Editing Openai/6874b524-4134-8013-b5e6-0601c853d841 (section)

=== From Revolution to Regimentation: 1918–1928 ===

===== The period between the end of the Russian Civil War (ca. 1921) and the consolidation of Stalin’s power in the late 1920s was a time of chaos, creativity, and creeping danger. For the Gershovitz family—now fully embedded in the evolving Soviet system—this decade represented both their zenith and the beginning of their fragmentation. =====

===== By the early 1920s, Israel had become a rising star in Soviet propaganda circles. A poet of considerable talent and ideological clarity, he served as both an editor and writer for the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) and was instrumental in campaigns to bring revolutionary literature to the provinces. =====

His 1923 anthology Burning Alphabet featured lines that became slogans etched on factory walls:

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Yet even as he ascended, Israel began to feel the shadow of Zhdanovshchina-style aesthetic orthodoxy. His friend and fellow poet Isaak Babel warned him in 1925: “Write fewer truths. The state prefers fiction it can control.”

Still, Israel was too useful—and still ideologically compliant enough—to face censure… yet.

===== After his 1918 revolutionary pieces, Yakob spent the early 1920s in Moscow’s increasingly politicized music scene. He was a student and later a protégé of Reinhold Glière, but with his dissonant compositions, African-American rhythmic motifs, and jazz inflections, he soon stood apart from the more conservative Soviet musical establishment. =====

It was during this period that he encountered Vladimir Dukelsky, a gifted student from a noble family who shared Yakob's fascination with syncopation, American spirituals, and tonal experimentation. The two had a brief, intense friendship—playing four-hand piano arrangements in cafés near Tverskaya, arguing over Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, and dissecting the possibilities of “Soviet jazz.”

But their paths diverged sharply by 1924:
* Dukelsky, ever aware of his aristocratic pedigree and uneasy with Soviet conformity, emigrated via Constantinople to Paris, eventually reinventing himself as Vernon Duke in the United States.
* Yakob, stubborn and idealistic, chose to stay.

His 1925 work “Steel & Shadows: Suite for Dancer and Machine” premiered at the Meyerhold Theater and was hailed by avant-garde critics as “a proletarian jazz ritual.” But party officials grumbled about “Negro decadence,” “bourgeois individualism,” and “non-dialectical rhythm.”

===== In 1927, Yakob’s commission for the 10th Anniversary of the October Revolution—a piece called “Red Fugue”—was rejected by the cultural commissariat for being “insufficiently legible to the masses.” =====

This marked the beginning of his political unmasking.

Israel tried to shield him—appealing to mutual contacts in Narkompros—but warned:

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===== By 1922, Artur had secured a permanent position within the Central Economic Planning Bureau (Gosplan). He was discreet, efficient, and completely apolitical in public—traits that made him indispensable in the early days of the New Economic Policy (NEP). =====

Privately, he helped both Israel and Yakob navigate the increasingly Kafkaesque approval systems for artistic and cultural work. He did not necessarily agree with their choices, but he understood how to manipulate the system.

Artur had no illusions. He often said to Rosa: “They believe the future can be calculated. I merely provide the illusion of the math.”

By 1928, as Stalin moved to crush the NEP and enforce collectivization, Artur quietly transferred into a new department under the Commissariat of Internal Affairs—predecessor to the NKVD. Officially, he was working on rural administrative reform. Unofficially, he began compiling profiles of "culturally problematic elements"—including, perhaps, his own brother.

===== Now in her early twenties, Franka had graduated into the Bolshoi’s second troupe, admired for her graceful but disciplined form. Her performances—stylized, austere, and increasingly ideological—were typical of the era’s “Soviet Ballet,” purged of romanticism, yet still imbued with the subtle poetry of movement. =====

She danced in Yakob’s 1923 production of "Iron Flowers", a politically symbolic ballet set in a metallurgical plant, portraying a woman whose body is both enslaved by and liberated through industrial labor.

Though her name appeared in several state publications, Franka knew she was never first-tier. She told Rosa, “They want me to move like an idea, not a girl.”

Her relationship with Yakob remained closest. She was often the first to dance to his music—sometimes alone, late at night, in empty studios that still echoed with old Czardas melodies.

===== By the late 1920s, Moishe was nearly deaf from decades of workshop noise and increasingly confused by the political mood. He closed his workshop in 1926 after it was nationalized, accepting a ceremonial post in a factory training young mechanics. =====

Rosa, ever practical, focused on helping Franka manage the day-to-day struggles of a performer’s life—ration cards, crowded apartments, suspicious neighbors. But she watched her sons with dread.

She told Israel once:

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===== As Stalin prepared to launch the First Five-Year Plan, the atmosphere chilled. Avant-gardism was out. Socialist Realism would soon be mandatory. Jazz, syncopation, ambiguity—these were now suspect. =====

Israel began censoring his own poems. Yakob refused to change his style, instead beginning work on an oratorio for factory sirens and string quartet. Artur wrote him a letter—brief, unsigned, and untraceable:

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Would you like a short story from this period—perhaps a tense reunion between Yakob and Dukelsky before the latter emigrates, or a confrontation between the brothers as Stalin's grip tightens? Or shall we keep advancing into the shadowy 1930s?