The Education of a Traitor: A Memoir of Growing Up in Cold War Russia

by Svetlana Grobman

  Mom sighs, “Well, he took the ribbon off, I guess, and, at first, he ate just one piece. He thought nobody would notice. Then he ate another piece, and then another, and before he knew it, he finished them all.” Here Mom stops, crouches in front of me, and says, looking straight into my eyes, “Let that be a lesson to you. This is what happens when children start doing bad things. They think that nobody will notice, but it never works that way. The best you can do ...”

  I stop listening. I understand the only thing that really matters to me. There is no hope of getting any chocolate. Not today, not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow. Not until New Year's. And that is a long wait.

  CHATER FOUR

  HOW MANY LANGUAGES DOES ONE MAN NEED?

  “… Gai kaken oifen yam!” (Go shit in the ocean, Yiddish.)

  “Shvaygn, Raphail!” (Be quiet.)

  “Zi farshtey dos nit.” (She doesn’t understand.)

  Both of my grandparents grew up in the Pale of Settlement (where the Jews in imperial Russia were required to live), in a Ukrainian shtetl (village) called Monasterishche. The place was relatively prosperous. It had two plants—one produced sugar and the other plows and other agricultural equipment—two synagogues, two orthodox churches, several Jewish schools, and a gymnasium. Half of Monasterishche’s population was Jewish and the other Ukrainian or Russian, but almost everybody knew Yiddish. The Russians and Ukrainians worked in the nearby fields or at the plants, and the Jews—who were forbidden to own land—as shoemakers, tailors, tinsmiths, and such.

  My grandfather’s father had a small leather-currying business. He was a hard-working and strong man who, according to family lore, could bend an iron poker with his bare hands. He was also religious. He went regularly to synagogue and presided over Sabbath dinners with a yarmulke on his head and a tallit over his shoulders.

  Together with my great grandmother he had five surviving children: three sons and two daughters—my grandfather the oldest. When the time came, the sons went to a cheder (a traditional Jewish school), where boys—but not girls—studied the Torah and the Talmud, as well as learned some Hebrew under the supervision of the Rabbi.

  Later, my grandfather went to a government school, which was taught in Ukrainian but offered Russian as well. There he perfected his Ukrainian, improved his Russian, and developed good penmanship. The latter especially came in handy when, during World War I, he was drafted in the Tsar’s Army. He served as a military clerk—a rare job for a Jew—which may have saved his life, although it did not prevent him from being captured by the Germans and spending a year in a German POW camp.

  The good thing was that, in those days, the Germans treated all their prisoners, including Jews, equally. So my grandfather survived the camp and, after the war ended, came home dressed in a European-style suit and hat. That hat impressed many young women in Monasterische, including my grandmother and, more importantly, her parents, and soon my grandparents were married.

  Of course, the shtetl my grandfather returned to was not the same shtetl he left before the war. It had undergone pogroms and revolutionary changes. The pogroms alone left half the town dead. During one of them, several drunken men burst into my great grandparents’ house demanding money. My great grandfather and two of his children were out of town. My great grandmother, with her youngest daughter on her lap, was at home fixing dinner. She got up and offered the marauders some food. They shot her in the chest, and they threw the toddler out the window. The youngest son rushed to his fallen mother, and they shot him, too. The middle daughter tried to escape, but the bandits caught up with her and raped her. Everywhere around them, hundreds of people were murdered, hanged and tortured, and their possessions stolen while the police did nothing.

  Despite such recent violence, the beginning of my grand-parents’ life together was no different from the lives of any young Jewish couple in the Pale of Settlement. They worked. They went to synagogue. Their only ambition was to start a family. They could have been supporting characters in Shalom Aleichem’s “Fiddler on the Roof”—neighbors or distant relatives of Tevye, the milk-man. They spoke the same language, wore the same clothes, and had the same problems. Besides, my grandfather was a good musician, although he poured his heart out through the guitar and not the fiddle.

  The difference was that Shalom Aleichem sent his characters to America, while my grandparents stayed in Russia. That forever changed their lives, for shortly afterward, the October Revolution of 1917 swept across the country.

  When my grandfather returned home after the war, he first joined his father and younger brother in the family’s leather tanning business. Soon, however, the new Soviet government introduced taxes so high that no matter how much they worked, they could hardly break even. The family decided to close the business and leave Monasterishche.

  They moved to a Jewish collective farm, Frayheyt (Freedom), near the Black Sea where my grandmother’s parents had settled earlier. There they were given a place to live and a job as dairymen. For a while, life seemed good. They worked hard, but the work paid off. Their children were born, and my grandmother’s parents, who lived nearby on a small farm, helped to care for them.

  This relative tranquility did not last long. The power-hungry Soviet authorities began a campaign of raskulachivanie—expropriation of the property of independent farmers. The better-off farmers, most of whom did not have much land and never employed anybody outside their immediate families, were branded kulaks and pronounced “class enemies.” Arrests, deportations to Siberia, and executions were commonplace.

  At the same time, the Soviet government, led by Stalin, began another assault on the peasantry—forced collectivization of all agricultural workers into government-ruled kolkhozi. This new action, designed to build “socialism in the countryside,” brought all Soviet agriculture under state control while greatly decreasing its efficiency. All in all, in 1930-1937, Stalin’s policies led to the starvation and death of 15 million peasants, including 5 million in the Ukraine alone.

  As for my own family, in 1931, four of my great grandparents were arrested and sent to a kolkhoz in Kazakhstan, where they starved to death within two years. My grandfather and his brother managed to hide from the authorities and flee Frayheyt during the night. They headed for Moscow—their wives and children would join them later.

  Nobody in my family talks about any of this, and I will not learn about our history until much later. They do not talk much about their life in Moscow under Stalin either. Or, if they do speak about it in my presence, they use Yiddish, a language which I don’t know.

  My relatives do not teach me this language for two reasons: one, they can say anything they want without my understanding them; and two, they have no fear that I will repeat something dangerous on the street. This is crucial in a country where children are taught at a very early age to love their country first and foremost, even to the detriment of their families. Also, maybe even more importantly, they do not want me to stand out among other children. Like immigrants everywhere—and they are unwanted immigrants in their own country—they want their offspring to fit in. Speaking Yiddish will betray me as Jewish, and Russians do not care for us Jews.

  My uncle, my aunt, and my mother as children

  Whether my family is right or wrong, I grow up monolingual. The only language I know is Russian. The only tales I hear are Russian fairytales. My toys have Russian names, and my own name, Sveta, is Slavic. In fact, it was Grandma who named me, for she wanted my life to be different from hers: bright and full of light—svéta—and that is what my name means in the Russian language.

  It never bothers me that adults in my family speak a funny language that I do not understand, the name of which I will not know until I am older. I grow up believing that speaking two languages is what adults do, like going to places they call “work” or making boring jokes, or drinking vodka. In my world, there is one language for everybody and a secret code for adults.

  When I go to school two years lat
er, I will learn that not every adult speaks two languages, and, in fact, that is one of the things that separates us from the families outside our door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MOSCOW NIGHTS

  I spend long hours on my little sofa going through Russian folktales with images of a burly Ded Moroz (Grandpa Frost) and his lovely granddaughter Snegurochka, Snow Maiden—both in felt boots, puffy red coats, and hats with white trim. I examine pictures of the hook-nosed Baba Yaga who is peeking from her wooden cabin perched upon a chicken leg. I know many of these tales by heart—my parents have read them to me many times, so I can repeat them aloud to Grandma. Also, I can count to twenty and back, I know the alphabet, and I can read several simple words. I can even scribble my name on a piece of paper that Grandma hands me on the condition that I give her “some peace and quiet for at least half an hour.”

  I am very proud of my writing, but Grandma does not have much time to admire my unsteady scrawls. She’s as busy as ever. Grandma and I have just returned from a rented summer house, a dacha, outside Moscow, and now Grandma has her hands full with unpacking and washing and, of course, cooking.

  “I wonder what your grandfather ate when I was away,” Grandma says, suspiciously eyeing her kitchen. I do not care about that. I want to know where my parents are. This past month, I did not see my father at all, and I saw Mom on Sundays only. She wasn’t much fun, though. She didn’t even play with me.

  She would say, “I’m tired. Find something else to do.” She had to get up early in the morning, take a bus and the metro to the train station, and then spend two hours on the train, loaded down with an array of heavy string bags containing a week’s worth of produce for Grandma and me, since nothing but milk and bread can be bought locally.

  Life at the dacha was so-o-o boring. Grandma and I mostly took walks around the block and listened to the radio, which was boring, too—a lot of talking, a lot of stormy music, and annoyingly long songs. There was just one song that I liked. It had a smooth, slightly drawn-out and warm melody—just like the summer evenings that sneaked up on us shortly after supper.

  In fact, that was the song’s name, Podmoskovnye Vechera (Moscow Nights), and it had words like “I will never forget a friend I met in Moscow.” That song was everywhere in 1957. I heard it pouring from our neighbors’ houses as Grandma and I walked toward the train station to meet Mom. It was sung on the platform by young people waiting for a train. And Mom, when she arrived, hummed it, too.

  Podmoskovnye Vechera became popular because of the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students. Mom talked about it a lot. It was the first international festival held in Moscow or anywhere in our country. Thousands of young people came to us from abroad, and all the Soviet republics sent their representatives to meet with the foreign guests. Government-sanctioned events and festivities took place all over the city. Music—even officially ostracized bourgeois jazz!—sounded everywhere, and young people of all nationalities danced in downtown Moscow, which, according to Mom, was “thoroughly cleaned.”

  Most of what Mom talked about went over my head. Yet I understood her last remark, and in my mind’s eye, I immediately pictured a detachment of bearded, hoarse-voiced dvorniki (men who take care of the city streets and sidewalks) fiercely sweeping the pavement with long-handled brooms, while raising thick clouds of dust and scattering lazy pigeons.

  “Did the dvorniki clean the streets for the dancers?” I asked.

  Mom just sighed and winked toward my grandmother. The “cleaning” had nothing to do with the dvorniniki, or dust, or pigeons, but with Moscow’s “unreliable elements”—criminal and political—who were moved 100 kilometers away from the city during the festival.

  Besides their bourgeois music, the foreigners shocked the Soviet people with their easy manners, broad smiles, and never-before-seen tight blue pants called “jeans.” Every time Mom visited, she described a new and exciting detail of the festival, including the fact that, for the first time in ten years, Soviet people were allowed to mingle with foreigners.

  “Not alone, you understand,” she said, giving Grandma a meaningful glance.

  “With a teacher?” I asked.

  “You can call it that, I suppose,” Mom said and then added, to me, “Why don’t you go out and play.”

  As I was slowly putting on my shoes, I heard Mom telling Grandma about somebody’s daughter, Nina, who came home with a large lock of hair shaved off, and how she was going to “pay for her behavior dearly.” That sounded so interesting that, despite my mother’s order, I immediately took off my shoes and returned to the room to find out more about Nina’s hair and her payment. Mom just rolled her eyes and switched to Yiddish, so I had to resign myself to putting my shoes back on and going outside.

  My mother, of course, was not talking about teachers’ supervision but about a ban that Moscow authorities imposed on Soviet youth to prevent them from meeting with foreign delegates unofficially. Yet curiosity, a post-war lack of men, and the hasty love that saturated the warm air of Moscow’s nights overcame the strict rules, and unsanctioned encounters took place all over the city.

  The foreigners thought nothing much about it, but the Russian women who were caught by the Soviet security services during raids of city hotels and parks had part of their hair shaved off. This made it easy for their college or work authorities to spot them and promptly “deal” with the women’s “amoral behavior.” Still, nine months later, more babies were born in Moscow than usual—some of them strikingly non-Russian in appearance.

  Now, with the boredom of the dacha and the excitement of the festival safely behind us, I am looking forward to seeing my parents.

  “Your mother will come tonight,” Grandma says, chopping a large onion and wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

  “You’ll soon move to your own apartment, you know.”

  No, I do not know. Nor am I sure that I like this news.

  “Are you moving with us, Grandma?”

  “I don’t think so. Your grandfather needs me here. Besides, you’ll have a nanny.”

  That is another thing I am not sure about. A strange nanny? I have never spent much time with strangers, and the mere thought that I will be left alone with one of them for a long time makes my heart sink. Besides, what if the nanny is like Zolushka’s (Cinderella’s) stepmother—fat, greedy and mean? Or even worse, like ugly Baba Yaga? (Baba Yaga is never far from my thoughts, because, as every Russian child knows, if you don’t behave, she’ll come and get you!)

  With trepidation, I pull out a book of Russian Folktales, find a picture of Baba Yaga, and carefully examine it. If my book is any indication, my future is grim. The old woman who stares back at me with an ominously crooked smile showing her only tooth definitely does not like children. In fact, she tried to bake some in a wood stove and eat them for dinner!

  When Mom appears in the doorway, I jump off the sofa, scattering books and pieces of paper with my name all around the floor, and blurt out, “Are we leaving now?”

  “No, no,” Mom laughs, bending over to give me a kiss. The apartment is not finished yet, and when it is, they will first move our furniture, and only then will I leave my grandparents.

  “Is my nanny there? What’s her name? Will she beat me?”

  No, the nanny is not there and, in fact, they haven’t found her, yet. I sigh with relief. Hopefully, they’ll never find anybody, and I will stay at the grandparents’, where life is not exiting but predictable, and where I do not have to worry about strange nannies, Zolushka’s stepmother, or Baba Yaga.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DON’T TELL ANYBODY

  I get my wish. For what seems a very long time—two years, by my recollection, and two weeks, according to my parents—I am left with my grandparents. Most of the day, I play with my old companion Masha, who by now has lost some of her blond locks and whose formerly blue eyes have turned gray. I like her all the same. She looks like girls in our neighborhood, with straw-colored hair and limpi
d eyes. I myself am dark-haired and my eyes are so dark that Grandma claims she cannot see my pupils. No kid on our street looks like me, nor do the characters from my favorite books. Even Zolushka, who appears dark and smudgy on the cover of my book, turns into a beautiful blond by the time she arrives at the king’s ball in her pumpkin carriage!

  On the weekends, despite the cold Moscow winter, Grandpa takes me for a walk. Grandma helps me put on valenki s galoshami (felt boots with black rubber overshoes), a threadbare gray fleece coat and hat, and a pair of thick mittens—all hand-me-downs from my cousin Sima. With a jerk that shakes my whole body, Grandma ties a scarf underneath the coat’s collar, and off we go.

  Our destination is a big city park nearby—Sokolniki. We cross several streets blanketed with fresh puffy snow and edged by wooden houses with white swollen roofs until we find ourselves at the park’s gate. The park is large, with broad alleys, a pond, soccer and hockey fields, as well as several amphitheaters that are used for holiday concerts and special events.

  I love this park. In the summer, it looks like a green island where trees and bushes spread free and untamed, where wind plays with the hair of the promenading public, and where a few mischievous squirrels make their exciting appearance. In the fall, maple leaves swirl in a melancholy dance before becoming a multicolored carpet that rustles under my feet. And springtime brings clusters of lilacs showing off their fragrant petals against heart-shaped leaves.

  Now, in December, the park is a winter wonderland. Snow-dusted trees, benches, and ice-cream kiosks sparkle under the frigid northern sun. White snow showers, set in motion by a fussy sparrow or a cawing crow, stream down from the stately pine trees. Sounds of a waltz pour from the loudspeakers of an ice rink, where young couples skate in elegant unison and single skaters perform fancy pirouettes.