed that grew up into a flower, built a remarkable professional career, but then became a victim of the repressive political system controlled by the KGB.
The book is about surviving in the communist system and escaping to the West.
The book is a contrast between two worlds, two different political systems, one with liberty and personal freedom, and the other – without.
All the events described in the book are historically accurate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665536769

Book preview

2021 Nadya Surikova-Klein. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/30/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3674-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3673-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3676-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021917763

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

CHAPTER 1 Where I came from

CHAPTER 2 Happy childhood

CHAPTER 3 Schooling and beyond

CHAPTER 4 Radio education

CHAPTER 5 What being a professional means

CHAPTER 6 What being a mother means

CHAPTER 7 The first impressions of the West

CHAPTER 8 Who was my father anyway?

CHAPTER 9 The downfall

CHAPTER 10 Living in an upside down world

CHAPTER 11 Crossing the Rubicon

CHAPTER 12 Deus ex machina

CHAPTER 13 Light at the end of the tunnel

CHAPTER 14 Surviving the culture shock

CHAPTER 15 Some acronyms sound like music: BB&N, VOA

CHAPTER 16 Welcome to the Voice of America! Willis Conover said in his jazz hour voice

CHAPTER 17 Watching history being made

CHAPTER 18 Married, with children

CHAPTER 19 Back to the USSR

CHAPTER 20 As the world turns….

ADDENDUM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have seen the light of day, if it hadn’t been for Jack Dold, a trusted friend, a talented writer and my book’s editor. His encouragement was in fact the trigger.

I am thankful to my dear husband Cole who was by my side at every stage of the challenging process of writing. He read every chapter of the manuscript, and his critique and corrections were invaluable.

I also owed an explanation for my children. By writing this book I cut the Gordian knot. They would understand precisely why I am saying this after they have finished reading the book.

CHAPTER 1

Where I came from

I am a Russian woman with a story to tell.

I remember very little from my earliest childhood. It is just a blur. Except one unforgettable episode, and I remember it only because I caused a big commotion. I got lost. During the Second World War, always the Great Patriotic War for Russians, my mother and I were evacuated to Ufa in the Ural mountains. Of course, as a small child I hadn’t the foggiest idea about the Urals, a natural land separation between the European and Asian parts of the Soviet Union. I learned these geographic facts much later at school, and then just connected the dots.

It was always very cold where we lived. Unbelievably cold. And I did not have warm winter clothes. The only place that was invitingly warm near our house was a big building with many doors from which a lot of warm steam came out at any hour of the day whenever somebody left the building. When my mother was at work I was left to my own devices. I decided to go to that wonderful warm place near our house. And I did. A woman just left the building, so I could sneak in through the door without being noticed. First, I couldn’t figure out where I was, I couldn’t even see anything, but it did not matter. I was warm at last! There was steam all around me. I found a spot, sat on the floor, then lied down and fell asleep.

There was a happy end to the story. When my mother came from work and found her daughter missing, she was alarmed and ran to the authorities. An emergency was announced around the city of Ufa. From the radio announcement people got a description of a missing child. The search continued through the night. In the early morning hours, when there was a shift change in the building which happened to be a huge industrial laundry facility, a woman saw a kind of a bundle, which turned out to be a small scantily dressed child sleeping on the floor near the entrance door. Hooray! I was found. The women around me were crying. I couldn’t understand why. But I cried too. Perhaps, in solidarity.

My mother was not a laundry worker. Oh, no! Far from it.

She was a very well- educated person, a professional athlete and a fanatical communist. She left her own family from the city of Yaroslavl at the age of 17 to join the Bolsheviks and assist in the proletarian revolution. Her belief in the communist dogma was so profound, that she not only sacrificed her sister, but endangered her own child and grandchildren.

My mother, a professional athlete, was even a Moscow champion in fencing, but later in life she was a physical education instructor at some of the institutes of higher learning. She was the one who introduced me to sports of all kinds. She was my personal trainer in fencing since I was six years old. Depending on the season of the year I was doing cross country skiing, speed skating, swimming, doing gymnastics, bicycling, playing basketball, participating in track and field competitions and just moving around all the time because I had of a lot of energy. It was probably genetic.

I had a relationship problem with my mother. She was always away, either participating in some competition, or being in training, or being a referee. She was an absentee mother. She was never at home, never cooked for me, never ever checked my homework. I was on my own all the time, but did not even feel her absence because I was very busy doing things I liked, without any supervision or parental control.

I know almost nothing about my father. To be sure, my middle name is a derivative of his first name because every Russian has a patronymic, and I have a couple of black and white photos of him. I also knew what my mother told me. She got angry every time my father’s name was mentioned. At first I could not understand why she spoke about my father with such animosity. Later I got it: he left her a young widow, which she repeated a thousand times, a stupid hero who always wanted to be the first to attack the Germans. That’s why he was killed.

We did not seem to have any other relatives. It took a long time for me to know the truth. I had an aunt, my mother’s younger sister Agatha.

Even with an absentee mother, I grew up in the Soviet Union, a communist country, where everything, especially for children, was free. I went to a music school to learn to play cello and piano for free, I went to drama classes for free, all my sports activities were free as well, and as a child I never questioned why and how come. This is just how things were. Food, of course, was not free. Neither was lodging. We lived in a crummy two room apartment without a shower, which was provided by the government.

In retrospect, I often wonder why I did not to go astray as a child? I had absolutely no supervision, none, was on my own all the time. Like many children of the same age, without a father, I was a half -orphan. I could have joined a group of hooligans. I could have done some mischief, but it never occurred to me. I was naive, pure and busy with something I liked to do.

One possible explanation is that I am not mean or cunning by nature. I was also naive to a fault, nobody taught me to do bad things, or gave me bad examples. I grew up like a wild flower, or, rather a weed, and nobody pulled me up. And a second possibility is that I lived in a highly controlled environment. Growing up in the post-war time in the Soviet Union was hard, but we, the kids, did not know any better. Everybody around me was poor. I did not have any material possessions of my own. I only had two school uniforms: one brown dress with a black apron and the second one – the same dress, but with a white apron for special occasions at school. Later I learned how to sew, also at school, and made my own dresses. Actually they were alterations from my mother’s old dresses. I washed my clothes by hand, ironed them and wore them as long as they could last, or until I grew out of them. My needs were very basic. There was rationing in the country. There was always a shortage of everything. But somehow I did not need anything more. Was I poor? I never knew that. Again, in retrospect, I think I was dirt poor. And I did not know what the word luxury meant. It was not in my vocabulary.

CHAPTER 2

Happy childhood

We returned to Moscow from evacuation in Ufa just in time for me to begin school. I turned seven years old in May, which is usually when children are enrolled in school, and was looking forward to my new life. Traditionally a school year in the Soviet Union always began on September 1st. It is a great and nervous day for both parents and children. Every child was expected to wear a school uniform. Boys usually had a blue uniform with a white shirt. For girls it was a brown dress with an apron: either a black one for regular school days or a white one for special occasions, like September 1st. Some mothers added a special touch to their daughters’ uniforms, usually a pretty white lace collar. My mother probably was not creative enough, so I just had a simple white cotton collar on my brown dress. I liked what I saw in the mirror. In my new school uniform I somehow looked different, like an adult.

And, indeed, beginning school was a turning point in my life.

It is absolutely true that in the Soviet Union there was 100% literacy. Attending school was compulsory, no matter where you lived – in the urban area or in the country. There were no functionally illiterate people. Even if somebody dropped out after the fourth grade, he or she could read, write and speak in grammatically correct Russian. One had to go to school regardless of the season of the year or the weather. And winters in Moscow were sometimes extraordinarily cold, with lots of snow. But we did not have snow days. Missing classes without a reason or an excuse was considered almost criminal behavior. Therefore truancy was unheard of. There were no school buses. All children had to walk to school. Fortunately mine was within a thirty-minute walking distance from where we lived, but I used short cuts unknown to other kids and always tried to be the first when school doors opened.

There were no lunches available for children, no water or drink of any kind. You could drink tap water, of course! If you had a sports or some kind of extracurricular activity after classes you had to have brought some food with you from home. Otherwise – tough luck.

From day one the children were taught that school is a very serious place. There were lots of rules and regulations, do’s and don’t s. Following these rules and behaving properly was expected at all times. The discipline was extremely strict. Teachers were treated with respect. When a teacher entered or left a classroom all children had to rise, they sat down only after the teacher told them to do so. You always raised your hand if you wanted to ask a question or give an answer, you never talked back and never ever interrupted a teacher. Then you were in trouble!

I loved being at school. It just happened that very early in life I learned to be very organized, never missed a class or a training session, was always on time and getting a lot of praise from teachers and adults. Learning turned out to be extremely easy and fun, and I excelled in practically every subject. Children go to school from the age of seven to the age of seventeen. I finished high school with a Silver medal. It means that I had a B in only one subject, the rest were As. Having learned this at my graduation, my mother was very impressed and proud. And she cried. That surprised me.

A friend of mine asked me once whether I was a happy or unhappy child. It took me some time to answer the question. I did not know. Children do not think in categories of happiness or unhappiness. I was just a normal child, like everybody else. Children of my age, orphans or half-orphans, were mostly well behaved and obedient. My mother and I lived in the part of Moscow called Izmailovo, with a famous park, which was actually a forest, where my friends and I did our cross-country skiing. There was also a skating rink nearby. There were plenty of spaces to bicycle, run around, play games, like hide and seek and, interestingly, there was no adult supervision.

In Soviet society radio was very important. It was always turned on.

The Soviet Union was, as Russia is today, the largest country in the world with eleven time zones. Yet we only had one radio station for the whole country. Just think about it: only one radio station! Wherever you lived, when you turned on the radio you were listening to the centralized broadcast transmitted probably from Moscow. That was our only source of information. The television appeared much later.

The beauty of radio, though, was that, besides the government propaganda, which I ignored since I did not understand any of it, we listened to Russian popular and folk songs and beautiful music all the time.