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 years, early and/or years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora’s box. “What! all!” said the Prince. “Yes, all.” “No,” said the Prince; “curiosity must have been without.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)