A few years ago, I wanted to tell my grandchildren about my life. But I realized that boys are more interested in “talking” with the modern devices than with the grandfather even if he is  a professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences. So, I decided to write down some stories from my life by believing that the grandsons would read this. My grandsons were born in America and English was native to them. Therefore, to increase the likelihood that my memories will ever be read, I decided to write in English. I was very lucky that my American friend Nathan Helpert enthusiastically started to help me. He not only corrected my English; our very interesting conversations helped me formulate my thoughts in the best way.

For many years I was a witness and sometimes the participant in events, and I was lucky I met with many interesting people. Therefore, I describe not only my personal life, but those events and phenomena that occurred in our country, those people with whom I was familiar and all that influenced my life. Some facts from my Soviet life may be incomprehensible to the modern, especially American reader and so these facts required explanations. However, all of them are not fiction; they occurred in real life. I called my scattering memories: “The notes about my life”

What It Is

I begin my notes with a description of my life and events that took place at the Nikita Gate during the first and very important stage of my life. I was born, graduated from school and university, and got married here.  I lived at the Nikita Gate for 25 years and I formed here as a person among people and events that surrounded me at that time.

The Nikita Gate is the name of the square in downtown Moscow. In the old days there was really a gate of the fortification walls. These walls were destroyed at the end of the XVIII century and the world gate preserved in the name of several squares in Moscow.

I was born on March 15, 1931. At that time the Nikita Gate square was a big area similar to the American plaza. There were many different institutions in this area, such as two savings banks, a cinema Union, a photo studio, a shoe repair shop, two barber shops, a metal works shop, a pharmacy, two bakeries, and three grocery stores. These three had the same signboards: “Products”, however, among the locals, each of them had its proper name. One of them was called: “Three Little Pigs”, because the layouts of these pigs stood in the window of this store. Another grocery store was just called: “The angular” because it was located in the corner building. The largest grocery store at Nikita Gate was called, before the revolution, “The grocery”. In principle, everything from sweets to meat and fish was sold here. However, this does not mean that the customers could buy it at any time. Often there were the long lines for scarce products in the stories.

As for me, the most interesting was the candy story at the Nikita Gate, and not only because that many sweets were offered here but because there was the unusual shop window. I could stand there for a long time and look into it. There was the small model of this store, where customers were coming into the shop and going out with purchases in hand. The people came in and the same people came out with purchases. And so on without end. It was the most interesting sight for me, and I liked watching it.

In those years there were no trolleybuses in Moscow and Metro was just started to be built. The tram was the main form of public transport. The several tram routes passed through the Nikita Gate. Two multi-colored lights were on the roof of the head carriage like the eyes of a Cyclops. I remember route number 22 well, it had two green lights; my parents and I drove this tram to grandma house many times.

During my childhood the horse-drawn transport still met on the streets of Moscow.  The passenger carriages began to disappear with the advent of the taxies and Subway in Moscow. There was even a very popular song about the last cabdriver, who took the subway to go where he harnessed his horse. The cargo carriages stopped appearing in Moscow only after the Second World War.

I always felt sorry for the horses that were carrying heavy loads near trucks and trams. When I was little and walked with a nanny at the Nikita Gate l saw how the horse fell right on the tram rails in the middle of the square. It was winter and it was slippery; the horse dragged heavy loads and apparently slipped. The driver was frightened that his cart with a fallen horse blocked the tramway and began to whip his horse. The horse tried to climb convulsively but slid and fell again. I was very sorry for this unhappy horse and I cried bitterly, and the nanny quickly took me home. More than 80 years have passed since that moment, but I remember this sad picture very well.

Now the Nikita Gate, a completely different area. For a long time, there have been no horses or trams here. All small buildings have long been demolished. The six-story luxury building erected on the site of the candy store that I loved very much as a child, it occupies the right side. The public garden and crudely fashioned Rotonda fountain  were created on the site of an old building where the famous store “The grocery” was located.  Only one building from the time of my childhood survived at the Nikita Gate, there was the “Union” cinema in this building. In the early fifties when there was a decisive struggle with cosmopolitanism in the Soviet Union and all foreign words withdrawn from Russian, the cinema got its name “The movie theater of the repeat films”. Now this building is occupied by “The theater at the Nikita Gate”.

The other my favorite place was Nikita Boulevard itself. In that time Russian boulevards represented green zones between two roads, similar to American malls but not so broad. The boulevard was a good place for children to play. We could even ski there in the winter.

Well, the Nikita Gate became a completely different area but every time I am in Moscow, I am happy to visit Nikita Gate.

Communal Apartment

When I was born, my parents lived at 15 Nikita Blvd. Apt. #7, where beside them there were seven more families. Before the revolution this apartment belonged to Boris Ivanovich Abrikosov. He was a lawyer, I believe he was a good lawyer, because he was able to occupy such a big apartment in the center of Moscow. After the October Revolution private apartments were converted to communal apartments, where several families could live, usually occupy, only one room. Our family also had one room in a similar apartment.

The surname Abrikosov was well known in Moscow. The famous pathologist, academician Aleksey Ivanovich Abrikosov was brother of Boris Ivanovich. By the way, his nephew Aleksey Alekseevich became the famous Russian-American scientist, academician and the Nobel Prize winner. He died in Palo-Alto, California USA, 2017.  The very popular actor and Stalin Laureate Andrei Abrikosov who lived in our apartment was a relative of Boris Ivanovich. What an interesting man was Boris Ivanovich Abrikosov.

In total, twenty six people lived in the apartment, including six children and three nannies, who were called, at that time domestic workers. The apartment was large, and we could even ride the small bike in the long corridor. Unfortunately, there was only one bathroom and one lavatory without a wash basin. Therefore, the sink in the kitchen was also for washing especially in the morning when people hurried to go to work.

Among the inhabitants of our apartment I especially well remember  David, who lived in a small room which was designed for domestic women in the old days. The room was very small, four-five square meters, but David was not despondent. He was actually satisfied with this space.  All items in the room were not big; a narrow bed, small desk on which there was a radio set. It was the first radio in my life. And when I was listening to the radio music, I thought, how the musicians could fit into the radio set. I believe I was four-five years old at that time. It was the time of the beginning of Stalin's repressions, and when I got considerably older, I knew that David was arrested and never returned to his room. And another man, a communist by the name of Michael who lived in the apartment was also arrested. I don't know anything about his fate. But we, my friends and I were kids and we liked to play hide-and-seek, to ride  bikes or just run about the corridor in  our  apartment.

Violinist on the Boulevard

But most of all I liked to go to Nikita Boulevard, where kids had more freedom than at home. Each kid came there accompanied by grandmother, mother or the nanny. Usually the nannies were young women, who moved to the city from the country, when the collectivization began. They had the same reason to live in the city, and hopefully to get married there. They usually liked to get together and to discuss their problems or to sing inspiringly some ditties. As a result. the children under their care of the nannies had more freedom in the boulevard, than the children who were with their parents. Sometimes this freedom led to not very good results. One terrible case happened to me.