This is me with my husband Grigoriy Chanin. This photo was taken in Kishinev, in the early 1970s. We were taking a walk in town on a warm day in spring and got photographed by the Arch of Victory on Lenin Avenue. The Cathedral Park can be seen behind the Arch.
In 1958 I married Grigoriy Chanin. Grigoriy was five years older than me, he was born in Kishinev in 1918. He was born in Kishinev in 1918. Along with other Soviet officers who knew Romanian, Grigoriy was sent to the Romanian units formed in the USSR at the end of the war to fight against Fascist Germany. They were instructors to Romanian officers. He fought till the end of the war. When victory came, he was in Hungary. After the war he served in the registry office in Vadul lui-Voda district and demobilized from there. Grigoriy started work and entered the evening department of Kishinev Polytechnic College, the Faculty of Economics. When we got married, Grigoriy was finishing the college. I was helping him, went to exams to write notes for him. I also helped him to write his diploma thesis.
We had many friends: my husband's comrades and my colleagues. We often got together. We had friends of many nationalities. When Jews began to emigrate, my husband was thinking about it. It was my fault that we stayed, or I don't know whether it was a fault at all. I was against moving away. I like this land. When my husband and I had discussions of this kind, I used to walk the streets of Kishinev gazing at each tree: can it be that I will never see it again? How can I leave the graves of my parents? I was born here and I have grown up here, and every little thing here is dear to me.
I worked hard and often had to go on business to district towns. My husband and I tried to rest well on vacations. We went to health centers. We’ve been in Kislovodsk a few times. Once, during our trip to Kislovodsk we traveled to Armavir, my husband wanted to find the hospital where he stayed during the war, but unfortunately, we failed to find the former employees of the hospital in Armavir. Like a drunkard loving to have a drink, I loved Kislovodsk.
In 1979, when I turned 55, I began to receive a personal pension of the Republican significance. As a pensioner, I continued working in an ordinary job for a few years. My husband was very independent and proud and often changed jobs for this reason, though he was a very good economist, so he got a smaller pension than I had.
