Kseniya Melnik - Snow in May - Stories

dachaA summerhouse outside a city, usually with a vegetable plot. Dachas could be large and fancy or a simple wooden shed, depending on the person’s status in the USSR and their financial situation afterward.

defitsitLack or scarcity of most goods available for sale in stores.

grazhdankaTranslated as “citizen” (female); a common officious form of address in the Soviet Union.

Great Patriotic WarThe portion of World War II fought in eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

GulagOriginally an acronym for Main Camp Administration; later used to indicate the countrywide web of labor camps from 1930 to 1955.

izbaA traditional Russian house, often made of logs.

khrushchyovkaA type of five-story cement-panel building with one- or two-room apartments with private bathrooms and kitchens, mass-produced during the years of Khrushchev’s leadership; they helped get millions of people out of cramped kommunalkas.

kolkhozA collective farm owned by the State.

kolkhoznitsaA female member of a kolkhoz.

kollektivA group of people, usually on friendly terms, working in the same company/organization, e.g., a teacher kollektiv .

KolymaA region in the far northeast of Russia named after the Kolyma River, notorious for Gulag labor camps; Magadan is often called the capital of Kolyma.

kommunalkaA communal apartment, where each family had a room and shared a kitchen and a bathroom. This was a solution to the housing shortage after people began to leave the countryside for the cities en masse in the early twentieth century. Older kommunalkas in the big cities were carved out of the big apartments and/or houses confiscated from the aristocracy and the rich during the revolutions of 1917; kommunalkas in other cities were designed as communal living spaces from the start.

KomsomolYouth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

KomsomoletsA member of Komsomol.

MaslenitsaAn Eastern Slavic holiday, with both Christian and pagan roots, celebrated the last week before Great Lent. Bliny (pancakes) are the traditional food of Maslenitsa.

medcartaA notebook where a patient’s medical history is recorded.

New RussiansA term used for newly rich businessmen and entrepreneurs who had most likely gained access to wealth and property through criminal means in the economic and legal chaos of early post-Soviet Russia.

polyclinikaA clinic with doctors of various specialties under one roof.

StarkhanovitesLaborers (in the former Soviet Union) who worked fanatically to surpass production quotas set by the State.

YezhovshchinaNamed after Nikolai Yezhov, once the head of the Soviet secret police, the period of the most intense political repressions characterized by arbitrary imprisonment and executions (1937–1938).

Young PioneersMembers of the Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, a mass youth organization for children ten to fifteen years old, with communist undertones.

It would take another long short story to name every person who has helped or inspired me in some way over nearly ten years it took to write and publish this book. I remember and am eternally grateful for advice, encouragement, support, and critical insight to all of you, especially:

My amazing and generous teachers: Jennifer Vanderbes, John Reed, Darin Strauss, David Lipsky, Jonathan Lethem, E. L. Doctorow, Lawrence Weschler, Jonathan Safran Foer, as well as Deborah Landau and everyone at the NYU MFA program.

My smart and tireless early readers: Mariah Robbins, Amy Bonnaffons, Sativa January, Boris Fishman, Brock Tellier, Conor Robin Madigan, Sam Beebe, Axel Wilhite, Nitin Das Rai, and everyone in the workshops and writing groups I’ve been a part of over the years.

My excellent agents, Simon Trewin and Dorian Karchmar, as well as Zoë Pagnamenta. My astute and patient editors: Sarah Bowlin, Olly Rowse, Clare Reihill, and everyone at Henry Holt in the United States and Fourth Estate in Britain. Also, thank you for early support to the editors who published my work in literary journals: Ollie Brock, John Freeman, Ellah Allfrey, Ted Hodgkinson, Ted Genoways, Michael Koch, and Natalie Young.

The biggest gratitude and —a deep bow — goes to my family. For their support and belief in me. For hours of conversations about the beauty and horror that is Russia. To my father, for bringing me to a country where I am free to write and publish anything I want, for helping me research, and for remembering the most minute details about life in the Soviet Union. To my mother, for sharing her sharp observations about people, love, literature, and art. To my grandfather, my aunt, and my late grandmother, for sharing memories of their youth. To my sister, Maria, my brilliant partner in crime, for keeping me on my toes. And to my husband, Ben, for everything.

KSENIYA MELNIK was born in Magadan, in the northeast of Russia, and immigrated to Alaska at age fifteen. She earned an MFA from New York University, and her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Epoch, Prospect (U.K.), Virginia Quarterly Review and was selected for Granta ’s New Voices series. She lives in El Paso, Texas.