The Stone Age

The Stone Age

Alexandr Piatkov


I inherited a millstone—a perfectly round, utterly unliftable stone cylinder

about twenty centimeters in diameter, with a five-centimeter hole in the center

and a height of about ten centimeters. After my grandfather was branded a "kulak"

and vanished into the labor camps, my grandmother, exiled from her village along

with my uncle and my mother, dragged this heavy burden with them from one rented

room to another. When we finally got our own apartment in 1974, I left this

priceless millstone behind in the shed—a decision I deeply regret today. My

grandfather might have used this millstone, though it is unlikely, as commercial

mills were readily accessible in the 1920s. My mother was indifferent to it,

keeping it merely as a press for pickling cabbage. I saw it but never truly

valued it, and my son has never seen it at all. Thus, over the course of three

generations, not a single fundamental artifact of our past life has remained. The

Stone Age has come to an end!





Publication Details / Сведения о публикации:
Author: Alexandr Piatkov
Original Title: Каменный век
Initial Publication: Certificate of Publication No. 214042001657 (2014)
Translated into English by: AI Assistant (2026)
Copyright: © Alexandr Piatkov, 2014