Once, my mom told me that an officer lived with them. And they lived in a cellar. The officer was kind; he gave chocolate, she said, and gave medicine. Mom told such a story: they worked at the train station, loading and unloading train cars. And my mom’s older brother, [born] in [19]22, had been taken to Germany. He was a turner, he was already working there; he wrote [letters], but I don’t remember the city. Mom was loading, and she heard the officers talking. And she heard [the name of] the city [where her brother was]. <...> And she approached and asked him, “Can you (since he [the officer] was going there) take a little package?” He agreed. Mom ran home, Grandma baked matorzhenyky — flatbreads — and sent some linens, too. And when my uncle returned, he was liberated, he came home and told the story. He worked at some factory as a turner, and they lived in barracks, under guard. He said that one day, he came back from work, they had supper, and since there were fellow villagers there, a guard came in and said, “Hryhoriy Karpovych, the officer is waiting for you at the main entrance.” He got scared and started saying goodbye to everyone. He was thinking: maybe someone betrayed him or he said something, maybe they were taking him to be shot, probably. He said goodbye to everyone and left. He approaches the gate, and the officer calls him over, “Here’s a package from your homeland.” And he came back to the barrack and shared those flatbreads with everyone. They smelled those flatbreads from home.
I remember, once I worked driving an electric cart. I remember hauling some kind of pallets loaded behind me. And all day, a senior foreman from the steelmaking shop, the SPTs, rode along with me. I said, “Why are you riding with me? What, I can’t deliver it by myself?” I took those small billets, about half a meter long, quite thick. “What, I can’t deliver them myself?” “No. If you knew what you’re carrying right now, if you took it for yourself, you’d be rich.” Oh, I thought, what could it be? So he [followed] me the whole shift <…>. It turns out, later they said <…> that it was something for space rockets, something that was being produced. A special furnace, pouring special metal.
In ‘67, a friend of ours went off to Kamchatka. How to leave home? They wouldn’t just let you go. You needed money, and they wouldn’t give it. So my friend, my neighbor, and I came up with a plan: that we’d write [a letter]… And that friend who left wrote to us, “Girls, you can’t just get in here.” It was a closed city, with passes [required]. <...> You had to arrange a permit at the passport office. And she wrote, “Go ahead, write a letter asking for an assignment from Kamchatka.” So we wrote there, to a pedagogical institute. And in ten days, we got a response: “Dear young ladies, you have the exact same institute in Sloviansk. Why are you coming here? Our region is harsh.” We wrote, “Well, we dream of working in a harsh region.” We couldn’t write that we just wanted to leave home. And they sent us an invitation. And off we went. The passport office was here on Yuzhna Street, where the water utility is now. We got our passes. Otherwise, they wouldn’t sell you tickets or anything! We came and got train tickets by [showing] the pass. <…> We left Kramatorsk by train, and from Moscow by train, seven days on the road. In general, I love traveling, I enjoy it. And imagine, the nine-hour time difference changes as you go. Sometimes it was a steam locomotive, sometimes a diesel locomotive — switching here and there. Earlier, there was the Baikal-Amur Mainline… But back then it wasn’t built yet; I was already on Kamchatka when they started building it. And you go through Siberia. Interesting!
What kind of dream can a grandma at 80 have? My dream is that I could just go out, lie down, go back into the house without worrying whether I’ll lie down, get up, or not get up. And I pray, I cross myself, and everything… Oh, until you fall asleep — once you fall asleep, it seems okay. Boom — somewhere out there. It echoes loudly where we are. Maybe in Chasiv Yar, or Bakhmut — I don’t know. We sit on the bench outside, “Oh, did you hear that boom?” — “I sure did.” <…> I just don’t want any of this anymore. I want peace, to live out our days calmly. I only feel sorry for the grandchildren. I feel sorry for the grandchildren, the children who have nothing to do with it. All children, all children of the entire country.
When my cousin arrived to us from Hungary — he had served in Hungary — and he came here with his family to his parents’ place in Ivanivka, they had some argument. And my mom [took] them in, even though we just had one room, and they had a daughter. His wife played the accordion. When I heard it, I said, “Oh, Mom, I will play it! I will play it!” So she sold her two dresses — back then it was crepe-georgette [fabric]. And right here, where we have the Lenin Street, it’s not Lenin now, it’s Druzhby Street, there was a store there, it’s still there today, where they sold cultural goods. Mom sold those dresses, went and bought me that bayan [a type of accordion], so I could learn to play. “Ukraine” was written on it. <…> To get into a music school back then — it was difficult. Then they opened a branch over on Druzhby, near that store, near our Pioneer House in a basement room. They opened a music school branch there. And so I… Only you had to have your own bayan. Mom sewed a backpack-like [case] for me, and I carried it. I live right where the Industriya hotel is, that’s all battered; we still live in that yard. So I’d put it on my shoulder and carry it along Mashynobudivnykiv Boulevard, there’s a small park. I’d go like that, feeling shy, hoping no one would see me with my bayan. But I went, yes, and I finished five grades in bayan class. After that, the teacher came to see Mom, “Send her to Artemivsk [Bakhmut],” that’s [the music] college. But I didn’t want to, that’s it. Oh, did Mom scold me!
Nina Kosygina is a pensioner from Kramatorsk. She was born on May 27, 1945, in Kramatorsk. She grew up during the postwar devastation, when even the most basic necessities — food and clothing — were in short supply. Thanks to her uncle, who paid for her music school lessons, she learned to play the bayan. Despite her musical abilities, she became a laborer. She studied at a workers’ evening school and later worked as a mail carrier and messenger at the LiP foundry and forging plant in Kramatorsk. In 1967, she went to the Russian Far East, dreaming of a new, independent life. There she worked at the Freza ship repair plant and got married. In 1977, due to health problems, she returned with her family to Kramatorsk and continued working at the foundry and forging plant. So absorbed in work and family responsibilities, she barely noticed the end of the Soviet era. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, she retired. Even though her apartment was damaged by shelling in 2014, during the occupation of Kramatorsk by “DPR” militants, and again after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Nina Kosygina remains at home and dreams of a peaceful old age.
