The Russian Century

room! I recall that most of all we took this as a moral blow. Our mentor had made a promise, which we believed, and had fooled us right there on the spot. From this moment on, we would have no faith in our teachers.

In the eight years that I spent in the gimnazium, our relationship with our teachers was pretty much one of open civil war. Almost none of them were able to interest us in their subject. We felt that Greek and Latin were invented merely to torture us. Even the instructor in Russian language and literature, though he was Vladimir Ivanovich Shenrok, a Gogol scholar, could not engage us. Geography was a dead science—the mere enumeration of geographic names. It was particularly unpleasant when the “mute” map hung before us. On it we had to name and identify the mountain ranges, oceans and

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rivers of the world’s five parts. Physics seemed a useless fabrication to us, as did, cosmography. I had a visceral revulsion for mathematics and, in all honesty, to this day cannot understand why we had to learn spherical geometry, trigonometry, Newtonian binomials, and suffer over logarithms. Even history failed to interest us.

We studied all of this only because it was demanded of us and the teachers taught it because that was the educational program dictated by the Ministry of Education.

When, as an adult, I began to study classical antiquity anew, I bitterly lamented that even those little bits of Greek and Latin which I absorbed in my gimnazium years, were almost totally forgotten. How I would love now to reread and hear the commentaries of Caesar, Ovid, Virgil and Horace, Plato, and especially Homer! I had read all of this once, but it was all a dead letter, “lessons” to which I had to respond, and which I could either learn or not. Why did no one interest us in this, or even try? Forget about inculcating a love for the subject. One may ask, who was at fault here? Of course, it was not us, the school children, but our teachers and our lifeless and deadening school system.

The most fearful and unpleasant memories were of our history teacher— Viacheslav Vladimirovich Smirnov. This was a small and very quiet person with a short, dark beard. All his movements were in slow motion, his voice quiet. But he was the terror of the whole gimnazium. We all feared and hated him fiercely. He was very demanding. We had to be ready for anything that he might ask that was covered over the whole year. He never corrected the student, never interrupted him, or asked him to repeat. He waited— sometimes with malicious glee—until the student became entangled or stopped altogether.

Frequently, the following took place. He would call on a student—he always made him come to the front: “Kananov!” Kananov, a tall and confident student, a dandy, wearing an inordinately wide leather belt, would willingly jump from his seat. He would push his way along the long desk, hop loudly to the floor and walk to the front of the room. There he would assume an almost defiant pose, jutting one leg forward and shoving a hand inside his belt. “Tell me,” the “historian” would say quietly, “about the events in Russia during the period of the War of the Roses in England.” The question was a tricky one—it required knowledge of Russian and English history. Kananov remained silent and so did Viacheslav Vladimirovich. (A deathly silence always reigned in his classes because he noticed everything, saw all, and punished severely.) A minute would pass, then two. The silence became tense, unbearable to the class. Kananov put his other foot forward. Just as quietly, as if he had finished listening to Kananov, the “historian” would say: “Now, tell us

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Chapter Seven

how Alcibiades governed.” Kananov immediately would liven up and begin in a confident tone: “Alcibiades was rich and famous. Nature endowed him generously with many talents . . .” and then suddenly he stopped, as if stumbling. Again the torturous silence. Kananov was terrorized and failed to comprehend anything. “The War of the Roses . . . what happened in Russia at that time? . . . Alcibiades . . . he was also, supposedly, famous for cutting off the tail of his favorite dog?” “Enough” the teacher would say dispassionately. Next to Kananov’s name in the grade book, at the very center of the list, he would, with a slight movement of the hand visible to the whole class mark a “one” or “the stake” (i.e., the lowest grade). Poor Kananov would return to his seat, this time without any boldness.

A strange thing: in my eight years at the gimnazium I don’t ever remember even one student having a friendly, purely human relationship with a teacher. We had nothing to do with our teachers outside of class. They never went with us to museums, galleries, or the theater. We studied our lessons, they quizzed us on them—that was the limit of our relationship. To me, this now seems impossible, but that is precisely how it was. I know that later the reciprocity between students and teachers in primary schools and gimnaziums was different. I heard stories about other gimnaziums (not those run by the state, but the private ones) where friendships between teachers and students were developed. In my case, however, things were exactly as I described them, even more so. This was the situation prevalent in our generation.

Despite everything said above, I nevertheless harbor good feelings and a grateful remembrance of the years spent in the gimnazium. Those years gave me much. They laid the foundation of my future life. But it is not the gim-nazium that I must thank for this.

Herzen, in My Past and Thoughts, once expressed surprise as to why so much attention is given to first love in biographies, but that the first childhood friendship is rarely mentioned. Herzen, in recalling Ogarev, wrote: “I do not know why there is a monopoly of the memories of first love over the recollection of a youthful friendship.” I am prepared to reiterate this observation. In any case, in my life, my first friendship played an enormous role, perhaps even the determining one, for my whole life.

His last name was Gorozhankin, and his name was Sergei. His father was professor of botany at the University of Moscow and director of the Botanical Garden. We quickly became friends. My other friend—even closer to me and one who had a decisive influence on me during those years—was of a completely different character and type. He had a large, irregular mouth, and dark fiery eyes. Were it not for his eyes, he would be unnoticeable. But when he became carried away—which happened quite frequently—and spoke of that which was precious and of interest to him, while ruffling his short hair

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with his right hand, his eyes burned like coals. Usually he stayed away from everyone and only during a fight would he dive into the center of the pack oblivious of the blows which rained on him from all sides.

I didn’t notice him for a long time. But, having accidentally talked to him at length once, I was convinced that he read a lot and that his favorite books and authors coincided with mine. This instantly drew us together. We started walking home together from school and had endless conversations on the way. His name was Evgenii Voronov. In contrast to Gorozhankin and me, he did poorly in school. So poorly, that he was kept back for a second year in several classes and managed to stay behind for a third year in the fourth grade. Thus, Gorozhankin and I quickly passed him in grade. Finally, he was even expelled for his lack of achievement. Meanwhile, this was a smart