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I Stand Corrected

More Topolskis

I read your book with interest. Especially the part where your father says "you are the last Topolski". My father and mother left eastern Poland in 1911 and settled in Dickson City, Pennsylvania. (A sizeable Polish community). They had 14 children, 9 boys and 5 girls. My father is probably responsible for 20% of all the Topolski's in the US. Rest assured, you are not alone! I for one have spent my life trying to make theTopolski name one to be proud of and I may yet succeed through my offspring. Thank you for adding to my pride.

T.  Topolski,   Pennsylvania, USA

Aleks replies -- Bravo! You’re right. The name Topolski is not that rare. It comes from topol, Polish for the poplar tree, plus the ending -ski that means from or from the place of, i.e the equivalent of de in French or von in German.

I have since heard from other Topolskis, including Valéria from Curitiba city in Brazil. Her Polish grandfather, Wladislaw Topolski, settled in Brazil around 1910. I tried, belatedly, to answer but Valeria’s e-mail address was no longer valid.

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I just finished reading your book. It's great. Though there is almost nothing NEW in it for me, being born and raised in USSR, I found in your book many vivid details for my own mental picture of what my people lived through....

Do you mind if I make two suggestions?

'Shalman' means 'small drinking establishment,' not a female thief or prostitute. The word for the latter is 'shalava.'

And, of course, 'Farewell unwashed Russia' was written by Mikhail Lermontov, not Alexander Pushkin.

Thank you again. I'm looking forward for the second volume.

Serge L,   Chicago, IL, USA

Aleks replies

Thank you very much for your e-mail. Although I've received many letters from readers, yours was the first response from a person who actually was born and raised in the Soviet Union. I have waited for such a letter for a long time.

I thank you for your kind words and suggested corrections.

The first edition of "Without Vodka" (before it was trimmed by the major publishers) had many conversational bits in Russian (albeit in Roman orthography). I have only a couple of copies left of that original private edition. I'm sure you would enjoy correcting my vernacular Russian.

My Russian dictionaries have no shalman or shalava listed. Shalman sounds pretty close to shantan defined as "a café or cabaret." The closest word to shalava I could find was the verb shalit' defined as "bezobrazno vesti sebia." 

As for "Farewell, unwashed Russia!" I confused those two writers. The lives of Lermontov and of Pushkin followed similar paths, both being expelled to the Caucasus, both in the army, both out of favour with the tsar, and both dying young in a duel. >

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Addendum  Others readers have also pointed out – kindly and gracefully – that Lermontov was indeed the author of the well known phrase "Farewell unwashed Russia". I should have looked it up. Mea culpa.

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I am sending this to you so you can show it to Mr. Topolski and say "I told you so"
since I gather from the acknowledgments that you had the usual editor's
problems (I have been a science copy editor for more than 40 years) with
an author.  Tell him the phrase is not "in a split of a second" but "a split
second."  I assume the reference to the Eight Army at the end is simply a typo.

At any rate, I stayed up until 2 pm this morning (and after a big dinner 
party yet) to finish the book.  It is an amazing story and well written 
(ok, you can tell him that also).  I have a waiting list for my copy, and I 
hope you have convinced him to write the second volume.

Ruth H.