One Resident's Story

My mother’s parents lived in this building since the day it was built. Grampa, Pyotr Savelevich Zaslavsky, was a Bolshevik, a participant in three revolutions, served time in exile alongside Stalin in the 1910s, and knew Lenin personally. He held significant state and party positions,* knew German very well, worked for a time in Germany, and later was deputy editor of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia. Grampa was a person of very strong opinions. He considered manicures, black stockings and gypsy theater to be depraved. He was very good at chess, wrote poetry and respected the Buddha. Grampa never drank, even to Stalin’s health (inconspicuously emptying his glass into the pot that held a ficus).

Grampa was almost competely blind, due to an unsuccessful operation. That may have saved him from being repressed. He died in 1967, and grandma continued to live in the building. In the early 1990s, our families combined, which is how I became a resident of the House on the Embankment.

I arrived after the renovation and never saw what the previous interiors were like. I never heard anything about frescoes on the ceilings; perhaps that was a myth. After I moved in they cleaned the building’s facade, lightened it, removed the Mercedes logo from the roof, replaced the windows. For me it is simply the building where I live: I arrive home tired, then eat, and sleep. In other words, my attitude is mundane and everyday. But friends who visit can feel the special atmosphere. What delights them so much, I don’t know. Maybe the view of the Kremlin, maybe the old photos, the books or furniture. But most likely it is the sense of proximity to the country’s history, making contact with the energy (that which often takes on a mystical hue) of the people who lived here and the things that took place here. As to the spirit of the 1930s and the repressions, the fear and tension, I don’t sense that.