We can often hear that there is no harder labor than the one that has to be done by farmers. And that is completely true. Only now agricultural workshops have started using suitable machines (even though they have not yet appeared everywhere and, for the time being, just in small quantities, which dispose about an automatic steering, well-cushioned seats, air-tight cabs, insulation against noise, air-conditioning and computers. And the combine drivers work in the fields in clean shirts.
However, probably nobody was worried about how much dust former tractor and combine drivers had to inhale – and about those drivers, who had been working on such vehicles of domestic production , where they were missing even the slightest comfort. Sitting on a tractor made of iron, the hands imperishably smeared with oil and a head drumming and shaking from all those vibrating, cracking and clacking noises. And imagine, who many times during a shift the driver had to jump down from the operator’s cab, in order to carefully check the quality of his work and the state of his tractor or combine. Nowadays, you can see all this right in front of you – on the computer monitor.
Hard physical labor is of no use to human health. It is not without good reason that, in the countryside, many tractor and combine drivers do not live to see their pension.
The hamlet of Shilinka numbers 475 inhabitants. There are just 30 men older than 60 years, but more than twice as many women in the same age. Well, this is the general tendency – the lifetime of men is considerably lower than the lifetime of women. When I asked for the possibility to make me acquainted with the long-time residents of the village, it turned out that most of them were women. Finally, however, we discovered three men standing at the little sales booth amidst dozens of veteran women. We approached them in order to get to know them.
Andrei Alexandrovich Stengauer (Steinhauer?) – rightmost on the photo. He looks back to a work life of 81 years! No, esteemed reader, this is no literal mistake at all. According previous law years, which a person had been forced to spend in special resettlement, counted twice or even three times. Andrej Alexandrovich and his parents were deported to Siberia in 1941 and released only in 1956. In 1994 all members of the family were rehabilitated and the years in exile were credited to their working lifetime accordingly.
But even without consideration of all these years Stengauer had been working for 48 years! He is bearing the title of a „Veteran of labor“. He worked as a tractor and combine driver – namely on heavy tractors with crawler tracks. He started his professional life in the third section of the „Tayozhniy“ sovkhoz. More than 30 years of his life he sacrificed to the “Minderlinskoe” rural educational sovkhoz.
Anatolij Mikhailovich Dudorov (in the middle of the photo). He can look back at a professional life of 48 years, as well(!). He started his working life as a greaser in some forest enterprise in the Ural Mountains. From1956 till 1959 he served in the army. Afterwards he removed with his family to Shilinka. Anatoliy Mikhailovich spent over 30 years behind the wheel of a truck. Many years he was working as an instructor for the Shilinka boarding school and continued his job there, even after he had already gone into official retirement. He has the title of a veteran of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Viktor Mikhailovich Postolatiy is younger than his comrades – he will become 68 in October, but more than 40 man-years are weighing on his shoulders, too. He served in the army in Germany. He did not chose a soft job for himself – he was working as a driver of motor vehicles, tractors and combines for many years. Five years before going on pension, he was working on the construction sector.
Now all three of them are in well-deserved retirement, although they cannot just sit about inactively; they are dealing with their house and little farm. They never lost courage. It looks as if the good genes of their parents were passed on to them.
Text and photo: Olga Vavilenko
„Country Life“ (Sukhobuzimskoe), 29th August 2008