When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home: A Memoir

by Elisa Brodinsky Miller

Overview

Shortly after her father’s death, Elisa Brodinsky Miller uncovered a cache of letters among his belongings. Written in Russian and Yiddish, with datelines in Tsarist and early Soviet Russia, the letters detail eight long years (1914-1922) during which Elisa’s father, his five siblings, and their mother spend apart from Elisa’s grandfather who had left for America, believing their separation would be short.

Miller, a Russian affairs specialist, learns bit by bit with each translation about the family she knew so little about, and the eight years of history they lived through, enabling her for the first time to connect her own experiences with those who came before her. This captivating memoir bridges the past with the present, as we learn about her grandparents’ struggles to escape Tsarist Russia, her parents’ hopes for their marriage in America, and her own reach for meaning and purpose: each a generation with dreams—first theirs, now hers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644692790
Publisher:	Cherry Orchard Books
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Elisa Brodinsky Miller, PhD, has a long career in Russian Far East business and trade: both in academia (University of Washington) and in the business community. Based in Seattle, her monthly publication, Russian Far East Update (1991-1999) provided commercial intelligence on the Russian Far East for a global readership. Alongside her newsletter, she published four editions of The Russian Far East: A Business Reference Guide. She presently works in graphic narrative and lives on Whidbey Island in the State of Washington.

Table of Contents

1. A Cache of Letters
2. Gone to America
3. War Disrupts
4. Inflation Spirals
5. Scythe against Stone
6. Wrapping Tefillin
7. Eli Sends Money
8. Making Ends Meet
9. My Parents Separate, Reconcile, Divorce
10. Meer Joins the Red Army
11. My Marriage and My Divorce
12. Reindeer in the Arctic Circle
13. Taiga, Tundra, Gulag
14. Papa, Come Home!
15. Jewish Passion, Jewish Suffering
16. A Terrible Night
17. It Is My Turn Now to Try
18. The Soul Suffers
19. Ragamuffins, Barefoot, and Hungry
20. When the River Ice Flows
21. Waiting to Leave
22. The “Moloch” of Ambition
23. In Riga, at Last
24. Olga
25. Al Anon
26. A Plot in the Jewish Section

Afterword
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Endnotes
Sources

Appendix 1. My Father’s Travel Notes
Appendix 2. Understanding the Russian Pale

Maps

Southwestern (Ukrainian) Provinces of the Russian Empire, 1914
Kiev Province and the Pale of Jewish Settlement within the Russian Empire, 1914
Gulag Territory (Yakutiia)
Working in the Tundra
Siziman Bay Gulag Camp
Civil War 1912-1921, with Railroad Lines
After the Pogrom of 1920, Manya’s Family Disperses
Amur and Ussuri Rivers Ice Breakup
Railroad Lines 1918
Getting to the Ship at Liepeija, Latvia

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home is a moving memoir that lovingly recreates the lives of Elisa Miller’s father and his family as Jews in the dying years of the Romanov dynasty. Drawing on a collection of letters and postcards, Miller chronicles the drama and horror of the times—pogroms, war, revolution, and emigration—and tells of her own experiences with the land of her ancestors. An evocative and deeply felt journey of discovery.”

—Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy

“Prominent University of Washington scholar Elisa Miller finds a cache of letters when her father dies that sets her on a quest to discover the history of her paternal Russian Jewish grandparents. Quotes from their letters and postcards highlight the increasing struggles of daily life in post-1917 Bolshevik Russia and eventual emigration to America. Interwoven are excerpts from the author’s life—her academic pursuits, and role as an intermediary that helps businesses like Alaska Airlines begin to operate in the Russian Far East after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Descriptions of the profound stillness of the frozen northern taiga to a personal journey of facing and embracing her own Jewishness enrich the narrative. Abundant maps and delightful illustrations add to the text.” —Patricia Polansky, Russian Bibliographer, University of Hawaii at Mānoa