Finally, the book is for me myself, to relive the experience, to rethink it, and ultimately to let it go and to step back, having turned over this page of my life.
I tell the story from two points of view: that of a child growing up in a cult and that of an adult who has experience of both parenting and emigration. I remember what I faced and how I felt as a child, and I share my present thoughts about the past. I track the evolution of my attitudes and thoughts to show how easy it is when you are young to fall into a trap, and how difficult, and sometimes impossible, even over the years, to get out of it.
Everyone will see something of their own in this story. I am a philosopher by education; I like thinking, reasoning and looking at things from different angles. Write to me and let me know what you think about all this!
1. Before the cult
NOTHING IS SHOCKING IN CHILDHOOD
Everything that happens in childhood seems normal. Children have no choice: adults decide everything for you and you can only go with the flow, trying to adapt and survive. As the years pass and you grow up, your memory returns time and again to episodes from childhood, and questions start welling up inside…
What was the point of that? Why would they do that?
When you compare your own experience of being a parent with that of your own parents, you start to wonder:
Would I have acted like that with my own child? What about with someone else’s?
You come to see more and more that there is no difference between your own child and others, especially when you grew up with other children yourself, without your family —although you knew you had one.
A PRISON FOR ACADEMICS
I was born in Dushanbe and spent my early years there, until my parents left to live and work in Leningrad. My memories of my birth town are childishly picturesque, symbols of home: my grandma, warm air, aroma of fruit, flies in the kitchen, traditional pechak sweets, the “Green” bazar, cool linoleum on the floor, vinyl records, the smell of books, our loggia with its huge mirror, babbling irrigation channels right in the street, the asphalt melting, our hip bath, whole alleyways of roses, weeping willows, vines hanging over your head, tea with mulberry, fragrant flatbreads with sesame, cherry orchards, sandstorms, and of course, the opera! Grandma often took me to the opera, which was considered the heart of the town (at least that’s how I remember it).
Tajik State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Sadriddin Aini. Founded in Dushanbe in 1936.
The Russian-speaking circle in Tajikistan at that time was mainly members of the intelligentsia, forcibly exiled from the major Russian cities. This included my relatives. My grandfather was the son of an enemy of the Soviet state, who was shot during Stalin’s reign of terror, and the whole family was now living under this stigma. My mother’s side of the family weren’t allowed to live in Leningrad, where they were actually from. For a while the family lived just outside the forbidden 100-kilometre radius which stretched around the desirable cities, but after that we were packed off to the most remote Central Asian republic to “colonise the virgin lands”. My grandparents, as academics and professors, were sent to found and build a local university in Dushanbe. For this they received a meagre salary and an adobe shack with no amenities, right in the university’s internal courtyard. My mother and uncle grew up there. Nobody complained (it just wasn’t done in the Soviet Union), and to this day my mum is convinced that the family chose to live in Dushanbe of their own free will. Back then everyone was obliged to be happy and grateful to the Communist Party, whatever happened.
AUNT OLYA CARMEN
When I was born, my grandmother already had her own apartment, “kindly” donated by the Soviet government. It was in a three-storey building and even had a cold tap and plumbing. Her and my grandfather were divorced: he had gone to live and work in Kyrgyzstan, where later he headed up the geological institute. Grandma continued to teach at the Dushanbe university and to look after the children (my mum and her brother) as before.
I lived the first years of my life in my grandmother’s apartment. We had a neighbour called Aunt Olya. I knew her very well: she lived right underneath us, in the same sort of apartment. Actually, all the inhabitants knew each other, as there were only six apartments in this building of ours on Ulitsa Lakhuti.
Aunt Olya was something special. She sang in the opera. When we went to see Carmen I would wait on the edge of my seat for her appearance. On the stage she would metamorphose from the average woman I usually saw her as into a real firebird: the flamboyant Carmen, with gorgeous hairstyles and dresses, vivid makeup and the stirring sound of castanets. She would dance, clacking her castanets and heels, passionately singing the Habanera, and toss a rose to Don Jose! The whole hall would be on their feet demanding an encore. Some of the audience were moved to stick their fingers in their mouths and whistle from overwhelming emotion.
At the end of the opera we would stream out into the foyer, chattering animatedly while we waited for Aunt Olya. She would come out to us already stripped of her makeup, in the normal clothes of a simple Soviet woman, with her hair in a ponytail. I was always amazed by the change in her. Where had the passion gone, where the roses and Don Jose? Why could she not stay the same beautiful Carmen outside the theatre? But in those times we were obliged to look like everyone else: modest, greyish, forbidden to stand out.
Aunt Olya fell into the cult too, and my memories of that bright and wonderful Carmen had to stay in the past forever.
Oh, how I wanted to be like Carmen! I dreamed of being flamboyant and vivacious, showered with roses, singing like a nightingale, beside me a Don Jose who would delight in me always. (My dream came true later, but it took me almost 40 years).
A HAPPY CHILDHOOD IN LENINGRAD.
MY FIRST YEAR OF SCHOOL
In 1981 I was 7 years old. I lived with my mum and dad in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). My parents were geologists and worked at the Soviet Union Geological Research Institute. This was a splendid building with high columns and wide staircases, like the Hermitage palace. A temple of science!
Soviet Union Geological Research Institute named after A. P. Karpinsky
My parents often took me to work with them. I remember the institute’s museum well. At the entrance stood a huge salt crystal you could lick, and there was a dinosaur skeleton of monstrous proportions in the centre of the permanent exhibition.
I remember that the institute seemed huge, with many corridors, halls and stairways linking the various parts of the bulding. While mum and dad led me along the long corridors I would count the office doors, and between them the smaller doors of the specimen cupboards. On seeing me, my parents’ colleagues would invariably throw up their hands with cries of “Is this really little Ania!? Lord how big she’s getting! Really takes after her mum! Or is it her dad?” That really pleased me. So much so that if someone suddenly forgot to say it, I wondered what was wrong with them.
THE TIME I WORKED AS A GEOLOGIST
The institute had an inner yard which housed the lorries used for geological fieldwork (as well as some homeless cats).
My parents took me on my first field expedition when I was just seven. This was to the Southern Urals, the mountainous region two timezones east of St. Petersburg, considered the border of the Europe and Asian landmasses. We stayed in tents, cooked on a campfire, walked miles into the hills, and I genuinely helped my parents discover ammonites and the fossil trails of single-celled organisms. Since I was smaller I could more easily see them under my feet. I was also tasked with bagging up the samples and labelling