From Publishers Weekly
"The last man with all known knowledge" is how one former colleague, New Republic editor Martin Peretz, remembers Harvard economist Alexander Gerschenkron (1904-1978) in this lively tribute to Gerschenkron and to a vanished era of scholarly standards that he embodied. Dawidoff (In the Country of Country) was deeply influenced as a child by his grandfather's affectionate, sometimes madcap tutelage ("Once he handed me a copy of Trevelyan's History of England, pulled out a stopwatch, and clocked me to see how many pages a minute I could manage. It is no small trick to acquaint yourself with Ethelred the Unready while... [a] man with a strong Russian accent is shouting out time splits"); he has carefully pieced together Gerschenkron's life through interviews with surviving family members, colleagues and former students. Gerschenkron was one of the most memorable figures on campus during his tenure in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, respected for his breadth of knowledge (an economic historian by training, he was also offered chairs in Italian literature and Slavic studies) and for being a great conversationalist and all-around "character" who battled mercilessly with Nabokov, John Kenneth Galbraith and every guest lecturer with Marxist leanings. Born in Odessa, Gerschenkron fled the Bolsheviks in 1920 and resettled in Vienna, only to flee the Nazis in 1938. It was the trauma of these upheavals, Dawidoff speculates, that made Gerschenkron refuse to talk about his past, even while his European experiences were clearly the driving force behind his scholarly interests and later his bitter opposition to the student protest movements. Indeed, given that those supposedly close to Gerschenkron Isaiah Berlin, physicist Philipp Frank, even Gerschenkron's sister insist that they hardly knew him, it's to Dawidoff's credit that this finely wrought book is not just a collection of amusing Gerschenkron sketches, but movingly conveys something of the man's inner life.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The biography of an economic historian might not sound like an especially lively read, but the story of Alexander Gerschenkron, written by grandson Dawidoff (The Catcher Was a Spy), is fascinating. Born in Russia in 1904, Gerschenkron fled the Russian Revolution and spent his teens and early twenties in Vienna. He and his wife might have stayed there indefinitely, but the Nazis made that impossible. The couple escaped to the United States in the late 1930s, and Gerschenkron, known by some as "the Great Gerschenkron," ultimately landed a teaching position at Harvard. He became famous on campus for his one-upmanship, his willingness to insult colleagues to their faces, and, most of all, his tireless scholarly habits. In the words of one colleague, "he knew everything, had read everything, and could talk about anything." Dawidoff offers an energetic and balanced study of his grandfather, and his book serves as a wonderful paean to scholarship, teaching, and the life of the mind. Amy Strong, South Portland, ME
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
A man who read political theory while sitting in the gutters of Vienna, Alexander "Shura" Gershenkron never relented in his pursuit of truth. In this moving memoir, Gershenkron's grandson suggests that, in part, his grandfather's intellectual restlessness resulted from his uprootings--first from Odessa when the Communists came to power and again from Vienna when the Nazis took over. Yet more than dispossession lifted Gershenkron into academic prominence as a professor of economics at Harvard, where his maverick approach to scholarship earned him the title of "Mr. UnHarvard." As comfortable quoting poetry as expounding his pioneering theory of economic backwardness, Shura often embarrassed colleagues by outshining them in their own fields. And outside academe, Shura insisted on proving himself as a patriot by helping shipyard roughnecks build Liberty ships, as a sports fan by swapping yarns with Ted Williams, and as a true chevalier by enchanting Marlene Dietrich. A father surrogate for Dawidoff (who lost his father to divorce and insanity), Shura nurtured in his grandson the capacity to explore a dozen humane fields--and to write one marvelous memoir. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"This is a most engaging book on one of the most distinguished and certainly one of the most interesting members of the Harvard Department of Economics. Alex Gerschenkron's office was next to mine; we had many years of pleasant association and friendly dispute. I recommend this book not only to those who know Gerschenkron's work but to all who would like acquaintance with one of the truly interesting economists of our time."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard University
“Alex Gerschenkron was a character who stood out even in the post-Conant Harvard of Quine, Woodward, and Schwinger. He was as pugnacious as a hockey player, more erudite than any database, and a meld of Russian, Viennese, and American cultures. His grandson Nicholas Dawidoff has captured in verbal amber Gerschenkron’s infinite variety.”
—Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel Laureate and author of Economics
“To give birth to one’s own grandfather is no mean feat, but that is exactly Dawidoff’s great triumph. The Fly Swatter is a densely imagined, beautifully written book.”
—Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang
“This is a most engaging book on one of the most distinguished and certainly one of the most interesting members of the Harvard Department of Economics. Alex Gerschenkron’s office was next to mine; we had many years of pleasant association and friendly dispute. I recommend this book not only to those who know Gerschenkron’s work but to all who would like acquaintance with one of the truly interesting economists of our time.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith, author of The Affluent Society
“A loving, carefully researched, effortless-seeming book—a delight to read. The story of the great Alexander Gerschenkron as told by his grandson combines the smallest and most telling personal details with an exhilarating wide-angle view of twentieth-century intellectual life.”
—Ian Frazier, author of Family and Great Plains
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard University
“Alex Gerschenkron was a character who stood out even in the post-Conant Harvard of Quine, Woodward, and Schwinger. He was as pugnacious as a hockey player, more erudite than any database, and a meld of Russian, Viennese, and American cultures. His grandson Nicholas Dawidoff has captured in verbal amber Gerschenkron’s infinite variety.”
—Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel Laureate and author of Economics
“To give birth to one’s own grandfather is no mean feat, but that is exactly Dawidoff’s great triumph. The Fly Swatter is a densely imagined, beautifully written book.”
—Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang
“This is a most engaging book on one of the most distinguished and certainly one of the most interesting members of the Harvard Department of Economics. Alex Gerschenkron’s office was next to mine; we had many years of pleasant association and friendly dispute. I recommend this book not only to those who know Gerschenkron’s work but to all who would like acquaintance with one of the truly interesting economists of our time.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith, author of The Affluent Society
“A loving, carefully researched, effortless-seeming book—a delight to read. The story of the great Alexander Gerschenkron as told by his grandson combines the smallest and most telling personal details with an exhilarating wide-angle view of twentieth-century intellectual life.”
—Ian Frazier, author of Family and Great Plains
Book Description
The most interesting lives are not always the best-known lives, and this is the account of a truly fascinating person. The stories of Alexander Gerschenkron—his great escapes, his vivid wit, his feuds, his flirtations, and his supremely cultured mind—are the stuff of legend.
Born in 1904 into the progressive Odessa intelligentsia, Gerschenkron fled the Russian Revolution at sixteen and settled in Vienna, immersing himself in the charged civic and intellectual life of another doomed city. Escaping the Nazis in the late 1930s, he made his way to Massachusetts, evolving from a political exile and social outcast into a man referred to by The New York Times as “Harvard’s scholarly model,” and by his peers as “The Great Gerschenkron”—the Harvard professor who knew the most.
Gerschenkron was a dazzling thinker, and his professional theories complemented his personal preoccupations. He was particularly interested in people—and economies—that cleverly overcame the large forces conspiring to hold them back; there were uses, he said, to adversity. Colleagues admired his vigorous ethical code and considered his personality to be perhaps even more original than his work. Gerschenkron was an uncompromising man who feuded with everyone from Vladimir Nabokov to John Kenneth Galbraith, who played chess with Marcel Duchamp, who enjoyed an intimate interlude with Marlene Dietrich, and who was a confidant of both Isaiah Berlin of Oxford and Ted Williams of the Red Sox.
Or was he? Layers of mystery and contradiction are at the core of this brilliantly recreated life, this prism through which we look back across some of the most important and unsettling moments of the twentieth century. With The Fly Swatter, best-selling author Nicholas Dawidoff gives us an intelligent, beautifully written, deeply felt biographical memoir of a real-life American character.
Born in 1904 into the progressive Odessa intelligentsia, Gerschenkron fled the Russian Revolution at sixteen and settled in Vienna, immersing himself in the charged civic and intellectual life of another doomed city. Escaping the Nazis in the late 1930s, he made his way to Massachusetts, evolving from a political exile and social outcast into a man referred to by The New York Times as “Harvard’s scholarly model,” and by his peers as “The Great Gerschenkron”—the Harvard professor who knew the most.
Gerschenkron was a dazzling thinker, and his professional theories complemented his personal preoccupations. He was particularly interested in people—and economies—that cleverly overcame the large forces conspiring to hold them back; there were uses, he said, to adversity. Colleagues admired his vigorous ethical code and considered his personality to be perhaps even more original than his work. Gerschenkron was an uncompromising man who feuded with everyone from Vladimir Nabokov to John Kenneth Galbraith, who played chess with Marcel Duchamp, who enjoyed an intimate interlude with Marlene Dietrich, and who was a confidant of both Isaiah Berlin of Oxford and Ted Williams of the Red Sox.
Or was he? Layers of mystery and contradiction are at the core of this brilliantly recreated life, this prism through which we look back across some of the most important and unsettling moments of the twentieth century. With The Fly Swatter, best-selling author Nicholas Dawidoff gives us an intelligent, beautifully written, deeply felt biographical memoir of a real-life American character.
From the Back Cover
"This is a most engaging book on one of the most distinguished and certainly one of the most interesting members of the Harvard Department of Economics. Alex Gerschenkron's office was next to mine; we had many years of pleasant association and friendly dispute. I recommend this book not only to those who know Gerschenkron's work but to all who would like acquaintance with one of the truly interesting economists of our time."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard University
“Alex Gerschenkron was a character who stood out even in the post-Conant Harvard of Quine, Woodward, and Schwinger. He was as pugnacious as a hockey player, more erudite than any database, and a meld of Russian, Viennese, and American cultures. His grandson Nicholas Dawidoff has captured in verbal amber Gerschenkron’s infinite variety.”
—Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel Laureate and author of Economics
“To give birth to one’s own grandfather is no mean feat, but that is exactly Dawidoff’s great triumph. The Fly Swatter is a densely imagined, beautifully written book.”
—Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang
“This is a most engaging book on one of the most distinguished and certainly one of the most interesting members of the Harvard Department of Economics. Alex Gerschenkron’s office was next to mine; we had many years of pleasant association and friendly dispute. I recommend this book not only to those who know Gerschenkron’s work but to all who would like acquaintance with one of the truly interesting economists of our time.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith, author of The Affluent Society
“A loving, carefully researched, effortless-seeming book—a delight to read. The story of the great Alexander Gerschenkron as told by his grandson combines the smallest and most telling personal details with an exhilarating wide-angle view of twentieth-century intellectual life.”
—Ian Frazier, author of Family and Great Plains
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard University
“Alex Gerschenkron was a character who stood out even in the post-Conant Harvard of Quine, Woodward, and Schwinger. He was as pugnacious as a hockey player, more erudite than any database, and a meld of Russian, Viennese, and American cultures. His grandson Nicholas Dawidoff has captured in verbal amber Gerschenkron’s infinite variety.”
—Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel Laureate and author of Economics
“To give birth to one’s own grandfather is no mean feat, but that is exactly Dawidoff’s great triumph. The Fly Swatter is a densely imagined, beautifully written book.”
—Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang
“This is a most engaging book on one of the most distinguished and certainly one of the most interesting members of the Harvard Department of Economics. Alex Gerschenkron’s office was next to mine; we had many years of pleasant association and friendly dispute. I recommend this book not only to those who know Gerschenkron’s work but to all who would like acquaintance with one of the truly interesting economists of our time.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith, author of The Affluent Society
“A loving, carefully researched, effortless-seeming book—a delight to read. The story of the great Alexander Gerschenkron as told by his grandson combines the smallest and most telling personal details with an exhilarating wide-angle view of twentieth-century intellectual life.”
—Ian Frazier, author of Family and Great Plains
About the Author
Nicholas Dawidoff is the author of The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg and In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music, and is the editor of the Library of America’s Baseball:
A Literary Anthology. He is also a contributor to The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and The New York Times
Magazine. A graduate of Harvard University, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy. He and his wife live in New York.
A Literary Anthology. He is also a contributor to The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and The New York Times
Magazine. A graduate of Harvard University, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy. He and his wife live in New York.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ONE
Showing Off in Odessa
They talk in Western Europe of our duplicity and wily cunning; they mistake the desire to show off and swagger a bit for the desire to deceive. --Alexander Herzen, Memoirs
The Russia Alexander Gerschenkron was born into in 1904 was a vast and varied country of people who had been so frequently abused by tyrants that out of all the misery came a commonality of spirit shared even by Europeanized Russians like the Gerschenkrons. It was with enormous pride that all his life Alexander, known to his family by the nickname Shura (pronounced Shoo-rah, with the r rolled soft), referred to himself as “typically Russian.” Typically Russian behavior was a matter of both style and attitude, a rough-hewn, zestfully counterintuitive approach to living that was evident in many aspects of comportment, from the wordless sounds only Russians made to express their appreciation for something—such as a just-downed glass of vodka—to the uniquely Russian shudder that came over people experiencing strong emotion. It was typically Russian to sleep in stuffy rooms with the windows closed, to enjoy breathing in the air on dusty roads, to insist there was no finer music than the murmur of the samovar, to have political arguments in which you were quietly modifying your position all the time while loudly refusing to concede anything, and typically Russian to look at the schoolboy warning you to rub snow on your nose because it was nearly blue with frostbite and inform him that you preferred it that way. After you had sent the schoolboy packing, it was also typically Russian to think you had spited your nose for the good of a not-yet-typical child.
At its essence, to be typically Russian was to be “more so.” Though Russians, for instance, were not always energetic—were, in fact, famed for their abilities as sleepers—in his fleeting moments of vigor a typical Russian was more vigorous than anybody. In this way, Russians were “more so” about everything. As a Russian saw it, a Frenchman might be ardent when it came to France—or a Frenchwoman—but he never truly lost his head about anything except a Frenchwoman. (Usually it was someone else’s Frenchwoman.) Germans were even worse. They were so rigidly organized that they never lost their heads at all. Russians, however, believed in losing their heads and aspired to do so. Russians made outrageous claims, traveled to absurd lengths, pushed the limit, and exceeded expectations. Always they wanted to be more loyal, more devoted, more steadfast, more stoic, and—when circumstances called for it—more long-suffering. That was a lot to live up to, and to meet the perpetual challenge typical Russians spent spectacular amounts of time lying around dreaming up magnificent feats for themselves to accomplish. In other words, it was a nation of show-offs.
In Shura’s view, this behavior was rooted in the populist intelligentsia’s long-standing tradition of appropriating and preserving rural values. Russia was slow to industrialize, and into the early twentieth century many social mores still came from the provinces—from the peasantry. Even townspeople like the Gerschenkrons were familiar with tales of peasant heroics: the heavy sacks of grain this mujik had hoisted; the broad fields of ripe wheat that one had cut to the ground by himself in a single day with his scythe. Many of these stories featured men who had allowed so much work to accumulate that everyone said this time, truly, it was just impossible: no man could finish such a job in such a limited time. Whereupon the peasant went out and completed the task in a remarkable lather of activity. Sometimes these frenzied finishes were pyrrhic victories. Among other things, they led to an epidemic of Russian hernias.
Nobody but the afflicted worried too much about that. Far from earning any kind of censure, the reckless approach was prized in Russia, and peasants who betrayed too disciplined an attitude toward their work were scorned as “acting German.” Even in Soviet times, factory workers were notorious for lazing about until the end of a planning period and then compensating with the shturmovshchina—a storm of activity. As a city boy Shura was not obligated to do any physical labor, and he readily admitted that his own heroic displays were “not functional.” Still, he said of his youth that “you were called upon at all times to surprise the world by unusual achievements,” and added that “it was natural to indulge in it, since it was all around us.” That is to say, Alexander Gerschenkron was a moral and a dignified person, but he did not despise a show-off. Indeed, he was one himself.
The years of Shura’s youth were spent in the Black Sea port city of Odessa. Every August the nearby coast became crowded with men unloading boatloads of watermelons freshly harvested from the Ukrainian steppe. Shura never really thought about this until the winter of 1918, when he was fourteen and happened to read a book which described how difficult it was to be a mover of watermelons. Not only were the smallish fruits heavier than they appeared, but they were slick against a man’s hand and had an oblong shape that the book said made them cumbersome even for veteran stevedores. Shura decided that when the late summer came he would show those watermelons.
Early in August, he walked down to the water and came upon an energetic scene. Moored in the shallow surf were a number of skiffs piled high with Russian melons of the darkest green. Parked above the beach on the shore road were an equal number of fruit wagons. Between the boats and the wagons stood the watermelon movers. They worked bucket-brigade style in groups of five, tossing the melons up the line to the drayman, who settled them into his wagon. Noticing a team that had only four men, Shura stepped forward, offered his services to the foreman, and was waved into formation.
The watermelons turned out to be as unwieldy as advertised, and in no time Shura had allowed two of them to slip through his grasp and smash at his feet. Immediately he was set upon by the foreman, who marinated him in a thick stream of invective that concluded, “You drop another one and you are out, but before you go, I’ll mend that dirty running nose of yours.” In a rage Shura directed a series of murderous threats of his own back at the foreman, concluding with a guarantee of “utter destruction.” Then he bent his back. He didn’t drop another melon all morning.
At lunchtime he was not required to make good on his vows of mayhem; instead he was given his first short snort of vodka and was otherwise treated with great affection by his new colleagues, including the foreman, who, after inquiring if Shura would like some help changing his diapers, quivered with laughter and announced that he was not such a bad kid after all. Then the foreman proceeded to teach him what Shura remembered as a dazzling multitude of unsurpassable blasphemies. More melons were fumbled that afternoon, but not by Shura, who received his pay and hurried home to fulfill his real purpose in the whole enterprise—telling everyone in the family all about it.
All the Gerschenkrons enjoyed the tales of little Shura leaping across broad ditches or charging through rushing currents yelling “Dvum smertiam nye by vat, I odnoi nye mino vat” (Two deaths cannot happen to one person and one death cannot be avoided). From the time he was four, his parents had him standing up on chairs in front of the company, reciting little poems he’d memorized. As he grew older much of the inspiration for his “achievements” came from the conventional source, the peasants he met while the family was summering in the countryside outside Odessa.
Many educated Russians had sentimental feelings about rural life. That was because in the sweltering summer heat, Russian cities became oppressive places. The air reeked with the stench of sewage and disease, the streets were strewn with garbage, rats and flies moved in bold swarms, and cultivated families packed their trunks and got out of town. They built small houses in clearings, glades, and meadows and took up residence in these dachas for a few short weeks—just long enough for many of them to romanticize the bucolic life.
Shura’s father, Paul Gerschenkron, owned two such properties. There was the dacha that he bought in a moment of prosperity to please his wife Sophie. But Sophie was a particular woman and did not like the cottage. She preferred the family’s pomiestie (small rural estate) eight miles outside the city limits in a forest close to the Black Sea. It was easy to see why. The estate was a charming place. Besides the rustic wooden farmhouse surrounded by a veranda, there were meadows dappled with red and blue wildflowers, walnut trees, tall hedges, livestock, vegetable patches, cherry orchards, a strawberry field, and a garden where the samovar murmured on the table in expectation of the friends and family who were always dropping by for afternoon visits. One day a traveling peasant woman stopped in to ask for some food. While a hamper was prepared for her, she remarked upon the dozens of ghosts she’d seen the night before swirling around in the local graveyard. As soon as Shura heard this, he informed his father that he wasn’t afraid of that graveyard and, furthermore, he would be glad to prove it. His father took him up on the offer, inviting Shura to walk through the cemetery by himself at midnight. After Shura returned home triumphant, his father nodded thoughtfully: “Now you know there are no such things as ghosts,” he said. Shura adored having a father like that. Not only was Paul affectionate; he was always one step ahead of his oldest child, an endless source of incentive.
Shura and his friends were all strong swimmers,...
Showing Off in Odessa
They talk in Western Europe of our duplicity and wily cunning; they mistake the desire to show off and swagger a bit for the desire to deceive. --Alexander Herzen, Memoirs
The Russia Alexander Gerschenkron was born into in 1904 was a vast and varied country of people who had been so frequently abused by tyrants that out of all the misery came a commonality of spirit shared even by Europeanized Russians like the Gerschenkrons. It was with enormous pride that all his life Alexander, known to his family by the nickname Shura (pronounced Shoo-rah, with the r rolled soft), referred to himself as “typically Russian.” Typically Russian behavior was a matter of both style and attitude, a rough-hewn, zestfully counterintuitive approach to living that was evident in many aspects of comportment, from the wordless sounds only Russians made to express their appreciation for something—such as a just-downed glass of vodka—to the uniquely Russian shudder that came over people experiencing strong emotion. It was typically Russian to sleep in stuffy rooms with the windows closed, to enjoy breathing in the air on dusty roads, to insist there was no finer music than the murmur of the samovar, to have political arguments in which you were quietly modifying your position all the time while loudly refusing to concede anything, and typically Russian to look at the schoolboy warning you to rub snow on your nose because it was nearly blue with frostbite and inform him that you preferred it that way. After you had sent the schoolboy packing, it was also typically Russian to think you had spited your nose for the good of a not-yet-typical child.
At its essence, to be typically Russian was to be “more so.” Though Russians, for instance, were not always energetic—were, in fact, famed for their abilities as sleepers—in his fleeting moments of vigor a typical Russian was more vigorous than anybody. In this way, Russians were “more so” about everything. As a Russian saw it, a Frenchman might be ardent when it came to France—or a Frenchwoman—but he never truly lost his head about anything except a Frenchwoman. (Usually it was someone else’s Frenchwoman.) Germans were even worse. They were so rigidly organized that they never lost their heads at all. Russians, however, believed in losing their heads and aspired to do so. Russians made outrageous claims, traveled to absurd lengths, pushed the limit, and exceeded expectations. Always they wanted to be more loyal, more devoted, more steadfast, more stoic, and—when circumstances called for it—more long-suffering. That was a lot to live up to, and to meet the perpetual challenge typical Russians spent spectacular amounts of time lying around dreaming up magnificent feats for themselves to accomplish. In other words, it was a nation of show-offs.
In Shura’s view, this behavior was rooted in the populist intelligentsia’s long-standing tradition of appropriating and preserving rural values. Russia was slow to industrialize, and into the early twentieth century many social mores still came from the provinces—from the peasantry. Even townspeople like the Gerschenkrons were familiar with tales of peasant heroics: the heavy sacks of grain this mujik had hoisted; the broad fields of ripe wheat that one had cut to the ground by himself in a single day with his scythe. Many of these stories featured men who had allowed so much work to accumulate that everyone said this time, truly, it was just impossible: no man could finish such a job in such a limited time. Whereupon the peasant went out and completed the task in a remarkable lather of activity. Sometimes these frenzied finishes were pyrrhic victories. Among other things, they led to an epidemic of Russian hernias.
Nobody but the afflicted worried too much about that. Far from earning any kind of censure, the reckless approach was prized in Russia, and peasants who betrayed too disciplined an attitude toward their work were scorned as “acting German.” Even in Soviet times, factory workers were notorious for lazing about until the end of a planning period and then compensating with the shturmovshchina—a storm of activity. As a city boy Shura was not obligated to do any physical labor, and he readily admitted that his own heroic displays were “not functional.” Still, he said of his youth that “you were called upon at all times to surprise the world by unusual achievements,” and added that “it was natural to indulge in it, since it was all around us.” That is to say, Alexander Gerschenkron was a moral and a dignified person, but he did not despise a show-off. Indeed, he was one himself.
The years of Shura’s youth were spent in the Black Sea port city of Odessa. Every August the nearby coast became crowded with men unloading boatloads of watermelons freshly harvested from the Ukrainian steppe. Shura never really thought about this until the winter of 1918, when he was fourteen and happened to read a book which described how difficult it was to be a mover of watermelons. Not only were the smallish fruits heavier than they appeared, but they were slick against a man’s hand and had an oblong shape that the book said made them cumbersome even for veteran stevedores. Shura decided that when the late summer came he would show those watermelons.
Early in August, he walked down to the water and came upon an energetic scene. Moored in the shallow surf were a number of skiffs piled high with Russian melons of the darkest green. Parked above the beach on the shore road were an equal number of fruit wagons. Between the boats and the wagons stood the watermelon movers. They worked bucket-brigade style in groups of five, tossing the melons up the line to the drayman, who settled them into his wagon. Noticing a team that had only four men, Shura stepped forward, offered his services to the foreman, and was waved into formation.
The watermelons turned out to be as unwieldy as advertised, and in no time Shura had allowed two of them to slip through his grasp and smash at his feet. Immediately he was set upon by the foreman, who marinated him in a thick stream of invective that concluded, “You drop another one and you are out, but before you go, I’ll mend that dirty running nose of yours.” In a rage Shura directed a series of murderous threats of his own back at the foreman, concluding with a guarantee of “utter destruction.” Then he bent his back. He didn’t drop another melon all morning.
At lunchtime he was not required to make good on his vows of mayhem; instead he was given his first short snort of vodka and was otherwise treated with great affection by his new colleagues, including the foreman, who, after inquiring if Shura would like some help changing his diapers, quivered with laughter and announced that he was not such a bad kid after all. Then the foreman proceeded to teach him what Shura remembered as a dazzling multitude of unsurpassable blasphemies. More melons were fumbled that afternoon, but not by Shura, who received his pay and hurried home to fulfill his real purpose in the whole enterprise—telling everyone in the family all about it.
All the Gerschenkrons enjoyed the tales of little Shura leaping across broad ditches or charging through rushing currents yelling “Dvum smertiam nye by vat, I odnoi nye mino vat” (Two deaths cannot happen to one person and one death cannot be avoided). From the time he was four, his parents had him standing up on chairs in front of the company, reciting little poems he’d memorized. As he grew older much of the inspiration for his “achievements” came from the conventional source, the peasants he met while the family was summering in the countryside outside Odessa.
Many educated Russians had sentimental feelings about rural life. That was because in the sweltering summer heat, Russian cities became oppressive places. The air reeked with the stench of sewage and disease, the streets were strewn with garbage, rats and flies moved in bold swarms, and cultivated families packed their trunks and got out of town. They built small houses in clearings, glades, and meadows and took up residence in these dachas for a few short weeks—just long enough for many of them to romanticize the bucolic life.
Shura’s father, Paul Gerschenkron, owned two such properties. There was the dacha that he bought in a moment of prosperity to please his wife Sophie. But Sophie was a particular woman and did not like the cottage. She preferred the family’s pomiestie (small rural estate) eight miles outside the city limits in a forest close to the Black Sea. It was easy to see why. The estate was a charming place. Besides the rustic wooden farmhouse surrounded by a veranda, there were meadows dappled with red and blue wildflowers, walnut trees, tall hedges, livestock, vegetable patches, cherry orchards, a strawberry field, and a garden where the samovar murmured on the table in expectation of the friends and family who were always dropping by for afternoon visits. One day a traveling peasant woman stopped in to ask for some food. While a hamper was prepared for her, she remarked upon the dozens of ghosts she’d seen the night before swirling around in the local graveyard. As soon as Shura heard this, he informed his father that he wasn’t afraid of that graveyard and, furthermore, he would be glad to prove it. His father took him up on the offer, inviting Shura to walk through the cemetery by himself at midnight. After Shura returned home triumphant, his father nodded thoughtfully: “Now you know there are no such things as ghosts,” he said. Shura adored having a father like that. Not only was Paul affectionate; he was always one step ahead of his oldest child, an endless source of incentive.
Shura and his friends were all strong swimmers,...
