When I was transferred to the 10th grade, I entered preparatory department of the Steel Institute. I met Jew Boris Leviatov and Russian Valentin Sokolov. We were the boys from intelligentsia families. We used to discuss all kinds of subjects starting from the sense of life and up to the political disputes, Stalin’s dictatorship and NKVD [31], subordinated to Stalin or Nietzsche [32] and all kinds of things. Each of the interlocutors was trying to show off his erudition depicting the revolutionary hero or the movie character. Nobody could ever perceive what would be the outcome of such games of ours. It was a mere adolescent romance and the desire to stand out. After preparatory course we did not keep in touch.
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Displaying 37921 - 37950 of 50826 results
Yuri Fiedelgolts
In 1947 I entered Theatre Institute, the Department of actor's skill. It appealed to me. The teachers were happy with me and they said I would have a bright future. I was an avid reader. I was took an interest in the history of the theatre, biographies of great actors. I thought I liked what I was doing. I was happy. I was not interested in politics at that time.
At the end of the first year in 1948 I was arrested. I was taken straight from the classes and sent to the department of the reconnaissance SMERSH [33], located at Kropotkinskaya street. It is still there. They needed at least a formal confession of guilt for my case to file to court. I was pushed hard in the house of detention. I was blamed in foundation of the anti-Soviet circle and participation in its activity. Then I found out that Valentin Sokolov was the stooge. At that time I thought that he did it because he was a coward, being afraid of the beating and torture. In the 1990s I had a chance to look at my case and I saw the reference to be submitted to the martial court stating that Sokolov was the agent of the KGB Secret Service [34] and had the nickname ‘Rodionov’. I did not pay that much attention to that. Maybe that reference was one of KGB schemes. Who knows, may Sokolov was the agent. At any rate, the case was filed against the three of us. Sokolov was the witness at the line-up, both with me and Boris. When the search was made in our house, they found my diaries. They played an important role on the trial and were used as material evidence. I described all kinds of events in my life in the diary and admitted rebellious thoughts. It was the time when the struggle was actively taken against rootless cosmopolites and the three of us perfectly fit the article.
I would have run amuck if I had been interrogated longer. The sleuths were putting both moral and physical pressure. There were two interrogators- ‘kind’ and ‘evil’.
Only when the hemorrhage did no stop until the morning, the chief doctor understood that she had overplayed. I was sent to the barrack for disabled crammed with dying people. I got more and more feeble every day. I was a bliss for me. I did not have to go to work. Nobody pushed me to get up, there was no convoy… It was serene and quite. The doctors did not bother to come; there was no medicine. We were hardly fed, but I had no feeling of hunger. I was lying in my bad feeling happy and waiting for the death to knock on my door. The only medical assistance I got were injections of calcium chloride. Strange as it may be –they helped and my hemorrhage stopped.
I am not sure what kind of outcome I would have if I were not called by the management and read the order on my pardon in the middle May 1954. It was the time when the campaign on the investigation of the cases of the innocent convicts was being held. The lawyer, mother of the Boris Lyadov, filed appellation in the supreme court, the collegian of the martial court regarding our common case.
When our case was reconsidered, the Supreme Court left the charge in accordance with article 58- anti-Soviet propaganda, but cancelled item 11- the criminal group. Thus instead of 10 years of camp, we were supposed to have only 6, but we were in the going on the 7th year. Thus, we were to be released.
When our case was reconsidered, the Supreme Court left the charge in accordance with article 58- anti-Soviet propaganda, but cancelled item 11- the criminal group. Thus instead of 10 years of camp, we were supposed to have only 6, but we were in the going on the 7th year. Thus, we were to be released.
I was sent to the automobile repair plant in Karaganda commandant’s office. The profession was not new to me. I worked in the vehicle repair workshops during my service in the camp.
Mother was even more stressed with this song than with the swearing at the train station. She was about to feint. When aunt Dusya left, she said that I would not live in that criminal den and started looking for an apartment for me. She rented me a room from a very pleasant Jewish family, the Kouritskiys, the former Kievans. They were exiled to Karaganda before the war was unleashed. They had an only son, who was demented and spent almost all the time in the mental asylum. They gave me the son’s room and took good care of me as if I was their son.
I was taken from the first course of the institute. I decided not to waste my time in the exile and enter the institute. There were 3 institutes in Karaganda: medical, polytechnic and teachers’ training. I went to submit my documents to the teachers’ training. It was futile! I was told in the special department that my documents would not be accepted: what things might the exiled teach soviet children?! I went to the polytechnic and then to medical. The result was the same. The only institution I could enter was mining college. So, I went there. I was afflicted with tuberculosis so I could be admitted only to the faculty of the civilian and industrial construction. I could not work in the mines because of my health. It was hard for me to enter the college. I had to get ready for the entrance exams, and I had forgotten almost everything I knew. Hard physical labor made me a dumb primitive guy, and at times I thought I had no grey cells remained. When I started cudgeling my brains, I found it difficult, but I had enough perseverance and willingness to study. I told myself that I was a nobody, even on the free side – I had no specialty. Thus, I was spurring myself. I managed to get ready for the entrance exams and passed them. In studied in the evening, and worked during the daytime.
I still lived in Karaganda, when Nikita Khrushchev [43] exposed Stalin’s crimes on ХХ party congress [44]. I took Khrushchev’s speech like a sip of spring water making me clean. I read his report, published in the papers, over and over again and almost knew it by heart. Some of the teachers suggested that I should make the report to the students using the materials of the congress, and I willingly undertook the task. No matter how hard they blame Khrushchev for the coming events during his reign, I think that he could be forgiven merely because of the Twentieth Party Congress. It was a great step.
In 1956, after the Twentieth Party Congress rehabilitations commenced and I was also exonerated after 2-year exile. I was released and given a passport instead of the certificate on the exile. I was entitled to return to Moscow, get the residence permit [45] and live like a free person. I obtained the certificate on rehabilitation only in 1962, when I was operated on lung caverns in the hospital.
After operation I found a job in construction design institute Mosproject. I was exonerated already. I had not got a diploma yet, there was still one year left before graduation, but I could not stay in Karaganda any longer. I was hired as a technician and entered evening department of Moscow Engineering and Construction University, Civilian and Industrial Construction.
At any rate I obtained a diploma and had worked for the design institute Mosproject 1961, and retired in 1989.
I wanted to marry only a Jew. Yes, I saw the way my parents had lived in mutual love and respect, and there were other examples as well. I also witnessed how people concealed that they were Jews and, being shy to admit that. My close friend told me that he liked one girl who did not like Jews very much and he did not reveal what nationality he was. Even now I know people who conceal that they are Jews, but I see no reason for that. I had been hurt by anti-Semitists for quite a lot, even by my family. I wanted to feel at ease, but it is possible only when there is no issue on nationality segregation. I knew the families where the spouses were of different nationalities, but when having a tiff, the issue on nationality came up all of a sudden.
We had an ordinary wedding. We got registered in the state marriage registration office and had a wedding party for our close people. We lived with the parents. By that time our neighbor, colonel, in communal apartment, got a lodging and the unoccupied room was given to my parents by Ispolkom [46]. It turned out that we had a separate two-room apartment.
My mother was a well-bred Russian woman, raised in the best tradition. That is why she did not accept the soviet regime. Communistic ideas made her smile ironically. Of course, such an upbringing did not nurture anti-Semitism in any way nothing to mention that mother was head over heels in love with my father. She had been a Jew in her soul since getting married. She adored father, and admired Jews on the whole. She considered those people to be special, higher than the rest. The father was an ideological stickler of the communistic ideals, and here their opinions diverged in spite of the fact that mother had unconditionally followed father. When my son was a baby, mother was concerned why we did not made circumcision to the baby. I was aware that father might have disapproved that and I dodged from answering.
My son has always been aloof and tried not to tell about his child’s concerns. Later on I found out that my son, even when being a child, had to come across anti-Semitism. When my son told me that he was beaten up by a caboodle in the yard, who cried out ‘Yid’, I remembered chivalrous plays from my childhood. Mikhail was attacked by the group, being beat by the sticks and metal objects. Once he was almost murdered. In summer he was sent to the pioneer camp. The boys did not merely dare to beat Yid, they also tied up a plummet to the wire and hit my son in the face. His teeth were crashed, jaw was broken. He was hospitalized. It was a big stress for my son. Only after that he told me that it was not the first time, when he was beaten just for being a Jew, just because he had the last name of Fiedelgolts. When Mikhail was an adult, he told me when he was transferred to another school, the new classmates gave him a cold shoulder just because he was a Jew. He was beaten during the break to be put down. The son did not leak a word about it at home.
Having finished school Mikhail could not enter the institute. He was drafted in the army. He was lucky he was in the tank troops in Germany. He was a telephone operator. To a certain extent it kept him away from anti-Semitism, which might mostly likely have happened if was on the territory of the USSR. Having been demobilized from the army, he entered Moscow Institute of Telephone Communication. It was in Brezhnev’s times [47] in 1982, when anti-Semitism was spread all over the country. At that time demobilized from the army had some benefits and it must have worked. When son graduated, he was employed by the telephone communication company.
In the 1970s there was the outbreak of mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The latter was the country-symbol to me, the state founded by Jews. Of course, I dreamt of it, but at the same time I understood that there was no need for me to leave.
I had to come across anti-Semitism rather often. The most horrible for me was the fact that anti-Semitism was not only spread among young people, but such ideas were shared by front-line soldiers, mature people, who did not spare their lives to save the world from fascism. I had to undergo treatment in cardiologic sanatoriums. Being exonerated I was sent to the best sanatoriums of the country, where the veterans of war also took the treatment. There were cases when the veterans of war with the awards said to me that they did not want to sit close by because I was a Jew. I also heard their talks between themselves regarding my getting the voucher for their sanatorium because I was a Yid. They said that all Yids were conniving and knew how to settle well.
I have always been intolerant to anti-Semitism, and I would not change. My father has also been like that. He hated both fascism and anti-Semitism. I remember that in my presence he spat in the face of one anti-Semitist and was not ashamed to do that. By the way, that man was big and much stronger than my father. Father spat in his face and sat: «Here you go, fascist! ». But father did not recognize anti-Semitism on the state level, organized by the party. Father has remained ideological communist in spite of the things I and my parents had to go through. I think, international ideas of communism might have affected my father. My father found them the most attractive. He had to live in the times of pogroms, admission quotas for the Jews. Practically the same things, only inveigled had existed during Soviet regime, but father was oblivious to that. He so far away from politics. He believed in his ideals. In spite of everything he took communistic doctrine, which appealed to him to be right.
I was imbued with optimism when Gorbachev [48] started a new course of the party, perestroika [49]. There were a lot of demonstrations in Moscow. Everybody could speak his mind from the tribune without feeling timid! I was crying from happiness that things were getting recovered. Now I feel that all was built on sand and did not meet expectations. It hurts and I am thinking “was my imprisonment and suffering futile? Are those things I am doing and writing now, futile?.
I have been writing since childhood, first verses, then prose, but I did not find it important. I started doing it professionally (if I can say that) after I retired in 1989. There was a literary institution Magistral in Moscow [literary institution Magistral was founded in Moscow in the 1960s and united officially unrecognized poets and writers, whose works were unpublished by state publishers], Poet Grigoriy Levin was at the lead. He was an erudite. I was involved in work for this institution. I met many poets and writers. Then I took to writing more seriously. I write about the past and the present. My works were published in different collection of stories and magazines. I wrote reminiscences of my camp life the collection of stories «Still a Burden», published in 2004 in Moscow with assistance of the compiler. I still keep on writing and I would like to get as much publications as possible. Literature appeals to me. I do not find it interesting just to enjoy my life of the pensioner. I would like to do something.
As for the Jewry, I have always identified myself as Jew and will remain a Jew till the end of my days, especially is there are anti-Semitists. When I am invited to hold a speech, I always recite my verses dedicated to the Jewish theme. Jewish people are heroic. Each member of the tribe takes a credit that the peoples have survived under such hard conditions. A person becomes Jew at birth and remains a Jew for good. Jews did not just manage to ascertain, they also became the pride of the nation, which hosted and despised them.
In 1989 another organization was founded Memorial [50]. It united the victims of repressions, both Stalin’s and fascists. I have taken an active part in Memoria since its foundation, since its first Memorial conference. I was a coordinator of Memorial of our district. There are some interesting personalities among the former repressed. I meet with them. So I have a wide circle of acquaintances and a wide range of interests.
I still consider unbreak of USSR to be a big mistake because the economy of the country was based on centralization during all regimes, starting with the tsarist one. All was bound in one node: cotton was sent to the plants in Moscow bound from Turkistan and Uzbekistan, tractors were assembled from the parts manufactured in Ukraine and Russia and so on. All those ties have been broken. Each ethnicity has the right for self-determination, but the country could gain independence without violating this economic interaction. Here all political tasks were resolved and economic nodes were exterminated.
I always was actively against anti-Semitism, both in Memorial and during discussion with Russian human rights activist Sergey Kovalev. He is dealing with the violation of human rights in Chechnya [Chechen War] [51].
By the way, anti-Semitism was brought to Moscow by the new-comers, who name themselves Moscovites, because those people who cannot study well and get a useful and lucrative job and find their place in life, are inclined to blame ‘aliens’ (Jews in this case) in their unsuccessfulness. In any hamlet or a hick town they might tell you for instance: «We have a librarian Abramovich, a Jew, but a very good person ». Please pay attention to the conjunction ‘but’, which means that the rest of Jews are bad, but that one, was an exception. From many anti-Semitists you might here that many Yids are puds, scums, but he has a friend, Jew, and he would not replace him with 3-4 Russians. It is anti-Semitism. During my lifetime I will keep on fighting it they way I possibly can.
I do not work for Jewish organizations. I think that Jewry is personal, it is mine and I do not want to make out of it the source of welfare. I go to synagogue, not as often as I would like to because of my poor health. I am happy to go there whenever I can. I do not go there only on holidays, even when my soul is looking for it. I like to take part in that sacrament. Each visit to the synagogue is joyful for me.
Again there were interrogations … Then they were sick and tired of me and sent me to the prison for ‘additional effect’. Those people framed a mythical anti-Soviet organization from our circle, consisting of three people, and enjoyed awards and promotion. My father was also affected with my arrest. He was interrogated for couple of times. It was very rough and humiliating. They even used expletive words and threats. Of course, it was very unpleasant for him. By the way, during interrogation they kept on saying that father and I were Jews.