Early Years
The father, Yan Berzin, a Lett, was arrested and shot in 1938. Mother Roza Garmiza, originally a Jewish socialist-revolutionary, was arrested in the same year and died in imprisonment. Berzina was born in immigration, in Paris and spent most of her childhood abroad, mainly in England, being fluent in English. She graduated from MSU's geographic faculty as econogeographer. She declared herself a cosmopolite, even in 1950s, when this word was discouraged in the Soviet Union. Berzina spent only few months of her childhood in Russia, finally settling in Moscow in 1927. In 1937 she married Leonid Vasilevsky, a gifted econogeographer.
Read more about this topic: Maia Berzina
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)