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Chapter 3
Between Two Aerodromes
Almost every type of literary memoir proves that we are products of our childhood.
Normally, childhood is defined as ranging from infancy to the early school
years. I am not about to break with literary tradition, and I will confirm this thesis
with an example of my own biography.
My passport and all manner of questionnaires that I have filled out over the
course of at least eighty years claim that I was born 1 March 1912, in the city of
Lódz, Poland.
The “initial conditions” imposed by an individual’s parents and childhood
environment determine the fate of the majority of people. Initial conditions are
the critical factor in solving any problem in the scientific disciplines.There are no
super-powerful computer systems that modern science or the science of the foreseeable
future can use to describe the life of a human being. Literary memoirs
solve this problem with an essential simplification of reality and the initial conditions.
I will begin the description of my initial conditions, as in classic memoirs,
with my parents.
When I arrived in this world, my father was forty-two and my mother was
thirty-two. I was an only child. My mother, Sofiya Borisovna Yavchunovskaya, was
the third daughter in a wealthy Jewish family in the city of Gomel. 1 Her parents,
my grandmother and grandfather, had five daughters. I never met any of my
grandparents. My aunts and uncles, under various circumstances and for various
reasons, unanimously confirmed that of the five Yavchunovskiy daughters, Sofiya,
my future mother, was the most beautiful and capable.
Finding worthy suitors for five daughters who met the strict requirements of
wealthy and conservative parents was not easy. No one doubted that the beautiful
Sofiya would be left wanting. Quite unexpectedly, however, Sofiya Yavchunovskaya
was expelled from her last year of preparatory school for belonging to an illegal
revolutionary organization.To the horror of her family and admirers, she expressed
no remorse for her beliefs, and instead turned into a professional revolutionary.To
be independent, she completed doctor’s assistant and midwifery courses in St.
1. Gomel is located in the southeastern portion of present-day Belarus.
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