Albert Tsessarskiy

This is me during my work in Moscow theatre named after Ermolova, performance of the play written by Shakespeare "Much Ado about Nothing”. Moscow, the year of 1946. When the war was over my wife and I lived in the hostel. I was invited to Moscow theatre named after Ermolova. I worked as a doctor and I was an actor part time. I played roles in couple of performances there by 1947. The director of the theater suddenly died. When a new one came, the atmosphere in the team changed for worse dramatically. It was the time of all-in-all baiting of Jews, the so-called anti-cosmopolite campaign and I felt biased attitude towards me. I quitted the theatre. Once I was called in the administration of the institute and told to move out from the hostel within a day. My wife, out little daughter and I left the hostel. We had no place to stay and I went to the secretary of Moscow Council and was turned down rather roughly. First my wife and I rented a room. It was expensive and we could not afford it. Then my wife's relative suggested that we should move in her place. We lived in her kitchen. Then I started working in the system of Moscow health care and I was given a small room in the basement. Then the municipal department o health care gave me two rooms in a large communal apartment. When I was working for another organization, I was given a separate 3-room apartment in the newly constructed house. It is in the yard of the house I am currently living. When I left the theater I went to work for the system of Moscow health care. I did not want to work in the office or in the operating room. The country was being swiftly restored and I did not want to be kept aside. I began to work in the field of the hygiene of the labor and occupational diseases. The industry was being restored and such occupational diseases as radiation sickness and all kinds of toxicosis were very serious. The lethal rate was very high and the labor conditions were terrible. I took an interested in that. First I worked in the district, then I was invited for a position of the chief industrial sanitary doctor of Moscow, in charge of military medical institutions. There were 3500 plants in Moscow. Many people came to the devastated city from evacuation, There were 2000000 workers among the evacuees. I had a lot of tasks to do. I traveled throughout the country, visited construction sites in the remote corners of my country. I actively worked with scientific and research institute of occupational diseases by the Academy of Science of USSR, was the member of the academic council, deputy editor-in-chief of the specialized magazine. I was always focused on the issues, though it was hard as many of them were secret. Health care system was very influential under conditions of Soviet power. We were the experts in all industrial construction projects in Moscow and all over the country. Very many standards introduced by us were the most rigid in the world. It was good and there were much less occupational diseases. When I was working in the theatre, I was offered by the local House of Culture to be the head of the drama studio. It was the time when we were living in the basement. We were meeting with the guys from the studio in our place to have a talk and to conduct rehearsals. I and a producer Voinov were in charge of the studio. He was responsible for staging, I - for literary part. Young people attended the studio and many of them became famous in the art circles. I wrote a derivate play written by Spanish playwright Lope De Vega. The leaders of cultures were indignant about it. Somebody spread a rumor that we made the guys from the studio to sing with our blood and all kind of other nonsense. In the end the studio was closed down. It had worked for 3 years. A dignitary from the ministry said indignantly that the play was anti-soviet. It was a nightmare. I was in trouble and they even wanted to expel me from the party. It was a horrible time. Illiterate officials concocted mendacious anti-Soviet motifs in literary pieces and dramas and did not let the authors breathe so to say.