From Kristina Robb Dover
Dear Emilia Pavlovna,
You were my first-year Russian teacher. Somehow, you taught me to
love Russian. In hindsight, I think it was not so much the Russian language
but you with whom I fell in love—the evidence of which was a major in
Russian and East European Studies.
There have been so many things to love over the 20 some years we’ve
been friends. You are, in some ways, a second mother. But our care for one
another all really started with your care for me after an early first-year
Russian test. I was nursing a wounded ego after my first-ever “D” on a test
in the Russian alphabet. (We Yalies didn’t get into college, after all, by
regularly earning D’s.) But I had sought you out for answers, and you
assiduously and energetically (as was your way) walked me through the
slew of red marks on my paper with your usual mix of cheerful equanimity
and dogged determination to make me a successful Russian student, finally
sending me off one hour later with clear instructions: “You must study,
study, study.” You assured me that if I stuck with it I’d soon be earning
A’s. (You were right, as you often are.)
Those “bright college years” were marked by frequent interactions
with you over dinner at the Russian table, where you faithfully showed up
every week to bear the awkward, stilting Russian of eager students,
patiently repeating for them the correct grammatical construction with
almost the same motherly dedication to each carefully enunciated word
that you paid to each of you students.
When upon graduation from Yale I found myself rather miserably
not in the ranks of most of my cohorts, who by and large had followed one
of three paths (investment banking, medical school or law school), you
quite literally took me in. Your husband Mr. Hramov had just died and
you were alone—but you had a spare bedroom. “Well, look,” you said,
matter-of-factly. “Mr. Hramov isn’t here anymore, and I could use the
company.” I had landed a summer research job with Paul Kennedy and
every morning would take the bus in to work from your house in Hamden.
Living together for a summer is when we became more like family.
For one, you refused to let me pay rent. You insisted on stacking the fridge
with every manner of frozen dinner; every morning you would make me a