During the summer of 1941, in Vilna, Poland, Russian soldiers deport ten-year-old Esther Rudomin and her family to Rubtsovsk, Siberia. Along with other accused capitalists, the Rudomins ride in cattle cars for about six weeks to their place of exile. In their new world of forced poverty, the Rudomin family endures constant hardship. However, in Esther Hautzig’s 1968 autobiographical novel, The Endless Steppe, the author recounts not only her memories of frostbite, sickness, and squalor, but also the people she embraces during those years in exile. Esther draws strength from the good people she befriends in Siberia; she finds joy from various Rubtsovsk civilians, specific teachers, and her classmates, in order to make life in exile bearable.

Townspeople

Immediately upon her arrival in Siberia, Esther searches for positive interactions with new people. While at the labor camp on the outskirts of Rubtsovsk, Esther’s first home in Siberia, Esther and her grandmother receive permission to visit the town’s market. When the two arrive at the market, Esther relates:

In a second, we were surrounded: Where were we from? Where did we live? What did Grandmother do? How old was I? They were exceedingly friendly and frankly inquisitive, these native Siberians…It was, in fact, the happiest time I had had in a long, long time. The guns, the bombs of World War II were thousands of miles away and at the market place so was the labor camp close by. (pp. 68-69)

Esther loves the questions she receives from the townspeople, and rejoices in the engagement in normal conversation. Esther describes the Rubtsovsk townspeople as friendly, honest, and curious. Esther counts the simple interaction with the people of Rubtsovsk as a high point after a long period of suffering. She uses the marketplace socialization to put the labor camp, and the horrors of WWII in general, in the back of her mind for a short time. When the Rudomins have the chance to leave the labor camp, they find shelter with a Russian couple, Nina and Nikita. Esther remembers:

…there was a rather odd social custom: it consisted of nit picking and it was usually done after a nice cup of hot tea. The first time I witnessed it, I was invited to participate and I politely accepted. A friend visited Nina one afternoon when I was alone with her. They had their cup of tea and their gossip and then Nina’s friend, a pleasant lady around Nina’s age, placed her head in Nina’s lap and had it deloused…My turn was last and I laid my head on Nina’s lap. It was all very cozy, and a nice change. (p. 92)

Esther focuses not on the head lice or poverty during that time, but social inclusion. Esther appreciates the caring practice between friends, her invitation to join, her own participation, and the physical touch, all which make the activity with Nina and her friend “cozy” and “nice” for Esther. Later, Esther lives with another couple in Rubtsovsk: Natasha and Nikolay, and their baby daughter, Katia. With the family, Esther comes to feel almost normal in Siberia:

That winter when I was thirteen years old…The line between Polish deportee and Siberian girl sometimes appeared dangerously close to being extinguished. Living with Natasha and Nikolay, I almost felt that coming back to the hut from school was coming home. Natasha was young and gay and seemed to enjoy having me around. She treated me as if I were a younger sister and trusted me with Katia. (p. 206)

At the house with Natasha and Nikolay, she begins to see herself more like a typical local girl. The weight of Esther’s nationality and her political status slip away. Esther comes to regard the house not only as a structure that provides shelter, but more like a true home to which she has an emotional connection. Esther feels that Natasha not only accepts her, but appreciates her company. Natasha’s attitude and behavior indicate to Esther that she is a family member, and Esther happily assumes a familial role as another caregiver to the baby in the home.

Educators

As Esther prepares to attend school in Rubtsovsk for the first time, she worries because she doesn’t know anyone, she doesn’t speak Russian very well, and of course - she is a “capitalist” and “deportee” (p. 95). When Esther and her mother arrive at the school, the school principal meets them first. Esther allows herself to feel reassured by the woman:

The principal was an elderly woman with rough gray hair pulled back from a melancholy face. Her sad eyes sized us up and came to rest for a second on our shabby wet shoes. She rose to greet us with a little smile - of sympathy? Perhaps. In any case, we were being treated like human beings. (p. 97)

Esther sees that peasant life in Siberian challenges all people, not only the deportees; she finds the local Siberian principal’s appearance relatable as the the woman looks, “rough, melancholy, and sad.” Esther interprets the principal’s reception of her as potentially sympathetic. The principal seems to acknowledge Esther and her mother’s struggles (when she looks at Esther and her mother’s “shabby wet shoes”). The principal also rises to greet Esther and her mother, and gives them a small smile. Esther takes the subtle gestures as signs of respect for her humanity, and finds them enough to feel at ease. In the second school Esther attends, Esther finds even more joy. She claims:

It was in this school that I was to meet some truly great teachers. Almost all of them had taught in the universities in European Russia and had been forced to flee the German armies. They were generous with their knowledge and their classes were more than an adventure in learning; these men and women transported us from a remote Siberian village to the heart of Leningrad and Moscow, whetting our appetites for theater and ballet and music - and books of course. (pp. 199 - 200)

Esther appreciates the experience and professionalism of her new teachers, and empathizes with them as displaced people. She hails the teachers at the new school for their desire, and ability, to vibrantly communicate their knowledge. Because of them, Esther feels that she can access great cities, and understand the value of various forms of art. One teacher specifically inspires Esther:

If books had become more and more important to me, it was no doubt because their high priestess was Anna Semyonovna. Anna Semyonovna taught us Russian literature, taught it with a passion and a knowledge of her subject that would have been extraordinary any place. She had been a professor of comparative literature at Moscow University and she did not regard the students of the seventh grade in a small Siberian school as being unworthy of her attention. On the contrary, she taught us as if she had gotten hold of us at the optimum moment for conversion…It was in her classes that I finally mastered the Russian language and was able to read it with great ease and to write it too. (pp. 211- 212)

Esther compares literature to a religion, her teacher Anna Semyonovna to the religion’s leader, and the 7th grade students to disciples that Anna Semyonovna enthusiastically converts. Esther uses the extended metaphor of Anna Semyonovna as a religious leader to emphasize the teacher’s great importance. Esther credits Anna Semyonovna for her own mastery of the Russian language, and her Russian reading and writing skills.

Classmates

On the first day at her new school in Siberia, Esther welcomes the other children’s curiosity about her. She explains:

I was immediately surrounded by children firing questions at me which I had trouble understanding and answering…In spite of the difficulty with the language, this much attention from my classmates felt more like the strokes of little velvet paws than a barrage. (p. 103)

After a period of isolation from other children her age (on the journey from Vilna to Rubtsovsk, and during the first days on the steppes), the other fifth grade students invigorate Esther. She focuses less on her struggle with the Russian language, and more on the welcome attention she receives from the other children. “Like the strokes of little velvet paws,” the children’s conversation comforts her. In the spring of her first year at the Siberian school, the American movie, Charlie’s Aunt, comes to the Rubtsovsk movie theater. Esther recalls:

Two girls invited me to go with them. I was beside myself. An invitation in itself was something I longed to accept - any invitation would do… [the movie date] brought me just a bit closer to belonging, a condition I was beginning to hold more blissful than a full belly. A day that I was invited to play a game of dominoes or hopscotch I counted a big one, one that sent me home bursting to tell my grandmother about it. (pp. 122, 124)

Open to any kind of social invitation, Esther celebrates a trip to see a movie with two girls from school. She treasures social victories over food. Esther explains that games with other children such as dominoes or hopscotch fill her not with food, but with social interaction, so that at the end of a day of play, she leaves school not “bursting” with a full belly, but even better, with a full spirit. After some time, Esther gains what she desires most: a best friend. One day after school:

For the first time [Svetlana] asked me to stay. We ate sunflower seeds spitting the shells out till our chins were bearded with them. Now I had a best friend. I thought I would die of happiness. (p. 127)

Precious food is a part of Esther’s memory of the first afternoon at Svetlana’s house, but the food becomes a part of their careless play, not a desperate need. The focus of memory rests on Esther’s friendship with Svetlana. Somehow, in such a bleak environment, Esther feels as though she “would die with happiness.”

In a foreign country, surrounded by a new language, and labeled, “capitalists,” and “class enemies,” (p. 23), Esther and her family struggle for years to survive. Helpless against the injustice of her forcible relocation, Esther continues to exercise what control over her life that she does have. Although Russian soldiers devastate Esther’s family, Esther remains open to Russian people. Esther allows herself to socialize normally with the Rubtsovsk townspeople. She respects and values her Russian teachers, and loves her Russian school friends. Throughout her exile, Esther chooses to maintain an open heart and mind in order to thrive. The strong relationships she builds with the people around her bring her happiness during otherwise appalling years.

References

Hautzig, E. (1968). The endless steppe. HarperCollins Publishers.