The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

All stare at me and, bewildered, even I look at my humble dress, re-sewn out of something by my mother. Finding nothing reprehensible, I wait perplexed. Sustaining an effective pause, my accuser triumphantly announces:

“See how long it is? A whole quarter below the knees.”

Here he is truly correct. In accordance with fashion magazines, waistlines were raised and skirts lowered—and mother’s creation reflects these tendencies. In a period when engineers did not shave for weeks so as to graphically demonstrate their enthusiasm and zeal for the building of socialism—ostensibly having not even a minute for personal matters—and a student who showed up at an institute in a white shirt and tie would be immediately censured by the wall newspaper, any manifestation of femininity irritated the guardians of the purity of proletarian taste.

“I cannot consider the length of my dress to be a reason interfering with my entry into the professional union at this time,” I say with a non-penitential look, “Comrade Tarasov’s displeasure would be understandable if I raised my skirt a quarter above the knees.”

There are giggles in the hall, but Shura Zapiller, who is running the meeting, interrupts me: “A motion has been made to postpone the entry of comrade Pavlova into the professional union until she liquidates the left-over bourgeois habits in her consciousness. In the name of the institute’s professional organization, I fully support this action for re-education. Who is against?”

It is difficult to say when the necessary shifts in my behavior would have appeared. Unexpectedly, Sergo Ordzhonikidze [Minister of Heavy Industry] stopped accepting unshaven engineers and it was proposed to Komsomol secretaries that they lift the ban on white collars.

I was accepted as a union member in the fall.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nila Magidoff, Only to Travel! Only to Live!

Nila Magidoff was born in Belarus in 1905 to a peasant family. Her family moved to Kursk in central Russia when she was still a child. There she was accepted into a school for indigent girls funded by Maria Fedorovna (Romanov), the Queen Mother. After the Revolution the active and restless Nila trained to parachute jump and joined the Soviet merchant marine. These activities were far more interesting to her than the factory work that she was doing. In 1938 she married and American in Moscow, Robert Magidoff, a noted correspondent for the Associated Press and NBC radio. She was unexpectedly able to come to America in October 1941 where she became heavily involved as a speaker and fundraiser for Russian War Relief. The book Nila was co-written by Willie Snow Ethridge to whom Nila narrated her story. The narration makes for the colorful and idiosyncratic English. Excerpted from N. Magidoff and W.S. Ethridge, Nila. New York: Keedick Press, 1956.

I worked at this factory for some time and then I want to see the world. I understand I can go to the Merchant Marines and apply to be a sailor. I had a nice, clean biography. It was absolutely pure like a white page—nothing written there. I came from poor family with no capitalists, which was all they required. So here I went. It was very strange, I suppose you think, Willie, this married life. I don’t understand it myself. I loved my husband very much, and he loved me. It was just that I was young and crazy to travel and Karel at this time was so involved in his work.

I was assigned to a big freight boat, the Karl Marx. It was carrying the sunflower seeds and also butter. For weeks I hadn’t seen the butter. Russia exported everything: butter, ham, caviar. There was a crew of fifty-two people, fifty man and two woman.

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I don’t know why, but I cut my hair then with a bang. I really looked like a gangster. Not the third-degree gangster, but the lowest gangster. I wore a brown flannel shirt and black skirt. There was no uniform; you wear what you want.

Just before we sailed some kind of political commissar came on the boat and made a long speech how you are supposed to behave highly. All the crew, new and old, was given this lecture on behavior. We must remember we represent the new Soviet Republic abroad. This, you see, was in 1926. We must not involve in any political situation, but if we are involved, we must remember we are Soviet citizens and even if we are not members of the Party we must stick to the Party line. And he gave us to understand we had members of the family left behind.

But I didn’t mind the lecture. I was afraid of only one thing—that they take me off the boat. Up to the last minute I was afraid they take me off. Only to travel! Only to live! I sent a telegram to Mother, “I’m going abroad. Thinking of you.”