DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Yakov Pikus. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL050.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41h3m ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 16 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/16 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Yakov Pikus. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL050.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41h3m ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is October 26, 2009. We are in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, meeting a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please, introduce yourself: your name, middle name, and surname. Tell us about your life before the war. What did you do? What was your family like? What did your parents do? Which school did you attend? How did you end up in the ranks of the Red Army? What were the war years like for you? Please, go ahead. My last name is Pikus, Yakov Yudelevich. I was born in 1922 into a Jewish family. We had a rather large family. My parents had four children—three sons and one daughter. Before World War I, my father managed to make ends meet. There were already two sons by that time: one born in 1912 and another at the beginning of World War I, in September 1914. My father was . well he was a hired laborer for various landlords; his specialty was cheesemaking. He made very good cheeses; he was very skilled at it. When the war started, he continued to work, while the landlords were still around. Then, he and my mother had a daughter after the October Revolution, in 1918. And then, in 1922, I was born, right at the time when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was officially created. It was a time when everything was falling apart. We lived here, in Belorussia [Belarus], in Minsk. It was in shambles, and there was no work. There was no industry in Minsk at the time. There were a few privately owned workshops, but that’s it. There was nowhere for my father to work using his skills. Around that time, NEP, New Economic Policy, was announced. And my father became a small businessman. He rented a small grocery store, no more than 4 or 5 square meters, on a well-known merchant street here, Nemiga Street. He sold grocery items. Somehow it was enough, somehow the family was surviving, with four children, one younger than the other. But somehow we made it through, thanks to his work. We were not rich by any means, but things were okay. And then, in 1928, for whatever reason . NEP was a big boost, by the way—there was development of industry, agriculture, private production; the currency grew stronger. The golden "chervonets" was released in the Soviet Union at that time. We had all of that, but in 1928, suddenly and without explanation, without any reason, they announced . Of course, now we know what the NEP was—it was two worlds competing: socialism and capitalism. It was announced that socialism had defeated the capitalist elements. Just like that, declared it. So in a split second, all former business owners were left with nothing. They were labeled “lishentsy” [the deprived], a shameful name. My father became a “lishenets," which meant that he no longer had voting rights. What was he to do? My father didn't fall apart. He made the right call: a Jewish kolkhoz had been organized, and he brought his family from Minsk to this kolkhoz. It was organized on the land of a Polish nobleman. There were about 100 hectares. There was, of course, a wonderful garden as well as a small dairy farm. In this kolkhoz, there were about twelve or fifteen families including us and my uncle. It was basically a free settlement. The kolkhoz was run democratically: there was a new chairman every three months. If his leadership was not 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/16 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Yakov Pikus. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL050.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41h3m ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN liked, that was it. And at one point or another, there was a chairman from each of the fourteen families. My mother worked as a milkmaid on the farm. And then, in 1932—this will sound familiar if you know the history or read "Virgin Soil Upturned"—a man called Nagulnov appeared in our kolkhoz, and there was no more free reign, no democracy. The government appointed their own chairmen. At first they sent over a cavalryman—a Communist, of course—who had been in Budyonny’s cavalry, but he had a serious concussion. The first thing he did—this was the way he introduced himself—he gathered all the women, who were naturally followed by children, got on his horse, and, yelling “Warsaw is ours!” whipped the horse and galloped off no one knows where. All the children ran after him. Everyone understood right away that no good was going to come from this leader, and in 1932-1933 most of the families moved back to Minsk. We rented an apartment in a wooden house in the Perespa neighborhood of Minsk, in the Starovilensky District. You know how apartments were in those days—no amenities. My father began working, when industry and trade began to revive a little and job openings appeared. Until the war started, he worked in the commerce industry—he was the senior salesman at one point, and even the store manager of some store. So we managed to get by and grow. When we lived in the kolkhoz, the children had to be supported, of course. So anything that the family got—bread, potatoes—all went to the children, especially because the oldest was already around twenty years old by then. The middle son, Moisey, was sent to study with a carpenter, a trade that would be of much help to him later on. My sister graduated from a junior teaching college. She was fourteen, and there was such a lack of teachers that they had assigned her to a school in Ula, Vitebsk Oblast, as the principal. They made her a principal at fourteen. Though it was only elementary school. She was only there for a month, and then she got sick and my mother went and got her. When she returned, found a job as a bookkeeper. My middle and older brothers both finished workers' college, which gave them a secondary education. By the time that we left the kolkhoz, my oldest brother was working as a blacksmith in Shatzk. He was a very good student in Minsk and was admitted to the Gomel Industrial Institute. But he was not there for long. He was summoned by the administration and told that there was no room for him there because his father was a “lishenets.” This was like being an "enemy of the people." He was expelled from university during his first year. He did not, however, let it get him down, and instead went to Kiev [Kyiv] and enrolled in the Kiev Industrial Institute. They weren't so watchful there, so they accepted him and he started studying there. He graduated in 1937 and was sent to work at a factory here called October Revolution, where he worked as a mechanical engineer, while simultaneously working as an instructor at the Belorussian Polytechnic Institute. After the war, he defended his dissertation and became an associate professor in the Machines and Tools Department. I was really young back then, maybe ten years old, when he was expelled from the institute. I heard how upset my father was: “Why does life punish me so? No one helps me; I raised four children, made sure they could study, that they weren’t hungry. For what sins am I being punished? What did I do to be treated like an enemy of the people?” He fought to have that label, “lishenets,” removed and eventually succeeded. That shameful word. He had brought up four children. And what became of these children of a “lishenets”? One became a professor of technical sciences. The middle son, Moisey, graduated from the Polytechnic 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/16 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Yakov Pikus. Full, unedited interview, 2009 ID BEL050.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b41h3m ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN Institute and became a plumbing engineer. My sister, after completing workers' college, went on to graduate from a state university with a degree in chemistry. Why did they have to torture him like that? These days, having four children would merit all sorts of benefits: housing and other kinds. But back then, the people who were trying to do something about the general state of dilapidation were accused of God knows what. I was the youngest so I did not work. Though I did do a bit of work as a loader in eighth grade. But the family tried to make it so that I could finish school normally. In 1940 I graduated from School No. 15. My first school was in Duditsi, where our kolkhoz was located, Zamostye, Rudensky District. That school, by the way, is still standing. There was an anniversary there and I went, my son took me there. Zamostye, where the kolkhoz used to be, is totally desolate. There used to be two beautiful ponds there; they've become overgrown. The house of the landlord, which is where we lived, a good house . I think it was burnt down during the war.