biography
The family story written by Liberman in 2005 when he lived in Jerusalem
February 1, 1925, Moscow
September 3, 2011, Jerusalem
1
Polish and Western Ukrainian territories have always been notorious for their antisemitism. After the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, Suwalki was annexed by Prussia where persecution of Jews was less prevalent. Nevertheless, antisemitism persisted amongst the local population. After WWI, the Polish state was revived by the Treaty of Versailles, Suwalki was returned to Poland, and pogroms and persecution of Jews resumed.
My father, Azriel Alterovich, was born in 1885 in the ghetto of the Russian town of Suwalki.
This town located then at Russia’s Northwestern border with Germany belongs today to Poland — the country that exiled all their Jews1 but kept its antisemitism in place. Father’s ancestors were Jewish bankers. Torah forbids Jews to earn interest on their deposits. However, Jews did not trust each other, and my ancestors were the only ones whom they trusted. So, how did my ancestors sustain themselves and their families? It’s very simple: they earned interest on the money they deposited into a German bank. That is why they took the Liberman surname.
My father decided to become an agriculturist so that he could rebuild Russian agriculture. To this end, he had to be enrolled into Kiev Polytechnic Institute under the two-percent Jewish quota2. Equipped with a recommendation letter from his ancestors, my father came to Moscow to meet someone who was a merchant of the First Guild3 and had the residency permit. The merchant immediately gave him a job: during the school breaks, my father would visit the shops owned by his employer, settle accounts, order goods and bring cash back to Moscow. The merchant would throw the money into a drawer of his desk without counting it, but he paid my father well.
2
Universities were given government quotas for Jewish enrollment and allowed to enroll no more than two percent of Jews to each class.
3
People of other estates could become guild merchants if they met property qualification criteria. A merchant of the First Guild had to possess large capital. An owner of such a fortune could apply for admission to the First Guild of Russian merchants. Liberman’s acquaintance was a Jew as he obtained a residency permit for Moscow that was outside of the Pale of Settlement. The Pale of Settlement was established after the first partition of Poland in 1791 by Catherine the Great’s decree that restricted Jewish residency to Western and Southwestern territories of the Russian Empire.
Sima Izrael in the 1910s. A single oversized braid is visible on both sides of her neck.
My mother, Sima Izrael, was born in 1895 in the ghetto of the city of Bialystok. She decided to educate Russia and, to this end, she enrolled into the Higher Courses for Women4 Higher in Kiev under the same two-percent quota. My parents met in Kiev. Their photos taken back then are shown here.
However, Russia was then ablaze in fire of the great Russian Revolution that freed5 the Jews. My mother used to recollect how regime changed in Kiev, and barefoot Red Army soldiers entered the snow-covered city. My parents escaped from the chaos of Kiev life to Moscow that was now open to them.
Azriil Liberman in the early 1910s.
4
The Higher Courses for Women were opened in Kiev in 1878 with a two-year curriculum, which was extended by 1909 to four years and comprised the following specializations: Humanities, Physics and Mathematics, and Economics and Business. The level of education was comparable to the university level.
5
Probably, the author alludes to the October Revolution of 1917 that turned Russia into Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and marked the beginning of the civil war. However, persecution of religious minorities was banned earlier by the Decree of the Russian Provisional Government on the Abolition of the Restrictions for Ethnic or Religious Causes of April 2, 1917.
I was born on Adar 5 of the Hebrew year 56856 in the house of my grandma who was а NEPwoman7.
We lived in a wooden two-story house that used to belong to a nobleman. The house was surrounded by a garden and located not far from the site where Novoslobodskaya subway station was built later. My father held then the directorship of the first sovkhoz8 located near the town of Mozhaisk. In summer my Mom would leave the city for a country house that was, probably, in the village of Tоmilino.
6
Adar is the twelfth (counting from the month of Nissan as in the Bible) or the sixth (counting from Tishrei, the first month of the Hebrew year) month of the Hebrew calendar. There are 29 days in Adar. This month begins in late February and ends in late March of the Gregorian calendar. The Hebrew calendar started at the time of Creation, and the year of 5685 corresponds to the year of 1925 of the Gregorian calendar.
7
NEPmen and NEPwomen were entrepreneurs who became rich in the 1920s. From 1918 to 1921, the Soviet Government headed by Lenin followed the policy of so-called military communism that prescribed manufacturing nationalization, commerce monopolization and private property abolition. This resulted in economic calamity and hunger, so Bolsheviks decided to end it and switch to New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. Denationalization of manufacturing businesses started, private property was returned to its former owners, money circulation resumed. During NEP, entrepreneurial people were able to enrich themselves fast. Contemporaries frequently described NEPmen as uneducated and bad-mannered persons. Indeed, many of them were former profiteers and second-hand dealers.
8
A state-owned farm in the Soviet Union.
There, my baby carriage stood next to the baby carriage of her friend’s son. That friend once saw a dream that she shared with Mom.
In that dream, someone dressed in white approached the baby carriages and said:
— One of them will become a great man.
Having in mind her ancestors, the Mom’s friend asked:
— Who will become a great man, maybe a descendant of great artists?
And the man dressed in white answered:
— No, a descendant of great rabbis!
This was an amazing beginning, but it seemed later that I had no chance to stay alive and reach adulthood. First of all, it turned out that my father could not hold the director’s position because, in addition to his own aversion to stealing, he did not let others steal despite all his naivety.
The Grandma told my father: “What do you need this sovkhoz for? It does not produce anything anyway. I would build a factory for you and buy machines, so you will knit Persian-yarn9 stockings that women need so badly.
She built a factory. My father rapidly learned his new craft and began manufacturing the stockings.
9
Expensive Persian-yarn (fil de perse in French) stockings were extremely popular with fashionable women of that time and represented a status symbol. This yarn was produced from top-of-the-line mercerized cotton that gave it desired silky sheen.
10
The State Political Directorate under the People's Commissariat of Interior Affairs was formed in 1922. The official functions of GPU included monitoring for compliance with Soviet law. In reality, it was the top agency involved in mass repressions.
11
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), the original Soviet security agency, the GPU predecessor and the first Soviet agency involved in mass repressions. It was established in December 1917 under the chairmanship of Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926).
Shortly after that, Grandma was arrested, the house was confiscated, and The State Political Directorate (GPU)10 personnel moved in to reside there. They came to Moscow from different countries to work for this terrorist organization, a rebranded All-Russian Cheka11 — the favorite pet project of Lenin, openly declared as a terrorist organization under the “red terror” slogan. Our highest-ranking neighbor was a GPU general who cut us off from the front entrance. The only way to our rooms led now through the kitchen where, almost every evening, he would get drunk, strip bare and yell: "Beat the Yids and save Russia!". This was his way of mourning victims executed by firing squad under his command.
It is incomprehensible to me how he managed to avoid killing my parents and me. It was a pure miracle.
My mother thought that her letter to Ilya Ehrenburg12 saved her. However, this explanation seems shaky to me. She was unfamiliar with Ehrenburg.
Maybe, my father’s appeal to Lazar Kaganovich did the trick. “What did you tell him?” — asked my mother. — “I told him that it is forbidden to kill people.”
12
Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) was a poet, writer, translator and journalist who spent many years abroad before permanently returning to the USSR in 1940. Contemporary memoirists expressed different opinions about him: some of them believed that he was a sell-out scumbag (he was indeed close to notorious actors of Stalin’s regime), while others recalled how he helped many people in the years of terror using his influence and position.
13
Lazar Kaganovich (1893-1991) was a statesman, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party (Politburo) and а close ally of Stalin. Kaganovich was a major actor in implementing Stalin’s policies. After Stalin’s death, he plotted against Nikita Khrushchev, then-Soviet leader. When this plot was uncovered, he was expelled from the Politburo and, then, from the Communist Party in 1957. Since then, he did not play any serious role in politics or business of the country.
Nevertheless, I survived and started school where I also was severely bullied. Soon I was transferred to a newly built school. By the way, it was built by another resident of our house who occupied the entire mezzanine where my Grandma and uncles used to live. By that time, they were either in jail, or freed from Communists for a ransom of ten thousand dollars each and moved to Israel.
Unsuitable students from the flagship School No. 25, where Stalin’s daughter was enrolled, were transferred to this new school. Micka Bongard, my classmate and future mentor, was in this cohort. Somewhere around the fifth year of school, he decided that we should pursue science in order to study the human brain. He taught me using firm Soviet methods. He punched me into the solar plexus when I was unable to solve a quadratic equation. However, I understood that he was right because I was indeed unable to solve this equation.
14
A competition in math for high school students.
Eventually, I learned how to solve equations, and we even both received the first prizes at the Moscow City Mathematical Olympiad14.
Michael, Petr and Elena Vershilova-Vesterman, 1980
Mikhail Bongard never married and had no children. He believed that a man of science should devote all his life to it. I have been married three times and have seven sons and two daughters. My first wife was a daughter of Victor Shklovsky, a renowned Russian-Jewish writer. His wife, Vasilisa, was a blue-eyed captain who did not allow him to eagerly serve Soviet authorities. She was the first person who showed me the Bible.
She used to tell me: "You better read the Bible instead of theologizing."
I made several attempts to read it and thought that it was written by shepherds. She was also the first person who explained to me that Shakespeare, Pushkin and Gogol were all antisemites.
My first wife gave me a son whom I named Nikita after Vasilisa’s son who was killed during the war. Nikita, who was born exactly when Stalin schemed to kill all Jews in the Soviet Union, became later a cofounder of Chaimatics. My second wife, Elena Vershilova-Vesterman-Coen, a daughter of Boris Vershilov15 who was the first director of Habima16, eventually emigrated to the US with my two sons, Misha and Petya Liberman. My third wife is Svetlana Minina who co-authored a discovery relevant to Chaimatics and illustrated it17. She borne two daughters and four sons. All of them studied at a Jewish school.
To Your Name Give Glory.
15
Boris Vershilov, a.k.a. Vesterman (1893-1957), who was married to Ester Bongrad, Elena’s mother, was a Soviet director and a student of Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1883-1992), a Russian actor and theater director famous for his distinctive style.
16
Habima, a Jewish theater that gave performances in Hebrew, was founded by Nahum Zemach in Bialystok in 1909 with amateur actors. The founders were unable to make it a professional theater, and financial and administrative hurdles resulted in Habima closure in 1913. In 1917, Zemach sought and received help from Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), a seminal theater director, actor, teacher, theater scholar and reformer. The Habima theater was reopened in Moscow. In 1926 the theater left Moscow and, after several years of road tours in Palestine and Europe, permanently moved to Palestine in 1930.
17
See page 12 of the book “On the way to a new science”
Efim Liberman and Nikita Shklovskiy-Kordi
Efim Liberman’s children (right to left: Masha, Gabriel, Ilya, David, Anna, Daniil)
chaimatics
Chaimatics
Discovery of links between the biology, physics and mathematics, and founding a new area of studies focused on computations in living systems are his life achievements. Efim Liberman gave the name of “Chaimatics” to this new area of science
I
DNA is the text of a code written for molecular computers of living cells. The notion of “Text” is intrinsically opposite to a random sequence of symbols, and it can exist only inside the system of language. In this case, it is a genetic language, which is isomorphic to a natural language
II
Computations conducted in a living cell are real physical actions, and free energy and time must be spent for completing them. As all living organisms are comprised of cells, this statement is applicable to any control processes implemented in the biosphere
III
Molecular computations are limited by the microscopic scale of a cell and inevitable impact of the computations on formulation of a problem begin solved. The Chaimatics grew from the recognition of the computation reality as the quantum mechanics grew from the recognition of the measurement reality.
IV
A cell creates а quantum computing tool for solving complex problems. This tool utilizes hypersound quanta, and uses the cell cytoskeleton as the computing environment. In such a computer, a price of elementary computation converges to the physical limit, which is Planck’s constant
Chaimatic's statements are simple, but they require a change in the traditional vision, rooted in scientific practice
Read a book
Chapter I
The journey of life in science
chaimatics