My Russian Family Read online

  All things that have a beginning also have an end, including wars.

  The total loss of lives on both sides in World War I (1914-1918) was about 8,500,000 (including some 1,700,000 Russians). The total Russian casualties in World War I, including the dead, wounded, and missing was approximately 9,150,000. The Russian Civil War (1918-1922) deaths was estimated at 8 million, almost as much as the total deaths in World War I.

  So, the human price tag was enormous for Russia. Up to 15 million Russians were mobilized by the tsar for World War I from a total population of about 145 million and an incredibly high percentage of these mobilized forces became casualties. The Russian people’s resentment over this helped fan the flames of revolution as disillusioned soldiers deserted the front lines en masse.

  Although the Revolution of 1917 was generally bloodless, certainly the subsequent civil war period witnessed tons of blood soaked into the soil of Russia. The women did not stay on the sidelines, as there were no sidelines from the fighting, hunger, and disease. Large numbers of women and children died with the men. Russian Civil War property damage estimates were 50 billion gold rubles (as opposed to paper rubles) between 1918 and 1921.

  Perhaps the most telling and incomprehensible figure is that in 1922, Russia had seven million homeless orphans living in the streets.

  Wintertime at Ryazan Kremlin.

  8. Afterglow

  Slowly, a sense of normalcy returned to Russia.

  There came a time when Uncle Andre felt successful in everything. Many people could not read or write and they came to Uncle Andre for help. He influenced numerous people and developed an excellent reputation. He felt that he could do anything. He had the power of words and people listened to him and supported him. He was heavily involved in social and political life. He decided after a year of living in the village that he was ready to move to Moscow. It was 1922, the civil war was drawing to a close and Moscow was boiling over with life and new ideas.

  Uncle Andre had married a short time before and he and his young wife Natasha established a new life in Moscow. Uncle Andre is seen in a wonderful old photograph taken about 1922 in Moscow. (Pages 44-45) Some fifty workers posed in front of an old wooden building that likely was a factory of some kind. Their faces are mostly serious and it is an interesting study. The quality of their clothing bears witness to the difficulties of that time. The administration staff is in the center of the second row. In the first row, second from the right, and sprawled comfortably on the ground is Uncle Andre.

  The district Communistic Party Committee had their eyes out for smart and skilled people who could help with the new government. They were prepared to provide opportunities. Uncle Andre stood out, and they proposed that he study to be a criminal investigator at government expense. The ambitious young man happily accepted the proposition and when he completed the course work, he became an investigator. The availability of higher education for the average citizen was new and it drew young people like a magnet. They worked at their education with a compulsion and it was typical for them to complete the required five or six years of university requirements in three or even two years. This was made possible by the process of challenging a course through written and oral examinations.

  In 1924, the year that Communist political leader Lenin died, Uncle Andre accepted an invitation and became a member of the Communist Party. He completed higher levels of the law school at that time and they reassigned him to work in the Zaraisk District near Moscow.

  Uncle Andre with co-workers, Moscow, 1922.

  Law enforcement during those years was constantly changing like a river on a flood plain. The Bolshevik government kept the existing police force, called the militia. The tsar had a secret police force which disappeared with him. In 1917 the Bolsheviks created their own secret police force called Cheka and it has operated continuously since then under eight different names. It is best known to the world as the KGB. The translation for the Russian acronym Cheka is All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage. Cheka was aggressively arresting, imprisoning, and executing “enemies of the state” which included former nobility, the bourgeoisie, the clergy, traitors, and spies.

  It was a revelation when the Soviet archives were opened in the 1990s disclosing that Cheka had a staff of more than 250,000 in 1921 and was responsible for the execution of over 140,000 people during a four to five year period which included the revolution and the subsequent bloody civil war. This was an effective weapon of the Bolsheviks who utilized a merciless tool to survive and gain control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

  Obviously, one could correctly state that the Cheka was out of control and so the GPU was created to offset the Cheka in 1922, as the Communist Party sought to reduce the scale of Cheka’s terror. GPU is an acronym for the Russian words whose meaning is State Political Administration. In 1923 the name was changed to OGPU, an acronym for Unified State Political Administration.

  My recent research revealed another family secret. My Uncle Andre worked for the OGPU! I had always known that he was a state prosecutor but in my mind he was never linked to this organization. No one in my family had pointed this out to me. Maybe they thought it was plain enough. Working for the secret police was not a topic for discussion or bragging in those days as people were generally afraid of them. On the other hand, one could proudly brag about a father who worked for the militia (police).

  My Uncle Andre was the District Special Prosecutor specializing in criminal law. He was in his early thirties and his dream had come true. He was a lawyer like the Russian leader Lenin. Uncle Andre read everything he could find about Lenin. They shared a curiosity for knowledge and a lifelong love of learning. Uncle Andre greatly admired this historical leader and he loved to talk about him. Lenin was an icon to him.

  Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in 1870 to a happy, close-knit family of loving upper class parents. He was an intellectually gifted scholar in Latin and Greek and he eventually earned a law degree. Even the highly educated and cultured intelligentsia was denied basic civil and political rights under the tsars and many became involved in revolutionary activity. The future Lenin was a mere 17 years old when fate dealt him two bad cards. Lenin’s father was threatened with early retirement by the tsar’s government and he subsequently died. Lenin’s eldest brother Aleksandr was hanged as a terrorist, so Lenin became head of the family.

  These events certainly exerted an effect upon him. Lenin became Vladimir’s pseudonym while doing covert work in 1901, following a Siberian exile. He chose a long and difficult road to become founder of the Russian Communist Party, originally known as Bolsheviks. Lenin was the inspirational leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and the planner and first head of the Soviet state (1917-24) until his untimely death. He was also the founder of the Comintern or Communist International with the basic aim to help “Workers of the World, Unite and Overthrow Your Oppressors.”

  Uncle Andre believed that the most significant political event of the twentieth century was the Bolshevik Revolution and that Lenin was the greatest revolutionary leader and statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Karl Marx. A great dreamer, he adapted for Russia the revolutionary ideas of the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Lenin’s writings could fill a small library and Uncle Andre read it all. He knew that Lenin had created his own destiny.

  There is a widely believed story in Russia that Lenin had a secret motive that incited him to fight for his family’s honor and reputation. There were rumors that when Lenin’s mother Maria was a young and beautiful girl she had worked in a royal family household. One of the male members seduced Maria and she became pregnant. Possibly this person was the future Tsar Alexander III, who reigned from 1881 to 1895. It is known that when they were late teenagers their paths had crossed at a royal palace at the appropriate time to conceive Lenin’s older sister, Anna. Maria’s parents found themselves with an unmarried pregnant da
ughter and had to take immediate steps. They gave Maria as a wife to a poor but educated man named Ilich who worked in a lowly position within the education system.

  The civil service had, at that time, rankings comparable to the military. After the marriage, Ilich’s career advanced rapidly and soon he was the equivalent of an army general, and from this, Ilich became a rich noble. He was hardworking and kind, respected by his peers and certainly a man to be admired. But, how did the poor scholar Ilich rise so high and so fast? He made good money. They had a huge house and placed a high priority on educating their children.

  Lenin’s oldest sister Anna grew up with strong opinions. Anna became an embarrassment to the family as she quite vocally claimed that she was the tsar’s daughter. Anna considered herself royalty and ranked above her supposedly half-siblings. All their friends and neighbors were well aware of Anna’s claims, and most people simply ignored her.

  When Lenin’s oldest brother Aleksandr was in prison awaiting execution in 1887, their mother Maria traveled to St. Petersburg for an audience with a very senior official in the tsar’s administration. To everyone’s surprise, Maria gained access almost immediately and her visit was lengthy. According to the palace guards, she spoke boldly and with great pride while the official remained calm and polite. However, her visit was in vain. Even Lenin’s mother could not save her son Aleksandr and the tsar had him hanged!

  When Lenin finished university and developed his interests in the revolution, rumors started. He is not fighting for revolutionary ideas, people said. He is fighting for his mother Maria’s honor. Lenin’s sister Anna never stopped talking about her father the tsar. Like his older brother, Lenin wanted to remove the stain on his family’s honor by destroying the tsar.

  This rumor is still alive after more than 100 years!

  The aphrodisiac of power is strong, universal, and timeless. Sex scandals exert little effect on politics in non-English speaking countries. The populace considers it a perk and a privilege rather than a scandal. In contrast, English-speaking citizens faced with a political sex scandal always enjoy adding a little self-righteous indignation into the over-seasoned pot.

  9. Realism

  The harsh crack of a pistol shot shattered the late evening silence. Two dark moving figures had come together for an instant, then one of them froze and the other one went down hard, leaving no doubt that he had been shot.

  It was too late for any second thoughts from Comrade Special Prosecutor Andre Yemelyanovich Lapshin. This fateful day had started like a typical Saturday for Uncle Andre and ended with a police report and a subsequent burial, but thankfully not for Andre.

  Even though Andre had attained a high position, he had not gained much personal benefit from it. This was common, as life was difficult in the young Soviet Republic and no one could brag about his high and rich life because no one had a high and rich life. Everything was limited, from food and clothing to living quarters and supplies. He and his family lived in one room within a communal flat, where typically ten to 20 people shared the kitchen and bathroom facilities. Andre did not care about that. He was idealistic. He was building for the future.

  Following his new appointment, Uncle Andre had been transferred to the town of Zaraisk and he moved into a small room in another communal flat. His wife Natasha and their two children stayed in Moscow since it was dangerous to move and hard to find a place to live. Andre knew that someday he would return to Moscow to work.

  The late 1920s and early 1930s were hard years for Andre. He sometimes worked as much as 16 hours a day, he ate poorly and slept badly. He had his week’s food rations which included bread, fruit preserves, cereal, sugar, and salt. Crime was high at that time. Citizens were robbed and occasionally killed for very little gain-perhaps for a few cans of preserved food, a loaf of bread, the clothes on their back, the shoes on their feet, or even for one or two rubles or a bottle of vodka.

  The young special prosecutor traveled by train to Moscow every Saturday to take some food to his wife and children. Food was scarce in the capital’s stores, so people were short on everything from fish to bread. Meat was seldom on their dinner plate. Andre’s family did not live better than other people did. They waited impatiently for Saturday night when he would arrive with a rucksack full of food. Andre had to walk several kilometers from the train station with the loaded rucksack. He never used a car or a horse for his own needs. The young man was too honest to use government property, or even petrol, for his personal use. And the young Soviet Republic did not have much in the way of supplies anyway.

  As Andre was passing through a poorly lit area with numerous bushes, someone suddenly appeared. He asked for a cigarette as he moved closer and then hit my uncle hard with a sucker-punch right in the face. Somehow, Andre managed to keep his balance and not fall down. Everything happened very fast. He saw the blade of a knife gleaming in the light of the full moon in the large man’s hand. Instinctively, Andre grabbed his gun out of his belt.

  Andre realized that the big man was lying on the ground and showing no sign of life. He called out, “Hey man. Did I really hit you? Answer me!” Then, “Oh, Damn, I must have killed him. Oh hell! This damn food, I should have given the food to him!” He was distraught. The ex-soldier had physically injured no one since his war years against the Germans.

  The large figure on the ground did not move or breathe. Andre went back to the train station and reported the incident. “I just killed a hungry man looking for food. Oh, this is bad! Very bad!” He thought he had just killed an innocent, hungry man. He felt that he had reacted too fast for the situation.

  Early Monday morning, Andre was back in Zaraisk. He received shocking news when he arrived at his office. The man he had killed that Saturday night turned out to be a hardened gangster that the Criminal Investigation Department had been after for a long time. Andre’s staff believed that the infamous hoodlum was actually looking for Andre to kill him because he was an honest prosecutor.

  After this event, Andre attacked the problem of crime even more passionately. He started, in his words, “to shovel aside all the shit.” He reorganized people under his authority, people who could act quickly, accurately, and capably. He gave precise directions to his staff and they efficiently performed the assigned tasks. The young prosecutor did not doubt that he could do his job properly. He was tireless and his spirit was always up. He knew that he was doing the right thing for his people and for his country.

  During that period, dishonest people made false accusations, denouncing the person who had the position or home they wanted for themselves. Andre had a flair for uncovering such deceitful actions, just as a bird dog has a good nose for quail.

  One such unjustly accused person called comrade Glebov was an engineer from the intelligentsia of the old days under the tsar. He had a beautiful home and all the possessions and assets that a man could desire. Few men were qualified for his specialized position. He was charged with being disloyal. The accuser wrote that Engineer Glebov was deliberately doing a poor job and, further, that his mistakes had caused some accidents. The engineer was under investigation for a long time and he had a heart attack while in prison.

  After careful investigation, Andre found that the accusations were not true. Eventually Engineer Glebov was released from prison and freed of all charges. He returned home and was offered his job back. Andre declared, “The conclusion is that the errors were caused by untrained people who did not have the required engineering training. The recommendation is to send them for training to solve the basic problem. This case is closed.”

  The accuser could not be punished because he believed that what he was doing was correct, so what to do with him? This type of case frustrated Andre because it used up copious amounts of the time and energy of both himself and his staff. The practice of finger pointing and accusing others of malfeasance and incompetence became widespread and in the end even caught up with my Uncle Andre.

  10. The Kiosk

  Is it good
to know beforehand how events will turn out? Do you want to know whether your efforts are building something good or something bad for the future?

  It might be nice, but I don’t want it!

  Is it necessary to always watch every word and every step or should you relax and enjoy life? Should one always tell the truth and live with the consequences, or should one tell a few lies and live more comfortably?

  Who would be happier, the moralist or the realists? The answer for those living in Russia during the 1930s is—neither of them!

  A new ruler had taken control of Russia. The son of a poor cobbler and a washerwoman, he was born in 1879, not in Russia but in Georgia and, as Russian was his second language, he spoke with a heavy accent. He was physically strong with a short and stocky body and with one arm longer than the other one. Fierce black eyes dominated his dark complexioned face scarred by smallpox. The Caucasian Mountain blood-feud tradition influenced him and he was endowed with prodigious willpower. He had the ability to hide his true feelings and bide his time while he plotted long-term revenge against his real and imagined foes. Around 1900 he had worked for labor groups fomenting demonstrations and strikes with a zeal that alienated people. There is no record that he ever did any physical labor. There is speculation that he worked for the imperial political police as an agent provocateur since his frequent imprisonments and exiles were marked by mild sentences and frequent escapes.

  Somehow, this fellow named Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, whose mother wanted him to be a priest, slowly rose higher in the ranks. He changed his name to Joseph Stalin and became Secretary-General of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953. He made himself Premier of the Soviet state from 1941 until 1953. The secretary-general position was the real power seat and Stalin utilized it to dictatorially rule the Soviet Union and transform it from a backward country into a major world power, at the expense of individual rights. Historians still argue over Stalin. Some claim he was a mediocre personage, a lamentably deviant element in the evolution of Marxism. Clearly, Stalin was brilliant at political manipulation. Most agree that Stalin’s actions should not diminish the ultimate value of the historical achievements of the Russian October Revolution.