SOME STEPS IN THE PAST: AN ATTEMPT AT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Mikhail Yeselson
3. MY PARENTS
My parents were journalists. This word defines everything: the mode of life, the habits, and the circle of personal contacts.
My father was the oldest son of a poor Jewish family. Grandpa was a very kind man; Granny was very wise. Such a combination produced four bright sons who did less than they could do. Their Jewish origin, the Soviet Power, and the Second World War did not permit them to develop completely.
So, my father had three younger brothers. The first of them was a journalist, too. He was a very witty man, whose jokes were repeated by people all over his city. Unfortunately, in his youth he had joined the trozkist anti-Bolshevik organization for a short time, and this episode spoiled his entire future. From time to time, during a meeting of editorial staff, somebody stood up and asked: "Do you know that the former trozkist is among us, and it is Leonid Yeselson?" After that, he had to find a new job. (My father faced the same problem: "Do you know that the trozkist's brother...") He defended the Soviet Power in the World War II and died just after the war was finished.
The second brother was a talented chemist; he was young when he was killed in the war.
The youngest brother became a well-known physicist working in the field of low temperature effects. His life was longer than his brothers', but the war's wounds and illnesses caught him after all.
My father started working as a journalist at very early age. When he was only nineteen, he was already managing the newspaper for the young people of his town. At a New Year's party he was marked by a short girl who wrote good poems, and, waiting for a big career breakthrough and fame, worked as a typist in the editorial office. Of course, you guessed it: she was my mother. Now she is ninety, but her poems had not lost their charm. Regrettably, they are known only by a narrow circle of relatives and close friends.
My mother was the youngest child of a lawyer's family. Such a social origin caused her expulsion from high school because the new Soviet Power thought that a lawyer's daughter had no right to learn in a Soviet school. So, she joined the newspaper's staff.
I was born in 1931, in the year of the big starvation in the Ukraine. I grew up in the editorial offices. The newspapers' libraries were my second home, and the smell of news print was the most definitive smell of my youth. Too early I learned to read between the lines; I was a part of this world, bone of its bone.
My childhood fell on years when the Communist terror was increased and the country was horror-stricken. I know this time mostly from books and my relatives' stories, but one event I remember clearly.
I was eight when Dad, Mom and I went to Moscow by train. When we went into our compartment, a fat, tall man in a checkered coat was already sitting there. He was a foreigner, a physicist from Belgium. My father could speak English a little, and he was interested in physics. He and the Belgian were speaking all night long. Before the Belgian said good-bye, he had given us his address and had promised to send some books to my father.
My God, how afraid my parents were after that! They were simply shaken by fear! The fact was that Soviet people were not allowed to meet foreigners without permission from KGB (they also were required to write a report about such a meeting). The address was burned with matches; my parents waited for the promised books with real horror. Fortunately, these books had never arrived.
From that time on, this mystical fear was passed to me. I grew up and became an adult; like all Soviet people I was frightened by the invisible but terrible force. The humiliation that I felt due to this fear was one of the reasons for my emigration.
World War II was over. After 1949, anti-Semitism inspired by Stalin swept over the country. In 1950, PRAVDA published some articles against the most famous Jewish figures of art and literature, and a very important article for the future of all Soviet science, titled "About the pernicious cosmopolitan doctrine by physicist-theorist Frankel."
Just why was the word cosmopolitan used? It was an interesting question, because most of people always considered "cosmopolitan" a very positive definition. The point was that all Soviet leaders were bad educated men. In search of an abusive word for people who thought (and said) that something abroad was better than inside the USSR they chose this one. Since the beginning of the anti-Jewish campaign, this word was used as an official synonym of Jewish.
This started the most bitter period in the life of Soviet Jewish people, named A struggle against cosmopolitans.
I think I must add some words about the peculiarity of time that I describe.
Soviet Jewish people distinguished two sorts of anti-Semitism: everyday (common) and state (governmental).
Common anti-Semitism almost was not displayed before the World War II. It started appearing during the war in the districts that were spilling over with people running from the Nazis, and after the war in the regions that were temporarily occupied by German troops. It has become stronger since 1949-50 as a result of governmental anti-Semitism. It was not the same in different parts of country: anti-Semitism was very strong in Ukraine where it had the deep historical roots, but it was weaker in Siberia, in the republics near the Baltic See, in the very industrial districts and towns, and hardly existed at all in the North districts.
Governmental anti-Semitism started occurring in 1949 when Stalin changed his attitude to Israel. I think that the most part of my generation first began to feel the governmental anti-Semitism during 1950-51. It included top-secret instructions about rules of hiring Jews, admitting them at colleges and universities, transferring the Jews who were already working or studying, limiting the percentage of Jews in their work-places, etc. These rules were applied to all position in ideology, mass-media, education, the military industry and sciences; top and middle positions in general industry and other fields of science; only top positions in the service industries. The rules were also concerned with traveling abroad on business and vacation, accepting prestige awards, and many other aspects of the Soviet Jewish life.
So, all of us were under the oppression of anti-Semitism, but the degree and sort of pressure depended on the circumstances of life.
By that time, my father was a well-known journalist and had taken one of the top positions in the main Ukrainian newspaper. He was dismissed and was unemployed for two years. I remember that he sent his applications to all the newspapers throughout the country, but could not find a job because his name was included in the black list of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Those were very hard years for our family.
At last, in 1953 Stalin died. After a while, the Jews began returning to their offices little by little, but anti-Semitism did not decrease. It was growing and spreading, becoming not only a direction that came straight from the horse's mouth but one that permeated all Soviet society.
My father was hired by a small popular science magazine, but he could not stand the ordeals he had recently been through and died when he was only 47. It was a terrible loss to me.
Why did I not start to hate the Soviet Power just at that time? Could it really be true that my mind was washed by official propaganda so carefully since my childhood? These are not simple questions, and the answers are not simple, but it is an other story.
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Mikhail Yeselson, 1996