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Русский1. Lipsky's and Lyapidevsky's
With great uncertainty I'll take it up, but oh well, the only consolation is the computer, no drafts, remember - put in, not like ancestors.
There are notes from my great-grandfather Alexander Fedorovich Lipsky, ending in 1854 or 1855 - a year before his marriage to Anna Alexandrovna (Danilova), and from my Mama - Nina Vladimirovna de Lipsky ones, on only her early childhood (until 1916). My Daddy Boris von Dostovaloff wanted to write a detailed essay on the same topic, but he has not moved further than the plan of the first part, even the intention is the great thing for Russians, he could remember very, very much.
For my foreign readers, I would like to make a small remark.
The structure of Russian names unlike the English-speaking ones is regulated: the freedom of choice of parents is only in respect of the first name; it was usually chosen or in honor of a revered saint either in memory of important ancestors. The second name - patronymic - formed from the father's name by adding the suffix, so all children of one father have one and the same second name taking into account gender.
I was born on May 11, 1940, when World War II (1) already was raging in full in Europe. We lived in Moscow in the house # 90/96 belonged to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at the 1st Meshchanskaya street (and wrote the address: 90/96, the Academy of Science, USSR), renamed on 1957 to the Mira Prospect in connection with the International Festival of Youth and Students, and then the numbering of houses were changed. In this house I have lived all my life so far.
This house has been the only large one in the district for a long time and was the mountain towering among the many small houses. The surrounding houses were three-story, two-story, and even one-storey, separated walkways, patios, gardens and tiny kitchen garden, no one knows who lived there, craftsmen working at home who made by the whole family cheap plastic buttons, petty traders, but mainly - a criminal element.
This was the realm of Pereiaslav and Krestovskaya riff ruffs. It was always dangerous to keep in those yards even in daylight, and at night - even more. There were no light, low rotten fences and subtle passages allowed to disappear quickly and discreetly to any knowledgeable person. Police did not go there.
Krestovsky and Pereyaslavs'kyi streets were paved with cobblestones, along the road wooden pillars were supporting the countless wires and rare dim lights at the sides, water intake speakers were often standing, they looked like a cast-iron bollards a meter high with a massive cover treasury blue color.
A hook was on one side a column tube on which one could hang a bucket, and on the other one - a short handle. It was difficult to push and was beyond on the power of ten kids, but if it succeeded, one could hear the noise inside and downstairs, gurgling, and after a few seconds a powerful jet struggled from the spout, it was fit only for the buckets, ones could not drink or wash their hands, you'll be all wet.
Ramshackle wooden fences with peeling brown paint were between the houses, it was the perfect place to play hide and seek or cops and robbers. At the intersection of Little Pereyaslavky and Krestovsky side streets it was low place, which was flooded with water in heavy rain. Around the summer of 1970 there were elections, and our polling station was just at this place in the school building, built on the site of the demolished ruin. It was happened a heavy downpour, all site was flooded, and I had to make my way to the site, removing shoes and socks, the water was above my knees. I was soaking wet, barefoot keeping shoes in hand and wallet and passport in the other. The Electoral Commission was delighted.
As a child, we did not go without an adult in these places, one could be walloped as strangers, and adults did not go at night also. Passing the side streets one could get to the back of Krestovsky market, there were bought cabbage, potatoes and meat. The market was dirty, smelly, something always flowed under ones feet, unattractive street vendors stood firmly behind wooden rows, covered with galvanized iron, some rows had awnings. We often bought potatoes and cabbages, for some reason it is often tinged with frost. At the entrance candies were selling - red cocks on sticks, sunflower seeds in large bags, there were various knick-knacks for children: whistles, toys, wooden spoons, there were many gypsies and a lot of nondescript people who sold something from the floor, mysteriously whispered something to adult ear. The best was the row of dairy, where there were women and girls cleaner and better then others, the most delicious was the baked milk with dark brown foam; they poured the milk from large tin cans with dimensional dots on the liter or half liter. Milkwomen poured a little milk into cans lids - to try to buyers. At entering the market there was always terrible crush, probably specially staged by pickpockets, who stole and cut pockets with a razor mercilessly. The market has been near a platform District Railway, where one could go on western or south directions, it was near Komsomolskaya square as well with three train stations, so our market attracted many farmers and was lively place. Most milkwomen were lively girl and carried milk to the houses around.
The main entrance to the market located on the square of Rzhevsky station among the two-storey houses with small shops and stalls. The most attractive of them was a kerosene shop, which sold soap, lye, wicks, candles and other similar products. Kerosene and semi-liquid soap, light yellow stood in barrels along the counters. Once, it was before I was born and it was lean time, Mom could not resist, got a finger in a barrel of soap, believing that it is honey, and sent it all in her mouth! What a bitter disappointment, and how it was disgusting! This story was often reproduced by Pope as an anecdote; Mom was an outstanding sweet tooth.
On the opposite side of the 1st Meshchanskaya small houses were also, and behind them - the Second, Third and Fourth Meshchanskaya, many quiet lanes, the Catherine' streets which came down to the Garden of the Central Red Army House - the Catherine Palace. The houses were better and higher, mostly two-story, stucco exterior and decorated under the provincial facades.
Apple trees, lilacs, bird cherry trees grew among its. By Samara Street, which descends steeply to the Samotecka Boulevard, trams number 25 and 17 went to Pushkin Square, where I and Dusya, our housekeeper, daily traveled to the kindergarten on Gorky Street (2). Samara Street located along Burevestnick Stadium - empty, sometimes overgrown with grass field, on which ones played rugby occasionally.
A view from the windows of our apartment was perfect in two directions: to the East across the railroad the Sokolniky Park greens especially enjoyed at spring - green was light and young. Forest Park had, basically, only hardwood - birch, aspen, poplar, oaks, rarely in open dry places; the undergrowth was thick, heavily overgrown with hazel, pussy willow, brooms, whipping willows and others; early spring, they were completely covered with yellow catkins and stipules and were like yellow-green balls on the edge. High whipping willows also were looking pale green balls for the bushes. Near Sokolniky Church of Resurrection was visible, but the bell was not heard, maybe then it was not allowed at that times.
The train stand of Yaroslavl and Leningrad station separated us from Sokolniky; there were long-distance trains, conductors heated cars, and smoke from the boilers hung as a transparent blue muslin in front of Sokolniky and "Far Lands". And it was obviously seen really far. Beyond Sokolniky in three miles or farther there was a plant, work was beginning on the hooter there: one could see a cloud of steam, which then disappeared, and only then, after a few seconds, a low sound factory whistle came.
Where this plant was, I never found out, and beyond this place the "unknown distance" were visible on many miles further to the eastern outskirts of Moscow. Mom was easy to move; a robber or a scout wasted at her, she loved hiking and walking in any season and often used to take us directly to Sokolniky, crawling under standing trains.
The bright-eyed pre-war boys often went on the train roads, though it was dangerous. They put caps or coins on the rails, and got the guns. Once, my older brother Vladimir and Sasha Liverovsky, a neighbor of the house and a classmate of my brother, were walking along the roads, got into the story: Sasha stepped inadvertently on the automatic railway switch at a time when it was converted, and his shoe pinched. It was scary because suburban electric trains went very often on these routes. Fortunately, my brother always had a knife and managed to cut quickly the laces and pull the Sasha' leg, just a few seconds the train rumbled past over them, and shoes jumped out from its wheels.
The 1st Meshchanskaya street ended with a square of Rzhevsky train station, further across a new bridge, built in 1936 for the opening of the All-Union agriculture exhibition, there was Yaroslavl highway, although Moscow ended somewhere more further by the Severianin crossing. After the bridge a shield "Moscow" was posted, it remained from the beginning of century. Farther north, "very far away", there was Ostankino estate and the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. At the entrance to the Exhibition in the form of arches and with a famous sculpture by Vera Muchina (3) a trolleybus route # 2 ended - the second trolleybus line in Moscow, the longest one, it crossed the whole of Moscow, past our house, through the Kolkhoznaya square, Kuznetsky bridge (4), past the Manege (5), through the Arbat, and further by the Kiev station on the Mozhayskoe highway to Fili district.
Near the Agricultural Exhibition entrance there was the film studio named by Maxim Gorky (6), it was very far from my child's standards. In the southern part of the Agricultural Exhibition there was an old Ostankino park with a magnificent Count Sheremetev's palace, the situation inside the palace is preserved, the tour route and showing the own home theater Sheremetev's were carried out, in the theater actress Zhemchugova played a former serf, and then the wife of Count Sheremetev. The theater did not possess a scene, the audience was a little, a few people, and they fit in armchairs in a row. Catherine the Great, Russian Empress, has visited the palace, in honor of her visit the memorial pillar stood in the courtyard. The palace was magnificent, white-pink building in the style of Russian classicism with a central portico and semicircular colonnade covered regular garden, which was in front of its main facade on the south side.
Farther to the south of the palace there was Ostankino pond with clear water, where we sometimes swam and fished leeches. For the palace there was also a regular park with marble sculptures, installed along the alleys. The Ostankino Palace inside the park was not fenced, and the park was simply immense, later it was divided into three parts - the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Science, the Exhibition of Economic Achievements and the current park of Ostankino, and while it was a single oak-grove, completely overgrown with underbrush, pristine place.
After the establishment of the Botanical Garden untouched areas were surrounded by a metal fence to keep wild forest in the virgin form, fallen trees were not cleaned, even after the storm, and there they were quietly rotting, overgrown with green moss. In the depths of the park one could come to a cascade of ponds, along one lighthouse was standing in the form of a hyperboloids, decreasing in size and set at each other like the Shukhov tower (7) on Shabolovka Street. During the war, not far from it a downed Nazi bomber laid, it was in spots of the gray-green color with black crosses, it was very filthy, the smell of it was a specific German, weapons was taken off, but unscrew something it was possible. By Ostankino park tram #17 went, the park was a place to walk at any time of year.
To the west at the other side of our house it was seen as far away. The nearest hill in a sea of small little houses of Samoteka square and Bozhedomka street, where Feodor Dostoevsky (8) was born, and above the Mar'ina Roshcha district the theater building of the Red Army rose, but this view was closed by the end of the war with the apartment house the MPS (9) constructed before ours. Behind it there was a sea of buildings lost in the rays the setting sun. At night and in clear weather at the open pane windows one could hear clock chimes at the Kremlin tower, although the Kremlin was no less than five kilometers directly from home.
Now, these surrounding streets and alleys did not exist, instead its there are faceless high residential prefabricated houses, blocking any kind, only in the morning or at night one can hear the suburban electric trains go on the ring road.
Our house had the "standard" design, it was built in 1935 for the People's Commissariat of Finance (10) on the new project and had a very large window, a relatively good rooms, but a very small kitchen, bathroom, toilet and narrow hallway, it was all very sparingly and too small for us. In Moscow there were several houses of the same design, built in that time. In connection with the relocation of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow house was handed over to it for the newly arrived members of the Academy. Daddy thought that the apartment given to him in the property instead of the house in Leningrad, which he received as a son of political repression victim.
After the war, we were invited to sign a contract of employment. Daddy was terribly concerned and strictly forbade all home to sign any papers. His fears were in vain, the apartment was still miraculously turned out to be state property, and we privatized it only in 2005.
The house entrances are locked at night and at noon, an elevator operators sat at each entrance, they opened elevator with a special key and lift someone to the right floor. Lift cage itself was great: the mirrors on all walls and glass windows in oak doors, a dial with an arrow was on one the wall, which was installed on the desired floor, and then just click start button.
The elevator was not working down. Elevator operators, having fun, always asking me who I am and where I am going, I was very shocked and asked: "How true!" I have suffered from these issues. Many young people from the surrounding small houses dream to go for a drive on our elevators, around our house people lived in poverty, without conveniences, a fights have encountered in the court yard, but I, fortunately, did almost not catch this. Despite the careful attitude toward the elevator, it often broke down; passengers get stuck between floors and sat in the lift cage until they would be pulled out. Often, the keys of the apartment fell through the crack between the elevator and the floor of the site - it was an event: it was necessary to go down to the first floor, to raise up lift cage to the meter, than open the door and crawl under the elevator mine, it was dirty and frightened, suddenly lift cage would go down and crushed you.
The house was inhabited by young, active couples, so one or two of the children once appeared at them. By modern standards the house was small - seven floors, four front doors, only 64 apartments, all knew each other, the children were almost common, they can be fed and punished by anyone who was handy when children were caught in locus delicti (after all, what cruel were adults that times!), went to the guests, general children's parties and masquerades were arranged, which are in photographs. Children attended the same or a neighboring school classes, although at that time it was separate education for boys and girls.
How it seems to me now it was terrible enough to my parents to start of the second child in such disturbed times, but to limit by one son they did not want. Mom always referred to the reproduction as a sacred duty to the fatherland, and two children - was the minimum that was acceptable to her, the third child she did not dare, though she often said to us, the younger generation, that one should have at least 2.3 child in each family for zero playback, the demographic problem was always of her troubles. Material side of her life was not worse than the rest of her range, her husband was older by 16 years, earning money for the family and helped in every way in her academic career.
Her supervisors, academician Ivan Petrovsky (11), later rector of the Moscow University, and academician Andrei Tikhonov had a good relationship with daddy and were happy to help bright, beautiful and talented Nina Lipsky.
The Academy and the intellectuals in general after the Revolution and before the war were relatively small; almost all knew each other well. If one can read the biographies of great, it turns that everything was very closely.
Yakov Zel'dovich (12), studied and worked under the guidance of Peter Kapitsa (13), who was the friend of Nikolay Semenov (14), relative of Sasha Liverovsky. I talked with Zel'dovich in the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute on the Joint Astrophysical Seminar, which was led and attended by academicians Yakov Zel'dovich, Andrei Sakharov (15) and Vitaly Ginzburg (16), Iosif Shklovsky (17) - our boss, and Solomon Pikel'ner - "astrophysicist number one on Hamburg account". The son of Peter Kapitsa - Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was a graduate student of my mommy.
I handed in greeting Mstislav Vasilyevich Keldysh, the President of the Academy, when I engaged in space research, he was chairman of "MVK on SR" - Interdepartmental Committee on Space Research, as he shook hands with all the cabinet members and heads of other states. Daddy in the twenties participated in the then popular public debates, where appeared Vladimir Mayakovsky (18). Painter and sculptor Paul Antakolsky has done quick sketches with them. Once in our house on Meshchanskaya street daddy has met his former close friend that rose on the stairs. "And you know, I married Dimity Shostakovich (19)!" - "purred" she (as my daddy told me later).
The life of my parents before I was conscious age always seemed to me misty and obscure, it was very dangerous to tell anything foolish talkative children, and personal life daddy was probably full of events, undesirable disclosure. When Dad did offer mommy, and that was it, by my count, the fourth wife, Sofia Sergeevna, my grandmother warned him: "Nina is very jealous!". But, alas, he did not listen. Papa called mama "Koten'ka (kitten), apparently, loved her, but was capable of tricks.
Even after being married Yevgenia Nikolaevna for the fifth time he, when I was about, often thought of my mommy with the same respect and reverence that drew strained relations between me and the Yevgenia Nikolaevna. Mommy did not love him; she was always with him on "You" and called him rather formal "Boris Nikolaevich". She may be hopelessly and secretly in love with someone, I do not know, Tatyana Larina (20) of twentieth century! (21)
The best years of her life, probably associated with the Moscow University. The old five-story red brick building of the physics department was in the depths of the quarter - the corner of Tverskaya street and Manege Square behind the building of the Hotel "National". University Fundamental Library - rotunda at the "New University building" on the corner of Nikitskay and Mokhovaya streets, in front of the Manege - sacred to us with my brother and all of our family where we were before birth, as well as for daddy, because his father was also studied in this building and was a frequent visitor at the University Church of St. Tatiana, and at the church of Signs for the "new building", and his fianc?e and later his wife was in top medical courses at MSU. Since around 1860 a brother of my great-grandfather on my mother's line Nikolay Pavlovich Liapidevsky sat at this library, when he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University.
By type of character and temperament mummy was like a great sculptor - Vera Mukhina, whose moment of creativity was accurately captured in the portrait by M. Nesterov of 1940, the same impulsiveness throughout, the same passion for creativity and color in her cheeks on the white, smooth skin, cosmetics, she did not use. Mommy highly valued and Mukhina, and Mikhail Nesterov (22), and this portrait.
Despite all her qualities that distinguish her among others, Mom always felt in her own words, "black sheep", helped by her nature. She adored nagging at his older brother Nicholas, with whom the twins Xenia were the most tender relationship. Aunt Xenia already at an advanced age complained that "Nina had never let her write off", shut exercises palm. In St. Petersburg were "Xenia" and "Jura", and we had "Koten'ka" and "Boris Nikolaevich". Mom and Aunt Xenia received home education and training, they had nursery governess, as well as a senior. They came to high school only about fifteen years in the Soviet time, passing all required an external examination, feedback mom was most excellent, but next - wall! She could not go to anywhere, referring to the origin: "No vacancy!"
She tried many directions: State University of Leningrad (23) and Institute of Fine Arts that corresponded her features; she wrote poems, painted although she was self-educators, she had pronounced abilities to exact sciences, had excellent memory: memorized read mass poems but, alas!, everything was closed! She had to suffer for a long time to finally break through to the opportunity to receive higher education and to do science: first, the Mining Institute in Leningrad, and then transfer after her marriage to the Physics Department of Moscow University. To do this she had to be a miner, and a weaver, and mere observer in the prospecting parties, though not for long.
Earlier childhood of Mom and Aunt Xenia was bright, "twins" as they were called were self-sufficient team, were always together, playing, having fun and learning. Nursery governess took care and education of them. Older children in the family - Kolia, Sergey and Elia, almost the same age, were at 11 - 13 years older, had their own company and were the active "senior" who have contributed to a healthy and equitable hierarchy of generations that has been lost in reduced lifetime fertility of modern families.Sofia Sergeevna, as Vladimir Alexandrovich, whom the twins almost caught, he died when they were four months old, for children in general were "divinities". Besides the older brothers and Elia they had a huge and close in all respects collective of cousins of all ages and abilities, there were 10 uncles and aunts and more than twenty first cousins!
Clan Lipsky' - Lyapidevsky' was very cramped: Lipsky' brothers - Fedor and Vladimir married the twins - Nina and Sofia Lyapidevsky's, there was even a marriage between second cousins - Kira Konstantinovna Lyapidevsky and Yuri Alexandrovich Lipsky. The husband of Elia - Nicholas Lubarsky after Elia' untimely death from cancer was married her cousin Maya Alexandrovna Lipsky. The Revolution of 1917 had dispelled to the smoke, some people emigrated with their entire families and their descendants now live in the U.S., France and Serbia, some of them were arrested or killed and the rest turned into liquid streams dry up.
Elders combined with elders and younger ones - with the younger, the closest cousins to mom and aunt Xenia were younger children of "Uncle Lely" - Aleksandr Lipsky - Boris and Alexander, for us they were loved uncle Boria and uncle Alec. Other cousins, friends of the twins - Nike, Sandrick and "Kitty" Rochefort, as well as children of "Uncle Fyodor", Fyodor Lipsky, had left Russia shortly after the Revolution. The repressions and lack of money made life difficult. Sophia Sergeevna created her own cow Zor'ka at Kuzovni estate, and the seven-year twin were looked after, and hired an Estonian woman milked it, life went on subsistence farming.
1 For Russians it was the Great Patriotic War, which took more than 26 million lives.
2 Now Tverskaya street, the main street of Moscow.
3 The giant sculpture "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" was the centerpiece of the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. It was the world's first welded sculpture. In 1947 the sculpture, now on permanent display at the All-Russia Exhibition Centre, became the logo of the Russian Mosfilm studio. Vera Mukhina (1889 - 1953) is one of the Soviet Union's most prominent sculptors.
4 Kuznetsky bridge and Arbat are ones of the oldest streets of Moscow.
5 Manege was erected in 1817 to the fifths anniversary of the victory above Napoleon.
6 A famous writer.
7 Shukhov Tower - a unique hyperboloid structure, designed as a load-bearing steel mesh shell. Located in Moscow Shabolovka, built in 1920-1922, monument of architecture. Author - the great Russian engineer, architect, and scientist, academician Vladimir Shukhov (1853-1939). Tower has been recognized as one of the most beautiful and remarkable achievements of engineering in the world.
8 A famous writer.
9 Ministry of railways
10 Department of the Treasury
11 Ivan Petrovsy - prominent mathematics.
12 Jakov Zel'dovich - soviet physicist, academician, three times awarded the highest award - the Star of Hero of Labor, one of the creators of nuclear weapons.
13 Pyotr Kapitsa - physicist, academician, Nobel prize-winner.
14 Nikolay Semenov - academician, one of the founders of physical chemistry, Nobel prize-winner.
15 Andrei Sakharov - physicist, academician, political activist, dissident and human rights activist, one of the founders of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Nobel Peace Prize for 1975.
16 Vitaly Ginzburg - physicist, academician, Nobel prize-winner.
17 Iosif Shklovsky - an outstanding astrophysicist.
18 Vladimir Mayakovsky - a great Russian and Soviet poet.
19 Dimitry Shostakovich - a great Russian and Soviet composer.
20 The heroine of the novel "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin, who at the end of the scene said: "But I am given to another and will never leave him!"
21 Recently, these relationships have expanded: the husband of my aunt Xenia - Yuri Zhelubovsky was in relationship with A. Pushkin and the husband of my great-grandmother Anna Alexandrovna - Konstantin de Rochefort was a cousin of Louis and Maurice de Broglie, Louis - Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum theory. "The nobility - all kin to each other ..."
22 Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov (1862 - 1942) was a leading representative of religious Symbolism in Russian art. He studied under Pavel Tchistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts, but later allied himself with the group of artists known as the Peredvizhniki. His canvas "The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew" (1890-91), depicting the conversion of medieval Russian saint Sergii Radonezhsky, is often considered to mark the inauguration of the Russian Symbolist movement.
23 Now St. Petersburg.
There are notes from my great-grandfather Alexander Fedorovich Lipsky, ending in 1854 or 1855 - a year before his marriage to Anna Alexandrovna (Danilova), and from my Mama - Nina Vladimirovna de Lipsky ones, on only her early childhood (until 1916). My Daddy Boris von Dostovaloff wanted to write a detailed essay on the same topic, but he has not moved further than the plan of the first part, even the intention is the great thing for Russians, he could remember very, very much.
For my foreign readers, I would like to make a small remark.
The structure of Russian names unlike the English-speaking ones is regulated: the freedom of choice of parents is only in respect of the first name; it was usually chosen or in honor of a revered saint either in memory of important ancestors. The second name - patronymic - formed from the father's name by adding the suffix, so all children of one father have one and the same second name taking into account gender.
I was born on May 11, 1940, when World War II (1) already was raging in full in Europe. We lived in Moscow in the house # 90/96 belonged to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR at the 1st Meshchanskaya street (and wrote the address: 90/96, the Academy of Science, USSR), renamed on 1957 to the Mira Prospect in connection with the International Festival of Youth and Students, and then the numbering of houses were changed. In this house I have lived all my life so far.
This house has been the only large one in the district for a long time and was the mountain towering among the many small houses. The surrounding houses were three-story, two-story, and even one-storey, separated walkways, patios, gardens and tiny kitchen garden, no one knows who lived there, craftsmen working at home who made by the whole family cheap plastic buttons, petty traders, but mainly - a criminal element.
This was the realm of Pereiaslav and Krestovskaya riff ruffs. It was always dangerous to keep in those yards even in daylight, and at night - even more. There were no light, low rotten fences and subtle passages allowed to disappear quickly and discreetly to any knowledgeable person. Police did not go there.
Krestovsky and Pereyaslavs'kyi streets were paved with cobblestones, along the road wooden pillars were supporting the countless wires and rare dim lights at the sides, water intake speakers were often standing, they looked like a cast-iron bollards a meter high with a massive cover treasury blue color.
A hook was on one side a column tube on which one could hang a bucket, and on the other one - a short handle. It was difficult to push and was beyond on the power of ten kids, but if it succeeded, one could hear the noise inside and downstairs, gurgling, and after a few seconds a powerful jet struggled from the spout, it was fit only for the buckets, ones could not drink or wash their hands, you'll be all wet.
Ramshackle wooden fences with peeling brown paint were between the houses, it was the perfect place to play hide and seek or cops and robbers. At the intersection of Little Pereyaslavky and Krestovsky side streets it was low place, which was flooded with water in heavy rain. Around the summer of 1970 there were elections, and our polling station was just at this place in the school building, built on the site of the demolished ruin. It was happened a heavy downpour, all site was flooded, and I had to make my way to the site, removing shoes and socks, the water was above my knees. I was soaking wet, barefoot keeping shoes in hand and wallet and passport in the other. The Electoral Commission was delighted.
As a child, we did not go without an adult in these places, one could be walloped as strangers, and adults did not go at night also. Passing the side streets one could get to the back of Krestovsky market, there were bought cabbage, potatoes and meat. The market was dirty, smelly, something always flowed under ones feet, unattractive street vendors stood firmly behind wooden rows, covered with galvanized iron, some rows had awnings. We often bought potatoes and cabbages, for some reason it is often tinged with frost. At the entrance candies were selling - red cocks on sticks, sunflower seeds in large bags, there were various knick-knacks for children: whistles, toys, wooden spoons, there were many gypsies and a lot of nondescript people who sold something from the floor, mysteriously whispered something to adult ear. The best was the row of dairy, where there were women and girls cleaner and better then others, the most delicious was the baked milk with dark brown foam; they poured the milk from large tin cans with dimensional dots on the liter or half liter. Milkwomen poured a little milk into cans lids - to try to buyers. At entering the market there was always terrible crush, probably specially staged by pickpockets, who stole and cut pockets with a razor mercilessly. The market has been near a platform District Railway, where one could go on western or south directions, it was near Komsomolskaya square as well with three train stations, so our market attracted many farmers and was lively place. Most milkwomen were lively girl and carried milk to the houses around.
The main entrance to the market located on the square of Rzhevsky station among the two-storey houses with small shops and stalls. The most attractive of them was a kerosene shop, which sold soap, lye, wicks, candles and other similar products. Kerosene and semi-liquid soap, light yellow stood in barrels along the counters. Once, it was before I was born and it was lean time, Mom could not resist, got a finger in a barrel of soap, believing that it is honey, and sent it all in her mouth! What a bitter disappointment, and how it was disgusting! This story was often reproduced by Pope as an anecdote; Mom was an outstanding sweet tooth.
On the opposite side of the 1st Meshchanskaya small houses were also, and behind them - the Second, Third and Fourth Meshchanskaya, many quiet lanes, the Catherine' streets which came down to the Garden of the Central Red Army House - the Catherine Palace. The houses were better and higher, mostly two-story, stucco exterior and decorated under the provincial facades.
Apple trees, lilacs, bird cherry trees grew among its. By Samara Street, which descends steeply to the Samotecka Boulevard, trams number 25 and 17 went to Pushkin Square, where I and Dusya, our housekeeper, daily traveled to the kindergarten on Gorky Street (2). Samara Street located along Burevestnick Stadium - empty, sometimes overgrown with grass field, on which ones played rugby occasionally.
A view from the windows of our apartment was perfect in two directions: to the East across the railroad the Sokolniky Park greens especially enjoyed at spring - green was light and young. Forest Park had, basically, only hardwood - birch, aspen, poplar, oaks, rarely in open dry places; the undergrowth was thick, heavily overgrown with hazel, pussy willow, brooms, whipping willows and others; early spring, they were completely covered with yellow catkins and stipules and were like yellow-green balls on the edge. High whipping willows also were looking pale green balls for the bushes. Near Sokolniky Church of Resurrection was visible, but the bell was not heard, maybe then it was not allowed at that times.
The train stand of Yaroslavl and Leningrad station separated us from Sokolniky; there were long-distance trains, conductors heated cars, and smoke from the boilers hung as a transparent blue muslin in front of Sokolniky and "Far Lands". And it was obviously seen really far. Beyond Sokolniky in three miles or farther there was a plant, work was beginning on the hooter there: one could see a cloud of steam, which then disappeared, and only then, after a few seconds, a low sound factory whistle came.
Where this plant was, I never found out, and beyond this place the "unknown distance" were visible on many miles further to the eastern outskirts of Moscow. Mom was easy to move; a robber or a scout wasted at her, she loved hiking and walking in any season and often used to take us directly to Sokolniky, crawling under standing trains.
The bright-eyed pre-war boys often went on the train roads, though it was dangerous. They put caps or coins on the rails, and got the guns. Once, my older brother Vladimir and Sasha Liverovsky, a neighbor of the house and a classmate of my brother, were walking along the roads, got into the story: Sasha stepped inadvertently on the automatic railway switch at a time when it was converted, and his shoe pinched. It was scary because suburban electric trains went very often on these routes. Fortunately, my brother always had a knife and managed to cut quickly the laces and pull the Sasha' leg, just a few seconds the train rumbled past over them, and shoes jumped out from its wheels.
The 1st Meshchanskaya street ended with a square of Rzhevsky train station, further across a new bridge, built in 1936 for the opening of the All-Union agriculture exhibition, there was Yaroslavl highway, although Moscow ended somewhere more further by the Severianin crossing. After the bridge a shield "Moscow" was posted, it remained from the beginning of century. Farther north, "very far away", there was Ostankino estate and the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. At the entrance to the Exhibition in the form of arches and with a famous sculpture by Vera Muchina (3) a trolleybus route # 2 ended - the second trolleybus line in Moscow, the longest one, it crossed the whole of Moscow, past our house, through the Kolkhoznaya square, Kuznetsky bridge (4), past the Manege (5), through the Arbat, and further by the Kiev station on the Mozhayskoe highway to Fili district.
Near the Agricultural Exhibition entrance there was the film studio named by Maxim Gorky (6), it was very far from my child's standards. In the southern part of the Agricultural Exhibition there was an old Ostankino park with a magnificent Count Sheremetev's palace, the situation inside the palace is preserved, the tour route and showing the own home theater Sheremetev's were carried out, in the theater actress Zhemchugova played a former serf, and then the wife of Count Sheremetev. The theater did not possess a scene, the audience was a little, a few people, and they fit in armchairs in a row. Catherine the Great, Russian Empress, has visited the palace, in honor of her visit the memorial pillar stood in the courtyard. The palace was magnificent, white-pink building in the style of Russian classicism with a central portico and semicircular colonnade covered regular garden, which was in front of its main facade on the south side.
Farther to the south of the palace there was Ostankino pond with clear water, where we sometimes swam and fished leeches. For the palace there was also a regular park with marble sculptures, installed along the alleys. The Ostankino Palace inside the park was not fenced, and the park was simply immense, later it was divided into three parts - the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Science, the Exhibition of Economic Achievements and the current park of Ostankino, and while it was a single oak-grove, completely overgrown with underbrush, pristine place.
After the establishment of the Botanical Garden untouched areas were surrounded by a metal fence to keep wild forest in the virgin form, fallen trees were not cleaned, even after the storm, and there they were quietly rotting, overgrown with green moss. In the depths of the park one could come to a cascade of ponds, along one lighthouse was standing in the form of a hyperboloids, decreasing in size and set at each other like the Shukhov tower (7) on Shabolovka Street. During the war, not far from it a downed Nazi bomber laid, it was in spots of the gray-green color with black crosses, it was very filthy, the smell of it was a specific German, weapons was taken off, but unscrew something it was possible. By Ostankino park tram #17 went, the park was a place to walk at any time of year.
To the west at the other side of our house it was seen as far away. The nearest hill in a sea of small little houses of Samoteka square and Bozhedomka street, where Feodor Dostoevsky (8) was born, and above the Mar'ina Roshcha district the theater building of the Red Army rose, but this view was closed by the end of the war with the apartment house the MPS (9) constructed before ours. Behind it there was a sea of buildings lost in the rays the setting sun. At night and in clear weather at the open pane windows one could hear clock chimes at the Kremlin tower, although the Kremlin was no less than five kilometers directly from home.
Now, these surrounding streets and alleys did not exist, instead its there are faceless high residential prefabricated houses, blocking any kind, only in the morning or at night one can hear the suburban electric trains go on the ring road.
Our house had the "standard" design, it was built in 1935 for the People's Commissariat of Finance (10) on the new project and had a very large window, a relatively good rooms, but a very small kitchen, bathroom, toilet and narrow hallway, it was all very sparingly and too small for us. In Moscow there were several houses of the same design, built in that time. In connection with the relocation of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow house was handed over to it for the newly arrived members of the Academy. Daddy thought that the apartment given to him in the property instead of the house in Leningrad, which he received as a son of political repression victim.
After the war, we were invited to sign a contract of employment. Daddy was terribly concerned and strictly forbade all home to sign any papers. His fears were in vain, the apartment was still miraculously turned out to be state property, and we privatized it only in 2005.
The house entrances are locked at night and at noon, an elevator operators sat at each entrance, they opened elevator with a special key and lift someone to the right floor. Lift cage itself was great: the mirrors on all walls and glass windows in oak doors, a dial with an arrow was on one the wall, which was installed on the desired floor, and then just click start button.
The elevator was not working down. Elevator operators, having fun, always asking me who I am and where I am going, I was very shocked and asked: "How true!" I have suffered from these issues. Many young people from the surrounding small houses dream to go for a drive on our elevators, around our house people lived in poverty, without conveniences, a fights have encountered in the court yard, but I, fortunately, did almost not catch this. Despite the careful attitude toward the elevator, it often broke down; passengers get stuck between floors and sat in the lift cage until they would be pulled out. Often, the keys of the apartment fell through the crack between the elevator and the floor of the site - it was an event: it was necessary to go down to the first floor, to raise up lift cage to the meter, than open the door and crawl under the elevator mine, it was dirty and frightened, suddenly lift cage would go down and crushed you.
The house was inhabited by young, active couples, so one or two of the children once appeared at them. By modern standards the house was small - seven floors, four front doors, only 64 apartments, all knew each other, the children were almost common, they can be fed and punished by anyone who was handy when children were caught in locus delicti (after all, what cruel were adults that times!), went to the guests, general children's parties and masquerades were arranged, which are in photographs. Children attended the same or a neighboring school classes, although at that time it was separate education for boys and girls.
How it seems to me now it was terrible enough to my parents to start of the second child in such disturbed times, but to limit by one son they did not want. Mom always referred to the reproduction as a sacred duty to the fatherland, and two children - was the minimum that was acceptable to her, the third child she did not dare, though she often said to us, the younger generation, that one should have at least 2.3 child in each family for zero playback, the demographic problem was always of her troubles. Material side of her life was not worse than the rest of her range, her husband was older by 16 years, earning money for the family and helped in every way in her academic career.
Her supervisors, academician Ivan Petrovsky (11), later rector of the Moscow University, and academician Andrei Tikhonov had a good relationship with daddy and were happy to help bright, beautiful and talented Nina Lipsky.
The Academy and the intellectuals in general after the Revolution and before the war were relatively small; almost all knew each other well. If one can read the biographies of great, it turns that everything was very closely.
Yakov Zel'dovich (12), studied and worked under the guidance of Peter Kapitsa (13), who was the friend of Nikolay Semenov (14), relative of Sasha Liverovsky. I talked with Zel'dovich in the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute on the Joint Astrophysical Seminar, which was led and attended by academicians Yakov Zel'dovich, Andrei Sakharov (15) and Vitaly Ginzburg (16), Iosif Shklovsky (17) - our boss, and Solomon Pikel'ner - "astrophysicist number one on Hamburg account". The son of Peter Kapitsa - Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa was a graduate student of my mommy.
I handed in greeting Mstislav Vasilyevich Keldysh, the President of the Academy, when I engaged in space research, he was chairman of "MVK on SR" - Interdepartmental Committee on Space Research, as he shook hands with all the cabinet members and heads of other states. Daddy in the twenties participated in the then popular public debates, where appeared Vladimir Mayakovsky (18). Painter and sculptor Paul Antakolsky has done quick sketches with them. Once in our house on Meshchanskaya street daddy has met his former close friend that rose on the stairs. "And you know, I married Dimity Shostakovich (19)!" - "purred" she (as my daddy told me later).
The life of my parents before I was conscious age always seemed to me misty and obscure, it was very dangerous to tell anything foolish talkative children, and personal life daddy was probably full of events, undesirable disclosure. When Dad did offer mommy, and that was it, by my count, the fourth wife, Sofia Sergeevna, my grandmother warned him: "Nina is very jealous!". But, alas, he did not listen. Papa called mama "Koten'ka (kitten), apparently, loved her, but was capable of tricks.
Even after being married Yevgenia Nikolaevna for the fifth time he, when I was about, often thought of my mommy with the same respect and reverence that drew strained relations between me and the Yevgenia Nikolaevna. Mommy did not love him; she was always with him on "You" and called him rather formal "Boris Nikolaevich". She may be hopelessly and secretly in love with someone, I do not know, Tatyana Larina (20) of twentieth century! (21)
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"Ты медленно приближался. А я, - убежать бы впору, А я, - ускользнуть! Укрыться! Я осталась стоять - спокойно. Ты подошел ко мне. А я - как забилось сердце! Я - запылали щеки! Я поклонилась сухо. Ты улыбнулся мне. А я! Какое счастье! Я (дорогой... любимый…) Удивилась случайной встрече. Все. Ты прошел мимо, Равнодушный ко всем, холодный. А меня озарил светом, А мне подарил радость!" (Н.В. Липская, без даты) |
"You were slowly approaching. And I - to escape to at the time, And I - to slip away! To seek shelter! I was left standing - quietly. You came to me. And I - how a heart beat! I - how cheeks burned! I have bowed stiffly. You smiled at me. I! What luck! I (darling... favorite ...) I was surprised a chance encounter. All over. You walked past Indifferent to all, cool. But you illuminated me with light, And gave me joy!" (Nina Lipsky, undated) |
The best years of her life, probably associated with the Moscow University. The old five-story red brick building of the physics department was in the depths of the quarter - the corner of Tverskaya street and Manege Square behind the building of the Hotel "National". University Fundamental Library - rotunda at the "New University building" on the corner of Nikitskay and Mokhovaya streets, in front of the Manege - sacred to us with my brother and all of our family where we were before birth, as well as for daddy, because his father was also studied in this building and was a frequent visitor at the University Church of St. Tatiana, and at the church of Signs for the "new building", and his fianc?e and later his wife was in top medical courses at MSU. Since around 1860 a brother of my great-grandfather on my mother's line Nikolay Pavlovich Liapidevsky sat at this library, when he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University.
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"Опять университет, Те же гулкие стены, Те же плиты и своды, Тех же лестниц ступени, Коридоров мерцанье. Все спокойно … как прежде. Только я в исступлении От негаданной встречи С этим каменным зданьем! Переплеты окон, стекла в сумраке сером. И минувшее ожило вдруг до предела! Все такое - как прежде, только я поседела, Только я постарела душою и телом!" (Н.В. Липская, без даты) |
"Again University The same hollow walls The same plates and vaults, Those same stair step, Corridors flicker. All is quiet ... as before. But I became frenzied From unexpectedly meeting With this stone building! Bindings window glass in the twilight gray. And the past suddenly came to life to the limit! All this - as before, but I turned gray, But I've grown old soul and body!" (Nina Lipska, undated) |
By type of character and temperament mummy was like a great sculptor - Vera Mukhina, whose moment of creativity was accurately captured in the portrait by M. Nesterov of 1940, the same impulsiveness throughout, the same passion for creativity and color in her cheeks on the white, smooth skin, cosmetics, she did not use. Mommy highly valued and Mukhina, and Mikhail Nesterov (22), and this portrait.
Despite all her qualities that distinguish her among others, Mom always felt in her own words, "black sheep", helped by her nature. She adored nagging at his older brother Nicholas, with whom the twins Xenia were the most tender relationship. Aunt Xenia already at an advanced age complained that "Nina had never let her write off", shut exercises palm. In St. Petersburg were "Xenia" and "Jura", and we had "Koten'ka" and "Boris Nikolaevich". Mom and Aunt Xenia received home education and training, they had nursery governess, as well as a senior. They came to high school only about fifteen years in the Soviet time, passing all required an external examination, feedback mom was most excellent, but next - wall! She could not go to anywhere, referring to the origin: "No vacancy!"
She tried many directions: State University of Leningrad (23) and Institute of Fine Arts that corresponded her features; she wrote poems, painted although she was self-educators, she had pronounced abilities to exact sciences, had excellent memory: memorized read mass poems but, alas!, everything was closed! She had to suffer for a long time to finally break through to the opportunity to receive higher education and to do science: first, the Mining Institute in Leningrad, and then transfer after her marriage to the Physics Department of Moscow University. To do this she had to be a miner, and a weaver, and mere observer in the prospecting parties, though not for long.
Earlier childhood of Mom and Aunt Xenia was bright, "twins" as they were called were self-sufficient team, were always together, playing, having fun and learning. Nursery governess took care and education of them. Older children in the family - Kolia, Sergey and Elia, almost the same age, were at 11 - 13 years older, had their own company and were the active "senior" who have contributed to a healthy and equitable hierarchy of generations that has been lost in reduced lifetime fertility of modern families.Sofia Sergeevna, as Vladimir Alexandrovich, whom the twins almost caught, he died when they were four months old, for children in general were "divinities". Besides the older brothers and Elia they had a huge and close in all respects collective of cousins of all ages and abilities, there were 10 uncles and aunts and more than twenty first cousins!
Clan Lipsky' - Lyapidevsky' was very cramped: Lipsky' brothers - Fedor and Vladimir married the twins - Nina and Sofia Lyapidevsky's, there was even a marriage between second cousins - Kira Konstantinovna Lyapidevsky and Yuri Alexandrovich Lipsky. The husband of Elia - Nicholas Lubarsky after Elia' untimely death from cancer was married her cousin Maya Alexandrovna Lipsky. The Revolution of 1917 had dispelled to the smoke, some people emigrated with their entire families and their descendants now live in the U.S., France and Serbia, some of them were arrested or killed and the rest turned into liquid streams dry up.
Elders combined with elders and younger ones - with the younger, the closest cousins to mom and aunt Xenia were younger children of "Uncle Lely" - Aleksandr Lipsky - Boris and Alexander, for us they were loved uncle Boria and uncle Alec. Other cousins, friends of the twins - Nike, Sandrick and "Kitty" Rochefort, as well as children of "Uncle Fyodor", Fyodor Lipsky, had left Russia shortly after the Revolution. The repressions and lack of money made life difficult. Sophia Sergeevna created her own cow Zor'ka at Kuzovni estate, and the seven-year twin were looked after, and hired an Estonian woman milked it, life went on subsistence farming.
1 For Russians it was the Great Patriotic War, which took more than 26 million lives.
2 Now Tverskaya street, the main street of Moscow.
3 The giant sculpture "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" was the centerpiece of the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. It was the world's first welded sculpture. In 1947 the sculpture, now on permanent display at the All-Russia Exhibition Centre, became the logo of the Russian Mosfilm studio. Vera Mukhina (1889 - 1953) is one of the Soviet Union's most prominent sculptors.
4 Kuznetsky bridge and Arbat are ones of the oldest streets of Moscow.
5 Manege was erected in 1817 to the fifths anniversary of the victory above Napoleon.
6 A famous writer.
7 Shukhov Tower - a unique hyperboloid structure, designed as a load-bearing steel mesh shell. Located in Moscow Shabolovka, built in 1920-1922, monument of architecture. Author - the great Russian engineer, architect, and scientist, academician Vladimir Shukhov (1853-1939). Tower has been recognized as one of the most beautiful and remarkable achievements of engineering in the world.
8 A famous writer.
9 Ministry of railways
10 Department of the Treasury
11 Ivan Petrovsy - prominent mathematics.
12 Jakov Zel'dovich - soviet physicist, academician, three times awarded the highest award - the Star of Hero of Labor, one of the creators of nuclear weapons.
13 Pyotr Kapitsa - physicist, academician, Nobel prize-winner.
14 Nikolay Semenov - academician, one of the founders of physical chemistry, Nobel prize-winner.
15 Andrei Sakharov - physicist, academician, political activist, dissident and human rights activist, one of the founders of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Nobel Peace Prize for 1975.
16 Vitaly Ginzburg - physicist, academician, Nobel prize-winner.
17 Iosif Shklovsky - an outstanding astrophysicist.
18 Vladimir Mayakovsky - a great Russian and Soviet poet.
19 Dimitry Shostakovich - a great Russian and Soviet composer.
20 The heroine of the novel "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin, who at the end of the scene said: "But I am given to another and will never leave him!"
21 Recently, these relationships have expanded: the husband of my aunt Xenia - Yuri Zhelubovsky was in relationship with A. Pushkin and the husband of my great-grandmother Anna Alexandrovna - Konstantin de Rochefort was a cousin of Louis and Maurice de Broglie, Louis - Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum theory. "The nobility - all kin to each other ..."
22 Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov (1862 - 1942) was a leading representative of religious Symbolism in Russian art. He studied under Pavel Tchistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts, but later allied himself with the group of artists known as the Peredvizhniki. His canvas "The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew" (1890-91), depicting the conversion of medieval Russian saint Sergii Radonezhsky, is often considered to mark the inauguration of the Russian Symbolist movement.
23 Now St. Petersburg.