Communella Bunikovskaya with her parents Gita Bunikovskaya and Michael Bunikovskiy

My parents Gita and Michael Bunikovskiye and I, Communella Bunikovskaya. Kiev, 1953. I graduated from University and got a job assignment to the Krasnodar region. We were photographed before my departure and I took this picture with me. On 9 May 1945, Victory Day, we were in Bolgrad. This was the happiest spring in my life. After the war was over my father demobilized and got a job of director of the town library in Izmail. We moved there to join him. Inna and I studied in a secondary and music school. Our mother was an editor in the 'Pridunayskaya Pravda' newspaper - she also headed a literary club there. My father was free-lance lecturer of the Republican Bureau of lecturers. In 1947 he got a job offer in Kiev and we moved again. We rented an apartment there. My father worked as legal adviser at the Kiev Art Fund. He also lectured on 'Communist Morale', 'What is an intellectual/', about romanticism. My mother couldn't get a job associated with her literary activities. All offices required a diploma and she didn't have one. She had miscellaneous jobs; statistics inspector at the polyclinic, tuberculosis clinic, and she continued writing poems. She wrote poetic greeting to her friends and acquaintances on holidays and on their birthdays. I went to the 10th form of Russian school. Soon my father received a room in the basement of a building. The house annexed to a hill on one side. We descended stairs to the verandah where the front door to our room was and an opposite wall of the house was built in the hill. The room was dark and damp. We had no running water or toilet in the room. In 1948 I finished school with all excellent marks, but one or two good marks in my school certificate. I got a '4' in composition - there was also a comment 'indistinct development of the subject'. This was the result of prejudiced attitude towards me due to my nationality, but I decided not to argue with school commission of teachers. In 1948 I submitted documents to the Faculty of Biology at Kiev University. I was an excellent student in all 5 years of my studies at the University. In 1953 I graduated from University. Resume of my diploma thesis on protection of plants was published in the 'Information Bulletin' of the Botanical garden of the Academy of Sciences. A request for such specialist was sent to the university from Middle Asia, but they replied that didn't have one available. I graduated the university with all excellent grades and wanted to go on with research work, but I became a schoolteacher. I got a job assignment at Krasnodar region and worked at school in the district town of Khadyzhensk [1200 km from Kiev]. It was a small town with about 2000 families living there. There was one school housed in a shabby building. There were 30-40 pupils in one class. There was no cinema, library or any other entertainment in the town. I lived in a one-room apartment for two years. My job assignment was for 3 years, but when my mother fell ill with myocarditis I was released after two years.