CHELYABINSK ORPHANAGE
The boss of the local institution was a tank colonel who was decommissioned because of injuries, and had a face battered by shrapnel. He was an enormous man of fantastic strength, who did not fully realize how strong he was. He looked kind of frightening, but he was kind. His institution was not, thank heavens, a model institution like the previous Siberian one run by Toad. There was discipline, but it was not savage. There was not really any clear internal division into older boys and little kids who obeyed them unquestioningly. There was no humiliation from the instructors either. I can’t say that everything was benign. But the people in the Urals are generally harsher and more aloof than people in Siberia. And we boys didn’t exactly toe the line at that time, we
