I was born and spent my childhood and youth in the best, as it seemed to me then, and what I am convinced of now, place on the land of the village of Dzygarovka Kryukov-on-Dnieper (this is how our postal address was written). Now on the land of my parents and great-grandfathers, in the golden country of my childhood, the buildings of the Kremenchug steel plant rise. And in my childhood memories, the pure, pure waters of a small river continue to flow there, the swampy banks of which are densely overgrown with tall reeds (by the way, the Dzygarovites covered sheds and other outbuildings with them), calamus, which was lined with the floor on Green holidays; frantic nightingales, inhabitants of the Deevsky forest, which stood like a green wall almost next to our village, are flooded in the spring. Fragrant acacias bloom wildly.
The time of occurrence of Dzygarovka is unknown. Perhaps in the era of Novorossia at the end of the 18th century, when many settlers arrived in Kryukov. Indirect evidence of this can serve as a rather motley ethnic composition of the inhabitants of the village. In my memory, there were not only Ukrainians, but also Russians, Poles and Lithuanians.
Actually, various social and national roots were intertwined in my family. Judging by my father’s last name Shalaev, and from the fact that his father, my grandfather and all his relatives spoke Russian, or, say, my father’s name was “tyatya” (a typical Russian address), my father’s ancestors were immigrants from Russia. The mother’s family came from Ukrainian Cossacks. The estate of his parents was in Sadki. And mothers brothers on holidays, after several glasses, certainly reminded everyone present at the table that they were Cossacks, or rather goats. I remember that in the marriage certificate of my parents it was written: the bride is from the Cossacks, and the groom is from the townspeople. And relatives from the paternal side did not forget to be proud that they were bourgeois.
The village got its name, most likely, from the surname of the first or most numerous inhabitants at that time. I remember several of my neighbors with that last name. Dzygarovka is located on the southwestern outskirts of Kryukov. Unfettered by the strict rules of regular development, the village spread freely among the sandy hills and swampy banks of the river, whose name no one knew. Based on the plans for the city of Kryukov in the 18th century, which I looked at much later, one can guess that this was one of the branches of the Kryukov River, which flowed through Dzygarovka, then the village of Sadki and flowed into the Dnieper, and the other branch, already called the river Gnilushka, flowed around Kryukov from the north and flowed into the Dnieper somewhere in the area of the modern bridge.
The lands of Dzygarovka were bordered in the west by the Deevsky forest and the Kryukovsky forestry, in the north by the Kryukovsky quarry and a large swamp, in the east they were surrounded by huge sandy hills, and from the south the villages of Sadki and Deevka came very close, at the end of the 19th century. on the sandy hills, between Dzygarovka and Kryukov proper, they built the Main car repair workshops of the Kharkov-Nikolaev railway, the fence of which became one of the most remarkable boundaries of our village. Most of the male Dzygarov residents worked in the workshops of the workshops. The women of Dzygarovka took care of the housework, cultivated gardens, kept livestock, but, with rare exceptions, did not participate in public work.
Workshops, and in Soviet times the plant, not only provided Dzygarov residents with jobs, but also gave free fuel. Since during the repair of passenger cars, and they were wooden, the broken parts were simply taken out of the fence of the enterprise, from where my fellow countrymen dismantled them in a matter of hours. Old pieces of upholstered material, reminiscent of modern linoleum, were also thrown away. With them, the Dzygarovites hung the floors in their homes.
According to the Poltava Statistical Bureau, in 1910 Dzygarovka consisted of 29 households, in which 152 people lived. According to social status, the distribution was as follows: 13 peasant farms, 6 Cossacks, 10 petty-bourgeois. By occupation, they were: shoemakers, carpenters, locksmiths, representatives, as indicated in the report, of “intelligent occupations”, but more day laborers.
I remember Dzygarovka from the late 1920s and early 1930s. So I’ll tell you what I remember. To get to Dzygarovka from Kryukov, it was necessary to pass the railway crossing (near the modern western checkpoint of the carriage plant) and go through Onufrievsky by about one and a half kilometers along the swamp. This path was originally unpaved, and shortly before the start of World War II, it was paved with stone. Behind the swamp to the right of the road to the quarry stretched the village of Ponomarevka, where the vast majority of the inhabitants really bore the names of Ponomarenko, these were the estates of Ivan, Panas, Trofim, Dmitry, Grigory, Mikhail Ponomarenko, and Sudarenko, Dmitry Dzygar, Grigory Olefirenko, Lysenko also lived here , Novitskaya, a forester ZHEZHERA and a mysterious man named Molnar. He didn’t talk to anyone and didn’t make friends with anyone.
To the left of the heater, a dirt (or rather sandy) road descended, which led to Dzygarovka. To the left of the sandy road pulled
os cleanup, and then – the levada was spread, where already in Soviet times the Dzygarovites, the vast majority of whom lived on sandy lands, were allocated vegetable gardens. The soils in the garden were fertile, and lay in a lowland, so the gardens gave good harvests. Usually radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage were grown here. To irrigate the seedlings, small wells were dug in their plots, the so-called diggers, no more than 0.5 m deep.
The lands in Dzygarovka were very heterogeneous. Sandy soils prevailed closer to the plant, and the owners of such estates had to hire land for growing potatoes, beets, carrots, corn in the so-called “steppe”, near the villages of Deevka or Sadki, sometimes in forestry. Root crops and pumpkins were also planted annually on personal plots. And when the summer was rainy, they got a good harvest. When the summer was hot, everything burned out.
Behind the levada are the estates of Yevsey Shevchenko (instead of a fence, a well-made vine raft ran along the yard), Kovalevsky, Dzygar, Sidoruk, Nosulenka, and further on the estates of my parents and grandfather. The Shvets, Sidoruk, Semyonovs, and Vagenikov families settled around us. Behind the garden of the Semyonovs, along the street Turk, was the estate of Andreevsky.
Behind the gardens of my grandfather, closer to the lands of the forestry, lived Dzyga Andrey, Lepa Khariton, Dzygar, Levitsky, Shevchenko, Breus, Yablochkina Alexander, and in terms of social status, occupation, and habits and traditions, Dzygarovka was a mixture of town and village. Or rather, it was neither a city nor a village. And its name “village” quite accurately reflected the special way of its life. The Dzygarovites knew not only each other, but also the family tree of each from their grandfather-great-grandfather, sometimes they quarreled, but more often they helped, helped out like a neighbor. My dad recalled how, after the end of the civil war, in order to get a job, you had to register at the labor exchange (and unemployment was terrible and registered several times a week. Those who missed roll call time were struck off the line, no matter what the circumstances.
It was at this time that my father fell ill with typhus. And then the neighbors, on the initiative of M.P. Nosulenka went to celebrate for her father. And when it was his turn to get a job, the neighbors again worked for their father for several weeks until he recovered, thus supporting both him and his family. From my mother’s stories, I know that in the days of the New Economic Policy there was plenty of food. Flour was brought to Dzygarovka from the city and even offered on loan or, as they say now, on credit, the snow-white flour of the Sickle and Hammer trademark, which was bought for Easter, was especially good.
From my own recollections I remember the flood of 1931. During the breakthrough of temporary dams, and there were no permanent ones in Kryukov before the war, factory horns roared for a long time, and workers from the factory ran home to save the children, and everything that was possible from household utensils was transferred to the attic. The water rushed at high speed and everything that was not fixed was demolished. My grandfather, on the eve of the flood, made a large raft out of logs prepared for the construction of a new building, on which he placed cows and a good pile of hay. There they survived the flood. Dzygarov residents lived in attics, where drinking water, bread, herring, sugar were brought to them by boats.
The rising water was so high that the boats passed over our gates. We, the little children of me and my younger brother, contrary to our desire to stay in the attic, were sent to my mother’s sister, Aunt Olya, in Sadki. Her house was on a high hill and never flooded.
The walls of the houses in Dzygarovtsev were covered with clay, so during the flood the water eroded them into stakes and collapsed the stoves. And after the retreat of the flood, foundations, wooden ribs of walls and roofs remained. The walls were put up again, calling all the relatives to help. The most difficult problem was to find a stove-maker. During the flood years, it was a scarce profession. It seems to me that in the late 1920s and early 1930s floods were repeated for several years in a row. As a result of these floods, our wooden floor rotted after the last pre-war flood, they did not restore it, but made the floor again. Unfortunately, during the flood of 1931, the stove collapsed, lined with colored tiles, which I really liked. At the top of the stove stood two ceramic female figures holding baskets of grapes on their shoulders. Both these figures and a significant amount of ceramics were broken, and it was not possible to restore the stove in its original form, it was simply anointed and beaten. But our wonderful wooden paneled ceiling, fortunately, has been preserved.
After the end of the floods in the lowlands, pits, there was water for a long time, where the fish remained, which did not have time to move to the Dnieper. In such pits, “cowbanks,” as the Dzygarovites called them, fishing was arranged in the fall. The fishing gear, most often, were baskets woven from vines, into which vyuns or crucians were driven. And one day, my younger brother and I went to my grandfather’s garden to fish in such a kovbanka. The water was cloudy, nothing could be seen, we only felt that the basket had become extremely heavy and something large was clogged in it.
Frightened to death, we left our catch and fishing gear and ran home. Barely taking a breath, out of breath told what had happened. Father, laughing, went back with us, pulled out a basket in which a huge pike, up to about a meter long, fought.
In the early 1930s, when the party took a course towards complete collectivization, rumors spread about the organization of a collective farm in Dzygarovka. Things did not go further than rumors, since we did not have not only arable land or agricultural land, but, mainly, even vegetable gardens, but one of the best owners, Alexei Andrievsky, who really had a good estate with fertile soil, a garden and a pond, heard, that they are going to set up a collective farm yard on his estate, committed suicide by jumping into his own well. And my grandfather Shalaev Vasily said: “Take a horse, take carts, take everything, just don’t pull me from the chariots” (as he called the collective farm).
I remember the famine of 1933. Families where there were workers of the carriage plant suffered less from it. They were given work cards to receive food. But the situation in the surrounding villages was dire. Mother’s relatives lived in Sadki and Stone Streams. And, probably, on someone’s denunciation, the procurement commissioners came to us with a search, we do not hide the bread of our rural relatives. They began to rummage around the room, looking in every corner. Finally, under the shop they found a small barrel of millet intended for chickens, and they wanted to requisition it. The mother would not let go and pulled the keg towards herself, the commissioners snatched it from the mother’s hands and dragged it to them. This duel ended with the fact that the barrel could not stand it, fell apart, and millet, like water, splashed onto the floor covered with straw. It was impossible to pick it up.
After this failure, the commissioners went to the barn where the hay prepared for the cow was stored, and wished that the hay be thrown into the yard, so that they would be convinced that there was no hole under the hay where the wheat was buried. Mother swore that there was no grain in the barn and could not be. Where did we get grain from? But no one believed her. And it is not known how it would all end, but then the eldest son Mikhail arrived in time, who was a communist and had the right to bear arms. Seeing everything that was happening in the yard, he pulled out a revolver and said: “Throw away the hay and dig, but if you don’t find anything, I will shoot you. The commissioners stood still for a while, but they did not want to dig, and with that they left.
And our neighbor Ivan Glushko, who lived opposite, a healthy, strong man, worked as a stonemason at the Kryukovsky quarry, could not stand the hunger and died at the end of spring, when the acacias were in bloom. I remember, shortly before his death, he asked us children to pick acacia flowers for him, because he, with terrible swollen legs, could no longer get them. Uncle Ivan was buried under the house. The relatives did not have the strength to take him to the cemetery. Dmitry Slabo, the husband of my father’s sister, who lived in Sadki, died of starvation. Shortly before his death, his mother met him when he was going to the doctor and asked him what hurts. And he, hitting his chest, said hoarsely: “Nothing hurts me … I’m hungry! I want to eat! “A few days later he was gone.
And in the fall, when six months had passed since the day of his death, relatives gathered at the Sadovskoye cemetery. At the wake, as usual, large fluffy pies were served. And no one could eat them, people only cried and thought that if even a small share of the funeral dinner went to Uncle Dmitry in the spring, he, young and healthy, would be alive, and his three children would not be left orphans.
Our family had two houses located opposite each other across a small street, densely overgrown with grass. At first, our large family, consisting of parents and seven children, lived in the house that my mother and her first husband built on the Shalaev family estate. It was located on a high artificial hill, like the vast majority of houses in Kryukov, in case of a flood. The house consisted of a corridor and three rooms. In the corridor there was a small closet for food storage. From the corridor, a door led into a large kitchen, most of which was occupied by an oven with a high bench beside it. There was also a large eating table and oak stools in the kitchen. From the kitchen you could get into the living room and bedroom. In the bedroom there was a red-colored wooden bed and a high-legged oak cradle. In the living room, against the wall between the windows, there was a table with chiseled figured legs, covered with a white tablecloth. In the eastern corner stood a corner triangular cupboard, on which were placed one on top of the other three icons. The icons were decorated with large towels embroidered with red and black threads with knitted seams in the form of deer.
Under the other wall, opposite the table, there was a mirror with a mirror, on which my older sisters displayed their cosmetics. It was the “Swan’s Down” powder, which was used by two older sisters who worked and earned good money, and “Grandma’s Bouquet”, the price of which was much less. It was intended for middle sisters. A small round box, decorated with small bouquets of flowers, I really liked. At the windows stood in wooden barrels large
th ficus ceiling. It was my duty to wipe their leaves weekly. For the summer, these indoor flowers were taken out to the front garden, where they became even better. Once in the fall, they did not manage to bring them into the room on time, and the early autumn frost killed the flowers, fortunately for me. Along the walls were the so-called “Viennese” chairs. The room was heated with a rough one, which was heated from the bedroom, and copper pipes were installed in the stove, which heated up and thus heated the room. Behind the stove was the front bed.
The painted wooden floor was covered with cherry striped wool runners. Colored lithographs depicting Khrutsky’s still lifes in silver frames hung on the walls. In the center of the ceiling hung a beautiful metal lampshade with a kerosene lamp No. 12 (if memory serves, it was the largest size, the lamp gave a lot of light, but it was lit only on holidays, because it produced a lot of expensive kerosene) in the central inter-window gap hung a deer’s head with branched horns. The windows were hung with curtains.
The house was covered with a metal roof. The estate had a barn with two compartments (one for a cow) and a stone out cellar. My mother’s first husband was a skilled worker, worked on the railroad and could support his family. Unfortunately, he died at a young age, leaving my mother a widow with five children. Already after the end of the First World War and the Civil War, my mother remarried and from this marriage two more children appeared in the family, me and a little brother. Subsequently, the oldest brother married and the parents decided to leave the house to him. And for their own living bought a neighboring house. It was built according to the traditional scheme of huts in two halves. Along the entire front facade there was a wooden glazed veranda planted with lilac bushes, tea roses, and wild grapes. On the side of the street, between the fence and the house, there was a front garden, and in the spring, mother would definitely buy not only seedlings of vegetables from Ber’s nursery, but also brothers and favorite daisies.
The yard was overgrown with grass, and in the warm season the whole family dined in the yard at a low round table. They sat right on the grass. The food was simple, unfussy, but tasty and nutritious. On weekdays, for breakfast, my mother cooked potatoes with cracklings or lard. Washed down with milk or cocoa, which was brewed in a large copper teapot. For lunch, borsch with meat or lean with beans, or cabbage soup with mushrooms was cooked. For the second, millet porridge with milk or meat was prepared. On Sunday, they always boiled dumplings (with potatoes, cabbage, cottage cheese) or fried and baked pies. We always kept a cow, so dairy products were our own. A pig was slaughtered twice a year. The farm had chickens and geese. For the winter, cucumbers, tomatoes were salted in large oak barrels, and cabbage was shredded. For the summer, the barrels were removed from the cellar and filled with water for soaking. The water had to be changed once a week. This was the responsibility of the younger members of the family.
Our family, like the vast majority of Dzygarvians, celebrated both religious and revolutionary holidays. Religiously remembered Christmas and Easter Christmas began with a festive cleaning of the house. Washed towels and curtains. The floor was covered with fresh straw, the table was covered with a new festive white tablecloth. The lampada was polished to a shine. It was made of copper with slots and colored stones, and a glass of rose glass was inserted into the middle, into which oil was poured and oppression was placed. Then the oppression lit up and the icon lamp burned in front of the icons all the Christmas holidays. On Christmas Eve they prepared kutya from wheat and honey, fried fish, baked pies with poppy seeds, viburnum, rice and raisins. In the evening, supper, a jug of knots and pies were tied in a bundle, and they carried it to grandfather Shalaev, who lived opposite. Here they changed dinner for us, took away our pies, and put their own in return, they gave me a large painted gingerbread in the form of a “lady”, and to my brother in the form of a “horse”, as well as long sweets wrapped in a beautiful paper wrapper with tassels at the ends and tiles like chocolate, also wrapped in a bright wrapper, but not tasty. Grandfather and unmarried aunt Dunya (very beautiful and young) also gave us copper money.
The next day at Christmas, older brothers and sisters who were already married came to visit. Aspic, homemade sausages, bacon, potatoes, fried meat, pickles, sauerkraut, sometimes hodgepodge (sauerkraut fried with bacon) were served on the table. For dessert, they put deep bowls with fermented baked milk (it was eaten with spoons) or, also in bowls, compote of dried pears and apricots and baked pies. Mother baked a lot of pies, and in order not to confuse which with what, pies with one filling were put in one wicker basket, on the other in another. At the top of each basket, a broken pie was placed so that the filling could be seen.
Easter cakes are a must. It was a real ritual. Butter dough with raisins was placed in special metal molds and allowed to rise a little more, and only then put into the oven, which was closed with a damper. It was very important to guess the moment of planting the Easter cakes in the oven, so that they would bake and not burn. Spread the aroma of sweet dough
spread not only around the room, but throughout the estate. And since all of Dzygarovka baked on the same day, or rather on the same evening, on a clean Thursday, a thick spirit of butter cookies hung over the whole village. After the Easter was pulled out of the oven and in order to make sure that everything turned out as it should: the dough was baked, the top did not tear, the bottoms did not burn, the most interesting thing began, the decoration of the Easter cakes. There were many of them, and all of different sizes. Each was put on a plate and smeared with protein foam on top. She was knocked down, often, by the middle sister Klava. Egg white by hand had to be knocked down with powdered sugar for a very long time, and at the same time it was never possible to lick this yummy. Because the egg was a humble meal. And in the yard were the last days of Lent, so eating was considered a great sin. But once Klava could not resist. At first, she decided to lick the spoon with which she knocked down the foam only once, then again, then again … When my mother came to take the foam to decorate the Easter cakes, there was no foam. The little sinner was sent to a corner on her knees and they also sprinkled buckwheat on the floor. Fortunately, the father came home from work earlier, who never punished the children and always defended them in front of their mother. Seeing the weeping sinner in the corner on her knees, the father said: “Well, it will be, it will be. Run outside. I’ll whip up the foam myself and help decorate the Easter cakes. Candies were placed on top of the foam candy monpensier, which in Dzygarovka was called “Lampasetki”, and sprinkled with dyed millet, which was sold at the market. After that, Easter was put on the windows. It was very interesting to look into the windows, what kind of Easter they had.
And on the eve of Easter, they always dyed eggs. For some reason, they used pink, yellow, green paints more often. Early in the morning they went to sanctify Easter cakes, and after returning from the church they sat down at the festive table to break the fast. Be sure to put on the table bacon, sausages, onions, Easter cakes, krashenki consecrated in the church. On the first day of Easter, according to custom, they went to visit the parents of the husband, the next day to the parents of the wife. We especially enjoyed visiting grandfather Shalaev. He had 7 sons. All were already married and had children. Therefore, a large group of our peers converged and it was a lot of fun. First, the grandfather endowed all the children with gifts (candy and money) and escorted them out into the street. It was not customary for children to be at the table with adult guests. Grandfather Shalaev had a large estate, a large yard with an old barn, on which storks always nested, and just below the yard there was a current, along which it was so easy to run. In May, grandfather Vasily, probably remembering his Chumat youth, loved to cook for his grandchildren on the current, on a special tripod, “I give porridge”.
And we lay down with wooden spoons around the fire, impatiently waiting for the porridge to cook. And how delicious it seemed to us under the high spring starry sky!
Still remember the celebration of the Trinity. In addition to the usual festive cleaning, green grass was sprinkled on the floor in the room. Most often, these were cornflowers, steppe thyme, which bloomed in huge numbers on Deevsky Mountain behind Kryukov, and Tatar potion or calamus, which grew massively on the banks of the Dzygarovsky reservoirs. Tree branches were hung above the images, above the door, above the windows of the house, and outside. Everything in the house and in the hallway was decorated with greenery. All this hung for three days, and then collected and related to the river, so that in the summer there would be heavy rains. By the way, by the Trinity, all the gardens were to be completed: near the house, and in the garden, and in the steppe. There was a sign on Dzygarovka that it would definitely rain on Trinity.
I remember the celebration of May 1 and November 7 from the revolutionary holidays. In the 1930s life was hard. It was especially difficult with clothes. There was nothing in the stores. And if something was imported, then it was necessary to withstand a huge queue. Therefore, when it was possible to get a new thing, it was a real holiday. And they took care of it to put it on on May 1 or November 7. These days everyone tried to dress as well as possible. I remember how one day my older brother brought me a festive costume from a business trip, from Leningrad. I can’t even describe how impatiently I waited for May 1st to dress up for the demonstration. But, unfortunately, the weather on May 1st was very cold. I had to wear a coat. And I had an old one made of a fabric called “semi-clothing.” And no one will see my wonderful suit. And no matter how my mother forbade it, how she didn’t let me go without a coat, I still insisted on my own and went to the demonstration in one suit. However, I couldn’t even go to school: I froze so much that I barely ran home, returning halfway. And in the house, father and mother fried pies and prepared a festive table for the arrival of guests after the demonstration, the stove was heated hot. And as soon as I climbed onto the stove, I immediately fell asleep and did not hear my brother’s stories about Leningrad, did not see the gifts that the older sisters brought to us, little ones.
On the day of the revolutionary holidays, the main event was a demonstration. Every enterprise, every institution, every university took part in it. They dressed all the best, took their children with them, and carried the little ones on their shoulders “on a horse”. In the morning
and, on the day of the demonstration, they gave three beeps, calling the people to the checkpoint of the wagon factory. Here they formed a column and after the third beep they set off from the western entrance through Pervomaiskaya Street, to Lenin Street (now Republican, Makarenko. Then they went to the quartermaster’s warehouse and under the bridge went out to Karl Liebknecht Street, and from there they went to the Kotlov club, where near the monument to Lenin a tribune was set up. The local leadership spoke on it, saying congratulations on the occasion of the holiday. The columns carried flags, banners, portraits of leaders. Trucks (and there were very few of them then) carried children or staged theatrical scenes. I remember how the Red Army cart was driving with Komsomol members in Budenovkas and girls in red headscarves.
After the demonstration, they went to visit relatives and friends. Our parents loved to welcome guests, so usually our whole extended family would gather at our place after the demonstration. Children were given flags, sweets, small gifts, for example, ribbons in braids. When May Day was warm, the celebration continued at May Day in Deevsky Forest. Here they cooked porridge, danced to the accordion, children played various outdoor games. When we grew up, we went to a demonstration with the school. Our school was located in the building of the former railway public school, where A.S. Makarenko. The school was next to the factory. It was a one-story brick building with classrooms on one side and a large bright corridor. The porter Foma Konstantinovich Kharchenko was standing at the front door. His duties included not only ensuring that unauthorized persons did not enter the school, but also not letting schoolchildren out into the street in cold weather without outerwear, or at least without a hat or scarf. He gave calls to and from lessons. When the students sat down for lessons, the porter went to fetch water. The school did not have running water. In the corridor there was a metal tank with a lid that was closed with a lock, and covered with a snow-white napkin on top. A drinking fountain was arranged at the bottom of the tank.
Pioneer leader Valya worked with the children during breaks. She organized the games “Podolyanochka”, “Kotika and Misha. In the corridor there was a piano on which Valya played. And we sang “Through the valleys and the hills”, “Katyusha” and other songs of that time. There were not enough school premises in Kryukov. Our school worked in three shifts, the classes were overloaded. Just before the war, a new beautiful three-story beauty school was built (modern school No. 29) and we spent the last pre-war year of 1940-1941 there. I was in 9th grade at the time. By the way, at that time they introduced tuition fees in high school. I don’t remember how much they paid. I only remember that before the start of the school year in the 9th grade, my parents discussed this issue and dad said that he would definitely pay for me to continue my education. I studied well.
In the old school, Anatoly Grigoryevich Brazhnik was the director. It was said that at the beginning of the war he was shell-shocked. Sergei Vasilyevich Tkachenko became the director of the new school. He headed the school for many years after the war. Chemistry and biology were taught by Nila Anatolyevna Verbitskaya, a slender, very beautiful, surprisingly strict teacher. We were all incredibly afraid of her and the discipline in the lessons was perfect, you can even hear how a fly flies by. The Ukrainian language was taught by Efrosinya Fedorovna Rovnaya, Elizaveta Lvovna (I don’t remember her last name) the Russian language, and the old, pre-revolutionary teacher Daniil Markovich Myakota, “Dear Danya”, as the schoolchildren called him behind his back, taught the Russian language and literature. He never raised his voice to anyone, and there was no need for it. He knew his subject very well and spoke very interestingly. We listened to him with bated breath, afraid to miss a single word.
Mathematics was taught by Pyotr Vasilievich Moroz, always smart, well-dressed in a black suit and a snow-white shirt. He knew how to interest in his “dry” subject even those who were indifferent to science. After the end of the lesson, the students did not let him go for a long time, asking many questions. He only worked at the old school. Pyotr Vasilyevich did not work out with the new director and he moved to a technical school. When we found out about this, we collected money, bought a painting and went to visit the teacher, hoping to persuade him to stay. He rented an apartment in Dr. Vorontsov’s house on Pervomaiskaya Street. I remember he treated us to tea, talked for a long time, quite like an adult, but he did not agree to return to our school.
In the old school, there were still pre-revolutionary desks in the classrooms with top covers that rose. In the middle of the desk, we hid our briefcases or breakfast boxes. They wrote with ink, which was poured into inkwells. Everyone carried their own inkwell from home in a special bag. And when they moved to a new school, the inkwells were left in the classroom. At the end of the class, the duty officer collected the inkwells in a special wooden box with a high handle and put them in the closet in the classroom until morning. The attendant also made sure that ink was filled in time in the inkwells.
Before the war, elements of military discipline and order were gradually introduced into school life. At the beginning of the lesson, the duty officer commanded: “Class, get up!” And then he reported to the teacher as a commander: “Comrade teacher, the class is ready for the lesson.” In the old school there was no special room for a canteen or buffet. A cupboard with a glass case stood in the corridor against the wall. At recess, they sold delicious hot donuts with marmalade. Hot meals were brought in large aluminum cans from the canteen of the wagon factory. Tables were set up in the corridor, covered with white tablecloths, oak benches were placed nearby. Before the break, the mother of one of our students, Tanya Gridneva, delivered the food. For the first, I remember, they served borscht, soup, pickle, and for the second, I remembered macaroni and cheese, which I loved very much. I don’t remember what they drank dinner with. After dinner, tables and benches were moved to the wall and stacked on top of each other.
There was no school uniform. Went to school in whatever they had. Gifts were given to the best students at the end of the year. I remember one time I got a briefcase, and another time a nice gray checkered dress. On New Year’s Eve, on November 7, schoolchildren received gifts in thick paper bags, where there were sweets, bagels, cookies. There weren’t enough books. They were distributed 1 to 23 students who lived nearby. Later, before the war, they bought textbooks for themselves and there were already enough of them. From the unpleasant memories associated with the school, I remember how in some of the primary classes we all had our hair cut bald like a typewriter. Probably as a preventive measure to spread typhus. But I didn’t understand it then, or maybe they didn’t explain it to us. They bought me new beautiful ribbons, but there was nothing to wear them. And I cried a lot and bitterly. Another medical memory. After the flood, malaria spread very widely in the city. Almost everyone in Dzygarivtsi was ill. Attacks of malaria were intermittent. During the seizure, the person was very shaking. Some of the seizures recurred every other day, some shook daily. And it was very exhausting.
To treat and prevent malaria, everyone was given quinine powder. Terribly bitter. Before the start of the lesson, everyone in the class was forced to drink without exception. In the summer at home, my mother came up with the idea of giving quina in a cherry berry: she pulled out a bone, and poured quina powder in its place. If such a berry is quickly swallowed, then the bitterness will not be so burning. Dzygariv children not only went to school, but also helped adults with the housework. An annoying duty was grazing. At home, they did only written lessons, and taught oral subjects in the pasture: they grazed a cow and read textbooks on history, geography, and literature at the same time.
Children are always children. And in the difficult 30s, we played, like all children, at Panas (one of the players was blindfolded, untwisted several times with the words: “Afanasy, Afanasy, what are you standing on?” And he answers: “On ice” “What are you selling?” in red and white.
And although adults worked hard, they still found time to communicate with children. I remember how they took us, children, out of town in early spring to see how the melt water rustled in the ravines, or along the first snowdrops to the Deevsky forest, these were white bell-shaped flowers with pale purple stripes, they reached for the sun straight from under the snow; or for sleep-grass for the cellar or hazelnuts in the autumn forest in early gilding. Childhood had not yet had time to move away, hopes for a happy youth could be seen ahead. And everything suddenly ended on June 22, 1941. In the morning my parents were at the market, from where they brought me good black shoes with clasps in the form of red Cherries. So in the new shoes that I managed to try on, I heard Molotov’s speech on the radio. He said that the war had begun…
Author: Shalaeva Antonina Fedorovna – pensioner, veteran of labor, participant in the Great Patriotic War, a native of Kryukov.
Materials of the scientific – practical conference “Kremenchuk – 435 years”