Tag #147499 - Interview #83524 (Galina Natarevich)

My father, Boris Leibovich Zilber, was born in 1912 in Petrograd. His mother was a dentist, his father an engineer. He had problems with acquiring an education afterwards, because he was the son of intellectuals. [Editor’s note: In the times when Boris was trying to enter an institute, there existed an official quota for applicants: mainly they admitted the children of workers and peasants. Each applicant from the intellectuals’ family encountered obstacles if he wanted to enter a college. It was not about your nationality, it had to do with your social status.]

Because of his origin he could enter only three institutes in Leningrad: the Institute of Physical Culture, the Agricultural Institute and the Textiles Institute. He chose the Textiles Institute, when he was about 18. Kosygin was a student of the same institute in the same period. [A.N. Kosygin (1904-1980): a prominent Soviet public figure, from 1964 to 1997 – the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR] Grandfather was his classmate, they were in the same year and even had very close relations. Boris graduated from the Textiles Institute and worked at the ‘Red Thread’ factory. Boris was a dispatcher of the quality control department, though he wanted to do something different, but it was impossible.