Alexe waited for several more years, hoping Varoonka would change her mind and leave Timmofe. However, the couple were so happy together it did not seem likely that they would drift apart. Disappointed, Alexe started looking for a girl even prettier than Varoonka. His broken heart pushed him to prove something to Varoonka-but what? He was not sure.
The young man met a very beautiful girl named Zoya. His parents did not agree with his choice; they thought she had a head full of air. His parents advised him to marry the Sariechev girl Manya who loved Alexe but was too modest to show her feelings. However, Alexe married Zoya. When their baby was born, World War II had already started and Alexe was on the front lines, fighting fascists. The beautiful Zoya was bored, spending evenings alone with her child in the house with nothing to do. Therefore, every evening Zoya left her baby alone in his bed with a kerosene lamp burning on a nearby table as she went to visit her unmarried girlfriends. Zoya’s girlfriends repeatedly told her that it was stupid to leave the baby completely alone but their words to Zoya flew in one ear and out the other.
The predictable tragedy occurred when the child was about two years of age. The baby woke up and called for his mother, but nobody came. The young child somehow bumped the kerosene lamp, knocking it over, and the flames engulfed the child and the house. They were both rapidly gone. The intense heat of the flames captured a large birch near the house and for a long time it stood as a blackened stump until at last someone cut it down in a sign of respect. In an instant Zoya lost her baby, her home, and the respect of her friends forever. Nobody wrote to Alexe to tell him and he didn’t know until some two years later when he returned home after the war in 1945. In a blind rage he beat Zoya and then divorced her. The village ostracized her and she left without compassion from any of her neighbors. It was so painful, the kindly neighbors never again mentioned this matter to Alexe.
The widow Varoonka realized that Alexe would propose to her and even prior to his asking, she decided to accept. The man was still in love with her. Everyone talked about it. The brave ex-soldier started many times to visit Varoonka with presents and to propose, but his courage always disappeared before he reached her house and he would turn back. Weeks passed, but Alexe never got to Varoonka’s front door. Varoonka would see him from her window as he approached her house and she would wait in vain for his knock on the door. About five or ten minutes later she would see him depart. Finally, a frustrated Varoonka talked to Mareika, who responded, “I know. The whole village knows!”
Alexe was very handy and he made toys and whistles for Varoonka’s son and daughter. They talked about him every evening at the dinner table. One day, Mareika caught Alexe outside and, after joking and talking for a while, told him that she knew for sure that Varoonka wanted to be his wife because he was so good to her children. The kids wanted to have a father very badly as they did not remember their own father who fell with honor in World War II. After a short pause, Mareika added, “Varoonka told me that you would be a good father for her half-orphans.”
Mareika’s words filled Alexe with confidence and he was thrilled. The winds of love rippled the leaves on the birch trees! He decided to be brave and forget about her rejection so many years ago. He approached her front door and firmly knocked.
The wedding of Varoonka and Alexe shortly after the war was quite modest with not much food or wine but very elegant because my mother was the bridesmaid and she kept everything under control. My mother’s skill at creating hairdos earned her a reputation as a hairdresser and she was always in demand by the local women. Typically, the girls had nothing. They just wore their hair cut short or long and in braids. Mother had hairnets, curlers, special combs, scissors, and other implements not only for hair but also for manicures. She even had some perfumes and cosmetics, which the village girls did not possess. My mother had some lingerie from the Far East that was not available except for a very high price through the illegal and hard to find black market.
Mother arrived with bulging suitcases and bit-by-bit she gave things away. When she later departed her suitcases were mostly empty. The bride Varoonka had beautifully manicured hands and a stylish hairdo for the first time in her life and she wore silk stockings and silk underwear, the first that she had ever seen. Time proved that it was a good marriage for all. Even twenty years later there was a joke between friends, “Alexe’s failure to enter Varoonka’s door before the marriage greatly exceeded the times that he did enter it after they were married.”
People remember how that happy family started their new life together. They had almost no money, but who could worry about what you did not have and did not need? They didn’t need money to be happy. Happiness is one topic and money is a completely different topic. Russian people have a respect for what money can do but not for money itself. They have never cared too much for money or valued it very highly. This is demonstrated in their attitudes and proverbs. During prosperity many things like money are sought but during a survival period, a Russian seeks only food and wood. An old proverb goes, “One kopec holds a ruble together.” Another is, “Money is like manure, today you have nothing and tomorrow you have a whole carriage full.”
Money was required for the government to finance the war effort and so Soviet Union War Bonds were available to purchase in the war years with a 20-year payback period. Many people bought them just to be patriotic, but mostly the sales were mandatory. There was little faith that these bonds were redeemable and it was common to throw them away. The bonds were large and colorful and children used them as play money. Stalin surprised his citizens at the end of the war by announcing that it was important that these bonds be redeemable or people would lose their faith in their government. Nikita Khrushchev was in power when most of the 20year bonds came due and he received credit for actually making it happen. The bonds were sold in series and the newspapers would print the serial numbers of the bonds that were presently redeemable for rubles.
The word ruble derives from the Russian word to chop, because, historically, the ruble was a piece of a certain weight chopped off a silver ingot. It was the Russian equivalent of the mark, a measurement of weight for silver and gold used in medieval Western Europe. The Russian love of nicknames carried over to their money. Shtuka (the thing) refers to a 1,000-ruble banknote or, generally, any combination of money equal to 1,000 rubles. A folk name for the ruble is “wholesome” derived from a shortening of the term, “a wholesome, uncut ruble.” The ruble has been the Russian unit of currency for about 500 years.
Since 1710 one ruble has been equal to 100 kopeks. The word kopec, kopeck, or copeck derive from the Russian kop’yo, a spear. The first kopec coins, minted by Moscow after the capture of Novgorod in 1478, carried the Moscow coat of arms with Saint George slaying a dragon with a spear. The modern Russian kopec also carries this image. Paper money during the Russian tsarist and communist regimes was colorful with huge pictures.
My grandparents Varvara and Ivan had a wooden chest that was large enough for a small woman or a boy to sleep on. They used this to store paper money. By 1947, the chest was becoming full and there were conversations of what to purchase. During the four war years there were absolutely no goods available to buy. No one even wanted to borrow this money as there was nothing to buy and no one had the ability to pay back a loan anyway.
The money in the chest was from a variety of sources. Sale of farm produce and cull animals provided some. When my mother stayed there she received food coupons and some financial support from the government. Enlisted men’s wives did not receive this stipend, only officer’s wives. My father’s salary went into the chest along with my mother’s salary when she worked in Mongolia. Almost everyone in the family had contributed to the growing pile. Money was not required for normal village life, which used the barter system. My parents vacationed with my grandparents in 1947 and my father was worried because it was such a bad drought year with failed crops. Hunger was so widespread that people were dying of starvation. So before they l
eft, Mikhail gave some of the money to various family members and the rest went to his parents. This amounted to some 50 thousand rubles that my parents had saved in 1946 and 1947.
Inflation had become serious by 1947, spurred by a great drought and crop failure. The government proceeded with the typical response. They implemented a confiscatory redenomination of the currency to reduce the amount of money in circulation. This only affected the paper money. This became the Fifth Ruble Redenomination; the previous one, known as the Fourth (Gold) Ruble Redenomination, occurred on March 7, 1924. Devaluation included issuing new, smaller-sized paper money. Take your money to the bank and exchange ten old rubles for one new ruble. People with money in a bank would automatically have their currency converted, the first 3,000 rubles were to be converted at a one-old to one-new ratio (1:1). From 3,000 to 10,000 rubles would be converted at a three-old to one-new (3:1) and for over 10,000 rubles, it was 10 old to 1 new (10:1).
Many people did not make the deadline to exchange the rubles and there were various reports of suicides and other problems. Father knew of two army generals who had each amassed half a million rubles in savings. They had fought hard in the war and they had carefully saved their money for their old age. They both knew someone working in a bank and somehow managed to get all their money changed illegally at a preferred one-to-one ratio of new to old. One of these generals had a son-in-law who worked with my dad and they drank tea together and sometimes ate together. One day he told Father that some bad things happened to his father-in-law. Someone in authority uncovered their shenanigans and both generals were up on charges. The state fired the generals from their positions but fortunately they did not go to trial.
Another story involves a colonel who was serving as a political commissar. People considered him a good and just man. His wife, also considered a good woman, had a kitchen garden and some poultry. She started to sell some produce and built up a large amount of money which she kept at her home. After about ten years she amassed over half a million old rubles. Relatives would ask her, “What are you going to do with this money?” Her husband was afraid of possible notoriety and consequences with his position and he would not allow her to change her rubles. In the end, he burned her money to eliminate the potential problem. She considered filing for divorce, but did not.
Village people found it inconvenient to use banks, so many people had large amounts of money in their houses. This was well known and yet home robberies in villages were unheard of in those days.
The actual money reform occurred on December 15, 1947. Only on that day were people allowed to turn in the old money and receive the new bills in exchange. Arscent’evo had no radio; the closest thing was the postwoman who delivered mail once a week. She arrived with this information two days after the deadline and it was too late. The paper money was worthless.
Everyone in the village took it philosophically. Granny Varvara said, “We could not haul all the bulk anyway. The weather was bad, seven kilometers to the train station by foot, huge lines in front of the banks. Forget it! The paper will make good kindling to start the fire in the mornings!” It was the second time around for my grandparents, as they also lost all their money after the banks failed during the civil war.
I still have regrets about this huge pile of cash but my family never worried about it. They were happy before the money came and they were happy after it was gone.
31. The White Colonnade House
What is the holiest of holy for every person in his or her whole life? What is the most precious possession that everybody wants to have and keep safe? It is the family and all of its members.
Mikhail and Mareika now lived in the Far East, near the Sea of Japan, in the USSR town of Pogranichnyi. The name roughly translates as “town on the border” as it was 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Manchuria and boasted of a railroad connection into China. The town was also roughly 260 kilometers (161 miles) northeast of North Korea. Interesting geography for a town of just 5,000 people.
My mom and my brother Slahva had moved back to be with my dad a year after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. During the war my father had many addresses, including a house on the north shore of the large Lake Khanka on the Manchurian-USSR border. Any map confirms that this house was in China. Father did not talk about his duties and it is only in the last few years that I came to understand the significance of the Chinese and Korean artifacts in our home.
A recent conversation I had with my dad revealed that he had been to a Korean Wedding. I asked questions. “Did you like it?”
He replied after a pause, “Yes, they have great respect for tradition.”
“What are the people like?”
“I do not care much for their choice of food but they are intelligent and caring. They can demonstrate great respect for others, even in honoring their dead ancestors.”
Our conversation continued as I considered the fact that Koreans certainly would not invite a Soviet Union citizen living in the USSR to attend a private wedding in Korea.
My dad continued his military intelligence duty and my mom was a housewife taking care of Slahva. They were relatively fortunate. They had a comfortable home with land around it, money was not a problem, life was pleasant, and it was time for healing from the hectic and miserable war years, a time to stabilize and spend time with one’s family.
Just after her arrival, Mareika and another officer’s wife decided that the military rations of canned and dried foods was not sufficient for their children and there was little food available to purchase locally so they planted large vegetable gardens in their backyards. They bought some baby chicks to raise for meat and eggs and purchased several piglets to grow for meat. There were some problems in building pigpens and chicken coops. The two women had to travel 200 kilometers (125 miles) to find baby pigs for sale and to buy feed for the chickens and pigs. Nevertheless, their organized plans mostly proceeded beautifully.
On one particular day, Mom told me, she was planting potatoes while my dad was on duty. My four-year-old brother Slahva was hanging around helping her and by that evening they were very tired. After a bath, Mom tucked Slahva into bed and as she took his clothes to wash, she noticed that his knife was missing. She asked him, “Slahva, where is your beautiful pocket knife that your dad’s friend gave you?”
He replied, “Remember when I asked you why are you hiding the potatoes in the ground and you answered that you were planting them? You said that we put one potato in the ground now so that by autumn we will have five potatoes. Well, I planted my knife so I could have five of them and I can give them to my friends!”
Mareika smiled and thought, I am not going to tell him now. Tomorrow we will look for his knife. She kissed and hugged her boy, wished him sweet dreams and left. The next morning right after breakfast she explained to Slahva that they needed to find his knife, as planting was just for plants and did not work for other things. They went to the garden but they could not find it. The knife was truly lost and gone forever. It is too bad because it was a present from an officer who had fought in Germany. He had lost his wife and young son in a German airplane attack and Slahva reminded him of that son. The officer spent what time he could with Mikhail and his family and he loved Slahva. He wanted him to have something from him so he presented him with a beautiful trophy knife. Shortly afterwards this officer was transferred to a new duty station.
The vegetable garden was bountiful and provided a lot of good food year after year. Both the garden and the farm animals thrived. There were some apple trees and gooseberry shrubs growing nearby. The garden typically yielded cabbages, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peas, garlic, dill, and citron. The pigs grew up and multiplied and the ones they butchered for meat were tasty.
At one point, the young hens were disappearing. Mom complained to Dad who dryly observed that chicken hawks are called chicken hawks for a reason. My parents gave up the missing chickens as dead but actually they were only missing-in-action. One fine spring day th
ey started periodically returning through a small hole in the fence, each proud and possessive mother trailing a string of chicks behind her, as one baby followed another in a time-honored behavior pattern. Evidently, the hens had hatched their clutch of eggs in the protection of the nearby heavy vegetation. The arrogant and boastful roosters continued crowing and the willing hens remained fertile with many eggs. The following year those hens preferred to nest in the shelter of the leaves of the potato plants which simplified the hen husbandry. Dad derived much pleasure from throwing cracked grain to the chickens and watching them flutter and cackle as they ate. It all reminded him of his village childhood.
As Mom learned more about the pigs, she was surprised to know that pigs are the most intelligent of all farm animals and that they would stay clean if given the opportunity. But everyone knows that cool mud is highly preferable to being clean and hot. The two families gained a lot of satisfaction from feeding and caring for the animals and enjoyed the independent feeling that the food provided. Further, children always benefit mentally and physically from having animals around them.
The garden and animals could keep a young boy busy for many hours a day but inevitably the grass would look greener on the other side of the fence. My parents had warned Slahva repeatedly not to go outside the fence that surrounded the property. Nevertheless, one day the four-and-a-half year old boy somehow managed to open the gate to the fence. He walked out and ended up at the train station, about half a kilometer (.31 miles) away. He saw some military men and some train workers that were smoking. They all wore beautiful uniforms and they looked so handsome and proud that Slahva wanted to look like them, brave and independent.
He saw some cigarette butts on the asphalt and so he picked one up and pretended that he too was wearing a handsome uniform, that people admired him, and that he was old enough to smoke. The men stopped talking to watch his antics. They all knew Slahva; he was a social animal and he loved to talk to everyone. There were no strangers or enemies around that boy. One of the trainmen yelled out, “Hey Slahva, where is your mom?”
My Russian Family Page 22