| abstract
| - Leiba Bronstein lived at his parent's farm for the early years of his life, his father David Bronstein being one of the most dynamic farmers in the area, and his farm located a few miles outside of Yanovka which is located on the edge of the Jewish agricultural colony known as Gromokleya in Kherson province's Yelizavetgrad district. While his father was a fairly well-off farmer he was illiterate and used his children to write down the farm's financial accounting records; but slowly yet surely David went from living in a mud hut on the farm land to a house made of brick with a croquet field and his own mill on the farm to grind his grain too. When Leiba was aged 6 years old, Leiba started going to school, but rather than one of the officially subsidized schools which taught Russian (there were none in Gromokleya); Lev went to a traditional Jewish Cheder where his sole teacher Mr Schuler taught Leiba Russian, arithmetic and the old testament in the original Hebrew. While attending the Cheder, Leiba lived at his aunt Rakhil's house because Leiba's parents thought 2 miles was too much to walk daily into the village. Leiba didn't like how the labouring peasants where treated by the farm owners like his father in Yanovka, and Leiba's older cousin Moshe Shpentser encouraged young Leiba to critically think about his environment and Lev pitied the labourers living in poverty. Sowing the seeds for his future ideologies. As Leiba grew a little older, he was given more freedom at Yanovka and he loved to wander into the farm workshop. This was the domain of the remarkable Ivan Greben, his father's mechanic. He was a jack of all trades and a master of most. Greban was the Bronstein farm's most valued employee and when he was called up for military service David Bronstein paid a bribe to secure his exemption as the farm's mill required his regular expertise. Leiba's friendship with Ivan Greben reinforced his fluency in the Russo-Ukrainian dialect and taught Leiba some technical skills. Trotsky remembered his as the embodiment of the virtues of the working man. To sum up his early years were peaceful, protected and fulfilling. David Bronstein was determined that his children were going to grow up without his education disadvantage. As the Bronsteins were not devout Jews, they had little qualms about sending Lev to a Christian school. David chose St Paul's Realschule in Uspenski street in Odessa. He would of preferred the grammar school (gimnazia), which was the city's finest educational institution but Leiba was a casualty of the quota system applied to Jews since 1887. The authorities were nervous about producing a large number of highly educated Jewish young men. Ministers were not acting only out of religious prejudice. They also worried that Russians and others in general might resent losing places at favoured schools. St. Paul's was the next best choice and was still a very good school; arrangements were made for Leiba to live with his cousin Moshe Shpentser and his wife Fanni as a paying lodger. The day of departure was momentous for Yanovka. For Leiba, the trip of over two hundred miles to Odessa at the age of nine was like a journey across an unknown ocean. Leiba was very upset about leaving his family to go and attend school, and the journey started out by horse and cart to the rail station at Novy Bug, then by train to Nikolaev and then by ship (the SS Potemkin) to Odessa.
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