Anna Gandelsman, Boris Boguslavskiy and his ex-girlfriend

This is a picture of my mother Anna Gandelsman (on the left), my father Boris Boguslavskiy and his ex-girlfriend, whom he dated with before he met my mother in Kharkov in 1926. He broke up with her but they were on good terms for many years to come. In 1925 my father became a member of the Bolshevik party. My father was an intelligent man. He read a lot, knew the [then] modern poets Mayakovsky, Yesenin and Blok and he wrote poems himself. Women liked him and he had the reputation of being a 'playboy' before he met my mother in 1925 and fell in love. On a photograph of my mother, father and his ex-girlfriend he wrote the words addressed to my mother, 'I used to think that sentimentality was just spree, but here - a little spring has broken in my chest'. My parents got married in 1926 never to part again. My mother went to live with her cousins. There were four sisters, their last name was Tsyfrinovich and my mother was raised by them after her father died. They were her mother's cousins. My mother grew up a modern emancipated young lady under their influence. She couldn't even speak Yiddish and when my father introduced her to his parents they couldn't communicate because they didn't speak Russian. My mother finished grammar school in St. Petersburg and after the Revolution she and her aunts moved to Kharkov. In Kharkov my mother entered a course in law. She never worked as a lawyer but she was a very educated woman. In 1925 my mother met my father and they got married in April 1926. They had a civil ceremony, which was common at that time. They didn't have a Jewish wedding although my grandfather Zakhar insisted that they did. They rented an apartment at the beginning until my father, who held an important position at the Ukrteztile trust, received an apartment.