Obituaries are generally the first thing I read in a newspaper. Often elegantly written they provide glimpses into other lives, some extraordinarily rich and strange, others merrily squandered. The Telegraph on Tuesday obituarised Richard Pipes, the Russian scholar highly critical of Communism. Born in Polish Silesia in 1923 into “an assimilated upper-middle-class Jewish family”, the obituary provides an amusing quote by Pipes from his memoirs about his childhood:
I remembered my mother giving me a sandwich of rye bread covered with a thick layer of butter and radishes. As I was eating it in front of the house, the radishes slid off. Thus I learnt about loss. Next door lived a boy my age who had a rocking horse covered with a glossy hide. I badly wanted one like it. Thus I became acquainted with envy. And finally my parents told me that I once invited several of my friends to a grocery store and gave each an orange. Asked by the proprietor who would pay, I replied “Parents” Thus …I learnt what communism was, namely, that someone else pays.
