| The XX has sunk
into oblivion. The generation born in 20-30s is going away. It is
my generation.
The main events my contemporaries came through were political repressions
in 30s and WWII. Repressions resulted in broken lives and irresistible fear of
totalitarian regime. And a significant part of male population remained in battlefields.
I am a doctor by profession and work as a teacher and a scientist.
I do not think myself to be a writer. And my life was rather ordinary
without unusual meetings and sudden changes. However the above mentioned
events also touched me.
At the end of life looking at the
computerized youth I want to tell about the outgoing generation. I look at the
past and remember it through my own eyes.
 I
think we were neither better no worse than the today's youth. But we were different,
somehow chaster; and we were idealists and romantics I should say.
I used to tell some of my life stories to my friends
and they said - write about it! Having found out about memoirs collection "Pages
of Tragic Lives" being compiled I wrote about my parents and their arrest.
Then I remembered some other autobiographic episodes and wrote them in the
form of short stories. I asked a famous writer to edit them, but after reading
he said: "There's no need to edit them - you wrote true stories, not fiction".
Indeed, everything you can read about in this book really happened
to my family and me. That is why the book is called "True Stories of the
XX Century".
It feels as if I live my life once again.
Most of the people mentioned in the book have already passed away or left this
country. I am almost left alone to recollect about the past. It is hard to make
my story chronologically consistent - the past often mixes with the present.
I write only about the things that lingered in my mind.
I
went through many things, but I am happy because my life gave me a chance to meet
nice people. I had love and family. I have got a son, a daughter-in-law,
and a grandson. I am a professional and I still can rejoice at little things.
I hope my recollections will be one of the fibers
in the tie between generations
Tamara
Shaikevitch |
