The Bolsheviks Have Arrived

January 2021

Not long after Russia’s October Revolution, my grandfather and his family fled across Siberia, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean to reach the freedoms of the United States.  Their journey began after my grandparents could no longer reach their friends on a daily telephone check.  Grandfather’s crime was being an Engineer of the Tsarist government; that of my grandmother being a physician.  This made them bourgeoisie, not helped by their apartment on Fontanka canal in St. Petersburg nor their ownership of an automobile.   When my grandfather could no longer raise wages at a machine works fast enough to keep up with the inflationary price of bread, he decided to send the family on an extended “vacation” on the trans-Siberian railway.  He followed 3 weeks later on a “bridge inspection tour”.  He carried a .32 caliber revolver sewn into the crotch of his trousers.  This was during the time the American Expeditionary Force invaded Russia across Siberia in an attempt to help the White Army defeat…