Osip Hotinskiy

This photo was taken on my 5th birthday.

I could write a little by then and inscribed in printed letters:
‘To dearest granny Nena from Osia.’ I called my aunt Revekka [Schukina] my mother's younger sister, Nena.

This photo was taken in Moscow in 1924.

I was born in Moscow in December 1919. My parents named me Osip. Since my parents were atheists they didn't arrange any religious ceremonies with regards to my birth.

I was a baby when my father was sent to Kharkov in connection with his party activities. This happened during the Civil War. I cannot remember anything about our life in Kharkov. In 1925 our family moved to Moscow.

My parents received an apartment, luxurious for that time, on 2 Clementovskiy Lane in the center of Moscow: actually, they received two adjacent rooms in a five-bedroom shared apartment.

I have dim memories about my father. He died in 1927. His premature death probably rescued me and Mama from arrests later.

When I was small, Mama worked in the Central Supervisory Commission. She went to work early in the morning and returned home late at night.

At first my grandmother stayed with us taking care of me, but all other children wanted Grandmother to move to them and Mama hired a housemaid. When I was old enough, Mama sent me to the kindergarten.

Our housemaid or my grandmother picked me from the kindergarten in the evening. I could hear Mama's voice through my sleep, when she came home late at night.

Mama believed that work was beyond everything else, particularly the party work, and I was growing up a self-sufficient child.

I started school at the age of eight in 1928.