Maria Zabozlaeva with her husband Georgi Zabozlaev

I, Maria Zabozlaeva and my husband Georgi Zabozlaev. This photo was taken after the civil ceremony on our wedding day in the yard of our house in Saratov on 20 October 1950.

When a senior pupil I attended a history club in the House of Officers. Boys from a school for boys attended it, too. In  1945, when I was in the 8th form I met my future husband Yuri (Georgi) Zabozlaev. He was born in Saratov in 1929. I finished school in 1947 and entered the Pediatric Faculty at the Medical College. I passed my entrance exams and got all excellent marks. My Jewish identity didn't play any role I finished this college in 1953.

After finishing the 10th form Yuri was sent to a pilot school in Balashov [over 800 km from Moscow] in Saratov region. We got married after I finished my third year in college. This happened in summer 1950, though he had proposed to me few years before. We had a very cheerful wedding. There were relatives on both sides and my co-students.  We had a wedding party and tables set in Michael's house that was bigger than ours. My relatives helped with cooking. We had teyglakh, Gefilte fish and forshmak made. There were also lots of pastries.  We had a civil ceremony in a registry office. We didn't go to synagogue and didn't have a chuppah. It was out of the questions! Actually, my mother-in-law and her relatives were not quite happy about me as Yuri's wife, I don't know why. My husband was really nice and kind, there are no such husbands now. He told me that what they wanted was their business and we should do what we thought was right. My parents liked Yuri. One couldn't help liking him! It happened so that we took a decision to get married on the sour of the moment. Yuri was a 3rd-year student and I wasn’t quite prepared to get married. Since his mother and her sisters didn’t want this marriage to take place my father forwarded a condition that we would only get married if his relatives reached a compromise about me. Now I understand why his mother didn’t want us to get married. They were so poor and she hoped that he would support her and sisters after he finished his school. Or, perhaps, she thought we were too young to marry.
We enjoyed the wedding party. Yuri gave me brown amber necklace. Our guests had fun and danced a lot. They also danced 'seven forty'.

My husband and I lived separately for many years. I was finishing my studies in Saratov and he studied in Balashov. He finished his military school with honors and worked there as pilot-instructor for few years. Upon graduation from Medical College I worked as a doctor in a children's hospital, nursery school and was a district doctor. We rented an apartment in the outskirts of Balashov. In 1952 our daughter Sophia was born.

Yuri and I kept moving from one place to another where Yuri's military service required. From Balashov we moved to Cheliabinsk [about 1600 km from Moscow]. My husband finished his service in Feodorovka village Kustanai region [over 1700 km from Moscow] in Kazakhstan where our son was born in 1957. I named him Fyodor after father my husband. I had a happy life with my husband. We liked going to the cinema, theaters and concerts in the Philharmonic. We had a car and went to Mineralnyie Vody in the Caucasus on vacation.  In 1968 we traveled to the Baltic Republics and Leningrad.  In 1977 we made a tour of Western Ukraine and Moldova. We visited Kishinev, Yassy, Morshansk and Lvov. We had few friends and celebrated Soviet and family holidays with them. We had parties and sang Soviet songs and Russian folk songs. We didn't sing any Jewish songs.