The Endless Steppe

“She hid her face from me and I knew she was close to tears. Tears were against the rules of our house; here we shared our joys and hid our sorrows. It had always been a hard discipline; now it seemed like a cruel one. Why couldn’t we cry like other people?” 

When Raya is hurriedly packing for their forced exile, she hides her emotion from Esther. While the Rudomins are a fiercely loving family, they prize dignity and self-control. This dynamic shapes their interactions throughout the book.

“When I was younger, I had thought the moon was God. A rather too good child, I nevertheless used to make a list of my wrongdoings—an angry word to my mother, a fib to a playmate—and recite them to God when He appeared as the moon, and ask for His forgiveness. Now, when I saw the moon, I could only ask: What have I done wrong?”

This quote demonstrates Esther’s belief in God and the way she relates to him. Throughout the book, the moon symbolizes God to Esther, prompting her to reflect on her circumstances or to make requests. At this moment, on a cattle car headed to Siberia, Esther’s life has been turned upside down. She struggles to make sense of her situation, asking God what she has done wrong. She has been labeled an enemy of the state, and she wonders why she is guilty.

“In 1941, Rubtsovsk was nothing more than a village, all gazetteers to the contrary. That this speck in the middle of nowhere became a town of some industrial importance within some twenty years is a tribute to the people who made it possible; certainly not least among them were the hundreds who came there on that July day. They would make their contribution, indeed they would.”

When Esther first arrives in Rubtsovsk, this paragraph describes the village in its historical context. The author and first-person narrator is clearly writing from an adult perspective. She knows the ways Rubtsovsk will change in the future, and she hints that, for many of the deportees who arrived in 1941, the village would become more than a place of exile. They would be shaped by it, and in turn they would shape its future.

“Siberia! Siberia was the end of the world, a point of no return. Siberia was for criminals and political enemies, where the punishment was unbelievably cruel, and where people died like flies. Summer or no summer—and who had ever talked about hot Siberia?—Siberia was the tundra and mountainous drifts of snow. Siberia was wolves.”

When Esther realizes that she is in Siberia, all of her preconceptions about the region come to mind. She is horrified, grappling again with the way she has unjustly been labeled a criminal. Siberia, the place criminals are sent, is only a negative place in her mind; over time, however, her view of Siberia changes. By the end of the book, Esther actually wants to stay in Siberia rather than return to Poland.

“Even I, a child, had begun to feel oppressed. One had not the freedom to fetch so much as a glass of water by oneself. One waited to have water doled out. One waited. The flies buzzing around in the heat were free. I hated them, not for being flies, but for being free.” 

At the gypsum mine, the reality of life in exile is sinking in. The Rudomins have been stripped of their community, their possessions, their home—but one of the most painful losses is the loss of freedom. At the end of the book, it is this desire—the desire for freedom—that Esther sees in her mother. Although the Rudomins remain in exile for five years, every step of freedom they achieve—the freedom to move to the village, the freedom to briefly live in a hut of their own—makes life more bearable.

“It was shortly after six o’clock, the air was still cool and fresh, a hawk was soaring overhead, and, feeling oddly disloyal, I thought that the steppe was just a tiny bit beautiful that morning.” 

One Sunday, Esther and Grandmother leave the gypsum mine to visit the village market. Walking to the village, Esther has her first glimmer of admiration for the beauty of the steppe; eventually, she will fall in love with it. Esther’s changing view of the step signifies her changing view of life in exile. Esther and Grandmother enjoy their visit to the market, and Esther believes that life in Siberia would be bearable if she could go to the market every Sunday.

“All around me children were giggling over nothing, girls were showing off their dolls—what if they were made of rags?—and boys were wrestling. These children were just like the children in Vilna.”

One of the major themes of the book is the dismantling of racial and class divisions between people. Esther views Siberia as an unfamiliar place, but during her first visit to the village market, she sees that the children are, surprisingly, similar to the children in Vilna. Throughout her exile, Esther will realize the common humanity between people of different social and racial groups.

“When Mother told her that we were Jews, Nina stubbornly insisted that that was impossible since all Jews had crooked noses and the men wore long bears. No matter how hard Mother tried, Nina remained unconvinced and even somewhat suspicious: what were these people up to, pretending they were Jews when anyone could see that they weren’t?” 

The Rudomins live with Nina and her husband, Nikita; they are a friendly, likeable couple, but it is through Nina that the audience hears an outside view of Jewish people. Nina is presented as a good person, yet she is so convinced of stereotypes regarding Jewish people that she does not believe that the Rudomins are Jewish. Anti-Semitism is an important part of the wider context of Esther’s story, and this is one of her first encounters with it.

“It was at this moment that I fell in love with space, endless space. And since Siberia was space, I had to include it—just a little and with great guilt—in this love.” 

After the first snowfall in Siberia, Esther’s love for the vastness of the steppe grows. Even though the snow is a frightening warning of the winter to come, a winter that the Rudomins are unprepared for, Esther finds it beautiful. She is conflicted about this admiration, noting it “with great guilt.” As the book progresses, her view of Siberia continues to change, and the guilt she feels about admiring the steppes diminishes.

“Physically, the building was certainly cold, but to me, starving not only for food but for school and children my age, this place was like a blaze inviting me to come close. Suddenly I began to feel a little warmth in this ice-cold Siberia.” 

When Esther first visits a Siberian school, she is instantly attracted to it. The need to belong is a key theme in the book; school helps Esther obtain the social interaction and sense of belonging she craves. Esther’s intellect is also stimulated at school, and throughout her exile, learning and reading are forms of escape.

“Many times in Siberia, I would wake up not knowing where I was, sometimes not certain I was truly awake, sometimes not even certain I knew who I was.” 

Although Siberia is becoming more familiar to Esther, the reality of her exile is still surreal to her. In this quote, Esther describes her disorientation and disbelief at her own life. She admits that she sometimes does not even know who she is in Siberia, and this hints at the fact that, later, her identity will be changed by her time there.

“Mother had to be at the bakery and, clutching my notebook and pencil, I went to school alone. It never occurred to me that for a child to walk down a Siberian road, in every possible way the outsider—from the tips of her inappropriate shoes to her tongue stumbling over the language—required some courage. I was too busy trying to review the Russian alphabet.” 

In this paragraph, author Esther Hautzig steps out of the narrative and reflects from a future perspective, as an adult. This perspective allows the readers to see Esther the child from a distance, to recognize how others would have viewed her as she began her first day of school. While Esther the child does not see herself as courageous, Hautzig the author does.

“The knock on the door came in the early evening. It was another deportee, fresh from a labor camp, a former lawyer, a prominent one—everyone had been prominent once. The man came to the point in his own time. It was cold in the labor camp, many people were sick. With no care, no medication, they died like flies, but there were trees to be chopped down. He had been sick, very sick—who had been sick?—and he had been ordered to chop trees, an old man with pneumonia. It was his sad mission to tell Grandmother—Grandmother screamed.” 

In this paragraph, the Rudomins receive the news that Grandfather Solomon—the only other family member taken into exile, and quickly separated from them—has died. Grandmother screams at the news, and for the rest of the book, her grief shapes her. The description of the labor camp and the treatment of Grandfather demonstrates again how life has been turned upside down for the Rudomins. The news of his death is not directly stated, highlighting how terrible it is. Several times in the book, the author uses a conversational form of narration, rather than direct dialogue, to quicken the pace and allow the audience to “hear” what transpires.

“As the weeks and months went by and the snow piled up, sometimes nearly obliterating the hut, the isolation one felt in a Siberian hut was more than separation or loneliness, it was almost like an additional sense that one had been born with and would never lose.” 

The first Siberian winter is a difficult one. The family grieves the death of Grandfather Solomon, and Esther is confined to the hut due to illness. Esther’s keen sense of isolation demonstrates her strong need for social interaction, a need that competes even with hunger.

“‘You have always had long hair,’ Mother said.

‘Everyone else has short hair.’

‘As good a reason as I have ever heard for having long hair.’

‘But—’

‘But you are you and they are they.’

‘I don’t want to me, I want to be them. You don’t understand.’

Perhaps she didn’t. But it must have hurt to contemplate even the possibility that her child might discard her own rich heritage for a toe hold in this land of exile, this thoroughly alien land.” 

Esther has learned that a girl in school rejects her as a friend because she is jealous of her braids. As a solution, Esther argues with her mother to be allowed to cut her hair. This clash demonstrates their very different ways of dealing with exile; Raya clings to her former identity as a coping mechanism, while Esther seeks to conform to her new environment.

“Grandmother raised her head; she was proud of me. I had passed the test. ‘And you will never forget?’ No, I would never forget. ‘Good!’ Now my memory was to be honored, she seemed to say; it was to become the archive of her beloved past.” 

As Grandmother and Esther prepare a garden outside of their new hut, Grandmother remembers her husband. She quizzes Esther on what she remembers of Grandfather Solomon and of their life in Vilna; she is pleased when Esther correctly recalls the details. She values Esther’s memory, and this paragraph gives new meaning to the entire book. Particularly after the loss of her extended family, Esther’s memory becomes an important channel for her family history to live on.

“But the emptiness of our bellies would still be nothing compared to the emptiness of our hut without Father. The day Father left was the worst day of my whole life. I spent it weeping. I lay on my bed and wept incessantly. Not even Siberia had been able to extinguish my father’s love of life—his charm and his gaiety. In Siberia, I had warmed myself at this bright light time and time again.” 

When Samuel is ordered to go near the front lines, Esther dissolves into despair. The value of togetherness, and the strength the family members draw from each other, is evident as Samuel comforts Esther and Esther, in turn, comforts her mother. The painful loss of Samuel demonstrates the irreplaceable role he has in the family and Esther’s deep affection for him. Here, the imagery of cold and warmth is used to identify factors—school, Samuel’s optimism—that help Esther thrive in exile.

“Then, as if she were pleading my case before some unearthly court, she murmured: ‘She is only twelve years old, she helps keep house like a little old woman, she studies like a Talmudic scholar, she carries bricks back and forth—’ She caught her breath. ‘No. Enough is already too much. Esther, there is nothing more you can do that I will permit you to do.’” 

When Esther asks her mother if she can earn extra rubles by working, Raya responds with the quote above. Speaking about Esther, but not to Esther, she describes the injustice of her daughter’s life. Like Esther praying to the moon, Raya tries to appeal to an “unearthly court,” insisting that her daughter has been pushed far enough. These words allow the audience to see a perspective beyond that of Hautzig, the narrator, and they reveal the inner conflict Raya feels as she watches her own daughter become skilled in survival.

“There was so much that they offered us, that they would have been more than happy to give us—some food, a real bath—but Mother always politely refused. Fence in by her pride, Mother was a difficult woman to help. ‘Why?’ I would ask, angry and bewildered, when she would refuse a gift of luscious piece of meat for instance.

‘We do not want our friendship to be a burden to them.’

But, I thought, if you are supposed to be generous, who are you supposed to be generous to? Only those who don’t need it? It was very confusing.” 

Uncle Yozia and Aunt Zaya are Jewish but are part of the elite. They befriend the Rudomins and try to help them, but Raya resists any generosity. While Esther admires her mother’s pride and emulates it in many ways, the book also explores the limitations of her pride. Raya’s pride changes during their exile, and friends like Yozia and Zaya find creative ways to help the Rudomins while also respecting their dignity.

“There was one place where I forgot the cold, indeed forgot Siberia. That was in the library […] It was in that log cabin that I escaped from Siberia—either reading there or taking books home. It was between that library and two extraordinary teachers that I developed a lifelong passion for the great Russian novelists and poets. It was there that I learned to line up patiently for my turn to sit at a table and read, to wait—sometimes months—for a book. It was there that I learned that reading was no only a great delight, but a privilege.” 

From the beginning of the book, Esther’s love of reading is evident; on the morning of her exile, she is reading a mystery novel. As Esther develops into a young woman, her aptitude for reading and writing grows. Aside from academic study, however, reading continues to be a source of delight and a way of escape for her.

“I ran. As I ran, I held back tears of bewilderment along with the panic. Why did one need shoes to speak? And why did Raisa Nikitovna hate me so much?” 

Esther’s life has been shaped by injustice. Overall, she maintains her optimism and often stubbornly overcomes obstacles before her; however, these words reveal the hurt and confusion she feels. Her teacher, Raisa Nikitovna, treats her differently because she is Jewish and because she is poor; Esther perceives these prejudices, and the experience is painful.

“‘Esther…Esther…’

And then, “Sh’mah Israel…”

With every ounce of strength I had left, I forced myself toward that sound.

In the swirling blackness, I saw a figure.

‘Sh’mah Israel…’

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.

I fell into my mother’s arms.

There was no doubt about it. She had saved my life.

Standing in the middle of the road, a few yards from our hut, endangering her own life, knowing that I was out there someplace, she had turned herself into a human beam, homing me as surely as if I were a plane being homed in on an electric beam.

Sh’mah Israel…” 

In this scene, Esther has gotten caught in a severe winter storm and faced the realistic fear of dying in it. Calling out her name and a traditional Jewish prayer, Raya goes into the storm and rescues her daughter. This is a tender scene between mother and daughter; although they often clash, they cling together to survive life in Siberia, especially in Samuel’s absence. While Esther longs to fit in with the people around her, a traditional Jewish prayer—a symbol of her different identity—is what anchors her in a storm.

“A young girl’s heart is indestructible. Perpetually hungry and cold, in the land of exile, I fell in love for the first time.” 

The Endless Steppe tells the true story of one family’s exile; however, the book is told from the perspective of a young girl. This perspective changes the book’s content—significant historical events and updates on a world war are interwoven with Esther’s immediate concerns. From dealing with difficult teachers, to deciding what to wear to a school event, to falling in love for the first time, these concerns and anecdotes make Esther a relatable character and, at times, add humor. They also develop a key theme: Human beings have common ground across racial and social divisions.