Books I have been reading

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Family, life, Russia, Stalin, USA, USSR

Well it is  time for another instalment about books I am reading. The latest is the new Biography written by fellow Montrealer Rosemary Sullivan, winner of several prestigious literary awards, on the life of Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina (1926-2011) know later in life by the family name of her late mother, Alliluyeva and when she became an American citizen as Lana Peters. The book is entitled Stalin’s Daughter.

She had brothers, one, Yakov Dzhugashvili (1907-1943) died at Sachsenhausen during the Second World War in a POW camp for famous prisoners. He was the first born son of Stalin and his first wife. Yakov spoke more Georgian than Russian and it is said that Stalin did not like him much. Her other brother was Vasili Stalin (1921-1962) Lieutenant General in the Soviet Air Force, a drunk who died of acute alcoholism. She also had another brother  by adoption Artyom Fyodorovich Sergeyev ( 1921-2008) the adopted son of Joseph Stalin. He became a major general in the Soviet military. Sergeyev’s biological father, Fyodor Sergeyev, a close friend of Stalin, died in a train crash in 1921.

Svetlana had a strange and sad life, she was known in Soviet Elite Circles as the Princess of the Kremlin. When her mother Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva committed suicide by gunshot at the age of 31 after a party in the Kremlin in 1932, Svetlana was a child of 6 yrs old. Her world went from a carefree childhood to one of harrowing unexplained events punctuated by the disappearance of uncles and aunts and other relatives. Svetlana was physically isolated within the Kremlin and saw her father only occasionally and being followed and guarded by the Secret Police. Because of her isolation she was unaware of the cruelty of her father’s regime. Only at the age of 11 she noticed that schoolmates also disappeared or heard of their parents being arrested by the Secret Police. Later at the age of 14 while learning English and having access to American and British magazine she discovered by accident an article claiming that her mother had shot herself and not died of acute appendicitis as claimed in Official Soviet version of her death. This caused her severe emotional distress. At the age of 16 she started to understand that those who had disappeared in her family had been shot on her father’s orders because he blamed them for his wife’s suicide instead of looking at his own sordid behaviour.

Stalin was cruel, vindictive, a misogynist  and distrusted everyone, always seeing conspiracies against him, always testing people, one wrong word could be a death sentence. Svetlana became afraid and careful of what she said around her father when she saw him. He in turn could be nasty, as he had been with his late wife, full of put downs and negative criticism.

The book also gives us a description of how the elite who all lived together in the old Imperial Senate building of the Kremlin, lived on a daily basis. Children had governesses, tutors, private health care and the best of everything. Wives of party officials and the family members of Stalin had access to all manners of foreign luxury goods, even in times of famine everywhere in the Soviet Union, they had access to the best food and wines. Their lives where like that of the Bourgeoisie before the Revolution.  There was also the Datcha’s ( luxury homes) outside Moscow and other old Tsarist Palaces in the Crimea on the Black Sea. Chauffeured limousine, private trains and planes. Still her life was restricted to Moscow and the surrounding countryside. She would not visit Leningrad (St-Petersburg) until adulthood after her father’s death.

A series of fresh crisis erupted with the death of her father in March 1953, the power struggle and the physical elimination of people like Lavrenti Beria who was the head of the Secret Service and managed the million of executions of so called enemies of the people. Svetlana finds herself in a difficult situation, the Central committee declares that as the daughter of the late Stalin, she is State Property and her life is managed by the new leadership. She withdraws from public view and in March 1956 with the widespread publication of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev speech on Stalin’s crimes, she no longer dares go out in public, so afraid of the people’s loathing. She decides to change her name to her late’s mother family name, but this creates more problems for her. This is how kafkaesque the world of the Soviet Union was.

The book goes through her marriages both in the USSR and in the USA where she became an American citizen. Her famous defection in 1967 to the USA while in India to bury her husband Brajesh Singh. The publication of her first book Twenty letters to a Friend. Her 3 children, Joseph (1945-2008) Katya (1950) and Olga Peters (1971), two who are still alive live in Russia and in the USA. Olga does not speak Russian and was born in California.

Svetlana died in 2011 age 85 of cancer in Wisconsin, she also had a home in Portland. She never found peace nor did she ever get away from the ghost of her father or be reconcile with the death of her mother and became estranged from her children Josef and Katya, only Olga the American born daughter grew close to her. You feel sorry for Svetlana who like all children do not chose her parents and the accident of birth which haunted her life.

Svetlana Alliluyeva Stalina

One more case

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brown rat, Canada., PEI, Stalin, USSR

Well we have been lucky here on PEI. For the last 6 days there were no new cases of the virus, today one appeared in a man in his 30’s who just returned from International travel to give us a total of 3 cases. It is more than clear now that none of the restrictions will be lifted in Canada before at least August. So this could be a long haul and our economy will be impacted by all the restrictions. However the Government of Canada and our Prime Minister have come to the rescue in a big way financially to help Canadians in general. The programs, there are several, are generous, given that Canadians in general have a major personal debt problem and many have mortgages they cannot pay unless they are fully employed, I can see a lot of personal bankruptcies that will push people into permanent poverty. This is not news really since for the last 30 years personal debt has been a big problem for many with too much easy credit and a public ignorant of how personal finances work. An extremely sad situation for many, it could bring a lot of social instability, if we are not careful. In the 1930’s when the great depression struck, Canadians lived mostly on farms and in small rural settlements. Life was simple, many went to a public bath once a week, entertainment was limited. It was not the consumer society of today, far from it. People could make due with little, you made your own food at home, you only bought what was essential and necessary or made without if you could not afford it. My mother use to tell me that getting an orange as a gift at Christmas was a big treat. Other gifts were books and clothing. I can understand how the economic downturn we are living now could create mental health problems for many.

With the city so quiet and deserted, this afternoon I had a shock when getting out of the house to walk Nora, I see across the street this big brown rat walking along on the sidewalk. It was a Norwegian rat, I know them by sight because when I lived in Mexico City you would see them on the street quite often. My concern was Nora and if she saw it would go into killing mode and do her high pitch howling. Now this is a nocturnal creature I wonder if maybe because the city is so quiet we are going to start seeing more creatures coming out here and there. We also live near the river and wharfs which is a natural habitat for these rats. I would prefer seeing urban Foxes instead.

I have decided not to change my winter tires for my summer ones just right now and wait instead another few weeks before going to the garage. I am just concerned with the danger contamination of the car if 3 guys work on it and the clean up job wiping down everything. It can wait I don’t drive the car anyways and it is parked.

I just bought a book on Svetlana Alliluyeva who died in 2011 in Wisconsin while visiting her daughter Olga who is an American citizen. She had the most fascinating life and one filled with sadness, turmoil, death and disappearances. She was well educated and spoke 4 languages. An interview by the BBC done in 1982 in London is very interesting. I had read the biography of her father Josef Stalin and found it harrowing. I also saw the movie Death of Stalin, which is not a comedy but shows the absurdity of the Soviet Regime. She said that all her life she was hostage of her father’s name. I am fascinated by this historical period and by the people who lived in the entourage of Stalin.

We are running out of things to do. We will have to be more creative.

Comments I receive

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4th Symphony, Shostakovich, Stalin, USSR

Just yesterday I published a post on a book I read on the life of Stalin the Soviet Dictator. A horrific picture of how one man and his cronies can destroy a country and its people in the name of some illusion called Bolshevism. Just a few hours later another blogger Susan S. Prufrockdilemma.wordpress.com published a very good post on the Russian Composer Dimitri Shostakovich who died in 1975 and lived through the Stalinist dictatorship and managed barely to survive the purges. Stalin played cat and mouse with him, harassing and belittling the great composer. In 1936 at the height of the purges when millions were shot or disappeared on Stalin’s orders, Shostakovich was on tender hooks, he too could be arrested and shot. He composed at that time his 4th symphony, when I listen to it I think of a spiral taking you down and down. This was his way of resisting Stalin, he will go on writing many other symphonies, he is one of my favourite composers. Stalin did not always like what he wrote but Shostakovich manage to survive, a miracle in itself.

I believe that it is important not to forget what happened in the 20th century, the great dictators, the various political regimes either Fascist or Communist, the two world wars, the Cold War, Nuclear Arms race, we inherited all that and the World should remember. It is also important to understand those events not just in passing.

So my review of the book on Stalin got a comment from someone who thought I should read more light stuff like Barbara Cartland. I was a little surprised by the comment.  Am sure it was all meant in good fun. Light reading is just not my style.

 

 

 

 

Books I am reading

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Beria, France, Louis XVI, Russia, Stalin, Stefan Zweig, USSR

Well I am finishing the great big book on Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a lesson on why the Soviet Union collapse, it was doomed from the beginning. I remember a professor in one of my Political Science classes in University telling us that when Karl Marx wrote his book Das Kapital, he was thinking of industrial Germany not agricultural Russia. What has been depicted in movies and books as a glorious revolution by the people was in fact what we see today in Syria with ISIS. The government of the Tsar collapsed in 1917 when Nicholas II abdicates, the country is at war with Germany and all authority disappears. A group of adventurers styling themselves as revolutionaries “Bolsheviks” take over by simply killing anyone who might have been connected with the Tsarists regime. Russia then falls into a long 10 year Civil War which ends in 1928, after all opponents have been summarily shot, Lenin has died of cancer and Stalin grabs all the power for himself by shooting is old comrades and will launch purges against all manner of imaginary enemies, no one is safe, including his own family and the family of those comrades who managed not to be purged. Stalin’s wife who suffers from mental illness, shoots herself because she cannot live with this monster,  his reaction is How could she do this to me, he then proceeds to kill family members who he thinks conspired against him. Millions will die this way in an unending blood bath which will last until 1939.

So how or who is running the country, the industries, the army etc. well no one really, Stalin appoints incompetent people most of whom cannot read nor write but are Commissars in charge of everything and their first job is to shoot any worker or manager who does not produce ridiculous quotas of goods no one wants nor could use because the production is so shoddy. Famine ensues and millions die in vast areas of Russia.

As the war in Europe approaches, Stalin makes a secret pact with Hitler to divide Europe and the World. Stalin is secretly hoping that the Nazis will destroy the capitalists in France and England and will not attack Russia. He will make a more public pact to divide the world in 1945 in Yalta with Truman and Churchill, the beginning of the Cold War. Poland is sacrificed in the deal and 10% of its population will be killed, the country divided and disappear, the ultimate plan was to kill all the Poles, Stalin and Hitler hated them.

The same applies for Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.   Finland manages to save parts of its territory after a ferocious battle against the Soviets. Because of the purges of Stalin, the Soviet Army has no Senior officers in command, no modern armament, Stalin is still in favour of a 19th century style army with horses and old cannons, unable to understand that Germany has modern weapons and no one uses cavalry anymore and certainly not against tanks and machine guns. The Soviets have no planes, while Germany has a modern air fleet. The few planes Russia has are so poorly built that they are described as flying coffins. Again Stalin does not want to hear about it, his battle is against his own family, relatives and anyone he thinks might oppose him, a death sentence for many. When Hitler finally attacks Russia in 1941, in the first 48 hours despite the quickly advancing German army and aerial bombardments of cities, pleading by army officers like Zhukov to do something, Stalin refuses to believe the war is on, he thinks it is only a provocation by a lone German General, Hitler his friend would never do that to him. It is all conspirators around him who created this mess, he cannot be responsible for this disaster.

At the time of the pact with Nazi Germany, Stalin to please Hitler and later after 1945 for various reasons will purge (kill) all the Jews from the Soviet government, all of whom are committed Bolsheviks from 1905. They form a majority of all senior comrades in most government departments and in diplomacy. His henchmen is Lavrenti Beria who will outlive Stalin by one year and he himself will be arrested and shot by the new Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev in 1953. The master executioner was the peasant Vasily Blokhin who was in charge of all high profile execution and torture, he killed thousands and had a special squad to ensure efficiency in mass murders, he will commit suicide in 1955 after being disgraced by the new Soviet Leader.

So this is Josef V.Stalin, a Georgian peasant, who came from a dysfunctional family, poorly educated, suffering from various mental problems, his a reign of crimes, depravity and massacres against his own people, there was no communist ideal, no program, no policies, just a lot of purges of people to ensure that no one would ever topple him. Millions died at the hands of his secret police. If the purges stopped once Stalin died, the idea of a Soviet Union was forever doomed, no one, not Khrushchev, not Leonid Bhreznev, no one was able to reform the government and make social progress. Until it finally collapsed in 1989. In other words 72 years of utter misery and mismanagement, so much for the glorious revolution of the people. Problem is no one bothered to invite the people to their own revolution.

The book is well researched but after a while the reader is nauseated with the utter cruelty and nonsense of such a regime which brought nothing to Russia.

The other book I finished reading was the biography of Queen Marie-Antoinette by Stefan Zweig, a very detailed work, giving us a graphic picture, one I had not encountered before of the last 15 years of the Ancient Regime, the story of a monumental failure of the State, of an incompetent King Louis XVI and a Queen Marie-Antoinette who was unable to understand her role being a selfish, spoiled woman and the dangers around her despite many warnings. Missed opportunities at many crucial moments in history. The old Monarchy is swept away by a Bourgeois uprising again done in the name of the people and arranged or staged managed by the brother of the King, the Duke of Provence and his cousin Duke of Orleans, the problem is they (the people) are not aware of it. Only to be replaced by an Imperial regime under Napoleon I and a restoration of the same old monarchy in 1814. A Republican regime is only born in France in 1871, some 82 years later.

I am now going to read another of Stefan Zweig’s books The World of Yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books I am reading

Tags

Bolchevism, Fallada, Germany, Lenin, Nazism, Russia, Soviet, Stalin, terror, USSR, WWII

Recently I started two books, one was given to me by someone who came in for an interview at the Museum it is entitled Alone in Berlin, by German writer Hans Fallada (nom de plume) whose real name was Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen (1893-1947). He was the greatest writer of the XXth century. Fallada suggests that morality under the Nazi Dictatorship was not measured by the size of the struggle; it mattered only that one did not capitulate…the very act of writing Alone in Berlin – to say nothing of the stunning political clout of the novel itself – implies that for Fallada, the artist’s true role under fascism was chiefly one of bearing witness.

The story starts in an apartment building in central Berlin where several families live. All have different economic conditions, a retired senior Judge, an old Jewess, a worker and his wife, a Nazi party family with sons in the SS, a shifty alcoholic and his prostitute wife and their 5 kids. Tragedy strikes when the worker Quangel and his wife learn by official letter of the death of their son Otto, a soldier in the German Army invading France, this death will make of them resisters, the book is dark and full of anguish and fear. The Quangel write postcards denouncing the Fuhrer and leave them around Berlin. The Gestapo and the SS embark on a hunt to find whoever is responsible and it is a game of Cat and Mouse. The reader understands that many Germans resisted the Nazi, hated them but given the politics of fear and the Police State with the constant threat of the Concentration Camp for anyone resisting or criticizing the Fuhrer, people kept their heads low. Fallada who lived through it all also explains how the Nazi regime financed itself through extortion of the public in general and Party members.

Primo Levi called this book ”the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis. I have read other books about German resistance and living conditions during the Nazi dictatorship, it has been 75 years now and more biographies and diaries are coming out, it was not a black and white picture many shades of grey and complex reality. The picture is one of a society in turmoil and we have to ask ourselves what would we do if we lived in such atmosphere where the police can arbitrarily arrest you, beat you up, kill you or send you to a concentration camp. Where the wrong word can mean a death sentence, where no one can be trusted, where no one will be foolish enough to come to your defence.

A few years ago I read two biographies entitled Purgatory of Fools and Berlin Diaries 1940-45, it was the stories of two sisters of Russian-German origin, Marie Princess Vassilchikov and Tatiana Princess Metternich. Both worked at the German Foreign Ministry as secretaries and were implicated in the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944. They miraculously survived the war. However they do give a gripping account of the horrors under the Nazis.

The other book is about Joseph Stalin, who was not Russian but Georgian who becomes  the all powerful dictator of Soviet Russia under the Bolcheviks. Entitled Stalin, the Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore. It gives a psychological picture of the man and his family and entourage. It also re-establishes in reality what actually happened from 1917 onwards, removing all the romantic nonsense about the Revolution or that it was done for the people. What we see is how the people, the peasants, millions of people were starved, put to death, a country destroyed by fanaticism similar to what we see with the Taliban today. It was not the overthrow of the Tsar or the old Aristocratic Regime that was achieved, since the regime stop to exist in February 1917 by the sudden abdication of Nicholas II forced out by his cousins, a surprise to all including the Bolcheviks. No it was the fanatical pursuit of an inhumane ideology ”Bolchevism” to create the new man, a robot  basically who only thought in terms of means of production, devoid of any human feelings described as Bourgeois sentimentality.

The author Montefiore gives us a detailed psychological portrait of the people in Stalin’s entourage, few actual Russians, many were Jews who occupied top positions around him, their families, the children, their lack of education, their poverty and in the case of the Jewish colleagues the oppression they felt in Russian society. Even after the so called Revolution, Bolchevik Jews could not be promoted to senior positions because they were considered non-Russian, though non-Jews like the Armenians, Ukrainians, Abkazians, our other Ethnic groups could. Stalin will eventually get rid of all of them in his purges.

Montefiore did meticulous research much through interviews of the children now aged, and newly opened Kremlin State Archives , diaries and personal journals of who they were. We see Lenin the petit bourgeois, from a small noble family whose father was a Tsarist bureaucrat, Lenin who was absolutely convinced that in 1919 the world was going to fall into an orgy of blood and revolution, who believed that the people were with him, totally delusional. When he realized that nothing of the sort was happening, he turned to absolute violence against the very people he claimed to be wanting to free. As he said quote Change will come through total terror. Something Mao in China and Pol Pot in Cambodia years later will copy.

Trotsky the Jewish intellectual despised by all for his grandeur and aloofness, forced into exile and later assassinated in Mexico City on Stalin’s orders.

Stalin the Georgian street urchin, low birth and next to no education raised in a violent family background dominated by superstition and blood feud typical of the Mountains he came from, ready to kill for any reason. Stalin’s second wife Nadya, an unstable self-centred egoistical schizophrenic who after a party in 1932 will go to her bedroom in the Kremlin palace and shoot herself. Followed by the horrible vengeance of Stalin on his own family and all his close friends who he will blame for her death. Stalin himself is paranoid and violent, though highly intelligent and manipulative, always suspicious and ready to believe in conspiracy against him. A man who has no scrupules about exterminating, his own word, millions of innocent people simply because they do not fit into Bolchevik ideology. The mass starvation in the Ukraine where 10 million peasant died to satisfy the Five Year Plan for grain export to the rest of the Soviet Empire. The life of luxury on special trains taking the entourage and their families on vacation in the Crimea or to Sochi, the lavish banquets and constant drinking binges while the whole country is in flames gripped by a Civil War and then the purges 1936 of entire families, the old revolutionaries Stalin came to despise and fear, they knew too much. What the author shows us is that the entourage of Stalin who were rough necks of low birth and little education enabled him to become the Boss. He dominated them with his quick grasp of events. But also Stalin’s children how they did not fare very well, his first son Yakov from his first marriage, died during the Second World War a prisoner of the Germans in 1943, Stalin refused to save him for political reasons. He second son Vasily who will become a general in the Soviet Air Force drank himself to death unable to cope with such a father. Svetlana his daughter will fare a little better, but just, she will escape to the West and finally return to Russia to a life of oblivion, the crimes of her dead father followed her everywhere. The only one who appears to have done relatively well is Artyom his adoptive son who became a general and wrote two books about his adoptive father Stalin. He died in Moscow in 1981.

Lenin and others had no plan for the new promised Proletarian society, Bolchevism led to a dead end and Communism and Karl Marx mere shiny objects of little meaning used to retain absolute power over the masses. Stalin with the help of people like Beria, Molotov and others developed a State Secret Police to maintain a system of constant terror, creating the infamous Gulag. Even during the Second World War which again caught the Bolcheviks by surprised, so certain they were of their pact with Hitler to divide the world, Stalin would spy on his own troops at the Front and shoot here and there soldiers on the mere suspicion that they might not be faithful to him. He signed order 270 condemning as traitor any Soviet soldier who surrendered to the enemy or was made a POW.  Some 28 years in power and the total destruction of a society is the legacy of Stalin and his henchmen.

Stalin lived like a Tsar using Palaces and Dachas surrounding himself and his cronies with opulent luxury while the people had nothing. A sad commentary on a revolution that was not and almost 70 years of rule by one ideology. It explains a lot about Russia today and the many problems it faces. If you love history this is a great book.

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Tags

Shostakovich, Soviet Union, Stalin

This is one composer I personally like a lot, he was probably one of the greatest composers of the XXth Century and I always enjoy his music. He composed 15 symphonies which have themes and a complex history surrounding their creation. He also composed music in various genre. Though born in St-Petersburg in the last years of Imperial rule before the Revolution, he grew up in Soviet Russia and worked as a musician and composer during Stalin’s 30 year dictatorship. He suffered personally and he knew that despite his great fame at home and abroad, he could be arrested and killed on Stalin’s orders at any moment, that almost happened in 1937 and again in 1948.

To me Shostakovich represents the Russian People under those terrible years of Communism, how they persevered despite it all and survived.

I have been thinking of him a lot in the last few days. He use to say at the end of his life about the dictatorship of Stalin, how can people say; I did not know, I did not understand what was happening, how could they not have known. This is so true of any country where events create disharmony and fractures in Society. I hear such voices now around me here, people who say; I am not interested in what is going on, I do not vote, I do not read or listen to the news, why should I care. Will these same people later claim that they did not know or did not understand?

photo by Ida Kar, 1959

Under Stalin’s rule (1922-1952) some 30 million Russians where killed in his numerous purges, victim of his paranoia. This video made with the support of the Canadian Government and Canadian producers in 1997, is very interesting and well made, speakers are people who knew Shostakovich, friends, family, colleagues.

Warsaw, Poland, 1998.

Tags

Amman, Jordan, opera, Piaseczno, Poland, Russia, Saska Kepa, Soviet, Stalin, Vistula river, Warsaw

I arrived in Poland from my previous posting in Amman, Jordan, from the desert to a lush green land. The day I arrived it was raining in Warsaw and my hotel room was high up in a tower facing the Central Train Station and the Palace of Science and Culture, an iconic building in Warsaw, a gift of Josef Stalin to Poland, not much loved though and after 1990 there has been continuous discussion about demolishing the large monumental building in the Stalinist style. All I could see through the rain was green everywhere, it made an impression on me because a few hours before I had left dusty Amman behind.

Palac Kultury i Nauki, Warsawa

In 1998 life was still changing fast for Poles and everyone had ideas about becoming rich and starting a business, everything was possible now that the Communist were gone. One funny thing was that I could not find one single former Communist Party member. It appears that no one had ever been a member of the Party despite the fact that Communist ruled Poland from 1945 to 1989 though there were many people whose parents had participated in the Warsaw uprising of 1944 against the Nazi rule. Whatever happened after 1945 was lost in a sort of collective amnesia. I came to understand that the historical period after the end of the Second World War was a painful episode for many Poles. Poland had recovered its independence in 1918 only to lose it again in September 1939 when the Nazis invaded its territory which started the Second World War. Then in 1946 Polish borders shifted yet again West and many were forced to migrate Westward in a social engineering project imposed by Stalin. You can understand why many Poles were wondering when they were going to get rid of the Russians once and for all.

After reading Polish history you can see why Poland is always weary of Russia. Though Poles are Slavs like the Russians, they have been dominated politically by their neighbour to the East for centuries. Polish language is written with Latin characters whereas Russian uses Cyrillic alphabet. Poles are Roman Catholic, Russians are Orthodox Christians. So all those differences made for very uneasy relations for a very long time.

Warsaw is also a culturally rich city and this was a nice change from Amman where the entertainment was playing Bridge, golf or bowling and endless rounds of dinner and cocktail parties with the old Hashemite Princesses and Lebanese Bankers.

Seen from the air the Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa

the Quadriga on the main facade of the Opera house, installed in 2010 some 180 years after it was planned.

Warsaw has the Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa (National) and the Opera Kameralna (Chamber), the Narodowe has a full seasons offering each night a program of Opera, ballet or concert. The Opera Kameralna at the time under director Stefan Sutkowski who we knew personally  a charming person and we met the company of singers many of them are international stars, like Marta Boberska and Dorota Landowska. He had started a Mozart Festival which is now in its 24th edition. Sutkowski is now 82 and he is retired, he was the creator, founder of the Kameralna from 1961 to 2012. We loved going to the Kameralna because it is a very small theatre housed in a former Protestant Church with a beautiful garden all around. The performances were intimate and absolutely charming. Since 2012 and because of drastic budget cuts from the Polish Government the program of the Opera Kameralna has changed substantially.

Then of course there is the food and Polish food is very varied with many different dishes, salads, meats, paté, deserts of all kinds etc.. In 1998 many restaurants were opening and offering good quality food, some had pretensions and the decor was often over the top. Many old houses that once belonged to Noble families were taken over and restored to their former splendour such as the Sobanski Palace on Ulica Ujadowski near the Canadian Embassy.

Upon my arrival in Poland I was assigned a staff quarter, you do not get to choose where you will live, the employer decides. It was a house in Piaseczno a small town south of Warsaw, my house was near a very big forest famous for a terrible plane crash. At that time Piaseczno was really the end of the world, we were far from everything and Russian criminal gangs still operated in Poland. Meaning that there were shootings and car bombs but within one year of my arrival much of that had disappeared, the Polish Police must have been very effective. I had been offered a much bigger house outside of Warsaw some 40 Km from the City located on the Vistula River, but it really was too far and to isolated and I could not imagine living in such a place. Until 1995 by law we as diplomats had to live in Polish Government flats in the city proper, where in the days of the Cold War the Polish Secret Service could keep and eye and an ear to our doings and goings. Those buildings were horrible, poorly built, cramped and smelly, in other words the finest of Soviet architecture. After 1995 the Polish government abolished these rules and Foreign Diplomats were allowed to live wherever they wanted. Our administrator at the Embassy was a women who loved the far, far suburb and she had gone out and bought all kinds of houses far from the city centre. She did find plenty of old rambling kind of houses with vast gardens in the middle of nowhere. No one at the Office shared her love of the suburb, so her decision quickly became a problem for everyone. I campaigned to be housed within walking distance of the Embassy and within one year, I moved to Saska Kepa a very pleasant and green residential neighbourhood across the Vistula River from the centre of the City. We had a lovely house on Dabrowiecka street with a big garden.

It really was a period of Renaissance for Poland and I am glad I arrived there at that point.