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Rockets and People<br />
cruiser Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya.We shivered with cold in the chambers of the<br />
Peter and Paul Fortress and admired the works of the Italian and French architects.<br />
On the verge of exhaustion, we made our way <strong>to</strong> the site of Pushkin’s duel on the<br />
Chernaya River and then in the evening, out of fatigue, we fell asleep at the ballet<br />
in the former imperial Mariynskiy Theater. Leningrad won us over with its<br />
grandeur and its his<strong>to</strong>ry. My love for this city has been preserved from those school<br />
years <strong>to</strong> this day.<br />
The scope of the humanities we studied in school was not great, but I often<br />
recall with gratitude the teachers who, at the risk of losing their job, digressed from<br />
the instructions and literally sowed “reason, kindness, and the eternal.” 9 We studied<br />
neither Russian nor world his<strong>to</strong>ry.These subjects simply were not offered. Instead<br />
we had two years of social science, during which we studied the his<strong>to</strong>ry of<br />
Communist ideas from Thomas More <strong>to</strong> Lenin, as well as the worldwide revolutionary<br />
movement. Our clever social sciences teacher conducted lessons so that,<br />
along with the his<strong>to</strong>ry of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, we<br />
became familiar with the his<strong>to</strong>ry of the European peoples from Ancient Rome <strong>to</strong><br />
World War I; and while studying the Decembrist movement and 1905 Revolution<br />
in detail we were forced <strong>to</strong> investigate the his<strong>to</strong>ry of Russia. 10<br />
Many years later I unders<strong>to</strong>od what tremendous educational impact there is in<br />
direct contact with living his<strong>to</strong>ry, with genuine works of art and architecture. I<br />
unders<strong>to</strong>od that this was because I received a greater dose of the humanities in a<br />
Soviet nine-year school in the late 1920s than my sons did in the postwar elevenyear<br />
schools, or my grandson sixty years later! True, they had television, modern<br />
cinema, and extensive home libraries at their disposal. However, it is one thing <strong>to</strong><br />
feel for yourself the dampness of the Alekseyevskiy ravelin and quite another <strong>to</strong><br />
look at the Peter and Paul Fortress in the comfort of your home on television. 11<br />
Of course, during those five years of school, as far as I can remember, I never had<br />
enough time. On winter evenings you still had <strong>to</strong> manage <strong>to</strong> go skating. Patriarchs’<br />
Ponds, Iskra on the Presnya, and the Young Pioneers’ Stadium were three of the rinks<br />
where we would meet in our free time.We did more than just skate there. Rinks<br />
were venues for rendezvous and declarations of love. In those strict, puritanical times<br />
it was considered inappropriate for a young man of fourteen or fifteen <strong>to</strong> walk arm<br />
in arm with a young woman. But while skating, you could put your arm around a<br />
girl’s waist, whirl around with her on the ice <strong>to</strong> the point of utter exhaustion, and<br />
then accompany her home without the least fear of reproach. Such was the code of<br />
honor at skating rinks. Skiing competitions were held at Petrovskiy Park.The section<br />
9. The line is an excerpt from Nekrasov’s poem “To the Sowers.”<br />
10. The Decembrist movement refers <strong>to</strong> one of the first attempts <strong>to</strong> overthrow the Tsarist regime.The failed<br />
coup <strong>to</strong>ok place in December 1825.<br />
11. The Alekseyevskiy ravelin is the exterior fortification of Peter and Paul Fortress built in 1733 and named<br />
in honor of Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich (1629-1676). A “secret house” was built in 1797 at the ravelin and was<br />
used until 1884 as a prison.<br />
48