Categories: First childhood memory, Albert Ivashchenko

We didn’t have any household. But my father loved animals. Especially, horses. At one of the “zaimkas”, and “zaimka” in Siberia is the name for an isolated farmstead. There were two or three houses there. So. One friend had a female horse of English breed. A good one. A beautiful one. It gave birth to a foal, but it was weak and ill, and he wanted to get rid of it, didn’t want to leave it. And my father got to know about that. He told him: “Give it to me”. And he gave it to him. Well. He brought him home to the village and led, pulled it into the house and put it on the old blanket in the flat. My mother of course grumbled at him: “So you came here, do you understand…» and so on and so force. But thanks to a good care… he took care of the foal like of a small child. And this foal became a beautiful slender, hm, military, hm, female horse. He called her Bronza. So she grown up and became a beautiful, tall, well-built, but such a obedient, good one. And when our father came out for a walk with her or for example was riding her in the saddle, all village people admired this horse. She had such a nice star on her forehead, well, they complimented my father that he had bred such a nice horse from a weak foal. A female horse. So, well. But the joy was not very long. In 1929 they organized a collective farm there. Well. So they imposed a huge tax upon my father’s horse. It was difficult to pay this tax regularly. And my father had to sell this horse-beauty to a local collective farm. You see. But he got good money for her. And you know, the chair of the collective farm began to ride her. And when he was riding along the street and passing our house my mother was weeping when she saw our horse-beauty, because … (pause) it was poorly that she had to part with this beauty so early.

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Researcher: Наталья Иващенко, кандидат исторических наук, ГрГУ им. Я. Купалы, Ксения Адасик, ГрГУ им. Я. Купалы