Tag #112491 - Interview #92722 (Anna Gliena)

We stayed in Pavlodar until autumn 1942, until we received an order from Moscow about moving to Novokuznetsk [called Stalinsk at the time]. We stayed there about two years. Novokuznetsk is a big industrial town in the south of Siberia, on the Tom River in 4500 km from Kiev. It was built during the Soviet regime. Many people evacuated to this town. They worked at military enterprises ‘forging the victory’, as they said. There was order and discipline in the town. We were accommodated in the hostel of the town theater. Director of the theater offered me a position of chief administrator of the theater. He arranged a meeting with all employees of the theater and introduced me to them. This was a great promotion. We continued going on tours and I was responsible for making accommodations for actors. We stayed in various apartments. There was another actor living with us and my mother, my brother and I shared one room. The owner of this apartment lodged in the kitchen. The temperatures dropped down to minus 60° and the owner took her cow into the kitchen since it was freezing in the cowshed. The cow, of course, felt free with her needs in the kitchen.

All employees at the theater supported each other. Our theater shared the building with a theater from Zaporozhye, but our theater was more popular since we had wonderful performances. My brother played the leading roles in them.