31/08/03 — On the way to Moscow
This wasn't part of the plan. I have been persuaded by my father's cousin, Jascha, to visit another cousin, Difa, who is older and might not be here next time I visit, whenever that might be. Besides, it's sort of on the way to Kiev and means that I do two overnight trips rather than one 24 hour trip.
Since you're on this journey with me, I might as well fill you in a little. Some of this I knew already, some I have learnt in the last few days. Mum, if you're reading this and there are any mistakes, please let me know.
Mikhail Bershteyn was the third child in a family of 10, although his sister Rosa died when she was a baby. In order, they were: Lev, Golda, Mikhail, Ieva, Lipa, Rosa, Grigorivich, Lusya, Jakov, Mirunya.
Misha, as he was called, was born in around 1894 in Kiev, then a part of greater Russia, late last century and was a smart young man with ambitions.
One of the biggest 1906 pogroms against the Jews was in Kiev, during which, according to my cousins Jascha (Mirunya's son) and Difa (Golda's daughter), my great-grandfather Iosef was wounded. Most families had someone who died or was hurt. Misha, my grandfather, was a teenager. He became a socialist. He tried to go to the university but there was a quota for Jews and they had too many already. In 1913 or so (according to Difa; my memory of high school history says it was 1911, but that might have been Russia not Ukraine) there was another big pogrom. This time it was in response to the death of a Ukrainian boy. Some bright spark accused the Jews of killing the boy as a ritual sacrifice for Passover and before you knew it, it was on for young and old. It was the last straw for Misha. Conditions were getting worse, not better. Aged around 19, he decided to emigrate. First he went to America, but then he heard that the revolution had happened. Young fiery Misha tried to return via Europe, but the civil war had begun and there was no way in. He went to Japan to try to get in that way, but no luck. From Japan, the closest Western civilisation was Australia, and there he went. For a while, he wrote home, sent photos. He met a Dutch woman, married and had 5 children, 20 years apart. The youngest, Ian, was my father.
Then, it becomes too dangerous for those left behind to acknowledge foreign relatives. They lose touch.
In 1947, when my father was 8, my grandparents divorced. Unheard of. By 1956, he was dead. The Petrov affair, communist spies in Australia, was only a few years before that. Was my grandfather a communist spy? It certainly seems likely. My father now has the ASIO files on my grandfather to prove it. He boasted about his perfect Australian accent, how no one could tell he was Russian. He didn't speak Russian at home.
Poor Lipa, one of Misha's brothers, his story is even worse: he migrated to Germany first, then left Germany as the Nazis came to power, going to Prague; as the Germans came to Prague, he left and moved to Moldavia; in 1940, soviet troops occupied Moldavia, so he found himself back in the USSR after all, gave up and went back to Kiev; he was in St Petersburg in 1941, and in the only bit of good luck the family seems to have had, they made it out on the last train before the siege.
Anyhow, time passes. Stalin dies, slowly the culture in Russia becomes more open. Lipa places an ad in an Australian newspaper: Mikhail, where are you?
My uncle Norman, responds. Mikhail is dead, but his family is now enormous: the five children have all married and between them they have 13 kids. The Russian side is smaller. Norman and Ian go to Russia. It is all very carefully organised. They meet in the street so no one will know the family has foreign connections. It may be open, but this is pre-Perestroika, 1975. Norman and Ian bring with them a document they cannot read, written in Russian: Misha's diaries.
So, over the years, family go back and forth between Australia and Russia. Difa visited in 1983 when I was about 12. Various of the rels move to Israel when glasnost opens the doors. Some die. There is no one left living in Kiev. Jascha lives in St Petersburg. His daughter, Mascha, is who I've been staying with. Difa lives in Moscow. Bella, Ieva's daughter, lives in Moscow.
Anyhow, it is what it is. And now I'm going to try to sleep on this train in the middle of the Russian night, hurtling towards Moscow and my past.