About My Life

I was born in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is an ancient city, and in the 11^th century it was a center of Kievan Rus. Since that time, it has been called The Mother of Russian cities.

I grew up a typical Soviet girl who was expected to participate in various official organizations. At the age of seven my classmates and I became Octyabryata (organization dedicated in honor of October Revolution in 1917). Later, when I was 10, I joined pioneers (kind of continuation of the previous children organization – a mixture of scout attributes with communist ideology), and then I became of a member of Komsomol (the closest to Communist Party organization for young people named in honor of Lenin). I studied Journalism in a college and worked at the same time. As well as other students and workers, I was required from time to time to go to kolkhoz (collective farms) and to construction sites to do some hard physical work, such as digging the potato fields, or construct buildings, barns, etc.

While generally obeying the orders, I started reading prohibited literature, which was usually typed by someone on a typewriter or published officially but then the copies were confiscated and destroyed: Mikhail Bulgakov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I began thinking independently of Soviet propaganda. I found out that the things I believed in didn’t match the reality. I discovered that poets and writers who were considered outcasts in the Soviet Union were outstanding and their masterpieces belonged to the whole world but not to the group of communists: Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelshtam, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Innokentii Annenskii, Maksimilian Voloshin. I have learned later that the fate and life of each of my favorite authors was as extraordinary as their art. I realized that I couldn’t live without Russian literature and language.

I was lucky to work at the editorial department with journalists who shared my preferences and who had a wide life experience: some of them worked in virgin lands of Kazakhstan in 1954, they had friends among those exiled by Soviet authorities because of their views. I was lucky to work together with people who supported me when I made a ridiculous mistake by confusing the initial of the first name of the General Secretary of Communist Party Chernenko. Because of this, I was accused of grave political mistakes. In Stalin’s times, that would have been the end of my career and quite possibly life as well. But at that time I was reprimanded and stepped down. It did not mean that much to me since after Chernobyl catastrophe many things were put into a different prospective. I was taking care of my little son. Perestroika was beginning and it seemed like life should be changing to better. However, it was only getting worse. My little son has got his own experience of anti-Semitism.

I acted the same way as my favorite poet Marina Tsvetaeva who left Russia after the October revolution of 1917. I came to the USA during the Communist coup in August of 1991. I felt that not only I love Russian language and literature but also I would like to share my knowledge and love with the students.

While living here in the US, I keep myself abreast of significant changes in Russian and Ukrainian language and developments in literature. I communicate frequently with my friends and colleagues in the former USSR and visit my homeland every year.

I can say about myself, as Tevye the Milkman (a famous Sholom Aleihem’s personage) once said, slightly changing his words. I was born in Ukraine, I am Jew, my native language is Russian, and my second home is America.