My son Sasha, at the age of one and a half, turns on cartoons on his own, calls his grandmother on his mobile phone and knows how to start his favorite car. All achievements are available to modern children from the first days of life technical progress, entire corporations for the production of children's goods work for them, educators around the world develop hundreds of training programs. Today's boys and girls have everything: computers and TVs, fashionable clothes, sweets, the opportunity to develop and see the world - childhood now consists of all this and it's hard to imagine that a child's happiness is possible without it.
However, it is possible. "Letidor" talked to those whose childhood years fell on a different time. Anna Rubanova and Zinaida Zhukova were little girls almost 90 years ago. They consider their childhood, in which they collected sow thistles, made ice scooters and went to the cinema once every five years, to be the most common.
Anna Timofeevna Rubanova (left) and Zinaida Serafimovna Zhukova.
My interlocutors are residents of Novosibirsk, a former nurse and an employee of an aircraft manufacturing plant, now grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Their childhood was spent in different parts of the country. Anna Timofeevna, a native Irkutsk region, the average among five siblings. Zinaida Serafimovna was born in Leningrad, but most spent childhood in orphanage in one of the villages near the northern capital.
Children's joys
“We certainly had the most ordinary childhood,” they begin their story. They played rounders, hopscotch, sledding, ice slides in winter. There was a lot of free time, so they came up with more and more fun.
Tools for entertainment were made by hand. If you pour water on the board and freeze it - here's an ice scooter for you, you cut off a stick - you get a bit for a bast shoe. Anna Timofeevna's older brother made skis himself. He steamed the boards, bent the edge and dried in this state.
Girls, having learned to sew early, made dolls. Usually these were rag crafts, but sometimes luck happened - it was possible to get somewhere a head made at the factory for a doll, to which they themselves sewed the torso. It turned out to be the envy of all my friends. Only once in her life, smiling, says Zinaida Serafimovna, she was presented with a real factory very beautiful doll, she gave her the exquisite name Valentina and kept it for many years. “And she still hasn’t played enough with dolls,” she admits. “If I see it in a window, I can stand and stare for a long time.”
Our great-grandmothers sewed such dolls
Weekdays
Childhood in the 1920s was short. They started working from an early age, and not only the poor, but also the heirs of quite wealthy families. We started with the simplest: helping around the house, looking after younger children, or standing in line at the store. Adult children, those over 10 years old, grazed pigs and geese, mowed grass, weeded beds, collected flax, made wood, knitted, spun, sewed, traded. This was not considered something shameful, on the contrary, they tried to work well.
With hard work, she is one of the most bright stories Anna Timofeevna's childhood. She, then still a ten-year-old girl Nyurka, was sent to weed the field together with adults. With bare hands from morning to evening they tore sow thistle - a very prickly grass. Hands in a matter of hours were covered with blisters. “The worst thing,” he says, “was to put on mittens. Suddenly they think that they are lazy." She treated her swollen hands for a long time, but for her hard work she received a diploma and a teapot of honey. Teapot of honey! It is difficult to imagine the happiness of a child who saw sweets only a few times a year.
Sweets
On the collective farms where they had to work, “they fed delicious porridge, sometimes even with milk”, lived happily when they “ate their fill”, worked “for food”. Even in well-fed years delicacies were rarely seen, they ate very simple food: porridge, potatoes, bread, homemade vegetables. In the hungry thirties, the mere presence of food was happiness. What were the goodies? Yes, the simplest - linden buds collected in the summer, sorrel, locust, honeydew, bird cherry.
Anna Timofeevna recalls such a story. The mother, in search of additional livelihood, grows tobacco and exchanges it for food. Once the trade was very successful, she returned home with a huge beautiful loaf of bread. Children in anticipation of the holiday crowded around “I wish I could break off a piece!”. Impatience had to be calmed down a little, they were waiting for the return of all the household members. And finally, everyone sat down at the table and began to share the loaf. The fried crust is already crunching ... when suddenly there is an old hat inside, which the fraudster baked, wrapped in a thin layer of dough. Imagine childish disappointment! Anna Timofeevna sighs: “This roll is still in front of my eyes. Beautiful".
Zinaida Serafimovna has her own sad memories. It was at school. They, the ever-hungry orphans, always looked with envy at the village students. They had boiled potatoes and milk for lunch. In order for the villagers to give a taste of a piece of potatoes and a sip of milk, the children from the orphanage rolled them on the back of the neck during recess along the entire corridor.
School class 20s
Education
20-30 years in Russia is called the heyday pedagogical science. Schools were opened everywhere, the task of eliminating the illiterate was solved, the conditions of education were improved, although, of course, in ordinary schools it was still poor. Our storytellers recall interesting details. For example, writing on blank paper was a great luxury. Usually at the lessons they handed out old newspapers or church posters, wrote on them between the lines. The ink was made by ourselves from buckthorn berries of blue color. There were not enough inkwells for each table, they put them through the desk.
Concerning educational process, there has been significant progress. The school, in fact, took over the functions of the main educator, because at home no one thought to engage in pedagogy. “I don’t remember that at least once my parents had some conversations with me. It was not accepted. They grew up on their own, - says Zinaida Serafimovna. “Now children talk like adults, but then they lived without much conversation.”
I recall the stories of my great-grandmother Alexandra: for disobedience and in educational purposes she and her sisters were put in a corner, but not just like that, but with a load in their hands. The older sister - a shovel, the middle one - a broom, and the younger one - which is easier, a broom. Raised in strictness.
Many children in their 20s and 30s remember school as a holiday: beautiful teacher, colorful posters on the walls, illustrated textbooks. But going to school for the children of that time was a real feat in itself. In the family of Anna Timofeevna, for example, in winter they went to school in turn. She went to the lessons on the first shift, upon returning home she gave the shoes to her younger brother, and he went to study on the second shift. I ask: “Did your classmates laugh at you?” "What do you! - he says, - everyone lived like that!
Schoolchildren at the beginning of the 20th century. Middle Asia.
Life
Dressing simply and living modestly was commonplace. The houses are simple dugouts, there is a table by the window, a stove in the corner. The children slept side by side on the floor, ate from clay cups with wooden spoons, ironed clothes with an iron with hot coals inside. If suddenly the children began to get sick, they were treated with affordable folk remedies: the sores were smeared with tar, and the temperature was brought down by smearing the ankles and wrists with clay. It seemed to help.
Peasant family, 20s
Entertainment
I'm trying to find out what the children dreamed about at the beginning of the century? What were your idols and favorite characters? This question of mine makes grandmothers smile: “Yes, what dreams could there be?”. Didn't read hard books fairytale heroes did not know. We went to the cinema once every five years. Anna Timofeevna recalls how films were brought to the village. Tickets were too expensive for the children, but they really wanted to get to see it. I had to get out: they made their way into the hall in advance and hid under the chairs. When the lights went out, it was possible to occupy vacancies and enjoy the mute black and white wonder. But, even looking at a beautiful screen story, they dreamed not of a luxurious life and heroic deeds, but about a hearty dinner and a new dress.
This is how uncomplicated childhood was at the beginning of the last century, when there were no cars and telephones, when children did not know color cinema. When my son grows up, I will definitely tell him about my great-great-grandmother and about the life of children a century ago, when there was “nothing, nothing”.
Terrible time amazing destinies..... Dedicated to the memory of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers!
She milked the cow at five. At the very beginning of the sixth she drove out into the herd, which immediately disappeared into the milky fog that covered the river bank. Explosions rolled in waves behind the mist. She looked anxiously at her husband, who was sharpening his scythe; didn't ask anything. She was always silent, it even seemed that she had no thoughts of her own, no words, she was so used to listening to herself. That was her name in the village - not by her patronymic, nor by her last name - Arishka Shtychkova. The bayonet was a village nickname for a husband, lively and sharp-tongued. He ran a huge household, and cooperated superbly, and wove baskets ... Even at the First World War, Ivan Vasilyevich learned her hairdressing skills, and in the evenings village peasants came to him for a haircut, with whom he, restless, conducted “political information”. The bayonet was respected and feared - he didn’t climb into his pocket for a word, although he didn’t remember insults for a long time, he always said everything in the eye.
The gaps across the river merged into a continuous rumble. After wiping his scythe with grass, the husband sighed and said with bitter anguish: “The cannonade is very close, but it is not yet a month since the German crossed the border. Here rushing, apparently, has already approached Vyazma. She poured water from a bucket on his shoulders, on his head, and she herself kept looking across the river, and felt that aching pain was born inside her, and anxiety filled her soul. Taking the bundle of food prepared by her, the husband went to the station, where he worked as a lineman. She never followed him. And then she couldn’t go into the hut - she looked at the road until he disappeared around the corner. There are many years of life on this road ... They went along it to the church with Ivan to get married, and went to the fair, and to the market. How many people have passed along it from all the villages, that they are strung like beads on a thread on this ancient road?
Woke up. She didn’t enter the house, but ran in - fell on her knees in front of the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker: “Lord, help, help, save, save.” She prayed for a long time for her husband, who should not have been taken to the war because of his age, she prayed for her three girls. Then she got up heavily; inside it seemed to calm down, woke up the eldest, who was thirteen, punished her to feed the younger ones, met and milked the cow at lunchtime, so that in the evening they drove the cattle ... The fog left, the transparent morning brightened. Mowing began on the collective farm. Went away all day.
I learned in the evening that my husband had been taken away from a neighbor who worked there at the station. And in the morning there was a search in their hut. A young military man in a brand new uniform, grimacing, wrote down in the protocol that there was not a single book and not a single newspaper in the house, and then read out the arrest warrant: “Ivan Vasilyevich Abramov, is charged under article 58 “Propaganda or agitation containing a call to overthrow, undermine or weaken Soviet power”: while at work, he praised the German military forces, talked about how quickly and skillfully German troops moving across the territory of our country ... "
Arishka's eyes darkened, she realized that her husband continued their morning conversation at work. She screamed, fell to the floor, crawled to the military, it seemed to her that she could explain everything ...
For a long time she could not sleep at night, listened to the aching pain in her chest, peered into the dark crosshairs of frames against the background of gray windows, all waiting for news from her husband. She wanted to cry on someone's shoulder, to talk about her terrible grief, to throw out her pain. But from her relatives, she only had an older brother, Vasily, who lived in a neighboring village. Their mother died when Irinka was three years old. For as long as she can remember, she lived as a worker, where the mistress called her Arishka. The brother has his own family and four children, so Vasily came twice during the summer; helped to prepare firewood for the winter, said that the fifty-eighth article was a firing squad. After a conversation with her brother, her despair was replaced by a deaf longing, which replaced all her feelings and sensations.
August came. Harvesting was going on in the collective farm. They worked in the field until night. Potatoes were harvested in September. After September, there was less work, and a meeting was held on the collective farm. In the center of the village stood a table taken out of the village council, covered with red calico. The activists sitting behind him issued a demand: to deprive Arishka Shtychkova of all her workdays and expel her from the collective farm, as the wife of an enemy of the people, to send her to Siberia with her children. Then they gave her a word. Arishka knelt down in front of the village, cried, could not say anything, only asked to have pity on the children. They made a decision: to leave in the village with the condition that they would work without workdays. For the benefit of the front.
In October, the Germans had already occupied Kaluga. Then a column of motorcyclists drove into their village. All in helmets, shirts with rolled up sleeves and machine guns on their chests.
Listening to stories that the Germans take everything to the skin, at night she buried her husband's pre-war gift in the garden - sewing machine, two pieces of fabric and an icon.
The first to come to her hut was a German, fat, ugly, he was looking for housing for an officer. He had an interpreter with him, a Russian. They asked where the husband was fighting. Arishka showed four crossed fingers. "Political?" - said the translator. She nodded. The officer settled in, often said that he had three children left in Germany; however, he did not spare Arishka's daughters: the eldest washed with her, and the little ones cleaned his boots. With the onset of frost, the translator took away her felt boots. The Germans liked to repeat: "Moskau kaput." Arishka said to herself: “You won’t see Moscow like your own ears.”
More than ten soldiers were placed with the neighbors, the neighbor boasted that she cooked for them and fed herself. Arishkin's children were saved by a cow. The Germans took away the milk, but allowed the girls to drink a glass.
One evening, the grandfather came from the neighbors, said that the gun of one of the soldiers standing against the wall fell, and his daughter was killed by a shot ... Arishka realized that the three-month-old Tolik was left an orphan. Silently, she got dressed, went and took the boy.
Under New Year The Germans began to leave in a hurry. Was driving down the street truck and stopped at every yard. An officer jumped out of the cab - her guest, and soldiers with cans of gasoline jumped out of the body. The officer showed where to pour, the soldiers set it on fire and drove on. Everyone's huts were covered with straw, they burned like candles. Arishka was able to bring out the cow.
During the battle for the village, they fled in the cellar, where there were six of them: Arishka, girls, Tolik and a neighbor. Tolik kept screaming. Several times she lifted the lid of the cellar, and immediately bullets dug into the boards. Arishka asked: “Grandfather, you are old, get out, bring water. I can’t go out, they’ll kill me - who needs these four?” Grandfather was silent, turned away, pressed himself against the cellar wall, or wept, lamenting: "I don't want to die."
At night, a cow came to the cellar, screaming. Arishka got out and crawled to the ashes, found a pot, led the cow into the bushes, and milked it. Then, skinning her hands in blood, she broke pine branches to feed her. She fed and persuaded: "Go into the forest, maybe they won't kill you."
By dawn they started firing again. The cellar was unbearably stuffy. The children took turns crying, the grandfather coughed and groaned. Raising the lid, she scooped up the snow with her palms, poured it into a bottle and held it under her arm or on her stomach. I gave this water to everyone.
In the evening there was a knock on the lid of the cellar. Dead, Arishka lifted the sash, expecting that there was a German, and now he would throw a grenade. A Russian soldier was lying in the snow in a white camouflage coat. “We have almost recaptured your village, there are still a few Fritz left near the forest,” he reported cheerfully, almost cheerfully. Grandfather, right on Arishka's back, jumped out of the cellar, began to shout that his daughter had been killed, that he was glad to return Soviet troops... Arishka did not hear the sound of the shot, just the grandfather suddenly gasped, waved his arms and fell next to the skier in white. “Oh, father, where did you endure,” he only managed to say ... Then he sharply poked his face into the snow and groaned. Realizing that the soldier was wounded, Arishka grabbed him by the shoulders and began to drag him into the cellar. His hands were trembling, his legs became wadded and gave way, there was not enough strength. He suddenly drew back sharply, sat down, freed himself from his skis, then began to descend into the cellar himself. She was delighted, thought that she was mistaken that he was not wounded. When the soldier sat down on the floor and straightened up, she saw that the white camouflage robe on his stomach was soaked with blood. Tolik screamed, the girls cried, He grimaced, asked for water, drank a sip, closed his eyes. His face turned grey, acquiring an unpleasant earthy hue.
Arishka took Tolik in her arms, opened her quilted jacket, pressed it to her chest, and began to cradle; I forgot myself in an anxious half-sleep. The melancholy that did not let her go day or night, now completely twisted, turned inside out, tossed intrusive thoughts. The wounded man asked: "Our guys are in the forest, let them know." She didn't answer. She handed Tolik to her eldest daughter, kissed the children, and got up.
Carefully peeked out from under the lid. Darkness, gouge out your eye. The prickly, frosty air touched her flushed face; looked at the lying grandfather - it became creepy, even goosebumps. She was afraid to stand up to her full height, so she crawled towards the forest.
On the edge of the forest during the day, where the battle took place during the day, the dead lay: Germans or ours, she did not see. She crawled without swerving in order to quickly take cover behind the snow-covered bushes. The piercing creak of the skis echoed in her heart with the sound of joy. Our! There! Behind the trees! Suddenly she heard a German speech, fainted, clung to the dead man ... Then there was a burst of machine gun fire, screams, shots again, noise ... Pressing into the snow, and moving literally a few centimeters from her place, she leaned forward, raised her head. There was a skier in front of her. A scream of horror erupted from her chest! "Don't yell, fool!" he whispered and held out his hand to her. Arishka clutched at her, wept loudly and inconsolably.
Falling into the snow, she ran, fell, got up, tried to run again, pointing with her hand at a spot blackening in the distance. The skiers reached the cellar faster; when she got there, they were already moving towards her, carrying the wounded man. He touched her, whispered: "What is your name, savior?" She replied: "Irina." One of the guys hugged Arishka tightly, hugged him: “Thank you, sister, for our commander.”
The late winter dawn was already rising over the village.
Until the end of the war, the fire victims huddled with those who survived. Tolik was taken by the sister of his dead mother. Everyone was in terrible trouble.
About Arishka, as if forgotten. She built a dugout. Blinded the oven. Firewood burned down along with the house, so we had to break twigs and bushes along the river bank, collect branches in the forest. The younger daughters kept asking for food and crying. They didn’t even cry, but whined softly. From burnt potatoes and black grains, Arishka pounded the “dough”, baked dubiously edible cakes for children on an iron sheet. At night she went to cut the meat of dead horses, cooked, fed the children, but she herself could not eat. Sneaking through the ashes, collecting straw to feed the cow. She often talked to the cow, thanked her, hugged her, inhaling the milky smell, reminding her that once there was no war. Memories of the pre-war time almost tore my heart.
She did not count the numbers and months, the war for her was a terrible endless day that began when her husband was taken away. “Lord,” she whispered, crossing herself, “do not leave Vanya, do not leave my girls. My whole life is in them, Lord. Save!..»
Then they remembered about her - they wrote out an outfit for work on a collective farm. The front passed in the winter, so the spring began with a terrible and unusual work in the field - they buried the corpses.
Arishka was in the field from morning to evening: she plowed on cows, sowed with her hands, harrowed with a rake, dragged hay, harnessing herself to a wagon. It took two hours a day to sleep, and the rest of the time went to work. Her girls weeded the gardens of everyone in the village, and they took the plucked grass with them to dry the cow for the winter. There was nothing. They collected sorrel, sorrel, boiled quinoa soup in a helmet. Sometimes it was possible to catch fry in the river with a basket.
With the outbreak of war, soap disappeared, children became covered with scabs, lice raged. average girl taken to the hospital with typhus. There, the children of the "enemy of the people" were not even given bran soup. The nurse saved her by giving her rations; eldest daughter I went "begging" for people ... Sleepless nights pulled vital juices. Every day the work became harder and harder. Arishka couldn't even cry anymore. Only her blood-bitten lips betrayed her state of mind.
The collective farm in the autumn gave her boots and a jersey for work. She was glad, because already at the beginning of 1943 a school was opened, where her girls began to go in turn - in those same boots.
Ours, finally, drove the German. From the loudspeaker in the morning the song rumbled: “Get up, huge country”, from which Arishka seemed to move her hair, her heart went cold, then it flared up, and she wanted to do something, and, if necessary, die for her village. She was not offended by the authorities, telling herself that she and the girls would be forgiven, that the time was now turbulent. Only now she bypassed her neighbor. The neighbor, who worked with Ivan at the station, also quieted down, lived with care. Now everyone in the village knew that he had written the denunciation.
The terrible reports of the Sovinformburo were replaced by calmer ones. The situation at the front began to improve, but the funeral went on and on. Heartbreaking screams came from one house, then another.
In May 1944 it rained incessantly. The clouds descended low above the ground, and large raindrops generously watered the bushes, lowering their branches low to the ground itself, the hillocks with withered grass on the tops, the dusty road, which in an instant became dirty and impassable. Spring came. The village was told that a letter had been sent to Arishka by his Shtychok from the camp from the soda plant in the Kulunda steppe. By the time the letter reached her, the whole village had read it. Arishka cried all the time while the girls wrote the answer. At night she prayed for the return of her husband, for victory over the Germans, for the time when everyone could eat their fill. And there was still a whole year before the Victory ...
Three children, endless exhausting work, anxious expectation of news ... Arishka survived the war with this expectation.
On a May morning, as usual, I tied a cow to the shore. Over the riverside forest only - only a pink strip of morning dawn was indicated, a thin fog hung over the water ... Nature woke up. The grass was growing, the trees were driving sap, the birds yearning for their homeland did not get wet.
Everyone believed, rejoiced and wanted to live ...
The husband returned in 1947. Was fully rehabilitated. He has changed: aged in face, but strengthened in spirit. She knew they could make it through together.
In 1952, Abramova Irina Efimovna was awarded the Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
Author of the story Reznik M.A.
I am 60 years old, I am already a grandmother myself, but I often remember my grandmother Katya. When I was little, I loved listening to stories from my grandmother's life. She was an illiterate but very religious woman. She had 12 children, and 10 of them died during the war, defending their homeland. I want to tell a few stories that I heard from the lips of Katya's grandmother. The stories are unusual, it’s hard to believe in them, but my grandmother said that this is the absolute truth.
A woman lived in their village, everyone called her a witch, her house was bypassed. Her eye was heavy, if she looked at the cow, then that day the cow would not have milk. With just a glance, she could bring damage to any villager. Many said that at night she turns into a black cat. But how to prove it - people did not know. Once all the peasants of the village gathered and decided to watch for the witch at night. They did not have to wait long, a black cat jumped out of the witch's house. The witch herself had no cat, everyone immediately guessed that this was the witch herself. The men rushed after the cat with axes, and one man cut off her paw. Everyone noticed how the cat suddenly disappeared. The next morning, everyone again came to the witch. And what they saw, the witch was lying on the bed with her hand bandaged. There was no doubt that it was she who turned into a black cat at night. The men ordered the witch to leave their village and never come back here. The witch left, but the man who cut off the cat's paw became disabled himself, he cut off his own hand when he was chopping firewood for the winter. Everyone said that there was a witch's curse here. After the witch died in the village, cows began to give more milk, people began to live more friendly.
Another story my grandmother told me happened to her when she was young. They were sailing with a friend on the lake, and an unfamiliar woman swam towards them and said that they would find a treasure on the island. The girls turned the boat around and sailed to the indicated island. And in Karelia there were many lakes and many unknown islands. When my grandmother and her friend went to the island, they found nothing there, except a large number fish skins. She was unnatural large sizes. They took a handful of husks and casually tossed them into their pockets. When they returned home, they began to tell their relatives what had happened. And the brothers asked them, where is the fish husk. And the girls quickly ran to their pockets. And what did they find there: instead of fish skins, there were gold coins in their pockets. The brothers quickly rushed to this island, but it was empty, not a single fish husk. They returned empty-handed and for a long time reproached their friends for not getting enough fish husks, which turned into gold coins.
I loved listening to my grandmother's stories, and was a good, attentive listener. Grandmother said that during the war the Germans could not get to them, because their village was surrounded by swamps and the Germans did not dare to make their way through dangerous bogs. But enemy aircraft constantly flying over the village. And during the whole war one cow was killed and one schoolboy was wounded. He and the guys were skiing in the forest, and the pilot mistook them for partisans from a height. And then one day a German plane crashed near the village. All the people rushed to save him, not even suspecting how dangerous it was. After all, the German was armed, and local residents there were no weapons. And the grandmother said that the plane fell into a quagmire and began to quickly go to the bottom of the swamp. The German was shouting something in his own language, but no one understood him. People have already decided that it is necessary to save a person, even though he is an enemy. And then the unexpected happened, a little old man appeared, his clothes were made of branches. Old people began to say that this is a goblin, he always appeared in the forest to help people. Everyone thought that he would now help the German pilot, but he ran through the swamp around the sinking plane. Goblin was simply weightless, it seemed that he was not running, but flying. The German shouted, held out his hands to him, but the goblin did not react to his cries, but tried to drive the curious people away. And then the inexplicable happened. The plane was already completely sucked in by the quagmire. The German stood up to his full height, grabbed a machine gun, and prepared to shoot unarmed people. But the goblin quickly jumped up to him, pulled out the machine gun and threw it to the people. The German's head was already sinking into the quagmire. Leshy suddenly disappeared. And the machine gun of the German pilot remained in the village until the end of the war and reminded people of the goblin-savior. If not for him, it is not known how this story would have ended.
My grandmother also told me about her husband, grandfather Mikhail. During Finnish war he was taken prisoner. And he sat in deep hole under open sky. It was very cold and hungry. Grandmother prayed every day for her husband, asked the Lord God to return alive from the war. When grandfather returned, he began to tell his grandmother that some unknown force helped him in captivity. He sat in a hole in the open air and thought that it was all over, and here he would be buried. Once, early in the morning, a horse approached his hole. She looked at her grandfather for a long time. And then she disappeared, by lunchtime she reappeared and in her teeth she held a large bush with cloudberries. These berries are yellowish in color and look like raspberries, only bigger. Throwing this bush with berries to grandfather, the horse left. The next day, someone threw a bottle of moonshine into the pit. Grandfather drank it in small sips and warmed up. The next day, at lunchtime, he again saw the muzzle of a horse, in her teeth she held a wadded blanket. Grandpa didn't understand what was going on. Late at night, something fell on my grandfather, it was a log. With his help, he climbed out of the hole. And what he saw: in front of him was a familiar horse. Grandfather climbed on a horse, he had no strength at all. His body hung on her back. Grandfather was losing consciousness, but he realized that his horse was taking him somewhere. The next day, the grandfather was with his own. With his savior, he no longer parted. After the war, my grandfather came home with his horse. And he told his neighbors and grandmother about his savior. After the war, my grandfather undermined his health, he often began to drink. But his savior saved him more than once in peaceful life. The horse always brought a drunken grandfather home, did not let him freeze in harsh winters. When the horse died, then the grandfather did not live long in this world. His frozen body was found in a snowdrift. So my grandmother became a widow and lived to be 96 years old.
We are the ones in whose life one day in the headlines they will write "died last veteran Great Patriotic War". We are perhaps one of the last generations to whom real veterans came to talk about the war. What's next?
I don't want to go to the fireworks and the parade today. I want to see again how my grandmother's eyes light up when she says the word "Victory". And something rises before her eyes, which I will never - thanks to them - see. How she, my little thin grandmother, whose size 33 high-heeled shoes beckoned me in the closet all my childhood, skips dancing some kind of dance of military sailors, and then tells that they warmed ink in mittens at school, and at home she is the eldest - baked quinoa cakes for six brothers and sisters.
I want to see again how he and his grandfather hang home front awards on their chests and go to the parade - and sincerely believe that it is being done for them. How they read letters of congratulations to veterans from the President and without a shadow of a doubt are proud that he remembers and wrote to each of them personally.
They are children of the war, and have not seen the front. He walked through their lives with a funeral for his father - my great-grandfather - who remained forever somewhere in East Prussia a few years before the end of the war, echoing the first post-war years when my grandfather, a military paramedic, and his wife were sent to Germany, where their first child was born.
Today I want to hear their stories, their words and voices, and not beautiful and right votes from screens that, furiously interrupting each other, prove something. I want to hear them again now that I'm in my 20s, not 5, 10, 15. I would ask more, I would listen more attentively, I would probably even write it down. But we are the generation, many of which will remember their veterans only in their childhood.
We are those during whose lifetime one day in the headlines of the news they will write "the last veteran of the Great Patriotic War died." And they will no longer come to the children in schools to quietly tell how it all happened. That this is not something worth repeating.
My cousin learns about the war from the books in the history room, and not from the paramedic grandfather and little grandmother. It will be for him as distant and fantastic as the First World War. We believed the eyes of the veterans, we saw the flames of the front in their reflection, it was so real that you could get burned on it. We heard as an axiom "if only there was no war." What will they believe, how will they remember, how will they understand?
One day, the news headlines will write "the last veteran of the Great Patriotic War died." What will happen next? Will Immortal Regiment as long as Tverskaya and beyond, there will be a parade worth several million rubles, there will be volleys of salutes over Poklonnaya. It's all beautiful, of course, but not that. Who knows how we can now tell their story of the war to a new generation so that they see the flame of the front in their eyes, which can burn them?
"Be proud of the glory of your ancestors
not only possible, but must.
A.S. Pushkin.
Interest in the past, in the history of one's family and one's ancestors is inherent in every person. From an early age, a person has to hear and understand that before him there was the same time, there were people and events.
Each family goes its own way, has its victories and joys, disappointments and troubles. Biographies of people can be amazing and incredible. historical phenomena do not pass without a trace for a person. So a prime example maybe the life and fate of my great-grandmother Lucia Dmitrievna Batrakova.
On February 7, 1939, a girl was born in the village of Kurbaty, Uinsky district. She was born in ordinary family collective farm workers: my mother worked on a farm, and my father before the war - in the field-growing team, in the field on a tractor.
The father of the newborn Dmitry, an ardent supporter new government decided that he would name his daughter in honor of the event that had taken place in 1917, namely, the Revolution. But even though it rejected Soviet government the church, and yet the people, especially in the villages, believed in God, but in the church books there was no such intricate name, but the name - Lucius was found. Then the parents decided to name the girl Lucy.
On June 22, 1945, the Great Patriotic War. The mobilization of those liable for military service was announced, martial law was introduced. The inhabitants of the village of Kurbaty could not stand aside either. The entire male population left to fight for the freedom of their homeland. Lucy was 2 years old when her dad went to the front. Life was difficult. In 1944, my father returned from the front. “Before the war, I don’t even remember the folder,” my great-grandmother recalls, “but how I returned, I remember it well. He returned at the end of 1944, as he was wounded, lay in the hospital and was commissioned. He put me on his knees and showed me for a long time the bullets that he got after being wounded during the operation. A little girl could not even think at her five years that these “toys” could deprive her dad of her life.
On the farm, the Kurbatov family had livestock: cows, sheep, chickens. Despite this, the family lived hard, because everything was taxed. The great-grandmother recalls: “Even if the hens didn’t lay eggs, they were forced to buy eggs from someone else and still turn them in, if the cow didn’t have milk or it wasn’t enough, you also had to buy it, but the tax was obligatory. Hay was mowed for cows wherever necessary. Mom mowed all the pits with nettles near the house. From the collective farm they gave the cows straw, so my mother mixed it with her hay and fed it with it. It's time for little Lucy to help the family. Starting from the age of 6, the mother took the girl with her to work. Together they transported hay stacks from the field to warehouses on horseback, mowed rye with Lithuanians and knitted into sheaves, and then put them in barriers. “My mother specially made me a small Lithuanian coat,” my great-grandmother smiles, “and I went to the fields with her.” Lucy felt responsible and tried to keep up with her mother. Yes, and she remained alone with her parents, because the older children at that time left to study in the city, to receive education for further professional activities.
When Lucy was 12 years old, she was already doing more complex and responsible work on the collective farm. She recalls: “When I got older, I myself used horses to carry manure to the fields for fertilizer along with other girls and guys. I never expected someone to unload it for me. She turned the cart around and loaded it. She was very nimble and always harnessed the horse herself. Once I remember, there was one case. They asked some chief to take me to the district. And the horse caught me with a temper, it was always necessary to keep it in check. When there were a few kilometers left to the district, this man asked me: “Girl, aren’t you afraid to ride such a horse?” “No,” I say, “I’m not afraid.” I dropped him off and drove back to Kurbaty.” In the village of Kurbaty, children were only taught at school up to grade 4, and in order to continue their education, they had to go to the neighboring village of Suda to a nine-year school. “We left home for a whole week,” recalls the great-grandmother, “lived in an apartment. Mom collected a bundle of food for us, small potatoes, a can of milk, bread, and one ruble of money. All this we stretched for a whole week. At the end of the week there was nothing left, so the hostess, Aunt Masha, with whom we younger brother lived, gave us a piece of bread and an onion, and kept on this. And my mother gave little food, because there were large taxes at that time. There was almost nothing for myself.” Lusya graduated from the 9th grade in 1952, she dreamed of going further to the 10th grade, raising the level of her education. But these dreams did not come true, the trouble came: the father died. Great-grandmother recalls this episode from her life so far with tears in her eyes: “Mom took the death of her father very hard. She told me that she was not able to teach me without a father and sent me to the village of Gryzany to my sister Tasya, who at that time had already married and was raising children. Mom said that Tasia needs to work, and I will have to sit with her children. I had no choice but to go to Gryzany. Then, until the end of her life, my mother reproached herself for not having taught me the only one, not giving me complete education". Lucia could not disobey. Arriving to her sister, Lucy nursed her nephews for some time, but then she decided: “... why should I sit on my sister’s neck, I’ll go and get a job on a collective farm.” At this time, brigades were recruited on the collective farm for logging, and she went to logging. The work day has begun. The work was seasonal. What only Lucia Dmitrievna didn’t do: with her friend Masha, in a pair, they themselves felled the forest with a hand saw, sawed it themselves and piled it in a pile, stood on the harvester platform, collected grain in bags and put it in carts themselves. Although the girls were tired at work, in the evening they still went to dances, which took place to the accordion. Great-grandmother recalls this time with a sense of nostalgia in her voice: “The club was closed early, at 12 o’clock, so then we went to visit one of the guys, there was even a queue, who to go next for an hour and a half, played various games. Then there were dances already under the gramophone. They knew how to arrange their leisure time. And back to work in the morning. The Maslenitsa holiday was very interesting. Ride on horses unloaded. It's interesting, it's been fun." In 1958, Lyutsia Dmitrievna married a local guy Mikhail Stepanovich (my great-grandfather) and changed her maiden name Kurbatov to her husband's name and became Batrakova. The future husband was also simple. His father went to the front when Misha was three years old. He did not return back. His fighting friends said that a shell hit the dugout where his father was, and he died. Mikhail Stepanovich and his brother found out that his father was buried in Bryansk region near the village of Kopylovo, but it was not possible to go there. The young people didn’t do the wedding, they just wrote off, because the “mother” (mother-in-law) said: “... there is no money for the wedding, you will earn money yourself, then we will celebrate ...”, especially since a month before these events, the family of the future husband survived the fire, and almost all property burned down.
But there was no need to celebrate the wedding. A year later, the first son, Kolya, was born. And a year later, a daughter, Tanya, was born. Starting in 1959, my great-grandmother began working at the local FAP, along with her older sister, and worked there for 20 years. " Wage, - recalls Lucia Dmitrievna, - it was small, only 20 rubles, but the work was easier. There were no cars at that time, so they always rode horses to call the villages, get medicines to the region and go to meetings. Lucia Dmitrievna gave all of herself to work. When her great-grandmother turned 55, she retired, but with her indefatigable energy she could not sit at home, she still worked part-time, first at school as a technical engineer, and then in kindergarten babysitter.
Now my great-grandmother is 72 years old, she lives in the village of Gryzany, Ordinsky district with her husband, my great-grandfather - Mikhail Stepanovich and is engaged in raising grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she has many of them, she gives everyone a piece of her warmth.
I would like to be like my great-grandmother, to possess her human qualities: kindness, patience, responsiveness, selflessness, readiness to help those who need it. Having lived such a difficult life, she did not lose her spiritual qualities. To this day, people still go to her for advice. kind word. I am proud of my great-grandmother - Lucia Dmitrievna Batrakova.
