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Rockets and People
cruiser Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya.We shivered with cold in the chambers of the
Peter and Paul Fortress and admired the works of the Italian and French architects.
On the verge of exhaustion, we made our way to the site of Pushkin’s duel on the
Chernaya River and then in the evening, out of fatigue, we fell asleep at the ballet
in the former imperial Mariynskiy Theater. Leningrad won us over with its
grandeur and its history. My love for this city has been preserved from those school
years to this day.
The scope of the humanities we studied in school was not great, but I often
recall with gratitude the teachers who, at the risk of losing their job, digressed from
the instructions and literally sowed “reason, kindness, and the eternal.” 9 We studied
neither Russian nor world history.These subjects simply were not offered. Instead
we had two years of social science, during which we studied the history of
Communist ideas from Thomas More to Lenin, as well as the worldwide revolutionary
movement. Our clever social sciences teacher conducted lessons so that,
along with the history of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, we
became familiar with the history of the European peoples from Ancient Rome to
World War I; and while studying the Decembrist movement and 1905 Revolution
in detail we were forced to investigate the history of Russia. 10
Many years later I understood what tremendous educational impact there is in
direct contact with living history, with genuine works of art and architecture. I
understood that this was because I received a greater dose of the humanities in a
Soviet nine-year school in the late 1920s than my sons did in the postwar elevenyear
schools, or my grandson sixty years later! True, they had television, modern
cinema, and extensive home libraries at their disposal. However, it is one thing to
feel for yourself the dampness of the Alekseyevskiy ravelin and quite another to
look at the Peter and Paul Fortress in the comfort of your home on television. 11
Of course, during those five years of school, as far as I can remember, I never had
enough time. On winter evenings you still had to manage to go skating. Patriarchs’
Ponds, Iskra on the Presnya, and the Young Pioneers’ Stadium were three of the rinks
where we would meet in our free time.We did more than just skate there. Rinks
were venues for rendezvous and declarations of love. In those strict, puritanical times
it was considered inappropriate for a young man of fourteen or fifteen to walk arm
in arm with a young woman. But while skating, you could put your arm around a
girl’s waist, whirl around with her on the ice to the point of utter exhaustion, and
then accompany her home without the least fear of reproach. Such was the code of
honor at skating rinks. Skiing competitions were held at Petrovskiy Park.The section
9. The line is an excerpt from Nekrasov’s poem “To the Sowers.”
10. The Decembrist movement refers to one of the first attempts to overthrow the Tsarist regime.The failed
coup took place in December 1825.
11. The Alekseyevskiy ravelin is the exterior fortification of Peter and Paul Fortress built in 1733 and named
in honor of Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich (1629-1676). A “secret house” was built in 1797 at the ravelin and was
used until 1884 as a prison.
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