Irina Soboleva-Ginsburg

This photo was taken in 1922 in Moscow. I am two years old on this picture. I was born on 2nd November 1920. My mother didn't love my father and this attitude reflected on me. Two years after I was born my father left us. My grandparents' patience snapped because of my father's incapability. My grandmother bought a rooster for chicken broth. My father was told to slaughter it. He ran after the rooster in the whole apartment, but couldn't catch it. He was told to leave. My father returned to his mother, and my mother remarried soon. My mother met Abram Kutner in 1923 when he was chief of all military offices in the Central House of the Red Army in Moscow. He had a big belly, always wore his military trousers at home and shaved his head. He believed that he didn't have to continue his education and had reached everything he wanted in life. While his comrades, Red Army commanders, studied at military colleges and academies, my mother's husband kept changing positions and jobs. Their son Juli was born in 1925. My mother adored him. I was a miserable and abandoned child. My grandmother Enta and my aunt Maria loved me. They took care of me. We lived in a big apartment in Miasnitskaya Street in the center of Moscow. There was a dark yard near the house. The poet Aseyev, who lived on the 9th floor of our house, described the yard saying, 'the yard looked like an aquarium with no water in it and some children puttering about at the bottom'. My grandfather and grandmother shared their room with me. Maria lived in another room. My mother and her family lived in this same apartment but it was like they were living in a different one.