The Cult in my Grandmother's House - стр. 15

We weren’t meant to have time for letters: we were busy fighting our good fight, so why would we need letters? However, we were encouraged to write postcards to our parents on public holidays (the anniversary of the October revolution, Victory Day, International Women’s Day, Defenders of the Fatherland day, New Year). We didn’t really celebrate birthdays – that would have been way too individualistic. Any cards we did write were formulaic: “Dear mum! I am glad to be here in the collective with my friends and companions, and to be fighting together for our dedicated cause”, and so on.

It would never enter anyone’s head to use the normal postal service. Outside was all a conspiracy; besides, we never had any money for stamps or envelopes. So any messages had to wait for the right opportunity and could only be passed on personally by our members.

I have kept a few letters from that time. None have envelopes: they are almost all just folded notes with the recipient’s name on the back. Some are reproduced as pictures in this book. You can infer a lot from them: the values we lived by, the principles we followed, even the air we breathed.

I always preserved my grandmother’s messages with special care. By some miracle I still have a postcard I wrote her. I probably wrote it in the third class when I mastered joined-up writing, but apparently I didn’t give it to her, probably because of all the inkblots. I kept it to myself, safe in my “box of treasures” (the only personal item I was allowed). It is particularly telling how I don’t know how to address her: I started off with a pet name and crossed it out, I swivel between the familiar and formal forms of “you”, and even exhort her to “be mother” (sic).

Grandma Dina! With all my heart I congratulate you on Victory Day! Many thanks that you sent me such warmth and soul. Many thanks that you will never forsake me in a difficult time and will always come to my aid, like a true friend. Thank you. I hope you will always be just as kind, tender, warm and mother.

Many kisses. Till we meet.

From your granddaughter Ania Chedia.

GRANDMA

My grandmother was an emotional and impressionable character. She was famous in academic circles as an excellent researcher and educator, and her students worshipped her. This clever and vivacious woman, so capable of independent thought and picking things up on the fly, was so zombified by Soviet propaganda that she turned out unable to filter information in favour of common sense.

The reason for my time in the cult had basically been pulled out of thin air.