Juliana Sharik with her husband Yuri Sharik

These are my husband Yuri Sharik and I. The picture was taken in Tallinn in 1962.

I had known my husband, Yuri Sharik, since school. We had been friends for eight years before getting married. We went to neighboring schools. It was the time when there were no co-educational institutions. We went to each others’ parties, excursions. We also were living close to one another. We had been friends since our school days and then we understood that we were in love with each other.

Yuri finished school. He was very good at drawing. He really had an artistic talent. After the war, Yuri went to Leningrad to enter the Academy of Arts. His pieces were admitted by the commission. He took one or two exams. Then it turned out that there was a creative competition in the program. Yuri was not ready for it and he did not pass. He came back to Tallinn with the firm intention to work at a plant for a year, get ready for exams and take another attempt to enter the academy the next year.

That year his mother died. His father told Yuri not to enter an institution with full board. He could not think of any institutes as his father was not going to provide for him. Yuri entered military school, but dropped out when he was a freshman. He went to the army, completed his mandatory term and came back to Tallinn. Upon his return he went to police school. I recall, once he asked me out, and then suggested that we should meet in some thinly populated place. I asked him why. He said that he was wearing a cop uniform and he thought that I would not be pleased to be seen with a cop. I told him not to change the place. If he decided to put the uniform on, I said that I would not be ashamed of him. That evening Yuri said that his father refused helping him and forbade his entering an institute. That was the reason for his being in police school.

We got married in 1961. We moved to Yuri’s place after the wedding. His mother died young, when she was only 46. His elder sister was married and lived separately. I became ‘a stepmother’ for his younger sister. My father-in-law treated me pretty well. I do not know what was in his heart, but it looked like he had a good attitude towards me. We lived in a communal apartment – having one faucet and two toilets for eight apartments. We cleaned the toilet by turns. It was okay, we coped.