Vitebsk

Vitebsk occupies a singular place in Mary Antin's geography of childhood, standing as the intermediate region between Polotzk, the town where she lived, and Russia, the strange and frightening land where fathers went on business and where bad things happened. In the child's early mental map, the world was divided into just two parts: Polotzk and Russia. It was only gradually that she learned of other places—Vitebsk, Vilna, Riga—which formed a middle ground. From these cities came photographs of uncles and cousins she had never seen, and letters, and sometimes the uncles themselves, who arrived looking just like people from Polotzk, in contrast to the very different people of Russia. When these visiting uncles left, her mother hardly cried at all, unlike the tears that accompanied a father's departure for Russia, marking Vitebsk as a place of lesser sorrow and greater familiarity.

First Encounter and the Discovery of the Dvina

Mary's first direct experience of Vitebsk came when she was about eight years old, when one of her grown-up cousins went there and Mary, against the usual custom, went with her. She was put on the train with her best dress tied up in a bandana, and she stayed on the train for hours and hours, unable to tell where the end of Polotzk was as the landscape rushed past. The railroad station in Vitebsk was much bigger than the one in Polotzk, with several trains coming in at once instead of only one, an immense buffet with fruits and confections, and a place where books were sold. Her cousin never let go of her hand on account of the crowd, and they rode in a cab for a long time through streets and shops and houses much bigger and finer than any in Polotzk. The one great surprise of the visit, however, was something not new at all: the river Dvina. Mary had seen the Dvina all her life in Polotzk, and the discovery that the same river flowed through Vitebsk was a revelation. It became clear to her that the Dvina went on and on, like a railroad track, whereas she had always supposed it stopped where Polotzk stopped. It was very curious that the Dvina should remain the same while Polotzk changed into Vitebsk, and this observation planted the first seed of a world larger than her hometown.

Vitebsk Within the Pale of Settlement

Vitebsk was not merely a city of wonder; it was also a place defined by the same restrictions that confined Polotzk. Mary came to understand that Polotzk, Vitebsk, Vilna, and some other places were grouped together as the Pale of Settlement, within which the Czar commanded the Jews to stay. The knowledge that she was a prisoner within this area trickled into her consciousness drop by drop, so gradually that it could not shock her. By the time she fully understood that she was a prisoner, the shackles had grown familiar to her flesh. The world was divided into Jews and Gentiles, and Vitebsk, for all its grandeur, was part of the same fenced-in territory. The city's relative sophistication did not exempt it from the fundamental condition of Jewish life in Russia, and the same fears and constraints that shaped Polotzk also shaped Vitebsk.

The Sabbath Visit to Uncle Solomon

Years later, during a period of family hardship, Mary returned to Vitebsk and made her headquarters in the part of the city where her father's numerous cousins and aunts lived, in more or less poverty or at most in the humblest comfort. She was taken to her Uncle Solomon's to spend the Sabbath, and she remembered a long walk through magnificent avenues and past splendid shops and houses and gardens. Vitebsk was a metropolis beside provincial Polotzk, and Mary was very small, even without stooping. Uncle Solomon lived in the better part of the city, and Mary found his place very attractive. Yet after a night's sleep, she was ready for further travel and adventures, and she set out without a word to anybody to retrace her steps clear across the city. The way was twice as long as on the preceding day, perhaps because such small feet set the pace, perhaps because she lingered as long as she pleased at the shop windows. At some corners she had to stop and study her route, but she was not frightened at all, though she imagined her back was very straight and her head very high all the way, for she was well aware that she was out on an adventure. This solitary crossing of Vitebsk marked a moment of independence and self-possession in the child, a small act of exploration that mirrored the larger journey she would soon undertake.

Vitebsk as a Point of Connection and Contrast

Vitebsk also served as a point of connection between the old world and the new, a place where the fates of emigrants and those left behind intertwined. When the news spread through Polotzk that Mary's mother, Hannah Hayye, had received a steamer ticket for America, a steady stream of people poured into their street from every quarter of the city, from both sides of the Dvina, from over the Polota, and from nowhere. The visitors included friends and foes, distant relatives and new acquaintances, and among them were those who had connections to Vitebsk. The city was also the home of relatives who had emigrated to America and then vanished, as in the case of Hayye Dvoshe, the wig-maker, who begged Hannah Hayye to deliver a message about her son who had emigrated eighteen months earlier with twenty-five rubles in his pocket, new phylacteries, a silk skull-cap, and a suit as good as new, only to send one letter from Castle Garden and then disappear without a word. Vitebsk thus stood as a place where the hopes and anxieties of emigration were keenly felt, a staging ground for the dreams that would carry families like the Antins across the ocean.

Narrative Significance

In the larger structure of the memoir, Vitebsk functions as a threshold between the enclosed world of Polotzk and the vast unknown of America. It is the first place that teaches Mary that the world extends beyond her hometown, that the Dvina flows on and on, and that there are cities grander than the one she knows. Yet Vitebsk remains firmly within the Pale, subject to the same restrictions and fears that define Jewish life in Russia. It is a place of relative splendor but also of poverty, a place where uncles live in comfort and where cousins live in humble want. Mary's encounters with Vitebsk—the childhood train ride, the Sabbath visit to Uncle Solomon, the solitary walk across the city—prepare her for the greater transformation to come. The city represents the intermediate stage of her journey, a place where she begins to sense that the world is larger than Polotzk, but where she has not yet escaped the confines of the Pale. It is a necessary step on the path to America, a place that both expands her horizons and reminds her of the limits that govern her people's lives.