My Russian Family Read online

  There is a forsaken steppe around,

  Where a Coachman lay dying,

  Giving his friend last instructions,

  In the face of death.

  Give my horses to my father.

  Give my last kind regards to my mother,

  Tell my wife, I froze to death on the steppes,

  And took her love with me to my grave.

  Tell her, “Do not grieve,

  But marry someone and be happy.”

  The last two lines of the song always made the women cry. “Such a kind and caring man,” they would say. “He is not a jealous husband! He wants his wife to be happy even after his death.”

  The haunting words and melody even made an impression on Hollywood. The Enemy at the Gate is a memorable film based on the German Sixth Army’s Siege of Stalingrad by the Volga River during World War II. This ancient lament is included in the background music.

  After the war ended, many peasants returned home minus an arm or a leg. Some of Varvara’s neighbors became widows, including Dahsha. She grieved so much over her husband that she became sick. Several times her old love Georgi asked for her hand, but she answered sadly, “My husband did-n’t have your silky, golden, curly hair and he was not handsome, but he had a golden heart.” Her voice choked as her blue eyes misted over, “I love him still and I will love him forever for his kindness. I cannot betray my memories of him.”

  Dahsha remained single for the rest of her life.

  Uncle Andre

  Literal translation:

  Even a wise man is sometimes unintelligent.

  Meaning:

  Homer sometimes nods.

  7. The Ambition

  HIS BARE FEET WENT NUMB AS THEY LEFT TINY FOOTPRINTS in the snow. The little eight-year-old peasant boy trudged home from school for the last time. It was October of 1901 and very cold to be going barefoot. It had been a typical Russian autumn—snowy and frosty. His father Yemelyan was too poor to buy shoes for the boy. It had been a bad year and the family barely survived. Money for shoes and clothes even for the adults was unavailable. The boy was Varvara’s younger brother Andre Yemelyanovich Lapshin.

  The Lapshin family and many other Russian peasant families always had shoe problems. It was common to buy a large pair of shoes for the winter and leave them near the front door so they could be shared by the entire family when they went outside in the snow. When the father had to work outside, the rest of the family had to stay inside their home. Some of the landowners would not even let their peasants go into their forest, thus denying them access to special tree bark used to make shoes.

  Andre was a remarkable member of the Lapshin family. At a very young age he came to understand the price of education and many other things. When he realized that his dream of becoming a lawyer was unattainable, Andre could not stop crying for days. However, the boy was mollified in knowing that he had learned letters. He knew how to put letters together to make words and he could read. The talented lad also understood how to work with numbers.

  When he was around ten years old, young Andre became an orphan and he moved in with his older half-sister Katia and her family. He grew up as a simple peasant working in fields for rich owners. His family had just a small area, less than a hectare of their own to farm, so the boy could make more money working for the large landowners. Nevertheless, he always found the time and energy to further educate himself. The boy borrowed scarce books from the schoolteacher and anyone else who had them and he read almost every night. They had only one kerosene lamp but he seldom used it because fuel was expensive. He kept on hand a supply of large wooden splinters which he would set fire to and use for his reading, one hand holding the book and the other hand holding the light.

  The basswood splinters came from the boy’s woodworking. During the long winter evenings, he made wooden plates, cups, spoons, whistles, whip handles, and various toys. The linden tree provided long narrow bands of bark that Andre wove into baskets and sandals to wear in the summer. Most of them he sold even though they brought in only a small amount of money. However, Andre had developed a natural talent that gained him many admirers and gave him confidence in himself. One of the books he borrowed as a young boy described how to make Russian-style fireplaces. Young Andre studied it and years later was paid to build fireplaces in people’s homes.

  As a young man he became interested in politics. The 20th century began for the industrialized world like a boiling cauldron full of growth in radical new directions. All this energy and change was a huge motivation behind Uncle Andre’s continuous search for information. Newspapers were rare in the country and he was always searching for them to read their political stories. However, articles in the newspapers were nearly as old as stories from books because villages did not have any stores that sold newspapers. Even the small local town of Vyshetravino, which was just an overgrown village, did not sell newspapers. When peasant youths in the country gathered for dancing at someone’s house in the winter or outside under the trees in summer, Andre’s friends gathered around him to listen to his stories from books or newspapers, whether old or new. When Andre talked, nobody wanted to dance; they’d prick up their ears with great attention. He also gained a reputation as a person who could bring justice for his friends. If they had some disagreement they would depend upon Andre to sort it out. He functioned like a negotiation lawyer for the young peasants.

  At that time, the vast majority of citizens were peasants, some 90 percent of Russians were born in the country and few of them could read. Workers in the cities were a different story and the majority of them became literate and knowledgeable on current events. But they lived in squalor amid atrocious conditions, as the business owners and managers, and the police considered them almost non-human, as exploitable economic units. Beatings and mutilations occurred. Workers numbered in the millions and they maintained strong ties with the peasantry. They had come to the cities to become workers and they were expected to send money home. Often they would return to help with the critical fall harvest before the long hard winter.

  In return, the villages provided a sanctuary to the underprivileged workers who had gotten in trouble with the authorities. This link between workers and peasants was also important in maintaining traditions and religious beliefs. Peasants joyfully celebrated Easter, Christmas, and other events. The poorly educated and badly paid local Russian Orthodox priests were an integral part of daily life as they blessed babies and crops. But priests had only a limited power over peasants and paganism. The tsar was a traditionalist, so political and social changes were rare.

  Although Andre was my father’s uncle, everyone in the entire family including his sister Varvara and myself called him Uncle Andre his whole life as a measure of respect. Many beautiful girls wanted to be his bride even though he was poor and not handsome. He was skinny and a head shorter than his older sister Varvara. His face was far from perfection with his long nose and small sharp eyes. However, the rapt expression on his face and the intensity of his gray eyes attracted numerous girls, even some from rich families. Surprisingly, the patriarchs of the rich families were not against having the poor man as a son-in-law. They were always saying that this young man would build his life strong and secure. The romance was all one-sided, though. Not one girl was able to stir his heart.

  However, women’s efforts were one of the movements Uncle Andre closely followed. A peace movement on the eve of World War I involved the heavily motivated Russian women who organized Russia’s first International Woman’s Day in 1913. The force behind this was popular and the following year some eight million women in Europe held rallies to protest the war.

  Uncle Andre was still single when World War I started in 1914. The government recruited the 21-year-old to fight Germans. He spent a few years in the frontline trenches, feeding lice, dodging bullets, and getting old before his time.

  Originally it was a patriotic war, which brought people closer together while it increased industrial expansions.
As the war moved on from honor and glory to blood and mud, the economy and the people became strained and the situation changed drastically. The front line troops fought the Germans while enduring shortages in their supply system. The soldiers became experienced in foraging for food and supplies. Sometimes they retreated for want of ammunition, and casualty figures escalated. The injustices arising from the huge gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” bore its bitter fruit. Conflicts arose between officers and enlisted men as civilian strikes, mutinies, and demonstrations became widespread.

  Workers and peasants supported the magnificent idea of land reform. The Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s popular slogan, “Peace for People, Land for Peasants, Bread for Hunger!” made every peasant from the country and every worker from the city passionate advocates for the Bolsheviks.

  Uncle Andre enthusiastically supported the Bolsheviks because he saw it as a chance to have his own land, to work on it and be independent. He became a political activist and his army regiment elected him to the Bolshevik Committee. This was a process for frontline soldiers to counteract the tsarist influence from old regime officers. During the typically large meetings, no one could make speeches more humorous, pointed, and true than this brave soldier could. He had a talent for writing and delivering speeches that inspired men, since he believed in it with all his heart and soul.

  The speeches, revolutionary activity, and unrest grew stronger and more serious. There were thousands of “Uncle Andres” scattered all over Russia who were speaking their minds. Andre knew that it was in the Bolsheviks interest for the Tsar’s Army to be weakened in the now unpopular war with Germany, so he did not support fighting the Germans. He did-n’t believe newspaper stories that Lenin was a German spy. He doubted that the German government gave Lenin piles of money to make a revolution in Russia so that it would be easier for Germany to conquer Russia. Andre also did not believe that Lenin was simply extracting revenge against the tsar for the misfortunes of his family.

  Time slid by and World War I disappeared for most Russian soldiers—they simply gave up on it. Uncle Andre went back to his village and continued to agitate people for the Bolshevik’s causes.

  Russian women rose again on the last Sunday in February 1917 to strike for “bread and peace.” Political leaders opposed the timing but the Russian women proceeded as only women can do. The tsar was forced to abdicate four days later and Russian women subsequently gained the right to vote under the provisional government. The Soviets later adopted the Gregorian calendar and that made the protest day equivalent to March 8, which later became International Women’s Day (IWD) now celebrated around the world.

  A Provisional new government was established in St. Petersburg on March 2, 1917 and the first elected head of it, with the tsar’s blessing, was Prince Georgy Lvov, an aristocrat with a law degree and a background of voluntary war relief work and social reform. Unable to satisfy the demands of the increasingly radical general population, he resigned July 7, and Aleksandr Kerensky succeeded him as prime minister. Kerensky, also a lawyer, had initially won respect defending revolutionaries and later as an excellent speaker and politician.

  As the head of the Provisional Government, Kerensky instituted basic civil liberties including universal suffrage and equal rights for women throughout Russia. He was one of the most popular figures among the revolutionary leadership. However, as hard as he tried, he failed to control or unite all the political factions and he lost the confidence of the left wing. People wanted a complete break with the past and the provisional government was tied to it.

  It was an emotional, complicated, and dangerous time in Russia for everyone including Uncle Andre. Property-owning classes wanted a political revolution that would just transfer the tsar’s former power to themselves. Russian peasants and workingmen had suffered imprisonment, execution, and exile by the thousands and they were ready to fight for real change. Various groups had conflicting views on how to best proceed. Some in the government wanted a German victory that would eventually allow the tsar’s former power to be restored. There was manufacturing and transportation sabotage from high places resulting in devastating shortages of supplies on the front lines.

  There was no shortage of highly educated intelligent people supporting the revolution. The movement was awash in covert intelligence and misinformation, as well as potential violence with armed men and shifting loyalties. Surprisingly, the revolution remained relatively bloodless.

  They called the Russian Revolution “The Great Adventure.” It occurred during a foreign war (World War I), a Social Revolution, and a Political Revolution. The Bolshevik political party had 350 thousand members in autumn of 1917, and on the night of October 25 they led soldiers, sailors, workers, and progressive intelligentsia to overthrow the tsar’s Provisional Government. This triggered similar events in towns and cities across Russia.

  The Great October Socialist Revolution under Vladimir Lenin was the triumph of the Bolshevik as they led the peoples of the Great Russian Empire in the revolt that brought freedom to about 145 million of the world’s most oppressed citizens.

  After the revolt, Russian soldiers turned their bayonets against their Russian army commanders. The Revolution Leader Vladimir Lenin promised some land for each peasant who fought in the Red Army. Lenin was honest and kept his promises but people still had to fight for their right to have land. Uncle Andre was ready to fight to the death for the land.

  Uncle Andre believed that this revolution was one of the great events in human history. He saw everything change when the Bolsheviks seized power. The Russian revolutionaries optimistically believed that a magnificent life was ahead of them and they were ready to fight and even to die for it. Uncle Andre stayed active in talking to people, supporting Lenin, and encouraging people to take up arms.

  The nobles, aristocracy, and wealthy people were fighting the revolutionaries. They united and created a White Army headed mainly by former tsarist generals and admirals. It was a vicious and uncompromising civil war as the Whites fought desperately against Lenin’s Red regime to regain their power, land, and treasures. Brothers, fathers, sons, neighbors, and townsmen killed each other!

  The depth of hatred that existed is indicated by the early Red Army’s abandonment of the institution of an “officer corps” with all its ranks, epaulets, and insignia as a heritage of tsarism. Red Army officers were called commanders and a numbering system of K-1 (lowest) through K-14 (highest) was used. It was not until World War II that the system reverted to officers with ranks.

  Both Prince Lvov and Aleksandr Kerensky, the former heads of the provisional government, barely managed to evade arrest and they eventually escaped to Europe. Uncle Andre supported the Bolsheviks in detaining the tsar and his family. Eventually this royal family and some close friends were moved for security reasons to western Siberia. Revolutionaries later killed the family to avoid their rescue by a unit of anti-Bolshevik “White” forces that were approaching that area.

  The countries of the Atlantic Block (England, France, and the United States) supported the White Army. Further, they possessed large standing armies thanks to mobilization for World War I, which ended appropriately enough on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The Allies lavishly supported the anti-Soviet forces, or Whites, with material, money, and troops that secured White bases.

  All this foreign intervention news made headlines in the various newspapers, fliers, and bulletins printed by numerous groups. It was depressing to Uncle Andre since he knew of the efforts that the Bolsheviks exerted to gain world support for their cause. He also remembered strange times on the front line when German and Russian troops came together in brotherhood, hugging each other and cursing World War I. The Russian perspective became hazy as World War I overlapped and blended into the Russian Civil War, which then continued on by itself.

  The headlines worsened and only a courageous spirit motivated by centuries of injustice could overcome these se
emingly insurmountable obstacles. In March 1918, without a Declaration of War, England, France, and the United States landed troops in the Northern Russia ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. In April, Japan started its intervention in the Far East. Following in their steps, England landed troops in Vladivostok, followed by the American Expeditionary Corps, which moved deep into Soviet Territory via the Trans-Siberian Railroad. By the fall of 1918, foreigners including the United States had intervened and controlled all the Russian Far East. And the news kept getting blacker and blacker!

  Turkey occupied Armenia and a large part of Azerbaijan. English Imperialists seized part of Turkmenistan occupying Baku, the oil-producing city. Germany occupied the Ukraine and invaded the Crimea and Georgia.

  Despite all this, occasionally good news arrived. Uncle Andre and his friends were overjoyed at the wonderful reports that the peace conference of 1919 finally produced the Treaty of Versailles, which was designed to punish Germany and diminish its strength and stature. Officially signed on June 28, 1919, it was an economic disaster for Germany and it helped lay the foundation for World War II.

  It was an extremely difficult time for a young Soviet Union and the end was frequently in doubt, but eventually Bolsheviks won the bloody civil war as they defeated the Whites and the foreigners. The Soviet Republic was bleeding but standing. The civil war had ended by 1922 in most areas except Eastern Russia, where there were conflicts clear into 1923.

  Uncle Andre knew that the Red Power had distinct advantages over their enemies. They maintained their central location where they could plan, coordinate, and control the logistics of sending troops and supplies. They were also skillful and motivated fighters who were defending their home turf with the “might of the just” against foreigners and Russian landowners who had grown wealthy at the expense of the peasantry and the working class. Their foes were decentralized, uncoordinated, and acting independently on the periphery.