Life Stories of Soviet Women

The Interwar Generation

Melanie Ilic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781032353388
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135094782
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a rich picture of what everyday life was like for women in Soviet times by presenting the life stories of eight women who were born in the interwar period. The life stories are told through interviews with the women who were well educated and well placed in Soviet society, often in elite positions, and therefore well able to observe and articulate the wider conditions for Soviet women besides their own personal circumstances. The interviews, which are edited and preceded by a full introduction setting the context, touch on a wide variety of issues: key events in Soviet history; religion and nationalities policies; and women's everyday experiences of life in the Soviet Union – growing up and going to school; education; falling in love and getting married; giving birth and starting a family; housework and paid employment; travel; leisure and culture; and remembering the past.

1 Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alekseeva

Interview with Melanie Ilic and
Emilia Kosterina, 29 July 2011,
Moscow

This interview took place in Lyudmila Mikhailovna’s apartment near the Old Arbat in the centre of Moscow just two days after her 84th birthday on 27 July 2011. The apartment was full of flowers and the interview was interrupted several times by telephone calls. In the weeks leading up to this interview, a protest movement had developed in Moscow in which demonstrators sat next to the Memorial commemorative stone monument to the victims of political repression under Stalin, in Lubyanka Square. Protestors were forcibly removed by the local militia. By the time I arrived in Moscow, the stone had been cordoned off and was guarded by the militia.

This life story discusses the following topics: family background; the impact of the Second World War; life in evacuation; attitudes to marriage and sexual relationships; education, professional training and work; post-war living conditions; and life in emigration. It also touches on the following historical issues: the impact of the terror in 193 7; anti-Semitism and Soviet nationalities policy; elitism in Soviet society; the origins of dissent, the human rights movement and the work of the Moscow Helsinki Group; post-Soviet politics and the, as then, upcoming December 2011 elections to the Russian Duma.

I’m 84 years old so it’s impossible for me to tell you everything about my life. I was born in the Crimea, in Yevpatoria. My parents were students. They studied at Simferopol pedagogical institute. My father was an economist, my mother a mathematician. They both came from very poor families. My mum was born in 1906, my father in 1905, so they were already teenagers when the Civil War started and were old enough to understand life around them. They were both members of the Komsomol and were very devoted to the new Soviet regime. This was very common for people from poor families; they welcomed the communist regime. My mother especially welcomed it because at that time it was very rare for a girl to be able to get an education. My mum wanted to study and she had very good learning abilities. She often told me it was only thanks to the Soviet regime that she had the opportunity to study in higher education. She received a PhD in physics and mathematics. Later on she worked at the Academy of Sciences and gave lectures at the Bauman Institute.¹ In short, she was someone who discovered who she was through her career. My dad also received an education and he, too, was grateful to the Soviet regime.

I was raised in a typical Soviet family. My mother worked so my grandmother looked after me – my mum’s mother – and I think she influenced my personality a lot. She was Estonian and had been raised as a believer in the Lutheran Church. She became Russian Orthodox in her youth in order to marry my grandfather, who was an Orthodox believer. At the time when my grandparents got married it was only possible to get married in church, and the Orthodox Church only accepted marriages between Orthodox believers. Later on, both my grandmother and my grandfather joined the Komsomol and then they joined the Communist Party. There was no talk about religion in our family, and there were no icons at home. Despite this, my grandmother didn’t lose the Protestant ethics in which she herself had been raised. My grandma, my granddad and my mum and dad always worked a lot, and I’ve probably inherited this spirit of working all the time. I’m not able to stop working. Of course, I work less now than I used to, but I do my best.

By the time I was born, my mum had already graduated from the institute, and after that she had to work for three years at school. At that time, it was obligatory for graduate students to work for three years wherever they were sent by the state. This was a kind of repayment for the free education they’d received. She worked as a schoolteacher for three years and after that she applied for postgraduate study at Moscow State University in the maths department. She was accepted and we came to Moscow. I was three years old when we – mum and I – moved to Moscow. We lived in the University hostel and I attended the university nursery. Recently I attended the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Moscow State University. Somebody asked the audience, ‘who of you has the longest record of being connected with Moscow State University?’ I raised my hand and said, ‘It’s me, I think, because I attended Moscow University from the age of three: I was in Moscow University’s kindergarten.’ And, later on, I was myself a student at Moscow University.

A year later my dad also came to Moscow. He graduated from the pedagogical institute the year after my mum. I don’t know why my dad entered the institute a year later; there must have been some reason. Anyway, a year later than us he also came to Moscow and found a job here. At first we lived in Ostankino, and at that time Ostankino was just a suburb of Moscow.²

The year 1937 is special in Soviet history, the year of the especially big outpouring of Stalin’s terror. The terror was evident before 1937 as well and it didn’t stop in 1937, but in 1937 all the heads of department and all the chiefs of the organisation where my dad worked were arrested. As a result, the house where they lived became empty and my dad was given two rooms in a three-room flat. The person who’d had the three-room flat was arrested and his wife and his daughter were allowed to stay in one of the rooms while the other two rooms were given to our family. As a result, we moved from Ostankino to Smolenskaya and since that time I’ve always lived in this area. I attended the most ordinary Soviet school. In 1937, I started attending the school in Protochnyi pereulok and I continued to go there even during the war.

When the war started my father volunteered immediately. I was on holiday in the Crimea with my grandmother. My parents sent a telegram saying that they wanted us to come back to Moscow, which we did. When we arrived back, Moscow had already been bombed. My father was still in Moscow at this point, but not at home any more; he was living in barracks. At that time, my mum worked at the Academy of Sciences. When we came back to Moscow from the Crimea the evacuation of children of those who worked at the Academy of Sciences was already under way. The children were taken to Kazakhstan and my mum arranged that I would go with them. On 14 July [1941], my dad was given a day off from the barracks to come to see me, to say goodbye. I was only 13 years old. He said to me, ‘My little daughter, I’m going to the front to defend our Soviet regime.’ That was the last time I saw him. He didn’t make it back from the front.

Very soon after, I left Moscow for Kazakhstan with the children’s group. Then my mum left the Academy of Sciences because it was also being evacuated to Kazan. She couldn’t go with them because she needed to stay in Moscow to wait for a letter from my dad, who was to send the address of his regiment. My mum was afraid that if she left Moscow she wouldn’t know my dad’s address at the front and he wouldn’t know her new address in Kazan, and they’d lose track of each other. At that time she had a part-time job as a lecturer at the Bauman Institute, so she started teaching full-time there. In October, the Bauman Institute was evacuated too, but by that time my mum had received a letter from my dad with the address of his regiment. She went to Izhevsk with the Bauman Institute. Once my mum was settled, I moved to be with her. We lived in Izhevsk during our evacuation. Later on, my mum’s sister with her two children and my grandma came to Izhevsk and we all lived together.

In spring 1943 we came back to Moscow. There was no heating in the flat, no electricity, no gas, no water, but we were all very happy to be home. I returned to school and spent my eighth, ninth and tenth grades at school in Moscow. I finished school in 1945 and on 9 May 1945 the war ended. I started at Moscow State University in the history department.

I got married very young, and I was only 20 when my first son was born. My [second] husband was from Kiev. When the war started he was in his third year at the Technological University in Kiev. He was called up to the army when the war started, but he wasn’t sent to the front because he was a third-year student and already had some technological training. Instead, he was sent to study at the Zhukovskii Military [Aviation] Academy because the state needed specialists in military technology.³ Many specialists had already been killed. The Zhukovskii Military Academy was also evacuated, to Sverdlovsk, present day Ekaterinburg. In Sverdlovsk, the students who’d come from the same region formed a group: people from Kiev, from Kharkov made friends with each other and formed a kind of zemlyachestvo.⁴ Moscow University was also evacuated to Sverdlosvk. At that time my mum’s cousin, Anechka Sinberg, was a student at Moscow University and she was evacuated to Sverdlovsk. She was from Kharkov. She married a student from her course on 1 June 1941, and the war started on 22 June. Her husband was sent to the front and two weeks later he was killed. She became a young widow, having been married for only a matter of weeks. It so happened that the students in the Zhukovskii Academy had known her husband and they felt kindly towards their friend’s young widow.

In 1944 Moscow University returned to Moscow and Anechka came to see us. She was my mother’s cousin, and mum suggested that Anechka should stay with us. We had two rooms in the flat; my mum lived in one and the other room was mine. We put another bed into my room and Anechka joined us. We shared a room. Anechka was already an adult, a student in her final year at university. I was a school girl, but despite the age difference we became very good friends. Then the Zhukovskii Military Academy returned to Moscow from Sverdlovsk. Of course, Anechka’s friends from the Zhukovskii Military Academy started coming to see us and that’s how I met my future husband. He was among the group of friends from the Zhukovskii Military Academy.

All these boys were very shy and very intelligent. Life in their barracks wasn’t easy; they were young and homesick. They found some comfort at our house. Anechka was very nice and caring, and I, a young girl interested in listening to them, was always around. My mum was also very warm towards them, so they came to a warm female home where they were welcomed as our friends. They had a day off over the weekend and they used to come every day off. This was a time when it was normal to feel hungry. There wasn’t much food and not much money, but they obviously saved their money to get something for us. They’d bring tins of meat or fish or something like that and we’d organise a real feast. We listened to music and danced, but all this was in a very shy, modest way, like at school parties.

Anechka felt a lot for one young man. Anechka was very tall and he was the only man in this group taller than her. She was interested in him, and then she fell in love with him, but at first he didn’t pay much attention to her. He’d come as a friend to our house and would behave towards her in the same way as all the other friends did. She told me once that she felt so much for him but it seemed he wasn’t interested. But he was in love with her too, he was just very shy. Also, she was his friend’s widow so he wasn’t sure how he should behave. He proposed only after he’d graduated from the Academy and was sent to Svetlogorsk to serve in the army. There was no real courtship. I know this because we shared a room. Anechka was very surprised, pleasantly surprised but really surprised. She hadn’t dared to hope that he was in love with her too. He hadn’t shown any interest in her when he came to visit, but when he finished at the Academy he came and asked, ‘Anechka, could I possibly hope that you’ll agree to marry me and to go to Svetlogorsk with me as my wife?’ Before that, they’d never been out together; they’d never kissed each other. Anechka asked him, ‘Why have you been hiding your feelings?’ He answered, ‘How could I show my feelings towards you? You’re my comrade’s widow. I didn’t know what to do. My friends talked me into letting you know my feelings because I have to leave for Svetlogorsk and I won’t be able to come to see you any more.’ I think if he hadn’t had to leave Moscow he’d have remained silent about his feelings for three more years!

My husband – my future husband at that time – behaved the same way. He had feelings for me but he was in an even more complicated situation. I was only a schoolgirl, in my ninth or tenth grade at school. He was adult. He couldn’t tell me anything about his feelings. He often came to our house and helped me with my technical drawing homework. His friends teased him, saying, ‘She’s just a girl, why do you pay so much attention to her?’ He’d reply, ‘No, you’re wrong. I tell you, you need to choose and to raise your future wife from her childhood.’ I finished school and started at university. At that time, I had a little romance with a boy my own age – a boy from the boys’ school across the road; at that time boys and girls went to different schools, their education was separate. This boy was quicker. He proposed as soon as I started university and I married him.

The other man was very surprised. How come he’d put so much effort into raising this girl only for her to get married to someone else. How come? My first marriage didn’t go well. It wasn’t a serious relationship; it was more like a youthful romance. Nowadays, people wouldn’t marry in such circumstances. They’d be boyfriend and girlfriend for a while and then split up. But we got married. At that time you had to marry if you wanted to be together. I left him a year later and we divorced. But even when I was married, this other man still came to our house as a friend. He used to have tea with my mum. His friends told me about his feelings. I felt depressed after my divorce. I thought I’d been in love in my first husband but our marriage hadn’t worked out and I felt as if my life had fallen apart. Well, he proposed and I thought, ‘OK, this person has loved me for such a long time.’ I agreed to marry him and we had a baby. But later, I realised that it wasn’t me who loved in our marriage, it was only him who loved. I didn’t love him. Nevertheless, we lived together for 15 years and we have two children. He was a good person, but I didn’t love him.

Miserable marriages at that time were to a large extent determined by the institution of marriage itself. You had to get married to start a relationship. The current social attitude to relationships is much better. People can start a relationship as girlfriend and boyfriend. The relationship might work out or it might not; it may be long lasting or people may split up, but they don’t have to marry these days just so they can get to know each other better. It’s very important for people at first to try to live together; if they split up, there’s no tragedy. They’ll meet somebody else and can try again. In the end people meet the ‘one’ with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives, with whom they want to have children, to whom they feel devoted. But at that time it was absolutely unacceptable to have any sort of relationship before marriage. And it’s not even that. There were no means to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. So people had a physical relationship and had a baby. But a baby is a responsibility that binds both the man and the woman.

Life was absolutely different then. I like what’s happening now. If I were young now my entire personal life would’ve gone absolutely differently. In general I don’t have many regrets. I’ve got two very good sons and my husband was a good person, but still… still… I left him after 15 years of marriage because our children had grown up, and I thought, ‘What’s marriage for? It’s for having and raising children, nothing else. I already have children and they’re now adults. I’ll be better off living by myself I left my husband and lived on my own for several years, but then I met a man whom I really loved. It was a very happy marriage and, paradoxically, it happened at a time when I was sure that marriage in principle wouldn’t make me happy. Thankfully I was wrong. Yes, I’d tried marriage twice before and for some reason it didn’t work out. But my third marriage was very happy. Unfortunately – well, we were very happy together for 18 years – but he was seriously ill. But this marriage was really happy despite his disease. He died in October 1986. My personal life might seem very turbulent but it wasn’t really. It was determined by the contemporary social norms of how people were supposed to live. I was the kind of person who followed social norms; I did the things that society at that time believed to be correct.

During my life I’ve had different phases when I’ve been interested in different periods of history. I wanted to become a historian from a very young age. I was ten when my father brought me a book about prehistoric times, how people lived in caves, how they cooked on fire, how they fought for life. The book was so exciting and I asked my father, ‘How do we know how people lived so many years ago? They weren’t able to write so they weren’t able to leave any letters about how they lived.’ My dad replied, ‘There are people called archaeologists. They make excavations and learn about what was happening.’ I said, ‘I want to be an archaeologist!’

Before that I wanted to be a ballerina. I loved to dance and I wasn’t a bad dancer. My parents took all of my ideas and hobbies very seriously, and all of my fantasies about what I wanted to become. When I was five I wanted to be a ballerina. We lived in Ostankino at that time. They found a retired ballerina who gave private lessons to a small group of children. I attended the lessons and worked hard and even took part in children’s performances. She told my parents that I had some talent. She offered to work with me so that I could pass the ballet school exams. My parents asked, ‘Do you want to go to ballet school?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ She started giving me private lessons, not as part of a group any more. My parents paid for these lessons. But then the time came when I had to take the ballet school exams and my parents pointed out to me, ‘If you pass the exams you’ll have to live in the ballet school hostel’, because at that time Ostankino was such a remote suburb of Moscow that it wasn’t possible to take me the city centre so that I’d be there for eight o’clock. On hearing that I’d have to live in some hostel and not with my parents I declared, ‘No, I don’t want to be a ballerina any more.’ I was a very homely child and so all of my interest in ballet disappeared.

Then I told my parents I wanted to become an archaeologist. My dad started bringing me books on history, not archaeology, but history. I read them with great interest but then the war started and we had to leave Moscow. In evacuation there was no opportunity to read. We were constantly hungry, and I had to work and to study at the same time; we were in su...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge studies in the history of Russia and Eastern Europe
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Lyudmila Mikhailovna Alekseeva (b. 1927)
• 2 Galina Petrovna Kosterina (b. 1928)
• 3 Rada Nikitichna Adzhubei (b. 1929)
• 4 Renita Andreevna Grigor'eva (b. 1931)
• 5 Irina Fedorovna Vainstein (b. 1932)
• 6 Irina Mikhailovna Kulikova (b. 1932)
• 7 Ol'ga Andreevna Kuchkina (b. 1936)
• 8 Irina M. (b. 1944)
• Appendix A: TDK
• Appendix B: BEA
• List of people
• Notes
• Websites
• Select bibliography
• Index