3. Odessa: My Family and My School¶
Core Argument¶
In 1888, the young Trotsky was dispatched to Odessa to pursue his education, taking up residence with his mother’s nephew, Moissey Filippovich Schpentzer, and his wife. Schpentzer, barred from university for a minor political infraction, imposed a rigorous urban discipline upon the household: fixed bedtimes, exacting cleanliness, correct Russian, and polite conduct. From this environment, Trotsky absorbed the practical skills of printing and proof-reading from Schpentzer’s fledgling publishing house, while from the servants he glimpsed the “bewildering wrong side of life” that was otherwise excluded from both home and school. He entered the preparatory class of St. Paul realschule, a German-founded institution operating under the 1887 ten per cent Jewish quota. On his very first day, a poor apprentice spat on his new uniform in a gesture of social protest; he was also compelled to remove the school badge and braid, as these were forbidden to preparatory pupils. He excelled in arithmetic and German, earning top marks, even as the school regime tightened under the Russifying director Kaminsky, a “humanity-hater” who replaced the more liberal German Schwannebach.
The teaching staff presented a gallery of troubled figures. The mathematician Yurchenko, known as the ‘bindyuzhnik’, addressed all pupils informally and took bribes, as did others. The second mathematician, Zlotchansky, was dissipated and later cut his throat. The history teacher Lyubimov, outwardly imposing but weak-willed, hanged himself after an attack of insanity. The geography teacher Zhukovsky enforced an impossible silence and was feared. The German teacher Struve was kind and honest, while the French teacher Burnande was disliked, a scar on his forehead prompting various theories. The chief janitor Anton, a pillar of the school, shot an eighteen-year-old girl and was jailed. An orphanage attached to the church occupied part of the courtyard, but the schoolboys and inmates remained separate worlds. Trotsky avoided street life, brawls, and the sea, though he encountered a gymnasium student who teased him about his school’s badge. He became friends with Kostya R., whose family introduced him to a world of flirtation and socialising; he developed a crush on Bertha, but felt betrayed when his confidence was revealed. Diagnosed as short-sighted, he wore glasses, which his father opposed. In the countryside, he was more adventurous, riding horses and driving a gig, witnessing local antagonisms between schoolboys and gymnasium students.
Yet the city of Odessa itself was dominated by its governor, Admiral Zelenoy the Second, and was perhaps the most police-ridden city in Russia. Zelenoy combined absolute power with an uncurbed temper; anecdotes about him circulated in whispers, and a book of his exploits had been printed abroad. Trotsky saw him only once, from behind: the governor stood erect in his carriage, cursing in a throaty voice and shaking his fist across the street, while policemen stood at attention, janitors held their caps, and frightened faces peered from curtained windows. Trotsky adjusted his school kit and hurried home. Whenever he recalls official Russia of his early youth, he visualises that back, that fist stretched into space, and hears those throaty curses not found in dictionaries.