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School in the Twenties<br />
the journal, returned it, commenting,“I see that <strong>to</strong>day it is going <strong>to</strong> be difficult for<br />
you <strong>to</strong> transport yourselves back <strong>to</strong> the time of War and Peace.I excuse you, Zoya,<br />
from your report, but a week from <strong>to</strong>day you and the new writer will present a<br />
report <strong>to</strong>gether on ‘Natasha and Prince Andrey.’ Meanwhile, <strong>to</strong>day I will deviate<br />
from the syllabus and tell you about Russian Symbolists.”<br />
The class broke in<strong>to</strong> applause. We already knew about our teacher’s penchant<br />
for the Symbolists; he was a bit of a poet himself. For two hours, holding our<br />
breath, we listened <strong>to</strong> what was for those times a forbidden lecture about the<br />
poetry of Balmont, Belyy, early Blok, and Bryusov. 18<br />
With their initiatives, Nirenburg and Zoya had eclipsed my glory for the time<br />
being. But the following week, the school newspaper Iskra (Spark) was posted on<br />
the wall. In the traditional “Comic Quiz” section the following question appeared:<br />
“How do you use radio tube reflexes <strong>to</strong> change a “D” <strong>to</strong> an “A” in mathematics<br />
and literature?”<br />
Three months later I received an honorarium of sixty rubles, which for those<br />
times was not much at all, but it was my first paycheck in the field of science.This<br />
article was the crown of my radio engineering activities during those years.<br />
In the spring of 1929, having completed nine grades, we were triumphantly<br />
given certificates attesting <strong>to</strong> the successful completion of comprehensive school.<br />
We were released in<strong>to</strong> a life where each of us was faced with selecting our own<br />
path.We of course all dreamed of going straight in<strong>to</strong> an institute of higher learning.The<br />
resources that School No. 70 had given me did not go <strong>to</strong> waste.<br />
Forty years later, after meeting with several former classmates, we calculated that<br />
our class alone had produced four doc<strong>to</strong>rs of science, five candidates of science, and<br />
three or four production managers. Only three girls became professional librarians;<br />
the others had obtained higher pedagogical, civil engineering, or literary<br />
education. One of our classmates even graduated from the conserva<strong>to</strong>ry as a<br />
pianist. Everyone whom we recalled from the graduating class of 1929 had sooner<br />
or later obtained higher education. Three did not return from the front during<br />
World War II.<br />
My entry in<strong>to</strong> school coincided with the end of the Russian State’s general<br />
systemic crisis (1914-1923). Industrial production during the crisis period was<br />
one-fifth of the production level for 1913, and agricultural production two-thirds.<br />
Six years later, when we finished school, industrial production had already<br />
surpassed the 1913 level. The country’s integrity was res<strong>to</strong>red and the backward<br />
peasant nation had begun moving headlong <strong>to</strong>ward achieving the status of a great<br />
industrial power.<br />
A universal, burgeoning passion for technology and precise science had already<br />
begun in those years. Seven <strong>to</strong> ten individuals competed for each <strong>open</strong>ing in the<br />
18. Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont (1867-1942) and Andrey Belyy (1880-1934; his real name was Boris<br />
Nikolayevich Bugayev) were famous Russian Symbolist poets.<br />
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