BlogNovosibirsk, 1955.
The last time we traveled back in time with Sasha and his parents, Lisa and Lyonya, was when Lyonya departed for his new Destination: Siberia.
There are countless stories to share about the next several years of their life: How Lisa and Sasha came to Siberia in the middle of September, wearing light clothes, and a snow blizzard with way below freezing temperatures greeted them at their arrival; How, in second grade, Sasha invited the whole class to his birthday party, promising sandwiches for all; How grandma Leeba came to visit them from Kharkov only to find out to her horror that the milk at the farmers market was only available as frozen pieces, during the cold season; and many, many more – but we will share those another time.
Today we will jump forward, to the time when their life in Novosibirsk had already settled down, more or less. Lyonya became the head of The Department of Physics and Lisa started directing the Legal sector at the same college.
There were, of course, new friends around, but Lyonya and, especially, Lisa felt very much cut out from their circles. They missed their siblings, cousins, other relatives, and life-long friends, who used to always come together to celebrate what was good or helped to cope with what wasn’t.
They would read every letter that came from Kharkov aloud and wrote back right away with the long happy stories of their Siberian life. They might have been trying to convince themselves, but Sasha knew they dreamed about the time when they would return Home.
One weekend afternoon, there was a loud knock at the door. Lyonya went to open it and Sasha ran after him – surprise visits had the potential of a non-boring evening. Few apartments in 1955 Novosibirsk were equipped with phone lines, and neighbors often dropped in without a warning.
The visitor was not anyone Sasha had known. An old slim man in large glasses, with a short cut mustache and a big nose that occupied a large part of his face. He looked at Lyonya and Sasha with genuine interest in his smart, dark eyes.
“Does Lisa Mondrus live here?” he asked in a business like manner, but not as an official question.
“Yes,” said Lyonya, “And you are…?’’ The man did not answer. He turned around and yelled down to the bottom of the staircase – “Rosa! She is here. Come up.”
Lisa came to the door, hearing her name and the alarming sound of an unfamiliar voice. The man looked at Lisa with a sign of great accomplishment. “I am Gersh Mondrus, your uncle from Harbin,” he said as a matter of fact, and hugged her right away.
In a few minutes his wife, Rosa, came in too. At her age, she had become a large woman contrasted sharply by the appearance of her slim husband. Moving slowly because of her weight, asthma, and high blood pressure, she emanated clouds of kindness and calmness that were also contrasted with her husband’s sharpness and dedication.
From our previous story, Remember Glukhov, you know that in the early-1900s Sasha’s great-grandfather, Chayim, hired teachers from the local Gymnasium School, which the Jewish kids were not allowed to attend at that time. He organized home schooling for his children and their cousins. Gersh, Chayim’s nephew, was one of them.
When The Great War of 1914 was unleashed, Gersh gladly accepted his aunt’s invitation to come to the city of Harbin, then in Manchuria, now China, to help with the business she had opened there.
Harbin was pretty much a Russian place. The Russian Empire financed and built the Chinese Eastern Railway as the extension of the strategic Russian Trans-Siberian Railway. The railroad connected Harbin to Russian military bases – Vladivostok on Pacific Ocean, Naval Base Port Arthur and the new port-city of Dalian in the Yellow Sea (or Dalny, which in Russian means Far Away) , which allowed quick fortification of those bases.
The Railway Administration set up their headquarters in Harbin. To encourage further Russian settlement in that important outpost, the Russian Tsar waived a 25-year long military service obligation that attracted many young workers. For Jews any restrictions in education or business ownership were lifted, which was an extremely unusual move for the Russian Empire.
Just in a few years Harbin grew from a small village to the one of the biggest cities in Northeast China – an international metropolis and the major transportation and economic hub. After the Bolshevik Revolution Harbin became the main destination for defeated tsarists and White Guards, who came from the most educated social class in the Russian Empire.
For about a half of the 20th century Harbin contained the largest Russian population outside Russia with a sizable Jewish community. Even during the Japanese occupation of Harbin in the 1930s, the Russians and the Jews stayed in Harbin without any restrictions.
Both Russian and Chinese languages were equally spoken in Harbin up to the mid-1940s, and most of the permanent residents spoke both. In addition to those, English and Japanese, mandatory during the occupation, were also spoken.
A cosmopolitan city, full of political refugees of all colors, heaven for musicians, painters and poets, Harbin was often called “Paris of the East” for its modern artistic and cultural atmosphere.
And the business opportunities were countless. In one year after coming to Harbin, Gersh opened his own business and fell in love with Rosa, who he met at his aunt’s home. Rosa, who was 18 at that time, came there from London. Her family ran to London from the pogroms, when she was still a little girl.
When the date of the wedding of Gersh and Rosa had been set, Gersh’s father came to meet the bride. Happy timing it was – the Bolshevik Revolution delayed his return home and kept him safe from the deadliest anti-Semitic massacre in Glukhov, in 1918.
The Gersh family lived in Harbin without any real problems for the next quarter of a century. Business was going well. His son, Zyama, graduated from the Polytechnic University, and his daughter, Manya, left for Shanghai and was enrolled in the British College. The younger daughter, Zina, became a nurse.
Soviet Russia had no interests in expats from North-East China before the end of WWII. The Sino-Soviet relationship was concentrated around the Eastern Railway and Dalny. When the Chinese tried to seize the Railway in 1929, a quick Soviet military intervention put an end to the crisis and restored the status-quo.
After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong requested transferring of the Eastern Railway and Port Arthur to China. It was the central part of the Treaty of Friendship with Soviet Russia and, facing multiple issues in Asia, Josef Stalin agreed.
The propaganda campaign to return expats to Soviet Russia came in full active mode. Expats were promised professional positions, housing, education, etc. Combined with increasing hostility against foreigners in China, it was the reason, for many, to go to a country they barely knew.
Manya was the first to go.
Since expats could not choose their destination, Manya and her husband were assigned to a half empty town in Bashkiria, in the Southern Urals. The only jobs available were manual labor in the Iron Factory. No one was interested in their professional skills and even explaining their abilities was not easy, as most locals spoke Bashkir with little Russian.
Their experience, obviously, did not encourage the rest of the Gersh family to hurry. But Mao’s China became more and more intolerant toward any foreigners, and the new Chinese government set up deadlines for foreigners to leave.
When deadlines approached, Gersh, Rosa, and Zina’s family were assigned by the Soviets to a village in the rural region, Khakassia, in Western Siberia. Gersh knew that there was no perspective or opportunities there. In violation of all police rules of Soviet Russia, he left the family behind and set out alone for Novosibirsk, the largest city in Eastern Russia.
Nobody knows how he did it (or how much he paid under the table), but in a couple of months he got all the required permissions to stay in Novosibirsk and got a job.
He rented a small house and obtained the documents that allowed his wife and children to join him. Rosa and Zina’s family came right away,
and, soon, Manya and Zyama with their families, came to Novosibirsk as well.
Another one of Lisa’s uncles, Zelik, was Gersh’s best friend back in Glukhov. From him Gersh found out that Lisa was living in Novosibirsk too.
That is when Gersh and Rosa showed up knocking at Lisa’s door .
The arrival of the Gersh family to Novosibirsk changed everything. For Sasha, to have his cousins, girls, both about his age, was a pleasant development. For Lenya and Lisa it was crucial not just to have formal relatives, but folks, who in no time became their close friends.
Now there were thirteen, instead of three around the family table – a number that terrifies some, but which definitely brought luck to our family.
Gersh did not live long enough to enjoy watching the life of his children and grandchildren. He already had an advanced stage of cancer when he arranged that unbelievable Novosibirsk affair. No doubt that without his efforts the lives of all people in this story would have been different, and those lives would not have been as full and successful.
To preserve the happy number of thirteen, Gersh’s place around the family table was taken by another of Sasha’s cousins, Zina’s son, named Sasha too. Yes, we know that the tradition to use a limited pool of names is confusing, but we can’t help it – he was not the only one of Sasha’s cousins to be named Sasha.
One of the reasons that we have such a long journey into the history of Harbin and the Sino-Soviet relationship is that the other branches of our extended family have roots in that area too.
Our son-in-law’s grandmother, Manya, grew up in Harbin as well, and surprised everybody at our daughter’s wedding by speaking Russian with Iskra, our daughter’s Russian grandmother.
Lisa and Lyonya had many chances to leave Novosibirsk, but they never did. They did not feel lonely anymore after the Gersh family had become a part of their social circle. It worked as another piece of weight on the scales of Fate to diminish their desire to return to Kharkov.
In the long run, years later, that would allow Sasha meet Tanya, who had been already flourishing in Novosibirsk, thanks to the daring move of her mother, Iskra.
But that will be another story.
