Camel from Kyzylkum

Things were changing for the worse in our family as I grew older. My life changed dramatically when my parents divorced. We moved to Gomel to live in an apartment with three rooms. My mother and I, along with my retired grandmother, my Aunt Inna, her husband, and her little daughter Rimma, all lived in two rooms of the three-room apartment. An older woman named Rosa occupied the third little room of the apartment. A six-meter kitchen and bathroom were shared. Privacy was unknown to all of us. It was noisy in our apartment most of the time, and quite often very noisy because people did not get along with each other. When this was happening, I was going outside and walked on the street until things settled down; I hated this very noisy time. The apartment never felt like home to me. Around this time, my sister Alla was born, and I was sent to boarding school.

In 1956, speaking at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the immediate establishment of a wide system of boarding schools for Soviet children in which “engineers of the soul” could hatch a new elite under ideal laboratory conditions.

In reality, though, the opening of boarding schools in the USSR became an important social project aimed at supporting large and single-parent families that experienced serious financial difficulties. It was a social institution to save children from living on the streets.

The lack of connection with family and the inability to be alone at any point of time in the day, the inability to choose a circle of friends, the cruelty among children, as well as many other factors, all inevitably had a negative impact on the life of a child in a boarding school. I absolutely despised the school with all my heart and soul. Nevertheless, I did very well in classes; I had only excellent and good grades for all subjects. My two favorite teachers, who were in their early thirties, took me under their wings. One teacher was an unofficial photographer for the school and had a little room as his photo lab. He taught me photography and gave me the key to his lab. It was my sanctuary where I could escape from the strange world around me by reading a book or just spending some quiet time. The little room helped me get through the years when I was hungry for the love, warmth, and joy of family.