Still I want to continue the “saga” of this large family. It was already 1971, at last a miracle of miracles came to pass and we moved into a three-room apartment in the autumn. There was almost no furniture, and there was no money to buy any, and nowhere to buy it. Anyway, from habit, we loved to sit all together in one room. I was 17, but I had not yet learned at that moment to seclude myself from my parents. And my younger sister had only gone into second grade. And already in this apartment we began to forget the difficulties of life in the “khrushchevka” and the people who lived there. We had no telephone, and there was no communication with former neighbours either. Papa continued to work at the factory from which we had received the new apartment.
But one day my mama told me a story that was being discussed at papa’s factory. I will explain once more for the younger generation how apartments were obtained in the Soviet Union. Mainly houses were built by enterprises, such houses were called departmental, and apartments were distributed by trade-union committees to employees who had worked many years at this enterprise.
And so, returning to granny Sidorchikha’s family and to their apartment, I can now say, reasoning, that it came to them “with blood and sweat.” But already at that time there remained in the apartment unmarried Lena and her aged father, who had worked most of his life at the factory and received this apartment. And suddenly “love came” to Lena, a former circus performer. Love, you know yourselves what it can be like, unearthly, after a long lonely life. They married. And in order for the incoming circus performer to be able to get a job in the hero-city of Kiev, the circus performer had to be registered in this three-room apartment. And it turned out that old man Sidorenko (and he was the master of the apartment) would not agree to register the circus performer, but little Lena, apparently, persuaded him, because she was already expecting.
Anyway they registered the circus performer on the living space. Lena gave birth to a weak little girl, and when the girl turned one, the circus performer filed for divorce through the court and for the division of the three-room apartment. At the court there were representatives from the factory present, witnesses made speeches in defence of Lena and her aged father. Lena remained with her faith in love and with the hope that the circus performer would return to her.
There were three court sittings, and by Soviet law the circus performer was awarded space. And he went over to decisive action — to look for an exchange advantageous to himself. And he found one: for himself a one-room apartment in a good district, and for Lena, the child and the old man there remained little rooms in a semi-basement with neighbours. That is the tragic unjust fate that befell these people.