| |
russia: Tormenting The Ghosts - 05/10/12 11:03 PM
Sometimes I get that burning sensation that eventually results in a story from my Soviet era past. Maybe it is a way for me to mentally measure those little moments in life… life, that was so different from my life here today, that I often think that I managed to live two lives.
I am trying not to exaggerate, not to become a hindsight hero of sort, but comments on my Russian posts are often complimentary and I start looking like a dissident, a courageous guys who stood up to oppressors, a hero…
I wasn’t any of that. I was critical, … (10 comments)
|
russia: Revealations Of A Taxi Driver - 05/09/12 09:50 PM
This is the last blog post out of three involving my friend Vitaly Vasiljev. Here are the links to previous posts: A Scent Of Freedom… , The Tale of a Bully We both worked in school as military instructors. Each school had 3 AK-47, which were modified so that they could no longer shoot, but they were used for training. We also had small caliber rifles and sometimes guns, and kids loved shooting at the range that we built together with kids in the school basement.
Military instructions were for the last two grades. After the first year we had a … (25 comments)
|
russia: The Tale of a Bully - 05/08/12 08:32 PM
A true untrue story…
How can a true story be untrue? You're right, it can't. It is like a fisherman telling his friends about a fish he caught 30 years ago. They smile, but they don’t buy it. But he is telling the truth, he really caught this humongous fish... Will they ever believe him?
Stories like this belong to time in my past, and weird times reveal weird stories. So, here is the story and you be the judge.
In the Soviet Union the members of the Communist party had monthly party meetings. Every place of work had a party … (25 comments)
|
russia: A Scent Of Freedom… - 05/07/12 10:46 PM
Like me, Vitaly, was a military instructor in high school in our small coal-mining town above the Arctic Circle in the now former Soviet Union. We worked in different schools in the same town. We often met for training exercises where we combined classes to form a platoon, and eventually we developed a bond between us, two very different people. We were critical of our propaganda, even though we were its product, maybe a bit on critical side. It was the era of Gorbachev and we could feel the scent of freedom in the air. Maybe not a scent yet, but a hint … (24 comments)
|
russia: It Is April 22... What A Date! - 04/22/12 08:50 AM
I was surfing AR, and looked at the calendar. It was showing April 22. And it clicked right away. Everybody from the Soviet Union knows this date. We used to celebrate it, it was occupying the first pages of newspapers, was on TV news, it was celebrate by schoolchildren at schools and students in colleges...
I turned to my 20-year old grandson, who was preoccupied texting something to someone, and I asked him if he knew what happened on this day. He thought for a second, shrugged his shoulders and went back to texting.
Then I went to the balcony where … (11 comments)
|
russia: So That Nothing Happened... - 03/02/12 11:47 PM
Recently I read an interview (in Russian) with a Soviet/Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It was published in Seagull Magazine back in January 2011, but I only read it a few days ago.
The interview was timed to 50th anniversary of the publication of the poem “Babiy Yar”, which became one of the most important events in the post war literary history of the Soviet Union.
I posted A Monument To My Grandmother…, a very difficult post for me to write. I suggest you read it first, as otherwise you may not really understand this post. Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was shocked … (12 comments)
|
russia: A Monument To My Grandmother… - 02/29/12 09:15 PM
51 years ago a Russian/Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko published a poem “Babiy Yar”.
I am convinced that no other poem in the Soviet Union/Russia had the same effect as Babiy Yar. Ever…
It was like a nuke exploded in the Soviet Union. For so many people it was a breath of fresh air, a word of truth said in the empire of lie. For many others it was what a red cloth is to the enraged bull…
No, I do not think that this is the best poem ever written in Russian… but this poem stands out not on its … (19 comments)
|
russia: Do You Enjoy Sex or The Art of Landing A Job... - 02/15/12 08:09 PM
He came to US from the Ukraine when he, like me, was 40. I was a regular guy, and Nick was a decorated guy, one who was involved in coming with his best men and pumping the concrete into Chernobyl’s reactor in 1986 right after the explosion. He was a big boss, used to have a company car, a driver… and still he immigrated to the US, was looking for every opportunity to work, took construction jobs and shoveled dirt…
His wife, a music teacher, took college courses in accounting, and she was able to land a job. Not a lot … (14 comments)
|
russia: When It Hits Home... - 12/18/11 11:48 PM
Growing in the Soviet Union, one theme that was constant through our lives: it was fighting for peace. Constant shortages and long lines to buy anything were because we had to fight for peace in the world and that was costly. Living in three room apartment with one bathroom and one kitchen housing 3 unrelated families was common, and we could not do better because of the cost to fight for peace in the world…
Of course, it was America and the West, who made us live with tightened belts.
When you are in America, and, actually, can say whatever you … (8 comments)
|
russia: How To Make Wrong Right? - 12/15/11 01:56 AM
After coming to US, we learned about Food Stamps. We were supposed to receive them right away, but our 4-member family waited for 2 months... We ran out of money 2 weeks after landing at JFK, and had to severely cut on food for a few weeks, before my son got a dream job in a local supermarket in the Bronx.
He was paid little money, but he was getting tips from older ladies whom he was helping with the carts to their apartments. This put food on our table, and things were only getting better from that moment on. But … (29 comments)
|
russia: Fascinating Journey To The Past… - 12/08/11 12:33 AM
On November 22 Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana (Lana Peters) died. It struck me that she died in America (at a care home in Wisconsin). I did not know she was in America.
It really strange. Stalin’s daughter lived and died in America. After Stalin we had Nikita Khruschev and his son Sergey lives in America and writes memoirs about his great father…
How come that children of Soviet dictators end up here?
Stalin died in 1953. Svetlana in 1966 got out of the Soviet Union, and did not return. She published several books, I have not read any of them, even … (19 comments)
|
russia: Acting As Adults...Mafia Style - 10/12/11 12:11 AM
It is a coincidence, of course, but both the United States and Russia will be electing their next President in 2012. So, who will be the next Russian President?
Putin, a former KGB, was President for 2 terms, and then could change the Constitution so that he could stay another term, but he had a better idea and they put Dmitry Medvedev as substitute President (and people, of course, gladly voted for the guy nobody heard of), while Putin changed the office and became the Prime Minister, and everybody knew who the real boss was.
Putin, when asked by a Japanese journalist whether he would … (21 comments)
|
russia: Pursuit Of Little Happiness - 10/08/11 12:32 PM
In 1985 my wife applied to the Teacher's Union for a vacation abroad, and to my big surprise, they let us go on that fabulous 10-day bus tour of Hungary. Beautiful country, so clean and so neat...
It was strange, but many Hungarians we met were not happy. For us, coming from the Soviet Union, it was a beautiful country, but they did not compare to us, they compared to neighboring Austria... For them Hungary was a jail and knowing that Soviet Union was worse did not bring happiness to them.
10 days lasted just... 10 days, and we were back … (30 comments)
|
russia: My First American - 10/04/11 02:03 AM
I met my first American in Moscow in 1988 in Pushkin Square. This popular downtown Square was a gathering place for independently minded people after Gorbachev initiated his Glasnost & Perestroika. You could find there underground newspapers, there were spontaneous meetings, and a lot of discussions.
I heard someone was speaking English. Two guys, one a young guy in suit and tie, obviously Russian, fluent English, and the other one, a tall middle aged guy, was an American. I joined them attracted by the fact that they were speaking English, as this was the first American I met, and for … (28 comments)
|
russia: Memory Bits. The Stargazer - 10/02/11 11:53 PM
My wandering mind stumbles upon the bits and pieces of memory that I did not expect to remember… They just pop up from their oblivion deep in the brain cells and for a moment bring back the feelings, smells, sights of episodes long forgotten… Some disappear with the slightest distraction only to reappear months or years later triggered by a hint of a smell or sound… some get under the skin and my mind plays with the time long gone as if I am reliving it now… People call this a memory but it is truly more than memory as it … (8 comments)
|
russia: A State of Hyperactive Coma - 09/03/11 09:28 PM
In January 2009 I posted The Man Who Shot Down McCain
It was a bit of surprise to see the comment on this old blog coming in August just a few days ago. Actually two angry comments from a Russian named Boris. The comments were so familiar, that even if he would not have a Russian name, I could tell it in a fraction of a second.
The hatred, the blindness, lack of attempt to see world any different that what our propaganda instilled in us.
Anyway, I responded, and then there were two more comments, and it was turning … (19 comments)
|
russia: Bread, Butter and a Slice of Freedom - 08/05/11 12:16 AM
20 years ago on July 30th 1991 we boarded Pan Am Boeing 747 in Sheremetjevo Airport, Moscow, and after a long, exhausting and hostile border patrol checks and uncertainty of the last minute, when you are tight as a string of a bow, we finally got into our seats and the plane took off, and about 300 of lucky ones finally breathed the sigh of relief....We were leaving the Soviet Union, and we were leaving it for good.
It was our son's birthday. He turned 19 on that long-long day...
It was a flight from the past to the future. It … (33 comments)
|
russia: Taking Business Seriously... - 07/10/11 11:43 PM
It was 1988.
After I have submitted my documents to the American Consulate for immigrant Visa, I decided to test myself and see if I could survive in a hostile environment, I left the family in our Arctic city of Vorkuta and moved to Moscow.
Without a residency permit, I could not work in government sector, which was practically 100% of all jobs, leaving a tiny-tiny drop of emerging private sector. I landed a job and soon was a manager of the private language school for adults working with some wonderful teachers of foreign languages.
On a gloomy Moscow autumn day I was approached by two … (6 comments)
|
russia: Great Country With Unpredictable Past - 06/26/11 02:14 PM
This year was the first time I forgot about the shortest night of the year, June 22, the date the Great Patriotic War, how it was called in the Soviet Union, started 70 years ago. I do not know how that could happen. I thought I would never forget it, but I am getting older, and the war goes further away.
There were celebrations, with the most prominent in Byelorussia in Brest Fortress. Delegations from other countries came, President of Byelorussia was there... They reenacted the beginning of the war, with shootings, canon fire. Here is a television piece reporting about … (15 comments)
|
russia: The Beast in a Skirt - 06/22/11 02:17 AM
Long ago that I wrote a blog about Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a famous Soviet dissident, a great novelist, Nobel Laureate in literature. Americans know him, he was exiled and lived in Vermont until he returned to Russia in 1994.
There was another figure in the Soviet history, also a Nobel Laureate (Peace Prize), a dissident – academician Andrey Sakharov. He was called «the father of hydrogen bomb», was one of the highest decorated scientists, who forfeited everything he had and became a staunch opponent of the Soviet regime.
He died of a heart failure in 1989, and he would have turned 90 about a … (40 comments)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jon Zolsky, your Daytona Beach, Florida connection
Daytona Beach,
FL
More about me…
Jon Zolsky, Daytona Beach, FL. FunCoast Realty, 386-405-4408
Address: 313 S Atlantic Ave., Suite A, Daytona Beach, FL, 32118
Office Phone: (386) 255-5355
Cell Phone: (386) 405-4408
Email Me
 Listings
Links
Archives
|
;)
;)
;)
