Coming to the West

I had a safe childhood growing up in Brezhnev-era Soviet Russia. My family was a rather typical one, according to the principle formulated by Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I lived with a father, mother, younger brother, grandmother, and grandfather in a two-bedroom Khrushchyovka building on Vasilyevsky Island, Leningrad. To Americans, it may sound incredibly crowded and like poor living conditions, but I did not experience it as such. I felt loved and cared for; my kindergarten and school were around the corner from my apartment building. On weekends and during summers, we would either take a train or drive to the country house about 100 kilometers outside of Leningrad. We'd also have throngs of relatives visiting us, mostly on weekends. My grandparents had large families, and we had little respite from innumerable aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews, some of whom lived nearby in the city and some in other cities in Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia. A lot of the time, they would visit us; sometimes, we would visit them.

I remember the atmosphere of joy and the pleasure of seeing each other and being in each other's company; there was rarely bickering or quarrels. Reflecting on it, my extended family's joyfulness and a sense of cohesiveness appears almost unreal. Sometimes I wonder that the massive trauma of World War II, much of which was fought on Soviet Union territory, contributed to the family's sense of unity.

Everyone among my grandparents' and parents' generations was a World War II veteran or survivor; among my immediate family, my grandfather and his brothers fought in the war and were wounded multiple times; my grandmother and my mother survived the Blockade of Leningrad; my father was interred in camp as a young prisoner of war. Growing up, I heard many stories about the war, stories of struggle and survival. I wonder if the sheer joy of staying alive after several years o