My father, Georgy Ivanovich, was no ordinary person: he was a dreamer endowed with the rare ability to convince others of his ideas, a homegrown philosopher, from a young age an ardent revolutionary who even hung out with terrorists, but after the events of 1905 he turned to Tolstoyism. After he became a Tolstoyan he professed other ideals, and working the land became his religion. After that he never again lived in the city, but organized Tolstoyan farm collectives in various regions, all of them failures, except the last, the one in Troparevo.
When he was young, Father was very handsome. He had an aquiline nose and bright black eyes. Probably that was his Greek or South Caucasian blood. Mother, on the other hand, does not look very pretty in the photographs taken when she was young: a chubby face, tiny eyes, and a potato nose. When she was older, though, when I already began to understand things, Mama got prettier. She lost a lot of weight, her face acquired more distinct characteristics, became more memorable. Father was a man of unlimited passions. He liked to argue, took offense easily, and was quick-tempered, but incredibly kind. No, not kind, selfless. He was truly a man of the future, as I understand it. He had something in common with PA. He never thought about his own benefit, in fact, he didn’t really understand what that might be. He was ready to give everything away. But except for his books he had nothing, and his library was always communal. His bookplate had a curlicue border with the words “From the Public Library of Georgy Miakotin.”
He professed nonviolence as passionately and energetically as everything else. Now I’m able to judge him soberly: he supported nonviolence in public life, but was a terrible despot at home. He was gifted with the rare ability to instill his ideas in others; there was something infectious about him. Like Tolstoy he had many acolytes and followers. I think that Mama in fact was a victim of his rare, seductive personality. She followed him everywhere, trusted him in everything. He would change his convictions, and she couldn’t keep up with him. For her everything was more superficial, though; for her the main thing was that she loved him immensely, and for his sake she gave up her life as a modest music teacher in the city for life in the countryside. In the countryside she didn’t teach music, but cooked porridge for dozens of people, did laundry, and milked cows. She learned to do it all. All of it was beyond her capabilities, but she made the effort on Papa’s behalf: in addition to everything else, she wanted to be his best student. She did everything he wanted. Except for one thing: she returned to her parents’ house in Moscow to give birth. And left her tiny children with them to raise until we were old enough. I was the last, the third. Father was very angry with her for doing this. Because the other Tolstoyans all raised their children on the land. But this was the only issue that Mama did not concede to Father. Until I was four I was raised by my grandmother, then, at my father’s insistence, taken to live with them in the commune.
After collectivization started, the authorities launched frightening attacks against the commune, although, you would think, it was that same ideal collective farm the Bolsheviks intended to organize throughout the entire country. In the first year of collectivization, they even proposed that my father, an experienced commune manager, join the administration and help organize collective farms. But he refused.
“Our communities are voluntary, and that’s what keeps them alive, but you’re proposing to organize people through the use of force, which does not coincide with my views,” was how he explained it to the party bosses.
At first they left the members of the commune alone, but clearly not for long. Following deliberations and discussions it was decided that they look for new locations, farther away: the village of Troparevo was much too close to the capital. They began their search in 1930, but it was 1932 before they not only found a place but put up their first log houses in the foothills of Altai. Just before they moved, Mama begged Papa to leave me in Moscow. I was fifteen years old, and Grandmother was able to adopt me. I became a Nechaeva. Probably that’s what saved me from arrest—my grandmother’s surname.
In Altai, in Solonakcha, their life took a horrible turn. After that I never saw any of them. My brother Sergei was drafted, but refused on ethical grounds: he did not want to carry a gun. He was tried by military tribunal and sentenced to death by firing squad. He was like my father: unbending. But Vasya was a gentle, tender little boy: they called him shepherd boy. He was the only one of us who truly loved the soil and farming not abstractly, out of theoretical considerations, but from the heart. Animals listened to him.
Mishka the bull would follow him around like a puppy. Vasya drowned in the Ob River five days after he was handed a draft notice. The next day he was supposed to appear at the draft board in town. That was 1934. Soon after, my parents were arrested. They were given ten years without the right to send or receive letters. Grandmother tried to track them down: before the war she stood in all sorts of lines. But she never got an answer. She silently maintained that they had all perished because of my father. Basically, that’s how all the Tolstoyans became extinct. I visited Maroseyka Street where there used to be a vegetarian cafeteria. But the place was unrecognizable. No publishing house, no cafeteria . . .
But I wanted to write about something else. Here’s another image from my early childhood: I’m sitting at a large table with huge basins of raspberries in front of me. The berries are almost the size of eggs. I pull the fat white stems out of the centers of the berries and put them in a large cup and toss the berries into a bucket, as if they were no good, trash. It’s the inedible white centers that are valuable. The smell of the raspberries is so strong that it seems as if the air itself is colored with a reddish-blue tint. Inside me churns this difficult, serious question about how what’s most important to some can be trash and garbage for others. Was this a dream?
There are lots more just like this. I’m carrying a bowl of chopped greens for tiny baby rabbits. The stronger of them jump up first, while several little scrawny ones can’t make their way to the food. I have to sort these weak ones out and put them in a separate cage. So the stronger ones wouldn’t trample them. That seems not to have been a dream. But maybe it was a dream? It’s difficult to imagine that such tender liberties were allowed at our commune. Life was very harsh . . .
All these colorful trifles somewhat confuse and, if you will, soften the images of my memories. The commune where I lived from the time I was four, in Troparevo, a not so distant suburb of Moscow, was smalclass="underline" only eighteen to twenty adults and about ten children, all different ages. But we had our own school. We were taught to read using Lev Tolstoy’s primer. And our first books were, of course, Tolstoy’s. The story of the plum pits: how it’s bad to lie. About the wooden trough for the old grandfather: how one should treat one’s parents well. There was almost never enough food, but it was divided equally. When there was a lot—that happened too—it was still shameful to take a lot.
The Teachings of Christ Presented for Children: I have memories of it from early childhood. I read the real Gospels only much later, when I was living with Grandmother . . . To say that the adults in the commune loved Tolstoy would be an understatement: they idolized him. As a small child I had my fill of him. It’s even funny to admit, but they fed me such a steady diet of his articles and philosophy that I wouldn’t go near The Cossacks, Anna Karenina, or even War and Peace. I read his novels only after the war.