Having lived through Tsarist times to the Second World War, from the Soviet years to today’s Russia, Yevgenia Gracheva, who recently celebrated her 102nd birthday, is still dreaming of a better future. A resident of the village of Azovo, an hour outside of Omsk, Yevgenia has a quick mind and a clear head (although she complains her hearing is not what it was). She told me the story of her life.
The good life
‘I’m a Siberian born and bred, although we were always known as ‘Donfolk’ because my parents had emigrated from the Don region during Stolypin’s land reforms [before the First World War]. Peasants would be given land if they decided to settle here, so off they went, in freight wagons, along the new Trans-Siberian Railway. We ended up in a village called Gorkaya [‘Bitter’] – it was a good name for it – and I was born there, one of seven. My parents built themselves an earth hut. Richer people bought or built log cabins. But the Tsar also gave us money to help us settle and we started a small farm. We had ten cows, and horses as well – we might not have been Cossacks, but we were from the Don, after all!’
‘We all helped out, even when we were small. And we soon had a good life there – milk, meat, butter, bread. Dad made our shoes, Mum busied herself preparing a trousseau for each of us four girls. We spun and we wove, and on weekdays we wore homespun clothes. It was a good thing Mum was a stout woman – she would make four skirts for us out of one of her old dresses. We had good clothes for Sundays, of course, and always went to church. But our father wanted to give the horses a rest so we would have to walk the 30km there and back – I remember doing it when I was just three.
