Peninsula.
16
Grigory Nikitich Kopalkin, Lyalya’s husband.
17
He meant a gun.
18
Apparently, he wanted to inform them that they would go in the direction of Leningrad. A.S. Ginzburg, one of the family’s acquaintances, lived in Leningrad.
Примечания
1
To those who are unfamiliar with the Russian system of names: Volfovich and Nikolaevna are patronymic names, i.e., the name of Yakov’s father was Volf, and the name of Olga and Nadezhda’s father was Nikolai. Most first names in Russia have short versions, which are used by friends and relatives. Here Nadya is a short version of Nadezhda. (
2
The Butovo Firing Range was used as an execution site by NKVD.
3
Houses of Pioneers were organizations for extracurricular activities of children in the Former Soviet Union. They included various clubs.
4
Yakov was drafted into the Red Army and left Noginsk on 24 May 1941.
5
The use of patronymic names while addressing relatives and the second sentence were Yakov’s joke.
6
This refers to the film “Prisoners” – see the next letter.
7
Here he used nicknames for fun. Horseradish is “хрен” (khren) in Russian, used for Khrenov. Braga was used for Bragin, and Myrta for Marta.
8
This suggests that a similar case with “good soldier Švejk” during World War I in Jaroslav Hašek’s novel could be based on real events.
9
Evgeny (Zhenya) Khapulin, member of the drama club.
10
The Russian idiom for a crowded place.
11
Bear’s Mountain.
12
The Russian idiom for feeling great, like a noble person does.
13
The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.
14
Apparently, Elektrostal, an industrial city a few kilometers from Noginsk.
15
According to a biographical sketch written by Yakov in 1951, his first location was on Sredniy (Middle) Peninsula.
16
Grigory Nikitich Kopalkin, Lyalya’s husband.
17
He meant a gun.
18
Apparently, he wanted to inform them that they would go in the direction of Leningrad. A.S. Ginzburg, one of the family’s acquaintances, lived in Leningrad.
19
Lydia (Lida) and Vadim (Vadya), the children of Olga Sergeevna and Grigory Nikitich.
20
Probably the city of Elektrostal.
21
From that time until June 1944, Yakov served in the 273rd Infantry Regiment of the 104th Infantry Division, near the Alakurtti station. The division defended the road leading to Kandalaksha and the Kirov railway. At the end of August 1941, the division retreated and settled on the Verman line (the Verman River between the Upper Verman and Lower Verman lakes, about 20 km east of Alakurtti), where the border between the USSR and Finland was before the war of 1939—1940. The division defended this line until the retreat of the Germans in the fall of 1944.
22
The Soviet propaganda called the Finnish soldiers “White Finns” meaning that there are Red Finns and White Finns, like the Reds and the Whites during the Russian Civil War.
23
Their names and the word “killed” were obscured, apparently by a censor, but one can make out.
24
That was the official name of the Red Army.
25
Britain declared war on Finland, Hungary, and Romania on 5 December 1941.
26
Santa Claus’s analog in Russia.
27
Noginsk residents.
28
Son of Anna (Nyura), sister of Olga Nikolaevna.
29
She studied to be a nurse.
30
All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The so-called Short Course was an important ideological book in the Former Soviet Union at that time.
31
Aunt of Sergei Balashov’s wife worked for Professor Pyotr Ermolaevich Ermolaev, who developed ammargen, an ammonia silver compound (Ermolaev, P.E., Proceedings of the 1st MGMI, 1935, No. 4, pp. 6—16; Ermolaev, P.E., Proceedings of the 1st MGMI, 1936, No. 8, pp. 5—40).