Letters to the Editor

To the Editors,

In your April/May number of 1999 I was glad to see the note by John Varoli about the celebration of Vladimir Nabokov’s 100th birthday at 47 Bolshaia Morskaia in St Petersburg.  Mr. Varoli mentions that this is now “the world’s only Nabokov museum,” since the family summer residence at Rozhdestveno burned down in 1995.

In July 1999, with the Rozhdestveno Museum’s director Aleksandr Semochkin, I saw the work being done to restore the Rozhdestveno mansion, which already had its roof on and once again gazes down on the Luga highway.

The regional authorities are providing what support they can for the restoration, but its best chance of completion will be if awareness is raised worldwide that the project is taking place.  Any reader of Speak Memory will have in mind an idyllic picture of the beautiful Oredezh area, where artists such as Shishkin, Kramskoi and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin also spent summers.  It is certainly worth a visit for its own sake and the characterful Pushkinian Post House Museum is close by.

The Rozhdestveno restorers can be contacted through the area’s youthful historian, Valerii Mikhailovich Mel’nikov (telephone in Gatchina district 8-271-62-317), who speaks English, will describe how a two-hour train and bus ride will get you there and be glad to show you how the work is proceeding.

Susan Causey

Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum

London NW1 4QP

PS  Can anyone explain why Rozhdestveno is spelled ‘Rozhestveno’ in both the Penguin Speak Memory (1969) and Vladimir Vladimirovich’s Commentary to his own translation of Eugene Onegin (Routledge, London 1964)?

To The Editors:

First, I want to say that I very much enjoy your publication — it has helped me maintain a connection with Russia as my wife and I recently repatriated back to the states after four years there.

As a former resident of Nizhny Novgorod, I need to point out that the car pictured in your brief story (Jan/Feb, page 8) is not the VAZ-2123, but rather the newly-designed GAZ-3106 SUV.

Thanks!

Rick Walker

Scottsdale, Arizona   

To the Editors:

...A heart-felt greeting from far-off Canada. I am 92 years old, but, by the Grace of God, I still remember life in Orthodox Mother Russia, under the protection of the autocratic Tsar. I was 11 when our family fled from the invasion of the evil communist forces. I lived in the city of Harbin, where I was educated in a commercial school. In 1925, our family arrived in the wonderful country of Canada. Now I live in a rest home with my wife—it is my last station and at the next stop I will exit into a new, unknown world ...

I want to say that, in the October/November 1999 issue of your journal there was a small mistake in answer 12 to the sweepstakes: Ivan the Terrible opened the first Kabak, not Tabak, as was written. I remember well, we had one [a Kabak] in the Green Bazaar in Chelyabinsk. Above the doors was a small sign: “C pylu, s zharu, pyatachek za paru. U nas syt I pyan I nos v tabaku, milosti prosim.” (With smoke, with fire, two pies for five. We are sated and drunk and smoking; welcome!) Pyatachek za paru meant two large pies with meat or cabbage for five kopeks. A little bottle—like a small Coca-Cola bottle—of vodka stood on the table, together with vinegar, horseradish and salt. A full bowl of aromatic soup, two slices of good bread and the price for this pleasure was just 35 kopeks. I, as a young boy, did not partake of this, but I observed ... [Translated from Russian]

Anatoly Portnov

Burnaby, BC