Russia

“You wait three years for what was promised.” That is how the photographs sent from my youth were signed. Almost half a century has passed since then…. I did not wait, did not wait… And then, like snow. I remember myself well — that I did not like being photographed, but that is how it turned out… I will dare to write about the author. He deserves it! Vovka was lucky! Right after school he got into the cinematography course at the Kiev Theatre Institute named after Karpenko-Kary. In Soviet times that was very cool. An evening student, the youngest on the course. And the specialization “Cinematographer” had only just opened, thanks to one man who was recruiting that course. The students nicknamed him “Papa.” His surname was Smorodin. I think he brought many people up in the world. ...

There are days when you remember clearly the hard moments in your own life and in the lives of those close to you. On 31 March my grandfather Sergei Sergeyevich Dorofeyev would have had his birthday — 119 years. I have already written my childhood and youth memories of him. It is precisely today, as they say “on the topic of the day,” that I remembered what illness tormented him all his life. The illness was called emphysema of the lungs. He smoked all his life and drank. In Soviet times it was rare for anyone not to “drink.” My story now is not about that… but about the cough that appeared in him before the war of 1941. ...

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. ...

I had long been meaning to continue the description of my childhood and youth in the “khrushchevka.” Twist it how you will, but at the present moment this is my brightest recollection! I have already written that we lived in a one-room apartment. For a family of three they then gave one-room apartments. The apartments were state, people stood in a queue at their place of work, and when they were distributed, everyone knew about one another, who was entitled to get what. ...

I will say at once, I am not a tourist and not a traveller, and far-away distances did not attract me, nor hot exotic countries either. I am a homebody. And for me there must be a weighty reason to set out on the road. And this Chernobyl catastrophe, which happened on 26 April 1986, forced many, including me, to set out with two small children in evacuation to the nearest relatives in Moscow and the Moscow region. To this day I remember this hard time with a shudder. ...

This was in 2004. I was then earning extra as an English teacher on private courses. It was the holiday of 9 May. In the morning the director of the courses rang me and asked me to “teach English (the director of the courses did not know foreign languages, so that is how she put it) in 1.5 hours one adult girl, for good pay.” I decided not to refuse the extra work and agreed. I rang the girl, and in an hour she was already at my home. ...

After Raisa Titovna’s dismissal, personnel reshuffles took place in the shop. Mama was offered the post of salesperson in the manufactured-goods department, they appointed a new shop manager who was able to unite the collective, remove the shortcomings and work without a shortage. The bosses “from above” put forward demands — fulfilment of the plan. The salespeople’s salary depended on this. And here is how they had to wriggle. Usually goods were brought to the shop by one and the same vehicle — a goods van. The driver was called Kolya, a small, lively fellow, a dancer of the world-famous Virsky ensemble, on pension (at 35 they were thrown out of the ensemble onto pension). The manager would arrange with Kolya a trip “to the district,” namely to Zolotonosha or Zhashkiv for the Sunday kolkhoz market. ...

After Raisa Titovna’s dismissal, personnel reshuffles took place in the shop. Mama was offered the post of salesperson in the manufactured-goods department, they appointed a new shop manager who was able to unite the collective, remove the shortcomings and work without a shortage. The bosses “from above” put forward demands — fulfilment of the plan. The salespeople’s salary depended on this. And here is how they had to wriggle. Usually goods were brought to the shop by one and the same vehicle — a goods van. The driver was called Kolya, a small, lively fellow, a dancer of the world-famous Virsky ensemble, on pension (at 35 they were thrown out of the ensemble onto pension). The manager would arrange with Kolya a trip “to the district,” namely to Zolotonosha or Zhashkiv for the Sunday kolkhoz market. ...

Having worked two days off at the till in the grocery shop, mama still decided not to sit at home, but to try her strength in another place. Next to our house there was a little manufactured-goods shop, and there too they needed a cashier. I think in manufactured goods at the till there was not such a load as in the grocery shop. And at a family council we decided that mama should work there, although my sister did not yet go to kindergarten, but I could stay home with her until lunch, since I went to school in the second shift, then papa came home for lunch for an hour, then in the manufactured-goods shop there was a break from 14 to 15 hours. And a pensioner from the neighbouring house, Faina Mikhailovna, also agreed to help us nanny for a couple of hours. And by 17.30 papa would return from work and already always walked with the child in the evening, until about 7. ...

I have already written in my recollections of life in the “khrushchevka.” I understood little then that this was a hard period in our family’s life. It was hard for my parents! After my sister was born in 1963, the family’s material situation naturally did not improve, but worsened, and mama had to think how to go out to work and at the same time give attention to the family. ...