What was my great-grandmother?


My great-grandmother is no longer alive, but I remember her slightly faded blue eyes, knotted, worn out hands, and hunched back from work and grief. She was born in 1908, and her entire life was spent against the backdrop of social cataclysms that fell to our country: revolutions and wars, collectivization, famine. Great-grandmother raised three children, she spent her entire life in a collective farm and a personal farm. She was lucky, true, to get an elementary education, to learn how to read and write, whereas many of her fellow villagers did not have such an opportunity.

Of all the blessings of civilization in her house, I remember only the radio. The great-grandmother froze about him with a concentrated look, listening to the “weather report”, because this largely depended on the peasant life. But sometimes, at the radio, something incredible happened: it changed in the face, deep wrinkles were smoothed, cheerful lights lit up in the eyes, lips were stretched in a smile. And I, sometimes without even hearing the sound of the radio, knew: at that moment Lydia Ruslanova’s voice sounded. Russian folk songs in her performance brought the great-grandmother into rapture, fascinated, forced for a few happy moments to forget about cares, to relax with the soul and body.

What did I think, remembered the great-grandmother, listening to singing on the radio, I do not know and now I never know, but I am sure that she subtly felt beauty.


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What was my great-grandmother?