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Ганна-Лора родилась летом 1923 года в Берлине. “Папа потом говорил, что он бы назвал меня Надей или Наташей. Но мамин выбор пал на это имя, потому что она вычитала из журналов, что так звали королеву красоты того года — фото этой королевы ей понравилось, а вместе с королевой и имя”, — начинает воспоминания Лора Беленкина. А потом описывает свою жизнь: счастливое детство в Германии, отрочество и взросление после переезда в СССР.
Берлин 1920-х, Москва 1930-х, война, бедность, коммунальный быт, советская школа, послевоенный антисемитизм, дружба и любовь. Лора Беленкина, с ее памятью к деталям и заинтересованным взглядом на события, рисует в мемуарах красочную картину жизни ушедшей эпохи.
Берлин 1920-х, Москва 1930-х, война, бедность, коммунальный быт, советская школа, послевоенный антисемитизм, дружба и любовь. Лора Беленкина, с ее памятью к деталям и заинтересованным взглядом на события, рисует в мемуарах красочную картину жизни ушедшей эпохи.
592 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 21, 2015
Интересные мемуары не очень приятного человека – вот основная эмоция.
April 1, 2018
It could have been a very interesting book of memoirs. Лора Беленкина had such an interesting family and personal background: her father was a Russian Jew who started to live and work in Germany before the revolution, and her mother was a native German, and Lora was born in Germany (in 1923) and lived there for the first years of her life, being a perfectly German child. However, their family (all devoted Communists) was relocated to the Soviet Union when Lora was 7 (in 1930). The girl learned Russian from scratch, and started to study in Soviet schools, and all her life was in Moscow after that. The family was not a simple one, of course: her father was somehow a valuable Soviet employee, and their life was relatively well-off.
So, it’s a very promising setting, right? Indeed, some aspects of her memoirs are quite curious. However, I have found that the personality of the author is quite empty and shallow from my point of view, and this affected the memoirs significantly. In short, she might write pages and pages about her summers in a village, and eating berries, and enjoying herself, and what kinds of dresses women were wearing, and such nonsense, and all this — during the most important years of the life of the society, the most crucial changes and events. She also definitely had unhealthy relationships with people, especially with friends and boyfriends, and it’s just …an unpleasant reading. The first part of the book, where young Lora is adjusting to the unknown Soviet reality and looks at everything with fresh eyes, is more interesting than the last pages of the memoirs, where the author presents herself more and more as a vain and simplistic girl without much reflections overall. (Even her granddaughter who published the memoirs was puzzled and disappointed about it: “Я не находила ностальгии в привычном смысле — ни тоски, ни обобщений, ни идеологических надстроек, ни рефлексии, ни переосмысления. Как будто текст скроен из чистейшей, ни с чем не смешанной памяти. Мне бы хотелось понять, почему она не писала, например, о том, как переживала свое немецкое происхождение в годы войны. Почему даже спустя 50 лет, кроме фактического пересказа событий и описания трудного, особенно для 1940 года, выбора отметки в паспорте — «еврейка» или «немка», она не оставляет других свидетельств, какая это была для нее глубокая психологическая травма. Возможно, это переживание так и не было разрешено, не была подведена смысловая черта ни тогда, ни позже. А возможно, отношение к жизненным парадоксам — разлуке с родиной или национальной самоидентификации — она намеренно не проговаривает.”)
Besides, although the memoirs were written about all author’s life, her heirs decided that the most recent parts should not be publshed at all (god knows what unacceptable things she wrote there…). And so the book ends soon after the 1950s, quite stupidly and abruptly, although there were many interesting events in her life thereafter.
The credibility of the memoirs is another question. I have never understood how the family survived repressions, considering that Lora’s mother was a native German (with living relatives in Germany) and even never learned Russian properly. All Germans, even the most devoted Communists, were subjected to cruel repressions in the USSR during and after World War Two, but Lora and her mother lived in the very center of Moscow all their lives — how come?! Lora explains this by the death of her father as a volunteer soldier during the war, but I consider this explanation ridiculous. OK, probably there was some huge luck. Then how Lora herself, with a German mother, speaking fluently/professionally two key foreign languages (German and English) and working as a teacher of foreign languages, mostly in the МГИМО (Московский государственный институт международных отношений) (!!!!), never mentioned any “collaboration” with the state authorities, any unwanted attention from the KGB, or anything like that? How was that ever possible? The most serious difficulties that Lora ever had with the repressive Soviet system was because of her Jewish nationality, and they were very mild comparing to many respective accounts of other Soviet Jews. I don’t believe her — or, more exactly, I suppose that such half-truth is more dangerous than the total silence.
So, it’s a very promising setting, right? Indeed, some aspects of her memoirs are quite curious. However, I have found that the personality of the author is quite empty and shallow from my point of view, and this affected the memoirs significantly. In short, she might write pages and pages about her summers in a village, and eating berries, and enjoying herself, and what kinds of dresses women were wearing, and such nonsense, and all this — during the most important years of the life of the society, the most crucial changes and events. She also definitely had unhealthy relationships with people, especially with friends and boyfriends, and it’s just …an unpleasant reading. The first part of the book, where young Lora is adjusting to the unknown Soviet reality and looks at everything with fresh eyes, is more interesting than the last pages of the memoirs, where the author presents herself more and more as a vain and simplistic girl without much reflections overall. (Even her granddaughter who published the memoirs was puzzled and disappointed about it: “Я не находила ностальгии в привычном смысле — ни тоски, ни обобщений, ни идеологических надстроек, ни рефлексии, ни переосмысления. Как будто текст скроен из чистейшей, ни с чем не смешанной памяти. Мне бы хотелось понять, почему она не писала, например, о том, как переживала свое немецкое происхождение в годы войны. Почему даже спустя 50 лет, кроме фактического пересказа событий и описания трудного, особенно для 1940 года, выбора отметки в паспорте — «еврейка» или «немка», она не оставляет других свидетельств, какая это была для нее глубокая психологическая травма. Возможно, это переживание так и не было разрешено, не была подведена смысловая черта ни тогда, ни позже. А возможно, отношение к жизненным парадоксам — разлуке с родиной или национальной самоидентификации — она намеренно не проговаривает.”)
Besides, although the memoirs were written about all author’s life, her heirs decided that the most recent parts should not be publshed at all (god knows what unacceptable things she wrote there…). And so the book ends soon after the 1950s, quite stupidly and abruptly, although there were many interesting events in her life thereafter.
The credibility of the memoirs is another question. I have never understood how the family survived repressions, considering that Lora’s mother was a native German (with living relatives in Germany) and even never learned Russian properly. All Germans, even the most devoted Communists, were subjected to cruel repressions in the USSR during and after World War Two, but Lora and her mother lived in the very center of Moscow all their lives — how come?! Lora explains this by the death of her father as a volunteer soldier during the war, but I consider this explanation ridiculous. OK, probably there was some huge luck. Then how Lora herself, with a German mother, speaking fluently/professionally two key foreign languages (German and English) and working as a teacher of foreign languages, mostly in the МГИМО (Московский государственный институт международных отношений) (!!!!), never mentioned any “collaboration” with the state authorities, any unwanted attention from the KGB, or anything like that? How was that ever possible? The most serious difficulties that Lora ever had with the repressive Soviet system was because of her Jewish nationality, and they were very mild comparing to many respective accounts of other Soviet Jews. I don’t believe her — or, more exactly, I suppose that such half-truth is more dangerous than the total silence.
February 3, 2019
ОТличные мемуары о жизни Москвы 30 х годов
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews