Anatoly Lifshits was born in Ufa (the Ural region) in 1918, as the Russian Civil War was ravaging the area. His mother, Yevgenia Gutman, was the seventh child of Yosif Gutman, the founder of an iron processing plant in Ufa. After finishing high school, she intended to go to Kiev for her academic education (which was very rare among women in pre-Revolutionary Russia), but was prevented from doing so by the Civil War. Anatoly’s father Lev was born in the small town of Kopys’ in Belorussia, in a very poor family. He began to work rather early as a bookkeeper at a factory. Despite having no formal schooling, he was very smart and hardworking, and was eventually admitted to the Commercial Institute in Kiev, from which he graduated. Anatoly's parents married in Kiev in 1917, and then left for Ufa. The family was not religious. The parents cared nothing for Judaism or Jewish traditions and customs. However, Anatoly’s paternal grandfather was very devout. When he came to visit his son’s family, his first question was: “Is there a synagogue around here?” As Lifshits recalled:
“Since childhood, I have eaten Easter cakes and matzo with equal relish. And I regarded the Christmas tree as a pleasant custom, with no religious connotations. At the same time, there was no "anti-religious" animus in the family.”
Anatoly Lifshits, On Sea and On Land. St. Petersburg, 2005-2007, p. 16.
Anatoly was one of two children, and the family initially enjoyed a relatively high standard of living. However, it declined in the mid-1920s, because of the deterioration of the general situation in the country.
From early childhood, Anatoly studied foreign languages: German, French, and English. In 1927, he began to attend school in Kiev, becoming one of the top students. His favorite subject was mathematics. He finished high school with distinction, and entered the Polytechnical Institute in Kiev in 1937, but later transferred to the Highest Naval School in Leningrad. Shortly thereafter, he married a fellow student named Galina Rints, who was an ethnic German. On June 13, 1941, their son was born. A week later, the Soviet-German War broke out. He was forced to leave the School in the rank of lieutenant, having passed only four out of fifteen exams, and without an academic diploma. After the end of the war, he would return to the School and finish it.
In December 1941, Lifshits was appointed junior navigator on the Gremyashchy destroyer, which was part of the Northern Fleet. He was later transferred to another guard ship, Razumny.
The situation on the Soviet-German front was very difficult. German troops were rapidly advancing to the Volga, while the Red Army was in retreat. The Soviet forces suffered from an acute shortage of tanks, planes, and ammunition. The military supplies being shipped by the Western Allies were of critical importance, and the vessels of the Northern Fleet escorted these transports. The Soviet naval officers and crews had to operate in the severe conditions of the North Sea, amid relentless German attacks. It was a very dangerous job, which required great skill.
During the period from December 1941 to May 1945, Lifshits spent only one month away from the naval operations. He took part in the protection of forty-three convoys; while escorting them, he traveled a total of 96,000 nautical miles, taking part in the shelling of Wehrmacht positions in Northern Norway (1941) and in the liberation of the Arctic (1945). He also participated in the rescue of forty British sailors from Convoy PQ-17. In 1943-1945, he was the commander of the navigational combat units of different military ships. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class, and the Order of the Red Star.
After the end of the war, Anatoly returned to Kiev and found out that his wife had left with the Germans and taken away their son. They were later deported to Kazakhstan and assigned the status of “special settlers” (one of Stalin's repressive policies). Lifshits obtained a divorce, and soon married Lubov Vovsi, a friend of his sister's, who was the daughter of a famous physician, Miron Vovsi. Prof. Vovsi served as chief therapist of the Red Army during the Soviet-German War; later, in 1952-1953, he became one of the accused in the infamous "Doctor's Plot," which marked the culmination of the late Stalinist antisemitic campaign. Lifshits’ second marriage produced two sons. Soon, he reached a settlement with his ex-wife Galina and took his eldest son to live with him.
In 1958, Lifshits defended his PhD thesis, and went on to work as a lecturer at the Military Naval Academy in Leningrad. In 1973, he retired from the army. By that time, he was already a captain of the 1st rank. From 1973, he was a professor and department head at the Leningrad Institute of Management Methods and Techniques. Lifshits wrote and published more than 100 scientific books and papers. He died in 2017.
