March 5, 2013...So What?

Richard & Beth - I fear the same. As time goes, atrocities are further from us, and are fading from our memory. And it is dangerous

Jill - of course. And I was very glad that Olga couldn't even remember what it is. Of course, Olga is ethnic Russian, and her world was different and she had little or know lnowledge of these things until we became a family.

Hella - my mom ended the war in a military Hospital where she had the rank of Captain in Tajikistan. She was a military doctor. Tajikistan and other Central Asian Republics of USSR were also a place of exile for some nations that were not favored by Stalin, and part of Russian Germans fro the Volga Region were sent there.

My brother is 7 years older than me. When he was 5 years old, he was invited with other kids to neighbor's kid birthday. At the party somebody asked him what he wants the most, and he said that he dreams of a machine gun, and then he would shoot every German, and he made this gesture as if he was shooting people, and said "tra-ta-ta-ta-ta".

My mom did not know where to hide as these people were Germans. I can only imagine how bad it was for them, while there was no fault of any of them.

But right after the war hatred of Germans was everywhere and in everything... And can you blame a kid who lost both his grandparents?

Bruce - I remember that in late 70s, probably in 1978 I was talking to a good friend of mine and in a moment of opennes he asked me whether I implied that our regime would end somewhere in the very remote future. He felt it in my tone, and could not believve I actually thought this way.

I told him that there will be the end, but he could not even allow the thought that it could happen within the next 100 years. We were both very alert and concerned. He because he listened to me and did not report, which could cost him his career and party membership (luckily by that time it was no longer life, like 30 years before). Me, that if he reports, I would be fired and in a small city in the Arctic if you are fired on political grounds, where would you go?

Plus, it would sure have ended up my wifes successful career in education. She was a member of the Communist Party or she would not have had this career.

How smart are we now and how gloomy was it then and even the idea of things changing was unbearable and scary. Popular "kitchen" talks when people discussed things, were not about changing the regime. They were about changing the way the regime is working, changing the inefficiency of everything... It was about removing idiots and rewarding good people, and even when caught and accosted by KGB, people would defend that they wanted better communism, or they wanted real communism, and they wanted to expedite the move to the great future...

But not change it.

Carla - what a coincidence. I gave it to my older grandson (nearly 21), he read and said "great". I was puzzled. Feels as if he read it as a piee of fiction, or, worse, a poiece of science fiction

Hannah - the history that connected with me, whether I wanted it or not

Inna - my mom avoided speaking about it with me. She knew that if she would, how would she shut my mouth so that I do not go and start telling others around me about the regime? What would have happened to me? I had enough of my own conflicts, and the last one I needed was an anti Soviet one...

And what if you knew it when you were in your tumultuous 15? What would you do with this information? Would you be able to keep your mouth shut? I doubt it.

And ask your mom, these tings were said, they were mentioned, and not once, and not twice, but they were not pushed and they bounced of you, you did not notice them. When I asked you to read Baby Yar to Daniel, so that he start understanding the history, what did you say? You said that they did not learn it at school, and he does not know much about WWII.

But it is not a book history, it is a history of the family, where innocent people died. Bot h is Hitler's hands and in Stalin's hands.

You know your uncle Shura. Of course, you do. But do you know that in 1952 he was hiding from Stalin's hands after his father was sent to GULAG. And that my mom was hiding him?

There are many things that you do not know. I was figuring it out, and I knew some of it, but not from my mom.

You had a normal life, and you did not know. No fault of yours You were not supposed to know. It spelled trouble, and you did not need it.

It is all over now, at least here in America. I simply want you to understand that there was way more than just an adventure in your mom's decision to emigrate. And she is ethnic Russian, as you, of course, know. But she was afraid for your future in the Soviet Union/Russia.

Little Shane is an American. Probably a lucky one. As it could all have been different if the tyrant did not die on March 5, 1953.

Our live could be very different... meaning that there could be no lives for us in store...

Shar - it is a very personal history for me. And it could be no history for me, and subsequently no my kids, and no my grandchildren

Yes, it is history, and yes, it is very personal

Inna Ivchenko - she and her husband run a 2-people marketing company. Doing hi-end websites for successful agents (not me :) Inna finally started writing proze. She is a born writer. Actually, she wrote verses back in Russia, but it was only when she was sick and tied to bed, as other time she was too active with kids stuff and wouldn't write. But she is very talented. You can check her old posts, she had a few absolutely wonderful posts there

Inna Ivchenko - It is funny, but in our family my wife and I speak Russian at home, my son Vadim is truly bilingual and is equally good with both languages, and Inna is thinking and speaking in English, and sometimes I notice that when she speaks Russian, she translates from English. Even though she speaks Russian fluently, it still is second to English.

Funny because Vadim was 19, when we came to US and Inna was 18. But they are very different.