This is a photo of me when I was two and a half years old. The picture was taken in Leningrad in 1927.
My mother, Esphir Ulman, studied at the Primary Education Faculty of the Pedagogical Institute named after Hertzen. She defended her final thesis when she was pregnant with me. She married Yakov Plotkin and continued to live with her parents. I don't know how and when they met. I only know that their marriage wasn't registered. They rented a room for some time not far from grandparents' place, but by the time I was born they returned to my grandparents'. My parents only registered their marriage in the 1950s.
I don't recall anything interesting about my pre-school years. I went to a very good school which was called First Exemplary. It was a secondary general school. Children of various nationalities studied in that school, just as in any other Soviet school. The school was really excellent. We had a school orchestra, arranged school performances and masquerades. Children of famous people studied with me such as the son of A. A. Bryantsev, the founder of the first children's theater in Russia, and the son of S. Y. Marshak, who was a famous children's book writer and translator of Shakespeare's works. My grandfather picked me up from school every day. We went to the RosCond confectionery and had pastry and soufflé. We were scolded about it at home later, because I didn't want to eat my lunch.
