Julia Ioffe

Julia Ioffe Instagram – Emilia Isaakovna Bruk, 8.14.1934 – 12.19.2020. This weekend, my grandmother Emma died of #COVID19. She survived so much—a world war and the Holocaust, both of which took so many of her family members; Stalin and the Doctor’s Plot, which nearly derailed her medical career; the Soviet Union itself, as well as her parents and brother, whom she idolized till the end of her days, scores of friends, and two husbands, both of whom she loved to distraction. But this doesn’t begin to capture the irrepressible Emma Bruk. In the censorship and totalitarian control of the Soviet Union, she lived with an inner freedom that is nothing short of remarkable. It went beyond reading and passing around samizdat and helping dissidents and manning the barricades when the tanks rolled into Moscow in August 1991, though she did all that, too. It was about living on her own terms, about not letting anything diminish the purity of her ideals and hopes for a country she loved and refused to give up on, even when her only daughter took her only two grandchildren to another country, far beyond the Iron Curtain. She found her freedom in the people she surrounded herself with, many of whom were her former patients, people who remained her close friends long after she finished treating their hearts. She found it in the vast beauty of the mountains, which she climbed with friends, in the songs of the great bards she sang around campfires in that same beautiful voice I heard over my bed in the dark as a child. She found it in her work as a doctor, both at the Botkin Hospital and Moscow Art Theater, until she finally, reluctantly retired at 77. (She took great pride in the fact that her desk at the latter was next door to the old office of Mikhail Bulgakov, a writer, dramaturg, and fellow physician.) She lived independently till the end, despite her failing heart and the brain tumor that was growing unbeknownst to her. She followed the news and went to protests—her heart, she always said, hurt for Russia. She went to the theater, concerts, and exhibits; she traveled and saw her many friends and never diminishing number of informal patients. [continued in comments] | Posted on 21/Dec/2020 03:29:07