What Dreams May Come

Me, snoozing in my mom's lap, while vacationing on Lake Voldai.

We Are Scientists

My dad (top row, right), with some colleagues, at a conference in the mid-1980s.

Soviet Youth

My mom (left), with some friends, in the early '70s.

Knitting on the Beach

My mom was into knitting way before it became cool. Actually, making your own clothes was the only way to be reasonably stylish in the Soviet times.

A Day in the Country

In the Russian countryside, you can visit old churches... ...and then make shish kebabs for dinner.

My dad and his mother, sometime in the early 1970s.

Winter Fashion

My mom (to the right of the Jackie O look-alike in the middle) on a group trip to Lithuania in the late '70s.

Mother's Day

My mom and I back in 1983.

Spring

My mom, middle, with college friends.

Family Outing

My dad, 4 or 5, sulks about spending quality time with adults (his parents, middle, and family friends).

Class photo

My mom's eight grade class, I think. (There were only 10 grades under the Soviet school system.) Taken in the village of Serva in the Permskiy Kray region, 1971.

Granddads

Me, age 4, with my grandfather (left) and his brother.

In The Country

My paternal grandmother hopping a fence while on vacation somewhere in the countryside:

Grandma

My paternal grandmother as a baby, in the early 1920s.

Ski Trip

My dad and a pal of his on a ski trip: Cooking over an open fire:

Young Love

Aw, young love. My father and his very first girlfriend. Leningrad.

Girl and Doll

A relative of my grandfather's--not sure who; the family tree gets complicated here. Taken somewhere in Siberia in 1953.

Dolphin Show

My mom and I at a dolphin show in Anapa, a resort town on the Black Sea.

En Famille

My dad, age 10 or 11, with his parents.

St. Petersburg

One day circa spring 1986 or '87, my parents and some friends of theirs took me sightseeing around St. Petersburg. We posed on bridges:
I met a camel statue:
We went to the Hermitage.

Military-Industrial Complex

My dad, in 1973, at an abandoned (?) military base not from from Arkhangelsk. The caption on the back of the photo reads, "Me with a grenade and a cannon."

Boyhood

My dad, ages 5, 8 and 20. With a plush-toy bear:
Getting ready for school:
Hiking in the Carpathians:

Concert

My mom sings with her college choir under the gaze of Lenin.

Costumes

In college, my mom sang in a choir. The singers occasionally performed wearing traditional costumes of all the Soviet republics.

Class photo

A class photo of my mom's. Taken in fourth or fifth grade, maybe. Ural Mountains region, 1960s.

Teaching

Me, age 7, teaching my dolls the alphabet. That's letter "a"!

Parade

My mom (second from left), as a college student, marching in a parade. Apparently, participation was mandatory. Note the Lenin posters.

Contrasts

My mom, in 1980, at the height of her Soviet hipster-chic phase. The retro graphic T-shirt! The bell bottoms! The disaffected stare!
And two years later, a Soviet working woman, wheeling a baby carriage in the courtyard of a communal apartment building in St. Petersburg.

Family

My mom's uncle and his wife, with their daughter, Katya (my mother's cousin), in Nizhny Novgorod (?), in the 1950s.

Grandmother in Tatarstan

My mom's maternal grandmother, in Tatarstan, in the 1960s. My mother's side of the family is Tatar.

Mushroom Eaters

My mom (9 months pregnant with me), my paternal grandfather (middle), and his brother pretend to eat just-picked mushrooms while vacationing in the country. Mushroom-picking is big in Russia.

Uzbekistan, Bukhara

More from my parents' early '80s trip to Uzbekistan.

Drinking tea and eating grapes.

Stopping at the bazaar for watermelons.

Atop a camel.

And then a donkey.

Touring a minaret.

And a temple?

Bike Trip

My mom, on a bike trip in Zelenogorsk (a suburb of St. Petersburg, not the Siberian city).