BlogMoscow, 1947.
Victor Ushakov knew he came upon one of those rare moments in life, when the next decision he was going to make could change his life and the lives of those around him. He knew that there was no chance that the decision made would work for everyone. It would be gambling – gambling with the future.
That moment finally came at the end of the first semester of his freshman year in Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire – the dream of his life. Although a freshman, he was thirty years old – older than his peers. It was WWII that tragically delayed his dream to study music and composition in The Conservatoire for years.
On the other hand, the realities of War gave him the courage to write his music – lots of music – which was performed at concerts and on the radio.
Victor showed a talent for music since his childhood. Perhaps, he inherited it from his mother, Ekaterina, who always loved to sing in private and eventually became a well-known folk singer.
Before the War, the Ushakov family lived in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, where doctor Ushakov, Victor’s step-father, was the Chief Surgeon at the Military Hospital, and Ekaterina was his operating room nurse for many years, before becoming a celebrated singer.
Victor always had two passions – sports and music. In Siberia, skiing was a natural part of winter life, while hiking and rowing dominated all other seasons – it was not even considered a sport.
But for Victor, nothing could compare to soccer, his life-long devotion. He joined the Soccer Club during high school, and for years participated in high level competitions.
He was an athletic man – tall and strong, but the passion for music always prevailed. He played piano and flute at home and at school, and tried every other instrument that happened to be in his hands.
Tanya, his daughter, remembers that he used to bring exotic instruments into their tiny apartment, such as the harmonium – a pump organ, or the klavesin – a harpsichord. His excitement was neither appreciated by his wife, Iskra, nor by Maria, his mother-in-law, because of the size and the cost of those new additions to the many other musical instruments that already crowded their small apartment.
He knew that music was his destiny! The School of Music of the Siberian Military District gave him the opportunity to earn degrees in composition and music performance.
After graduation he was assigned to The Ensemble of the Siberian Military District. When war came to Russia in 1941, he joined the front-line band, playing trumpet. The band moved from one military unit to another, playing as many performances as possible, often interrupted by bombing or artillery fire.
He never liked to talk about those years: about the winter concerts, when his fingers were not able to move due to the frost; about the hordes of mosquitoes you couldn’t kill during summer performances; about the endless mud on endless roads; about the impossibility of protecting musical notations and instruments; about being lost, and not just once, while moving from one position to another; or about those nights, when the soldiers and musicians used their short breaks to write letters to their loved ones under the weak light of a self-made oil lamp.
Instead, he preferred to discuss the war-time music.
One night he wrote his first song – “A Letter to My Beloved”, which quickly became popular. Other songs soon followed.
His compositions for the band were well accepted, and Victor was requested back to the Ensemble’s headquarters in Novosibirsk, where he was commissioned to write more music for other bands and orchestras.
Novosibirsk, at that time, became one of the largest industrial and cultural centers in Russia. There was a large concentration of scientific and technological research centers, as well as factories, specializing in super-modern military productions.
It was also the city where many evacuees – writers and musicians, actors and whole theater troupes from Moscow and Leningrad found a new home. One of these theaters was the famous Pushkin Drama Theater from Leningrad, whose actors were placed in an old, crumbling building on Serebrennikov Street – the same building where years later the Actor’s House of the Theatrical Society was opened.
That Actors House would be one of Victor’s “second homes”, together with the Concert Hall and Philharmonic Society alike.
Tanya remembers how Victor would rush over to one of those places every evening, when he wasn’t busy teaching classes at Music School, wearing a suit and dress shoes. He even did it in the midst of a cold Siberian winter – it was good that they lived within a short distance and he could run back and forth without getting frostbite on his toes.
“Listening to music is always an event, a cause for celebration.” Victor used to say, “You cannot go to a concert in boots!”
Victor became a frequent guest at that building on Serebrennikov Street long before the Actor’s House was opened, visiting Konstantin Adashevsky, a character actor from the Pushkin Drama Theater and a future celebrity in Soviet Russia. They worked together on the weekly radio show “Open fire on the enemy!” where Adashevsky played the role of a military scout, and Victor composed some of the music and songs. The show immediately became popular, both at the front and and at home, while Victor and Adashevsky, despite their age differences, became close friends for life.
It was a pure coincidence that Victor’s parents also moved to Novosibirsk at the end of the War. Prior to that, Vladimir Moiseevich was offered to run a hospital in Odessa and they even sent their baggage there. But the next day after the initial inspection of that hospital, he rejected the offer and accepted another one in Novosibirsk.
Sadly, some of their baggage never made it back from Odessa. Ekaterina, who lived her last years in Odessa, with Tanya, often joked that her lost baggage always knew she would come back to get it.
Victor was overjoyed with the family reunion – he was very close to his mother and step-father, Vladimir Moiseevich, who Victor called Batya.
Living in the same city gave Ekaterina and Victor the opportunity to perform together in concerts. They both loved outdoor performances as the most suitable for folk songs, weather permitting.
Folk songs required folk instruments, and the most popular was the bayan, which Victor played very well.
Bayan became one of Victor’s favorite instruments in Novosibirsk, where he met the legendary bayan player Ivan Malanin. Malanin, blind from birth, dedicated his life to classical arrangements of Russian folk songs, and achieved near perfection when playing the instrument. Many bayan players called him “The Teacher”.
It was Ivan Malanin who initiated and provided major contributions to the radio-show “Open fire on the enemy!” where Victor met both him and Adashevsky. Cooperation with Malanin grew into such a deep friendship between Ushakov’s and Malanin’s families that many around them believed they they were close relatives.
Victor’s songs and compositions grew in popularity that made him known in musical circles far beyond the Siberian audience. He was invited to work in Moscow conferences and committees, and at the beginning of 1946, by recommendations from Isaak Dunayevsky, the brilliant song writer and film composer, Victor became a member of the Union of Soviet Composers.
That was a great achievement, but what was even more important to Victor, was that Dunayevsky invited him to enroll into his class of composition at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, the following year. Flushed with success, Victor returned to Novosibirsk.
The War was over and Victor was discharged from the active duty. However, he often came to The Ensemble that continued to play his compositions. Working with them all those years, he knew all the musicians and singers.
One day, he noticed a new face that made him stop. It was a young woman with expressive eyes and dark hair. She was dressed simply, but in his eyes, she stood out from the other girls in her group. That was the choir group and they were on rehearsal break.
Victor, who never had a problem talking to women, suddenly hesitated to come and introduce himself, but he knew that the girl had noticed him too.
“Hey, Victor,” one of the singers from the group said, “I heard your new song on the radio, congratulations!” After a little small talk Victor asked, “I see you have a new girl in your group, who is she?” The singer called her over, “Iskra, come here, please. I would like to introduce my friend, Victor.”
“Iskra…” said Victor to the girl, “Such an unusual name. I would like to hear more about your name.”
They had many long walks and talks that spring. Victor shared his stories about himself and about the War, and Iskra told him about Altay, about the Night Train ride to that city, and about the months that followed, when every new day brought new worries to her.
One evening Iskra told him that she did not have a mattress on her bed. The next day Victor came over to the house, where she rented a communal room, with two gigantic bags of cotton wool. They made a mattress together, and, when they finished, they shared a large sandwich with sausages that Victor had brought with him – a luxury at the time.
When Iskra was telling us the story about the mattress – and she did it many times – we were always joking that it was not the mattress, but the sandwich that sealed the deal.
Ekaterina was on a long concert tour, and Victor introduced Iskra to Vladimir Moiseevich. Three of them spent evenings together, but the health of Vladimir Moiseevich was rapidly deteriorating, and, soon, he passed away.
For Ekaterina, who just lost her husband, it was not the best time to learn about Iskra. She felt as though her son was leaving her, too.
Ekaterina was not happy, to say the least. She gave Victor and, sometimes, Iskra, a thousand reasons why they should not be married now or ever, and the main reason was Victor’s enrollment in the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow the next year. Victor and Iskra got married anyway.
Iskra and Ekaterina became closer in time, but the traces of sourness in their relationship would never disappear. We know that they both loved Victor in their own way, yet saw his future differently.
For Victor and Iskra it was the happiest year, until the time came to go to Moscow. They both knew that that time would come, but, as always in such situations, it came suddenly.
Victor wanted Iskra to come with him, but Iskra absolutely rejected that option. Being already pregnant, she had established her life in Novosibirsk. She counted on her mother’s help with the coming child, and to dive again into the unknown, as she did a couple of years ago, was way too frightening for her.
For Victor to stay was a betrayal of his dream, his purpose, his Music. He went to start the classes in Moscow, alone .
Three months passed. The letters from Iskra about her condition and hardships were alarming.
And now, at the end of the first semester of his freshman year, he was urged to made his decision. Myriads of questions flashed through his mind, the questions he couldn’t find answers for. Would Iskra come to Moscow with their child to stay there through the years of his study? Would he be able to support the family there? If he returned to Novosibirsk, would he have the courage and will power to return to the Conservatoire years later?
We now know his decision. Victor returned to Novosibirsk just in time for the birth of their daughter, Tanya. He made up his mind – family first. The Conservatoire for him remained a dream.
And Victor, Iskra, and Tanya lived happily ever after…
At least, for a while. But that will be another story.
