The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

I remember the time when the fifth anniversary of the October coup approached. Huge red canvases smeared with slogans were stretched over dilapidated houses. Preobrazhenskii [Transfiguration] Street was renamed Trotsky Street. The Cathedral of the Transfiguration stood on this street. The faithful managed to keep it functioning. One could regularly hear the ringing of the bells from this cathedral. But some extremely logical person decided to rename it in honor of Trotsky Street: since the street was Trotsky, the cathedral should be Trotsky as well.

Celebratory concerts were being arranged in Odessa. There was no shortage of artists. The popular couplet-rhyming singers merely moved to the workingmen’s clubs. The concerts were broad in nature: mandatory revolutionary poems were read and songs were sung; magicians, acrobats, sword swallowers, comedians, and violinists playing serious classical music all performed.

Once someone came to Stoliarskii [a famous violin teacher] in order to select a violinist for a concert. I was the one chosen. I had been playing a Vivaldi concerto. After listening, the political commissar deemed Vivaldi totally compatible with the revolutionary spirit. My parents were told that I had to appear at a particular place at a particular hour or else. My parents humbly fulfilled this command and brought me to some smelly hall. I remember it even now. Someone was vomiting; someone was fighting and cursing. Apparently the audience at this concert sacredly held to the oath of Genghis Khan and did not wash. They smoked all kinds of crap. Breathing was impossible. I was choking and a vial of perfume was brought up to my nose. They stood me on a table—the better to see me. Some very tall dame accompanied me on the piano. The audience listened with great attention and rewarded me with a storm of applause.

As reward for the performance I was given a small bag of flour. This was considered a high honor, even for well-known artists. They also handed me an official paper declaring my participation in the concert and receipt of an honorarium. The document was signed by a commissar who was covered with machine-gun bandoleers from head to belly button. He spat on the seal and slammed it against the paper. Mother hurriedly removed me from the stinking hall where I could barely breathe.

Out on the street I greedily swallowed the fresh air and mother kept saying that “tomorrow we would celebrate my birthday in royal style.” She kept her

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Chapter Seventeen

word. We ate mamalyga [a dense corn bread] with our fingers after cutting it with a string. From the flour mother baked up a tasty pirog of sautéed cabbage and fish. Cherry brandy appeared on the table. Intricate toasts, each carrying a subtext, were made. Jokes were told. I was made to play and performed several exercises and etudes which required no accompaniment.

Suddenly, amidst the celebration there was a pounding on the door. Shouts and gunfire were heard. One would have thought that the regime had fallen and the Bolsheviks had been cleared from Odessa. But, unfortunately, that did not occur. A gang of drunken sailors burst into our apartment. They waved pistols and fired into the ceiling, shouting “mother f––ing this” and “mother f––ing that.” “What is this, the constituent assembly?” one of the enraged “guests” shouted. “The bourgeoisie is feasting during famine! We will crush all of you like bedbugs!” A sailor, who possessed a high, rooster’s voice was especially furious in his invective; he kept screaming, piercingly: “What did we struggle for, what did we shed our blood for?” “You’re traitors, counterrevolutionaries! Vipers! A conspiracy against the revolution! It won’t happen! It won’t happen!”

One of our guests discreetly disappeared during the confusion. He sensed that the situation might have a terrible outcome. These tyrants were merciless. They disregarded the screams of my sister and the weeping of women. They were ready to kill even a child. One of them ordered that all the food on the table be seized, and immediately a blanket was ripped from the bed and food thrown into it, not only the food but also plates, dishes, and flatware. Then they began pulling wedding rings off the women’s fingers and ripping the crosses from their breasts. “You’re all under arrest,” screamed the “revolutionary” in his piercing voice. “You’re all going to prison.”