by Masha Gessen
It is perhaps a measure of my reassimilation that I have done what Russians do in times of stagnant fear: I have retreated into the cocoon of my family. I have done less and less journalism over the last couple of years. A year and a half ago my partner, Svenya, and I adopted a three-year-old boy, whose name is Vova. Three months ago I gave birth to his sister, whom we named Yolochka. Unlike both me and her father, she has light eyes and hair, which is a brown reddish color; I trace that and her straight, flared eyebrows to her great-grandfather Samuil. Since she started sleeping through the night, I have been able to work while she sleeps.
It is almost five in the morning. Today was a big day. Vova seems to have gotten the hang of reading: he will be able to move on to books in a few weeks. Yolochka is big enough to have sat, for the first time, facing forward in the baby carrier Svenya and I take turns wearing. I am finally finishing the book. Downstairs, the work is almost done on my grandmother Ruzya’s new apartment: she was willing to give up the Writers’ Union flat to be near her great-grandchildren, and we bought and renovated the apartment directly below us. In a couple of weeks, Ester will return from her annual stay in the United States. That day or the next I will take Yolochka the dozen blocks or so to Tverskaya (as Gorky Street is now known again) to meet her other great-grandmother and welcome her home.
THIS BOOK IS FOR MY CHILDREN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first third of this book was written while I was in Vienna as a fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, and I thank the Institute for its generosity. The second third was written while I was a guest at my father’s house on Cape Cod, and I thank Alexander Gessen for his hospitality. The final third I wrote at home in Moscow, while my baby daughter was asleep, so I thank Yael Gessen for sleeping through the night between the ages of two and four months—and express the hope that this habit may one day be reestablished. My brother, Keith Gessen, is always my first reader and best critic. This book owes a great deal to the efforts of my agent, Elyse Cheney, Dial Press editor Susan Kamil, and Beth Rashbaum, the closest of readers and the most patient of editors. But most of all, I am grateful to my grandmothers, Ruzya Solodovnik and Ester Gessen, who, incredibly, told me their stories and let me not only write but actually publish a book about them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MASHA GESSEN was born in the U.S.S.R., immigrated to the United States when she was fourteen years old, and later returned to Russia as a foreign correspondent. She now makes her permanent home in Moscow with her partner, Svenya, and their two children.
