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It was then that the head of the scientific laboratory, Gennady Viktorovich Sokolov, began showing interest in me. He was involved in science and invention, gave me the most responsible tasks. And to help me get up to speed faster, he first sent me to Alma-Ata for patenting courses, then helped me enroll in the Higher State Courses for Managerial Personnel on Patenting and Invention under the USSR State Committee in Leningrad.
This field interested me greatly. I even received a patent for the invention "Activator Mixer" for coal mines as part of a group.
Gennady Viktorovich – a tall blond with brown eyes, smart, successful – began persistently courting me. It seemed a chance to start everything anew. "Finally, a man who values me. Who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke."
"Let's live together," he proposed after another business trip.
He even asked my parents for my hand. I believed him, believed in new happiness.
But after moving in with me… he didn't finalize his divorce from his wife. When his wife started calling, my world collapsed again.
"Wrong again… Another mistake… Why didn't I see this right away?"
Her words: "Be damned! You will never be happy!" – rang in my head. She worked as a psychiatrist in a hospital and knew how to affect a person's psyche. I didn't believe in curses, but her hatred was so strong that I began to doubt.
I lay awake at night, thoughts circling:
"Maybe she's right? Maybe I really don't deserve happiness? First an unsuccessful marriage, now this… God, when will this end?"
Once, she called her husband and said:
"If you don't come back, I'll kill the children and myself, and you'll be guilty all your life." – she even prepared syringes with poison to scare him.
The world around me began to crumble. I didn't want to make anyone unhappy.
Finding out I was pregnant, I swallowed a handful of pills.
"Why do you need a married man? You're so beautiful and young!" the nurse lamented at the hospital.
Waking up, I had an abortion and ended the relationship.
My personal life had failed.
Many years later, Sokolov found me on social networks. He told me he had divorced his wife anyway. Got married, lived in Germany for many years, then moved to Alma-Ata. He asked for my forgiveness for the short, unsuccessful affair.
My father started drinking again, my mother left him and moved in with me. After all we'd been through, we decided to move to another city in the north of the Irkutsk region, where her friend lived, and start life anew.
Packing my things before leaving, I looked in the mirror and thought:
"Yes, it was painful. Yes, there were mistakes. But I don't give up. Despite shattered hopes, I will learn to be happy. Alone. With a child and my mother. But happy."
Move to the North
In 1980, we exchanged my two-room apartment for a similar one in the city of Zheleznogorsk, in the north of the Irkutsk region. The move happened in winter, and the first thing that caught my eye were the giant snowdrifts hanging over the streets like white giants. Houses, wrapped in snow caps, seemed tiny among these snowy colossi. The city, lost in the taiga, was like an island of civilization amidst endless forests.
The climate here was harsh: short, cool summers and long winters with cracking frosts, when the thermometer sometimes dropped to minus fifty. But the cold was surprisingly easy to bear – there was almost no wind, and the dry frost nipped at my cheeks like little needles. This area was equated to the Far North, meaning salaries were higher – with a "northern bonus."
The only city-forming enterprise was the Korshunovsky Mining and Processing Plant. I was immediately hired as a foreman in the repair shop, and my mother went to work in a shop with hazardous working conditions for a good pension, because an increased pension of 120 rubles was equivalent to an average salary. Work in the shop was shift work; she had to wear a helmet and special clothing, which made her shoulders ache by the end of the day. She came home late, fatigue accumulated, and I soon realized – I can't go on like this.
Once, climbing the stairs of the management building, I ran into the plant director. He stopped, gave me a curious look, and asked:
"Where did we get such a girl? I'm seeing you for the first time."
Without missing a beat, I replied that I had come from Kazakhstan, had a higher education, and wanted to work as an engineer. The director requested my personal file, and a week later, I was transferred to the position of labor safety engineer, given a separate office. In the personnel department, they whispered:
"What for? Who put in a word for her?"
At night, I still cried – dreams hadn't come true, family life hadn't worked out; I continued to love my husband and involuntarily compared all suitors to him. I remembered the Gypsy's prediction and decided: if I'm unlucky in my personal life, then I need to build a career.
I joined the CPSU [Communist Party] – without a party card in those years, you couldn't achieve high positions. Soon I was elected secretary of the party organization on a voluntary basis. I conducted meetings with shop managers, and sometimes production meetings in the absence of the chief engineer, dreaming of the chair of the second secretary of the district party committee or getting another managerial position.
In summer, all plant workers were sent to gather fireweed [ivan-chai] grass. I avoided this duty in every way possible – the taiga was teeming with mosquitoes, and even mosquito nets didn't save you from their bites. Colleagues were jealous, whispering:
"She's in a privileged position!"
Once, a lady from accounting couldn't stand it and reproached me:
"Our faces are bitten by mosquitoes, and you – you could go to an exhibition! Is management covering for you?"
But the management just waved it off – I did my job well, and such liberties were forgiven.
Once, arranging a business trip to Leningrad to take exams for the patenting and invention courses, I ran into the deputy director for economics in the corridor – Vladimir Petrovich Karpov. A man around forty, sturdy, well-groomed, he looked me over appraisingly and said admiringly:
"What a woman! I've never met one like you."
He asked:
"Where do you work?"
I replied that I worked as a labor safety engineer and was in my second year of extramural studies in Leningrad on courses for patenting and invention. Vladimir Petrovich showed great interest and actively participated in arranging the business trip at the enterprise's expense – in the USSR, an enterprise could pay for its workers' training – and I flew to Leningrad to take my exams.
Leningrad met me with a damp wind and rain. I immediately caught a cold but was amazed by the kindness of the local residents. The neighbors of the landlady I stayed with brought medicine, honey, and advised me on how to treat myself. These people, who had survived the blockade, were special – soulful, sincere, with genuine care in their eyes. I remember their attention, sympathy, and support for life and am very grateful to them.
Despite a high fever, I passed the exams with "excellent" grades, and after two years of study, I received a certificate of course completion. I passionately wanted to work on patenting – to protect Soviet inventions from foreigners who used our developments for free and then patented them abroad under their own names, taking advantage of the fact that this mechanism wasn't properly established in our country. At that time, everything was state-owned, and it was difficult to do privately, but I saw prospects in the development of patenting and wanted to take an active part in this process, so I studied everything new with interest. But due to the move, I could only dream about it.
Life in Siberia was enchanting. The taiga beckoned with its pristine power – century-old cedars, windfallen trees, carpets of moss, lingonberry clearings. A mysterious grandeur and calmness was felt in the very nature.
Once, my friends and I went to the taiga for lingonberries. First, we went by motorboat, then on foot. It was creepy making our way through the thicket deep into the taiga because rumors said the master of the taiga, the bear, sometimes attacked people gathering mushrooms and berries or hunting. Suddenly, a fairy-tale view opened before us – an endless carpet of lingonberries. We eagerly gathered them with a special scoop until dark; I brought home four buckets of lingonberries, and my mother and I canned jars for winter.
The Japanese who came to our city marveled at our wealth, admired the taiga. In their restaurants, lingonberries cost a fortune, while we ate them by the spoonful. They even bought our soap because of the wooden boxes it came in. They sincerely didn't understand why we didn't use the huge number of fallen trees, from whose sawdust they made furniture. The natural riches of our country, as well as mineral resources, have always aroused and continue to arouse burning interest among foreigners.
Vladimir Petrovich Karpov continued to show me attention, but soon he moved with his family to another city, and I lost sight of him.
My life flowed calmly, and to brighten the loneliness, I plunged into public work. I actively spoke at party meetings of the plant.
The newspaper "Magnetit" on June 19, 1987, fully published my speech "Not in Words, but in Deed," in which I said: "Not everyone yet understands perestroika and democratization correctly and are trying to settle scores with demanding and principled managers" – and continued: "I see the essence of perestroika precisely in ensuring that people who can be leaders, capable of finding the right solutions, rallying the people behind them, and inspiring them to accomplish set tasks, are in positions of leadership at all levels." I ended my speech with the words: "We all need to restructure our work. Not in words, but in deed. And for this, we must constantly increase demands, first of all, on ourselves."
My tasks also included organizing meetings with city residents and explaining what changes were happening in the country. We posted notices on building entrances and invited residents after work to a children's playground, where I held meetings with them.
At the same time, I participated in the amateur arts group of the collective. At competitions between shops, I performed a passionate Gypsy dance.
I was lucky: a choreographer from Leningrad came to the city and staged a number for me. In a red skirt, with a waist-length wig, I brought down the house. They even wrote in the newspaper:
"A real furor among the city residents was caused by the Gypsy dance!" – wrote the local newspaper. Thanks to my participation, our shop took first place.
Then came first place in swimming. Before the race, the chairman of the trade union committee said strictly:
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