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 the grandmother and her friend went to the island, they found nothing there, except for a large number of fish husks. She was unnaturally large. 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 planes were 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 the locals had 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 the Finnish war, he was taken prisoner. And he sat in a deep hole under the 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 a 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.

A 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, undermining or weakening Soviet power ": while at work, he praised the German military forces, talked about how quickly and skillfully the German troops were 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 - a 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.

On New Year's Eve, the Germans began to leave in a hurry. A truck drove along the street and stopped near each 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 for the return of 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, threw up obsessive 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 deceased 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. The middle girl was 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; the eldest daughter 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.

We often know about the love of our grandmothers not from them - from films. Of the sad ones, where a woman is waiting from the front for a missing person. From romantic and funny, where a girl and a guy fall in love with each other at a construction site, at lectures, in virgin lands. Because very often those grandmothers who could tell something else preferred to remain silent. Let it be like in the movies...

The cruel twentieth century has written many life stories that you don’t want to share .. Crossing them out of your memory is like erasing the memory of these women.

Sundress - on ribbons

My great-grandmother was actually married to the first person she met, because they found a good groom for her younger sister, and “they don’t reap through a sheaf” - that is, a younger sister cannot be married off before an older one. The great-grandmother lived in her husband's family for about a year, in order to avoid fulfilling her marital duty, she slept all the time on the stove with his grandmother.

When the Soviet government came, she was the first to rush to the neighboring village to get a divorce. Her husband, who never came into his own, guarded her outside the village, “tore her sundress into ribbons,” but she ran away and did not give up. And a few years later she met my great-grandfather, 6 years younger than her, fell in love, got married, gave birth to 4 children.

took pity

Our past neighbors - grandparents - got married in the war. She was a nurse, she slept, and he raped her sleeping. In the process, I realized that she was a virgin, was afraid of arrest and offered to marry: “anyway, no one will marry you anymore.” She was scared and agreed. So he later reminded her all his life: “Now, if I hadn’t taken pity on you, no one would have taken you.”

Harmonist

My great-grandmother's sister fell in love with an accordion player at her own wedding and ran away with him. She gave birth to three children. He walked, drank all the money. Bill, of course. She and her children went to dinner with my great-grandmother. The great-grandmother was tired of feeding her sister, and she forbade her to come and bring children. The sister went and hanged herself.

Laborer

My great-great-grandmother served as a laborer in the house of a rural priest. Then the owner married his son to her. They lived together all their lives. According to family stories, great-great-grandfather got drunk on a holiday, and began to tell his wife: you, they say, a laborer, know your place.

Flaw

One of my grandmothers got married after the war when the men returned from the front. She had a loved one, but he lost a couple of fingers in the war. And my grandmother decided - she won’t feed without fingers. She married a grandfather who drank. And the one without fingers was later an accountant. And earned, and did not drink ...

activist

One of my great-grandmothers was forced to marry a Chekist at the age of sixteen. She gave birth to three sons... And then her husband was shot. She handed over her sons from her hated husband to an orphanage and left for Siberia! She was a crazy activist and party worker, they say.

turchanochka

My great-great-grandmother is a military trophy from the Russian-Turkish war. Her great-great-grandfather brought her from Turkey, raped her first, and then did a favor and got married. Of course, she was forced to convert to Christianity. She died either from the fifth, or from the sixth childbirth, very early, she was not even thirty.

Necessary

My great-grandmother's husband did not return from the front. She “lost” her passport, made a new one without a stamp, sent her daughter to the village and got married again. Keeping silent about the previous marriage, because who needs a widow with a child.

The deception was revealed eight years later, and then the great-grandfather began to beat the great-grandmother. Beat almost every day. She endured, then broke his ribs. While he was lying and splicing his ribs back, she nursed him, apologized and comforted him. After that, my grandfather was born.

Great-grandfather continued to beat great-grandmother, but carefully. At half strength. Scary because it was. But what to do! Necessary.

clerk

My grandfather held a grudge against his parents for a long time because his beloved sister was forced to marry a clerk, known in the village for his evil temper. Shortly after the wedding, she badly tied the goat, she got rid of and nibbled something in the garden. The husband beat his wife so that she lay in bed for a long time and remained lame for the rest of her life.

Grandfather, having heard about such a thing, tore the stake out of the fence and went to sort it out. The clerk, having received his own, for some time became quieter, but the matter ended badly anyway. They threw haystacks, the husband somehow didn’t like how his wife gave him a napkin, he hit her on the head with a fork handle, and she went blind.

Don't overdo it!

My great-grandfather, who was then about 35 years old, wooed my 15-year-old great-grandmother. She didn't want to marry someone so old. Then my great-great-grandfather beat her with reins in the stable so that she would not go over rich suitors. She got married like a pretty girl ... She gave birth to six daughters. Then the war began, and all six had to be raised alone. But after the war, she did not want to return to her husband, so she raised her daughters alone.

Unequal marriage

I was lucky to talk with my great-grandmother, born in 1900. She lived in a village in southern Ukraine. She was married at the age of 16, to a widower with three children. The widower was over 30, he limped and was generally a little crooked. But on the other hand, he paid off the numerous debts of my great-grandmother's parents. In general, with such a condition, they married her. Actually sold.

Pilot

My grandmother worked in the rear during the war, at a factory. The young girl was just 15 years old. One day she fainted from hunger on her way to work. While they found it, while they pumped it out and achieved who she was, the factory authorities almost put her in jail - for desertion and failure to appear at the workplace.

To remedy the situation, her aunt goes to the front - the case is closed. After the war, grandma went to live in Georgia. I met a military pilot there; love at first sight! Mom was born 9 months later. When it came to the wedding, it turned out that she had a “criminal” past. The pilot was immediately recalled from the unit and ... that's all. Mom, although she tried to look for her father all her life, did not find him. They say I look a lot like him...

On different sides

My grandfather, from the nobility, left my grandmother alone with her two daughters in exile. When the Germans came to Latvia, my mother's sister was sent to a camp. Mother went to fight for Russia, which she had never seen.

Grandfather found one of his daughters in the camp and, having learned that the second one was in the Red Army, he promised to personally hang her. A Russian officer with a full St. George's bow, he was in a German uniform. He was caught in Yugoslavia by Tito's partisans and shot. My mother had a different patronymic all her life. And I never even saw his card.

Changed my mind

One of my cousins ​​dated a woman, loved her. One day she and her company went to the beach to swim, and there she was raped in the water. It's so simple - they surrounded a bathing woman and raped her. He changed his mind about getting married.

Escape to marriage

After graduating from the institute, my future grandmother was assigned to work in a remote Uzbek village. So deaf that all those who arrived were thinking about how to escape from this “prison”, and the village authorities, respectively, about how to keep them by force. They didn’t give holidays, they didn’t issue documents, they didn’t allow trips to a neighboring city and, in general, leave the village anywhere ...

After two years of this hell, my grandmother seized the moment when the head of the collective farm left, and escaped. She managed to knock out legal documents for vacation and drove the cart out, and there was a chase for her: they hit the director who had left, and he turned around and ordered to catch up ... They didn’t catch up. Grandmother came to her relatives to spend a vacation, but the question arose - how not to return when the vacation is over?

The decision was found banal for our family. By law, a wife cannot be separated from her husband. Therefore, for a month of vacation, a decent groom was found for my grandmother, who had a residence permit and a job in the capital, and they married her. Collective farmers, by the way, took revenge. When the grandmother asked them for her work book and other documents, they said that they had lost everything. And my grandmother lived with my grandfather until his death, and it was half a century of marriage without love.

Master

My grandmother, the first singer and dancer in the village, married her grandfather - a stern, courageous, real man. Grandfather knew how to work and earn money, knew how to do everything around the house - from sewing and cooking to repairing watches and furniture, knew how to get scarce goods for the family in the most difficult years and squeeze out all kinds of benefits and benefits from the state. Then my grandfather returned from the war and finally became a dream come true - a "stone wall", a breadwinner, a hero.

But the “stone wall” also had a downside. Grandpa was a real tyrant. Everything had to be just for him. Besides, he was amazingly stingy. Grandmother was not supposed to wear more than one dress to go out, cosmetics, new bed linen, she was not allowed to use what relatives and friends gave. It was not allowed to go to the cinema or the theater because it was a waste of money...

I thought for a long time that they lived like this from poverty, until I discovered that my grandfather kept a lot of money in a drawer in the closet. By the way, the house did not like guests. They lived together for over fifty years. Grandfather knew perfectly well that he was making his wife's life hell. In extreme old age, after a series of strokes, when reality began to mix with the imaginary, he often saw the same nightmare. She will take revenge...

kulak daughter

My grandmother was the daughter of a kulak, her family was exiled to Siberia. There, the red commander laid eyes on her. He wooed with a revolver, threatened the whole family with lime ... And after a few years he found himself another wife, a young one. As a result, the grandmother pulled both the children and the household on her own. And then the “young” wife of the grandfather left him.

Dresser

My great-grandmother died at 36 after about 40 abortions. She herself was a nurse, her husband was much older than her. He took her in marriage by force. He came to her village with a food requisition, saw a young great-grandmother and issued an ultimatum: marry or dispossess your parents.

Then my grandmother was born, whom my father named in honor of his first wife with a Jewish name; the first wife was also a fiery revolutionary, she died of tuberculosis. My great-grandfather took my grandmother to her grave several times a year. Grandmother did not love her own mother, and her mother, apparently, too.

Before my grandmother, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother had a boy who died as an infant. They buried him in a chest of drawers. This chest of drawers without one drawer stood in their apartment until their evacuation from Leningrad.

Article prepared by: Lilit Mazikina

Love for all ages. And also all generations. But real, beautiful love occurs, probably, once in a thousand or ten thousand couples.

We asked our readers to remember if they have a wonderful legend about the love of grandparents in their family.

cast iron heart

Granny is the eighteenth child in a Jewish family that came to Siberia by stage. The great-grandfather, a Belarusian tradesman, distinguished himself by slapping the governor. So the whole family thundered to Siberia, the great-grandmother followed the stage on the cart, from time to time counted the “packages” - the kids (so she noticed the loss of her grandmother's sister in time, by the way - they found it!) Granny was born already in Siberia, grew up, graduated from Tomsk University.

Grandfather - from the peasant settlers. They came from the Arkhangelsk (or Vologda - they lived somewhere on the border) province, to Siberia, to a new life. There were three brothers in the family. One fought for the Reds, the second for Kolchak. And my grandfather spit on politics and went to the workers' faculty at the Tomsk Polytechnic University.

They met at the construction site of the Kuznetsk Iron and Steel Works (the very one that Mayakovsky wrote about in his “Garden City”). Granny was a translator for American specialists. She once stood at the opening of the second blast furnace. Smelting began, iron went. And a drop of red-hot metal fell to her shoes, frozen in the shape of a heart. Like a sign. This heart, the size of a small female palm, is still kept at home.

Grandfather was a local power engineer at this plant. I still remember how my grandmother said: “I go into the office, and he is sitting there. Such a beautiful one.” Both were incredibly beautiful. Lived in a civil marriage all very long life. Both had many fans and admirers, but even options did not arise.

Yesenin

My grandfather, a handsome actor-director, fell in love with my grandmother when she worked as a teacher - she was so-o-one, ma-a-scarlet philologist. And my grandfather was handsome. She came to listen to him in the club reading from Yesenin's stage - his favorite poet was in Krasnoyarsk, and when he read, excuse me, "Son of a bitch" (about a dog who carried notes to a girl) and reached the lines "Yes, I liked girl in white \ And now I love - in blue!” he read “green” instead of “blue” and pointed to the grandmother, sitting just in a green dress. She was embarrassed, the audience applauded.

It was in the fifties. They got married and lived a happy life together.

Waited from the army

In those distant times, when they served in the Russian army for 25 years, one of my ancestor was drafted into the army. Before leaving for the service, he went to say goodbye to a friend. The friend was married, and even a newborn child was already there - in the cradle.

My ancestor, who, of course, did not know if he would return at all, took the baby from the cradle in his arms, and sadly joked that he would return and marry her. The baby was female. No one took the joke seriously, they giggled - and forgot about it.

The ancestor got into the grenadier regiment, acquired a surname - then the peasants did without surnames. And somehow these years of service passed safely, the soldier returned home alive and unharmed.

And interestingly, the baby also grew up and ... for all this time she did not get married, although there was no flaw either in appearance, or in mind, or in health. Considering that even in my time, girls at the age of 25 were officially considered old maids, then, probably, in general, a girl did not have much fun being unmarried.

When the soldier returned, it was then that everyone remembered the old joke and they were married. My retired ancestor, although he was not the first youth, but the groom was enviable - as a former soldier, he received a pension in silver and learned to read and write in the army. I forgot my native language in the army, I tried to speak Russian with my relatives, but I quickly remembered everything. The first polyglot in our family, the rest then only knew how to speak two languages ​​- Chuvash and Tatar (Tatars lived around). And this one also spoke Russian.

And they got married, and they began to live, live and make good.

Girl with no address

My great-aunt was called Tanya in life, and according to her passport she was Kira. And she did not bear the surname of her stepfather, but her father, but not everyone was aware of this. Her fiancé Lyova did not know, for example, when he was called to the front. He returned later, began to look for her - or whether her family had gone somewhere, or whether there was no one at home, no one knows anything. I turned to the police - Tatyana such and such, they say, was NEVER here. The situation seemed hopeless, but Lyova did not give up and continued to ask everyone. And I stumbled upon Tanya's former neighbor, who knew where the family had gone. So now I have genes for both.

apples

My grandmother in the thirties worked at the factory and was friends with one woman, five years older than her. The only son brought lunch to the woman all the time. And from some point on, I always took another apple to treat my mother's girlfriend. He treated like this for three years, and then he turned sixteen (that's what they say). He took my grandmother aside, began, like in an old movie, kissing his hands on his knees and persuading her to marry him. Either because she was already over twenty-five, or for some other reason, but she agreed. And then ... I didn’t come to the registry office for painting, which was supposed to pass secretly, I was ashamed. The guy persuaded the lady in the registry office to sign it later today out of turn, jumped on the bike and rushed to the hostel where my grandmother lived. I don’t know how I persuaded her, but two hours later he came out and, as she was, in some kind of home dress, she rode a bicycle with him to the registry office.

Their mother-in-law, of course, did not let them go home. At first, the grandmother spent the night in the hostel, and her young husband spent the night in the park in the gazebo. Then they rented a corner (that means a part of the room, separated by a curtain and a chiffonier) and began to live there. When their first daughter was born, only the mother-in-law forgave her daughter-in-law. And until that moment, they stood side by side in the factory behind the machine and did not talk.

Grandfather was at the front during the war and returned almost whole, with scars from shrapnel. And he continued to carry his grandmother almost in her arms until her death. When we were still living in a communal apartment, I got up early in the morning and went to wash clothes in the bathroom. Before everyone else - so that the neighbors do not see and condemn. When they had a separate apartment under Khrushchev, grandfather always vacuumed and washed, so that grandmother would not get tired. He said: “It is wrong to say that laundry is a woman's work. Anyone who has ever washed a family knows how hard it is. This should be a man's job, like chopping wood."

He survived his grandmother by only two months.

The article was prepared by Lilit Mazikina

"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. Such a vivid example can be 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 an ordinary family of collective farm workers: her mother worked on a farm, and her father before the war worked in a field farm team, in a field on a tractor.

The father of the newborn Dmitry, an ardent supporter of the new government, decided that he would name his daughter in honor of the event that had taken place in 1917, namely the Revolution. But although the church rejected the Soviet government, 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 began. 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 bales of hay from the field to warehouses on horseback, mowed rye with Lithuanians and knitted them 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 my younger brother and I lived, gave us a piece of bread and an onion, and we 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 a full 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 the Bryansk region near the village of Kopylovo, but they did not manage 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, together with her older sister, and worked there for 20 years. “The salary,” recalls Lyutsia Dmitrievna, “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 irrepressible energy she could not sit at home, she still worked part-time, first at school as a technical engineer, and then as a nanny in kindergarten.

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. Until now, people go to her for advice, for a kind word. I am proud of my great-grandmother - Lucia Dmitrievna Batrakova.