Moisey Grin

This is my father Moisey Grin.

This photo was taken in Moscow in 1970 for the board of honor at the institute where my father was working.

My father was born in Rostov-on-Don in 1899. He finished school and got attracted by revolutionary ideas. During the Civil War he served in the political department of the 2nd Red army cavalry unit.

He was an active member of the Communist Party, though he quit during the period of the NEP because of his disagreement with the policy of the party. He did it quietly and there were no consequences of this for him.

This episode was never discussed in the family because if people quit the party for ideological reasons they might have been sent to camps. During perestroika my father told me the story.

My father began to get involved in journalism in Rostov, but there were no career opportunities and my parents moved to Moscow in 1924.
My father began to work as chief editor of a trade union magazine.

He was about 30 years old then. At that time my father changed his surname to Grin. My paternal great grandfather and grandfather’s surname was Grinberg.

This was also my father’s surname, but later he shortened it to Grin. My father was a journalist and Grin became his literature nickname and then it became his family name.

On 13 October 1941 my father told us that his institute was evacuating and we could go with them. So we evacuated. We arrived in Frunze about 3,200 km southeast of Moscow. My father became an executive secretary of the newspaper 'Kyrghyzskaya Pravda' since there was no work for a geographer.

In the early 1950s the persecution of Jews in the country grew stronger. My father lost his job as dean of the Geographical Faculty of the Pedagogical College.

He went to work as senior scientific worker in the college of Railroad Transport.