I met Vladimir at M.I.T. in 1990 and we were married in 1995. I called him “Vova” but most of our American friends called him “Vlad.” He was a private person, very cautious about sharing information from his past. But in the summer of 2006 he asked me to write down some of his memories and thoughts. We worked on this project in our free time until 2013. He would talk–stream of consciousness–and I would type as fast as I could. The blog posts filed under “Life Stories” are from those sessions.
Blog
расставанья
About Vladimir’s mobiles
Sarabande…dances with the faintest zephyr and rolls with the gusts and gales. She remains joyfully confident at all times.”
— Michael Waddell, computer programmer
The mobile adds spirit and life to my office”
— Lev Zelenyi, Director of Space Research Institute, Moscow
Minuet…speaks to me of the beauty and fragility of life and all the gratitude I have for the delicate balance that makes it all work!”
— Diane Fillion Constantino, speech language pathologist
Vladimir’s mobiles bring joy and delight and relaxation for me and my patients. They add a lot to the healing process.”
— Elisa A. Adams, chiropractor and sculptor
…glorious…”
— Tom Rush, musician
They elicit a “feeling” of lightness (not ‘light’, as in lumens, but the absence of gravity) and have an almost heavenly-type of presence.…”
— Rosalie Uchanski, Washington University
About Vladimir’s classes
… I had a lot of down time in my hospital bed and … I used a styrofoam cup, string from gauze, medical tape, and a couple paper clips I found and made myself a lovely little mobile that really helped calm my nerves. Very meditative. And as always, the creative process feeds my soul. Thank you for sharing your gift and helping us learn to have fun! No matter what is going on!”
— Sarah Alessandro
When the students are armed with tools and instructions, having watched demonstrations, we are eager to try hands- on practice [and] a meditative, repetitive industriousness pervades the room…. After some wobbling and seesawing, the mobiles … gain a new life, a precarious and beautiful balance hovering in a somewhat reluctant harmony. Like clouds that are soothing almost because they could burst into rain but don’t, yet … mesmerizing because a visual proof is achieved to show a manipulated, palpable balance, though precarious (temporary?); the serenity of a human-made order in a chaotic world…”
— Amy Mccormick
To make a mobile gives me creative satisfaction and total absorption in the process. Mobiles are all about balance and movement — two qualities I strive for in life. The principles of balancing mobiles and the techniques of building them can be learned in the beginning mobile making class offered by Vladimir Barsukov. Then you are on your way to create whatever you can imagine.”
— Carolyn Kingston
In the act of creating something new, something artful, we lose track of time. With mobiles we also enter a new realm, one of light, air, and balance. Balancing different shapes, colors and weights, we are challenged to think in another dimension. Each time we place one object in relation to another within the mobile’s sphere of action, we need to find the point of balance. And finding that point is like a small miracle, a second in time and space when everything works — an amazing moment of recognition. The tiniest shift and the balance could be gone…. The entire experience is healthful and healing.”
— Irene Fairley
Poetry (Стихи)
I
“А мир за окном, мир неведомых таинств
Деревья танцуют кощунственный танец
И дождь, покаскуха, бормочет уныло
И сердце, грустя о разлуке, заныло.
Как часто мы гоним, что любим, что мило
И с близкой мечтой расстаемся легко.
И мчимся к другой, что от нас далеко
И верим неясным, обманчивым теням.
А то, что в руках, мы бросаем, не ценим.”
II
“Где ты дорогая, где теперь?
Я сохранить твой образ не сумел
Но иногда, как призрак, ты примчишься
Как Солнца луч и неба чищ
Неведомая, новая, простая,
И взбудоража кровь,
Опять растаешь.
И дни мои опять бесснуются в сметеньи
И радость вновь уходит вслед за тенью
И чтобы грусть хоть как – то заглушить
Я пью обман приятный для души”
“Где ты дорогая, где теперь?
Море снова шепчет о тебе
Я считаю каждую волну,
Звезд неясных призрачные блики.
Берег детства в мраке утонул,
И ушло все то, что было близким.
И теперь меня навстречу бурям
Хилое суденышко несет.
Я не знаю, что со мною будет
Столько недоступного во всем.
И зачем, отчаяние множат
Тыщи непонятных бед?
И зачем, забытое тревожа,
Море снова шепчет о тебе?”
III
“Под твоими окнами пепельная темень,
Тихо ходят около, тихо плачут тени.
Тени тех обманутых красотою гордой.
Снова что-то манит их в тишине у города.
До тебя ж далекая тыщи длинных лесенок
Ну а там, за окнами, ты читаешь Лессинга.
Книжные истории трогают иначе,
И что тебе, которые под Луною плачут.
Всех упомнишь разве, память их не копит,
Если кто приснится в сне-калейдоскопе.
Под твоими окнами пепельная темень,
Тихо ходят около, тихо плачут тени.
Фонари безмолвные притаились где-то,
В маленькие облачки звездочки одеты.”
Vladimir: Memories
“My earliest memories are from kindergarten, from some kind of medical check-up. I remember standing in line naked, with girls, and feeling very, very embarrassed. Memories are strange; some details I remember perfectly, others are just like hints of things, like just a scent that you go around, sniff and get a little hint of it…”
Digging the Dance–for Vladimir
Digging the Dance–for Vladimir
the sculptor’s shovel ovating a shape,
he saw the tree, down the decades,
leaves on pointe, dancing pirouettes
on a winded stage, a blossomed mobile.
Even the winter freeze
Of the half-foot of humus
necklacing the husky trunk
will cock it a little,
like the jaunt of a haughty hat
tipped against the headwinds,
brim all a-riffle.
The nurseryman idled up,
a fender of the old truck, its bolt missing,
quaking like an aspen, in time with
the engine’s tick.
“What kind is it?” asked the shoveler.
“Baldwin, but we call ‘em Bobbin’ Apple.
The springy limbs are never still, once
the apples load on.”
And so it was, down the decades,
roots reaching ever back
through unwitnessed stillness of soil,
twigs clicking heels in the rain,
branches lining out the old soft-shoe
on a sanded stage of wind,
and in a perfect calm,
the impossibly visible surge
of buds.
David Vandiver, April 27, 2014
My father Mois Barsukov
As far as I know, my father Mois Barsukov was in the military for nine years; he was a submariner and an officer in the marines. Shortly after my parents were married in 1939, my father was sent to fight in the war between Finland and the USSR. There was no break for him between this war and what Russians call The Great Patriotic War or The Great War for the Homeland—the USSR’s war with Germany.
In 1944 my father was wounded with a concussion and was sent to Tbilisi, Georgia, and my mother joined him there; it must have been their first opportunity to spend much time together. After my father was well enough to work he was assigned to teach in a military school called Nahimovskoye Uchilische. He taught astronomy among other things. He was teaching at this school when I was born, just a few months after the Great Patriotic war was over. I was born in January 1945 in a private house on Krilov Street in Tbilisi.
This school where my father worked was a military academy for orphaned boys. There were five or six such campuses in different cities. The goal of these schools was to take boys from the streets and turn them into well-educated and physically trained officers. The boys even learned ballroom dancing. Some of these schools are still in existence, but the one in Tbilisi where my father taught closed in 1955. Unfortunately the archives of the school are lost, but some enthusiastic former students have started a website. They are collecting pictures and documents and trying to build up a history of the school.
I ran across their website one day and sent an email to the webmaster. I was surprised to get a warm reply from a real person: Valentine Maximov, nicknamed “Fregat” (frigate). I’ve had several long email exchanges with him, and he has shown strong interest in learning about my father. He asked for photos and dates, and then finally he asked me what my father was called. This caused me to pause.
My father’s full name was Mois Itshok Fiselevitch Barsukov. Barsukov is not a Jewish name; it’s a Russian name, and how my father’s family came to have that name is a puzzle to me, because we are Jewish. The rest of my father’s name–Mois Itshok Fiselevitch–is clearly and obviously Jewish. Also, my father often went by two different first names: Mishe or Sashe. Not Mois. And what is more, some people called him by the middle name Fyodorovitch instead of Fiselevitch. These other names (Mishe, Sashe, and Fyodorovitch) do not sound Jewish—they would be more typical for a Russian than a Jew. So when Fregat asked my father’s name I was uncertain how to answer. I worried that if I told him my father’s real name he would not want to deal with me because of the anti-Semitism that is still so common in Russia. And besides that, I don’t actually know what my father called himself at that time.
So in the end I only gave the last name and unfortunately my father’s name has not been found yet among the documents about that school.
My father was always attracted to and attractive to women. He married more than once, but for as long as I knew him, he always carried a picture of my mother in his wallet and her picture hung on the wall of his apartment.
Sara Gitlin–my mother, and Maria Gitlin–my aunt
My father told me that I had a baby carriage from America. America supplied a lot of things at that time—so maybe that was not so unusual. But the story is that the baby carriage was given to my mother by a General in the military school where my father was employed, whose intentions were questionable. My mother Sara was an attractive woman, I was told. She looks beautiful in the few pictures I have of her. But I never knew her, because she died when I was nine months old.
The Great Patriotic War was over for Russia in May 1945, and my mother died a few months later at the age of 36. I was told that she had typhoid and that someone gave her a piece of bread, which was like poison for her system. I have no idea if this is true, but this is what I was told. I was told a lot of things but I never had an honest conversation with my father about my mother, even though my father lived to be 84 years old and immigrated to the U.S. with me. I was always afraid to hear the truth from him, and I am still piecing together many mysteries of my own life and his.
For example, I remember hearing that I was sent to St. Petersburg from Tbilisi when I was a baby. It probably means that my father took me there hoping one of his brothers or sisters would help with me, but that did not happen. Instead, I was sent hundreds of miles away to Samara (at that time called Kuybyshev, USSR), where I was raised by my mother’s sister—my aunt, Maria Markovna Gitlin.
My aunt Maria Gitlin (“Manya”) was a kind and wonderful person. I called her “mother” and for a very long time I was not told the truth, though I suspected something was not right because I overheard whispers of the adults. My father, who lived in St. Petersburg, often sent parcels and sometimes he visited us. Since I knew he was my father, naturally I assumed that he was my aunt’s husband. Instead of being told the truth, I was under the painful impression that my father had left my mother and that he lived with another woman in St. Petersburg.
Another experience made me question my identity. My aunt often locked me in the room when she had to go out. She probably did it for my safety but it was frightening to be locked in a room alone. I still remember the shape of the keyhole and trying to make a key from a piece of bread or a piece of paper to get out. When I became old enough to read, during these times I found letters my aunt had written, searching for her lost husband. This was her tragedy; her husband had disappeared during Stalin’s time. But I only understood her pain later; at the time the tragedy for me was the dawning realization she was not actually my mother.