Anna Filippovna Raichel (Reichel?) is already sixty-eight years old. In spite of her advanced age she kept many episodes of her past in mind. Stalin’s repressions play a very specific roll in her life, repressions which, at first, affected Anna Filippovna’s husband – and later impacted on her, as well.
Eight years in prison camps, eight years in internal exile. She was rehabilitated in 1956. She lived in Riga all on her own. The only relative who was left at that time was her nephew. And it was just he who finally convinced Anna Filippovna to remove to Krasnoyarsk. And in the beginning everything was perfectly fine – the new apartment, and her nephew atclose quarters. Even when he, after having finished the Krasnoyarsk Medical Institute, received the instruction to go to Chernogorsk, where they had assigned him a job, this new situation did not cause any particular concern. He had always been very helpful to his aunt, but she also disposed of sufficient strength and energy to go to the shop and buy foodstuffs.
Now Anna Filippovna is hardly able to move forward; apart from this, she is almost deaf-blind. Her advanced age and everything she had to go through in her life have now become fairly noticeable. Intrinsically all who know her should support her in these difficult minutes. However, after her nephew had been assigned his new flat, he remained silent. Shortly after, Anna Filippovna was visited with another adversity yet. It originated from one of the neighbours of the Fyrkovs’ communal flat . At first, everybody got around those who visited the old woman. And then they created a scandal with lots of scurrile revilements and constant threat. For all their efforts were focused on only one thing: to be assigned the few square meters of living space occupied by the old woman who had fallen in disgrace.
When I met with Anna Filippovna, she already lived with the Kadach family, two floors above her flat (these were the people who asked the editorial staff to share in A.F.Reichel’sfate). I asked Anna Filippovna,why she had left her flat.
- I am afraid of my neighbours,- she answers.- Hence, I decided to leave. I will soon remove to a home for old people.
- Why did they offend you?
- I’m blessed if I know.They say that I am a trouble-maker in their life, that I produce too much garbage. But my room always looked spotlessly clean. Lately the neighbours behaved with more respect and kindness – this happened after I had given my consent to remove to a home for old people. And then they did all the necessary paperwork very quickly. The neighbour even started to send her grandson with cookies. But I am not going to accept anything from her. I tell that I have everything I need …
- Some neighbours even eye our family,- Viktor Petrovich Kadach, the occupant of the flat, intervenes.- They say that we put this old woman up in order to become benecifiaries of her heritage – a few thousand rubles.
- How should I have come by such an amount of money? – splutters wonderingly.- After my rehabilitation I received 820 rubel. I used the money to buy myself a little house …
The Kadach family was very helpful to Anna Filippovna at that time, although she was then still fit and doing well; and now they do not leave her in the lurch, either. Yevgenia Mikhailovna Kadach addressed herself to the editorial staff, as she had no idea where else she could “knock at someone’s door”. And she just did not want to sit about, twiddling her thumbs and show indifference towards the distress and unhappiness of this old woman – she was not able to act this way. We talked about many things with the members of this family. About the lack of lovingless, benevolence, heartiness, sincerity, the loneliness of old people, many of which live beyond “poverty level”. On one of the sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR it was decided to augment the retirement pays of poor people already as of the 1 October; however, the enormous rise of living expenses had better been put in perspective first. And where is the guarantee that even upon availability of a “good” pension, weak and invalid old people are protected from unjustified demands and rudeness of other people and –from loneliness.
Anna Filippovna now lives in an old people’s home. A typical story of our presence…
Y. Tokmantsev,
Student of the Faculty of Journalism, Sverdlovsk State University
City of Krasnoyarsk
“Krasnoyarsk Labourer”, 09.08.1989