Until I was about three, I was physically heavy with a big frame; not fat, just a large girl with strength. This was helpful when I had to defend myself. For instance, I become involved in an argument with some four-and five-year-old girls over toys in a sandbox in a public park. The older girls had tried to take the toys away and push me out of the sandbox but I won the pushing match. Evidently, I was not a bashful child. The notable event occurred during this period. My family was in a bank in Ryazan. My mom was making a deposit, my dad was standing and holding me on his shoulder, and Slahva was playing on a bench. My family was well dressed and looked prosperous, at a time when most people were not.
A poor woman dressed in dark clothing approached father and made some comments about me, “My, your daughter looks so big and healthy, what do you feed her?’’
My father laughed and said, “Potatoes, grandmother, potatoes.” Actually at that time I did not like the taste of potatoes and would not eat them. Father was just making polite conversation.
The woman was slowly shaking her head from side-to-side as she stared at me and I remember staring back at her. She murmured, “Amazing, amazing!”
The woman left the bank and as the door closed behind her, I felt strangely uncomfortable and started to violently twist and turn in my dad’s arms. My typically good mood had vanished. We left for home and my troubled behavior continued. That same evening, I lost my appetite and became unexpectedly lethargic. My father thought that I was getting a cold, however, Mother felt sure that the woman had put an evil eye on me. Father started kidding her about that but she would not change her opinion. I began to lose weight over the coming days and developed a habit of eating potatoes as mother tried various ways to get food into me, mostly unsuccessfully. Nothing my parents did made any difference. Doctors had no advice that was helpful or effective. My good mood eventually returned with my rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes and I appeared healthy, but my weight did not come back. My father finally came to believe, as my mother already did, that the old woman had somehow, possibly unknowingly, brought this upon me probably because she was jealous.
Granny Varvara had earlier learned some skills in this area and tried to lift the spell, but couldn’t, probably because the old woman had a stronger power. Granny even took me to her psychic mentor, but nothing helped. My family looked for the old woman from the bank thinking that she would be willing to do something, but she could not be found. After that, every spring my granny would wash my face in a special ritual but with no noticeable improvement.
Thirteen years later, in March of 1967, I was 16 and still boyishly slender. I was walking in Lenin’s Square in Ryazan when a small old woman dressed in black approached me. She spoke to me in a self-assured manner, “Come to the Boris and Gelb Church tomorrow about six a.m., a visiting priest will be there for just one day. Try to get him to bless you and make the sign of the cross over you!” I was dumbfounded but something about the old woman made me decide to honor the rendezvous, even though I loved to sleep in and Sunday was the only day that it was possible.
The next morning, I slipped out of the house at 5:30 a.m. without speaking to anyone. It was cold and frosty that morning and I still remember that I wore a bright red scarf over my head and around my neck.
A large crowd of older people spilled out into the courtyard of the church. I looked for the old woman but could not find her as I pushed my way inside and saw the priest. People moved slowly around him and eventually I was in front of him. He looked at me, smiled kindly and murmured blessings as he made the sign of the cross over me. Somehow a noticeable change came over me. I felt happier and lighter. In fact, I felt really good.
I returned home and told my mother what had happened. My appetite returned and I gained weight. In less than six months I filled out into a mature shapely young woman. My mother and I always felt that somehow that priest had lifted the spell placed upon me 13 years earlier. I never told my atheist daddy about that short trip to the church.
One could ask how did that old woman in Lenin’s Square see me, recognize that I had a problem and have the courage to help me solve it. I don’t know. The same questions apply about the old woman who removed the sties from my mother’s eyes in St. Petersburg so many years ago. Psychics can recognize one another to varying degrees. I do know that the power is strong when one is young and if it is not used it dissipates. As one gets older, the unused power weakens. So an old person with power likely has been using it all her life.
I don’t know whether this ability is a blessing or a curse. I have an acquaintance who can recognize a certain person as someone who has killed animals as opposed to those who have not. Under the right circumstances, she can identify people who have killed other people. There are not too many people killers around now, but after World War II, during the old Veteran’s Day parades, she could see many of them as they marched by. The faces of the marching soldiers went in and out of focus, in continuous waves as they marched by. This only works when seen at a particular distance, move one step closer or farther away and all the faces look normal.
She can also recognize people who will soon die. Occasionally, she will see the face of an old person suddenly convert to the face of their youth. A 60-year-old man, for instance, will have a 20-year-old face for a few seconds. That person will be dead in less than two weeks.
48. Granny’s Scarf
My granny Varvara and I used to talk as we walked along a dirt road on our way to a nearby forest to pick mushrooms. On one of these trips, when I was about six, I noticed that the printed side of her headscarf was next to her gray hair.
“Granny, your scarf is inside out.”
“Oh, I have to redo it. Thank you for telling me.” She carefully removed the scarf, turned it over, and put it back on her head.
Some days later, we repeated the incident. This time Granny appeared a little flustered as she retied her scarf. The following day, Granny and I were relaxing in the garden and enjoying ourselves. I was curious and reckoned that it was a good time to pry, so I again broached the subject of her scarf. “I see that you and other older women have a habit of wearing your headscarves inside out. Why do you do that?”
Granny smiled and, touching my cheek with the back of her fingers said, “It is an old habit from the days when we had very little. We wore a new scarf reversed to protect the printed side from fading in the sun or from any other damage. Then, when some special event occurred, we could just turn it over and it would look as if we were wearing a brand new scarf.”
I nodded in understanding. “Yes,” I responded, “that makes sense.”
She continued, “It was a common custom. All the older women I knew did the same thing.”
I continued nodding as I absorbed this worldly feminine logic and tucked it away for future use. What I did not understand at the time was the simple fact that when these women wore their scarves inside out it was because they could only afford one scarf, which meant times were hard for them.
Sometime later, when I had a quiet time with my dad, I bragged at length about my discovery, about how sly I was to learn about Granny’s scarf. Dad laughed and said, “You know, I had almost the same conversation with your granny when I was a little boy about your age. Many women back then also wore their scarves reversed to protect them.” Dad paused in concentration and then continued as I listened, spellbound.
“Many women were like your granny and only had one scarf. It bothered me that she felt that she had to reverse her scarf. I promised her that I would buy her many, many scarves when I grew up. Eventually, I had some money and I greatly enjoyed building up her supply of scarves.” Dad was lost in thought for a moment. “But, you know, no matter what, she could not seem to lose that habit of reversing her scarf.”
Lilia in a traditional headscarf, 1956.
Another thought occurred to him. “Nowadays, it is completely different, as you see. Many women, like your mom, wear hats instead of scarves.”
Later, my m
om confirmed what Dad had said. It seemed a great paradox to me. Now that times were good for my granny she was too old to care much about how she looked. She always had a philosophy of not spending money on appearances and even when money became available, that philosophy did not change. The problem was much worse on the other side. Rich people who were used to spending money on themselves and who then became poor and unable to purchase luxury items found it very hard.
I made a vow to buy my granny Varvara a beautiful flowery headscarf. Years later, when I was eighteen and working, I purchased a scarf for my granny, and then another, and another. It became a game. She would say, “I do not need it. I do not need it! Thank you, anyway.” Later on, I would buy her another one. My last present to her was a green scarf with white lines along the edges. It was soft and thick but lightweight, a good scarf for winter.
She could accept homemade things but she was hesitant to have people spend their hard-earned money in a store for her. She never liked bright colors but preferred earth tones, especially brown. Mother would make dresses for her but she only liked turn-of-the-century fashiona floor length, billowing skirt with a sash around the waist tied in a large bow. She would never wear short or form-fitted dresses.
Many of my Varvara memories involve food. I remember a spring day when my granny made cold okroshka soup. I smelled the cucumbers and I ran to her asking where did she get them as it was still too early to harvest cucumbers from our garden. She chuckled and showed me the ground up remnants of a grassy green plant in the soup. Many years earlier, a close friend gave her seeds from this plant which my granny had kept growing in her garden year after year. When the leaves of this plant are bruised or ground, they give off a strong cucumber smell. Peasants love it because they feel as if they are dining on cucumbers.
Another treasured memory was triggered by a newspaper article which pointed out that Russians living in a harsh northern environment have a perspective markedly different from people living in more habitable southern climates. The journalist noted that a foreigner living on just bread, water, and an onion over an extended period of time would think times were very hard and he was barely surviving, while a Russian on this diet would remark that his life was all right! I expressed some doubt about the validity of this claim to my granny. She said nothing but motioned me into the kitchen. She took out a bowl, shredded a small hunk of black bread with her fingers, added some water, sliced a small onion into tiny pieces, added a touch of salt and sunflower oil, and then mixed it all together. She looked at me and said, “Let’s eat.” I stared at her, flabbergasted. “Lillichka,” she said, “This is called turria. When I was young, this is all we had to eat for months in the wintertime. Ask your daddy, even he will remember this!”
There was almost a direct correlation between lower levels of poverty and the eating of turria. My granny’s family frequently ate turria while it was seldom on my dad’s plate and I had never even tasted it. Before the Revolution, landowners controlled the peasants’ food supplies and as many as 90 percent of the peasants ate this cold mush turria three times a day during the winter.
The Russian Poet, Nikolai A. Nekrasov (1821-1878) wrote,
“Eat your turria Yasha.
There is no milk anymore….”
“Where is our cow?”
“They took her away my darling.”
Russians know that when a family cannot pay their tax they will lose something important like the family cow. Is it any wonder that Russians embraced Lenin and equality? Varvara had no doubts about the 1917 Revolution; she had always felt that even the blood spilt in the Civil War was justified. Perhaps her time helping the rebels in Moscow during the 1905 revolt made her see revolution differently from her husband. Her thoughts would come out in a myriad of ways. Granny was reminiscing with me one day about the feast they made for my parents and my brother in 1947 when they first returned home after World War II. She remarked on the fact that the numerous ingredients for this homecoming feast has always been readily available for the nobility and well-to-do. However, it was only after the revolution of 1917 that the peasants and workers could enjoy this kind of feast.
Grandfather Ivan remained skeptical about the revolution until the 1920s when they lived a very high-quality life for a peasant. Evidently it was only then that my granddad could agree with his wife that the 1917 Revolution was a good thing.
Granny was extremely gentle and an astute observer of the human condition. She strongly believed that the overthrow of the tsarist system brought improvements to people’s lives, and that the resultant pain and death was not in vain. She greatly admired Lenin and enjoyed talking about him. Lenin was the intelligent visionary who led Russia to dethrone Tsar Nicholas II and end tsarist rule, an amazing political and social revolution in the midst of World War I. Even many noncommunist scholars regard Lenin as the greatest revolutionary leader and statesman in history as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.
Many people did not agree with Granny. They looked back at the tsar’s era with nostalgia and longing. Granny never talked about Stalin. She always thought that if Lenin had not died Stalin’s excesses might have been checkmated.
When she was a young girl her parents took her to church but somehow she lost her faith and trust in the church. She did not like priests and considered them crooks, just out for people’s money. However, she did believe in God and had a deep and unbending faith in Him. She was a strong believer in both God and communism.
She was a remarkable woman with her own set of values. I never saw her impatient or angry. Looking back, my dad can recall only a few instances when Granny Varvara raised her voice, like the wolf event many years earlier near Arscent’evo. Her daughters were the same; they never lost their tempers. Her sons were like her husband in that they occasionally blew up, although it was rare.
It was several years later, while I was visiting my granny Varvara, that the subject of reversing the scarf came up again. I was full of life and wanted to make her smile. “Granny,” I said, “Please, tell me about all those times when something special happened and you turned your scarf right side out to make it look like new!” I waited expectantly for the happy stories.
But Granny Varvara paused in thought with a resigned expression. Finally, she remarked softly, “You know Lillichka, those special times when we changed our scarves almost never happened. It is like all the women in Russia were waiting for nothing, working for the future instead of enjoying now. It has become a bad habit which I cannot seem to break. Better that we had always worn the good side out and enjoyed life as it happened instead of sacrificing everything for the future. Promise me to always wear your scarf with the good side out.”
She went silent and stared off into space. I too was silent, thinking that even though I did not wear scarves, I knew just what my granny meant. Twenty-five years later, in the early 1990s, Russian women again “wore their scarves inside out.” This came to be a symbol to me, a sign of distress, comparable in my mind to seeing the United States flag flown upside down as a danger signal, a call for help!
Our socialistic world had the basis for an excellent lifestyle. However, it needed good leadership to avoid the seeds of destruction that inevitably try to grow within any governmental system. So it was that the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics marched on. Khrushchev had a crisis with crop failures in 1956 and 1958. He opened up over 70 million acres of virgin land in Siberia and sent thousands of laborers to farm the land, but the plan failed. There was a quarrel with Communist China and the humiliating resolution with the United States over the Cuban missile crisis. Americans were horrified to learn later that, despite denials by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Kremlin had authorized Russian Commanders in Cuba to respond with tactical and strategic nuclear missiles! Less than a year later Khrushchev was pushed from power and he later wrote in his memoirs that if Kennedy had lived, the two leaders could have brought peace to the world. These two men had developed a great respect for eac
h other. Khrushchev actually broke down and cried in the Kremlin upon hearing of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November of 1963.
A Kremlin coup orchestrated by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964 accepted Khrushchev’s resignation due to “advanced age and poor health.” Khrushchev was the son of a coal miner and his grandfather was a serf who served in the tsarist army. He rose to become First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953-1964) and Premiere of the Soviet Union (19581964). His de-Stalinization policy, including verbal attacks upon Stalin and attempts to reform communism, brought positive repercussions throughout the communist world. His peaceful coexistence foreign policy with the capitalist west was a welcome Kremlin change. He quietly lived out his life in retirement with little recognition for his courageous career.
Leonid I. Brezhnev was a political commissar in the World War II Red Army who advanced to the rank of major general in charge of the political commissars on the Ukrainian front. He did well in politics, emerging as a dominating political figure. Brezhnev became First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1964 after he helped lead the coalition that forced Nikita Khrushchev from power. He ruled for 18 long hard years, from 1964 until 1982. When Czechoslovakia attempted to liberalize its communist system in 1967-68, Brezhnev developed the “Brezhnev Doctrine” which asserted the right of Soviet intervention in cases where “the essential common interest of other socialist countries is threatened by one of their number.” This was the justification for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and their Warsaw Pact allies in 1968. Brezhnev retained his hold on power to the end despite his frail health and growing feebleness. He strengthened the Soviet Union’s formidable military-industrial-political base (the iron triangle) capable of supplying large numbers of the most modern weapons, but in so doing, he impoverished the rest of the Soviet economy. After his death, he received criticism for a gradual slide in living standards, the spread of corruption and cronyism within the Soviet bureaucracy, and the general stagnant and dispiriting character of Soviet life in the late 1970s and early 80s.
My Russian Family Page 37