Tag #144801 - Interview #97065 (Irina Soboleva-Ginsburg )

She wrote a letter to the highest officials in Riga explaining her situation and asking for an apartment. She received an apartment in the center of Riga. The only discomfort of this apartment was that it faced the wall of the adjoining building and was very dark. It was a communal apartment and there were two other tenants – two Lithuanian women. They didn’t talk with us and I couldn’t understand the reason until I guessed that it was because my mother moved into the room of a woman that had been deported by the Soviet authorities. And these women looked at all Russians, including us, as their enemies.

Andrei and I moved to my mother in Riga. I didn’t have a job in Moscow and we didn’t have a place to live. We decided to move there on a temporary basis. I didn’t want to stay in Riga forever. I never liked Riga. We lived from hand-to-mouth there.