I remember [the initiation] into the Pioneers. I don't remember [the initiation] into Octobrists, but I remember that I was very ill. I had strep throat. And the selection [process] back then... Not everyone was accepted as a pioneer right away. They chose five from the class, the best ones, those were the first to be chosen. All the kids wanted to be the first ones for some reason. I was one of those five kids, but I got seriously ill. And I wanted it so bad! And I had a terrible case of strep throat, with a fever — still, I was accepted into these pioneers. The next day, I was sick again.
Why did he [the husband] leave this factory? Because they didn't pay wages at all for more than three years. — And how did you survive? — Mainly, my parents were already receiving a pension. The factory paid something in kind by barter, some foodstuffs were distributed. We survived by chance. But when we couldn't buy shoes for our child to go to school, it was the last straw, we quit our jobs and just started doing some entrepreneurial activity. — The two of you together? — Him first. I continued to work at the factory for a while, and then I just walked out of there. — Wasn't it scary to start a business at that time? — It was already so hopeless that I was not afraid of anything anymore. Everything had already happened. He [the husband] was still a leading designer, that is, he already had his own machine in production. So he was not the least important person at the factory. And then, when everyone came to the market to see the leading designer peddling, looking from the outside, it was embarrassing.
Checkpoints. The checkpoints were disgusting. When we went to Oskol, there we... I went to Kharkiv, I took a marshrutka. And people [passengers] who hadn't been to Kramatorsk, Sloviansk — and there were checkpoints like that there too — and everyone was so surprised they took out their phones, they took pictures, they were so interested, and I just drove and cried, because I was disgusted. We had lived in it. And it was just so incomparable. To this day, I still remember, and I have this black, dirty, sticky feeling.
It was very tough. It was the kind of train we accidentally... As usual, everything was by chance. We were lucky with the planes, lucky with the trains, lucky with the carriers. Actually, it was the only train that [went in that direction] - it went to Lyman with all the lights off. And I wondered about how we were going to reach Kramatorsk. Unclear. And it was redirected to Kramatorsk. We arrived in Kramatorsk at three o'clock in the morning. They opened the station for us. There were ten of us from the whole train. We spent the night there until morning. And there were people from Volnovakha who lost everything [to the Russian invaders]. They had nothing. They even took away the belongings that they had packed. And they are looking at some jackets, pulling them out. I think to myself, why did they take these things? They are absolutely useless. And this was all they had at that moment. It was two women and one man. I will never forget their faces.
Olena Bokova is a factory worker and entrepreneur. She was born on February 11, 1967, in Sloviansk, Donetsk region. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, but chose to study lifting and transport machines at the Kramatorsk Industrial Institute. In the last years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, she got married, gave birth to her first son, and began her career at the Kramatorsk Heavy Duty Machine Tool Building Plant. After her second maternity leave, she did not return to the factory, which had not been paying salaries for several years. Due to the economic crisis of the transitional 1990s, she followed her husband, a leading engineering designer who went into commerce, and started working on the market. Later, the couple opened their own store. She stayed at home during the occupation of Kramatorsk by the “DPR” terrorists. Before the Russian full-scale invasion, she decided to leave the business and move to her country house in the Kharkiv region. However, she soon had to abandon her farm and flee from the invaders, making Olena Bokova an internally displaced person. She began volunteering at the Territory of Success humanitarian center while living in Kropyvnytskyi. After 9 months, despite the danger, she returned to her native frontline city. Here she started a new business and dreams of opening her own dog clothing store after Ukraine’s victory.
