As it was already emphasized in the first material, there is no science here, but only personal impressions and judgments at the everyday level. As a rule, the majority of commentators on VO also refer to their personal experience, and not to articles in the journal Voprosy Sociologii. Everyone has their own experience, and this is why it is, however, valuable, even if there are usually no deep generalizations in it.
While studying at school, I somehow never thought about the preferences given to me from birth, although I realized that I have a lot of things that others do not have. But I felt the influence of the events taking place in society very well. For example, under Khrushchev there was a very "good bread", from the crumb of which you could sculpt anything you like, like from plasticine, and then "this" was petrified.
Now the 6th specialized school with the study of a number of subjects in English has turned into a language gymnasium with an electronic scoreboard above the entrance: "Through hardships to the stars!"
Having looked at the huts of my street friends, I began to appreciate my home more. And especially the bookcase. And what was not there, and there were also books in the couch, on the grandfather's shelf, in the barn and in the closet. There were magazines "Niva" in 1899 and further - "back and forth." "Science and Technology" of 1929 and 1937, "Ogonyok" of the 50s and much more. Since 1962 I was discharged "Young Technician" and "Young Naturalist", and since 1968 - "Technique of Youth" and "Model Designer". By the way, since the same 1968, sharp social changes took place in our streets, which adults called the "Kosygin reform." And, although it began earlier, I personally saw the result this year. All families of those who worked at our plant, including the family of two of my comrades, received new apartments in high-rise buildings, and their parents received a salary of 300 rubles. I came to visit them and was stunned: lacquered chipboard furniture (in those years, the dream and the norm of being of our citizens!), A new TV and all that jazz. On this, in fact, our friendship ended. We had nowhere to play, and what - after all, we were already big. It was a long way to go to each other. Therefore, all summer I now devoted … to reading. When the "wardrobe was over" - I turned to my relatives and began to re-read their wardrobes. All Jules Verne, Dumas, Sabatini, Haggard, Main Reid, Dickens, Zola's novels "Germinal" and "Ladies' Happiness" (there was about "this"), of course, Maupassant, Balzac, Alexander Belyaev, Ivan Efremov, Anatoly Dneprov, Sheckley, Lemm, Wells, Strugatsky, Vladimir Savchenko, Sergei Snegov - it’s probably easier to write, which I didn’t read then. But what didn’t please me? For some reason, there were very few good books in the free sale. Especially books from the Adventure Library series, with their distinctive ornate gold designs on the spine and on the cover. They had to be "taken out" or borrowed from the library.
Next to this school of ours in Soviet times there was a technical school or college named after I. Ternovsky. I still remember what types of young men and women stood at the entrance. Now there is a business incubator here.
And it all started with the books of this very library. Rather, from the fact that when I was still in the 9th grade, my mom finally got married a second time and, although she chose for a long time, she did. A retired colonel of the GRU and the Polish Army, with a bunch of orders (and what!), A luxurious apartment, furnishings, and the same assistant professor as she is, only without a degree. By the way, this is how it turned out that, although my grandfather's surname is Taratynov, my mother's first marriage is Shevchenko (every fool at school, and even at the institute, also strove to ask me: "and you are not a relative of Taras Grigorievich" - ugh!), but I carry the name of my adoptive father. And I chose her, by the way, my future wife. “What do you like to be called more,” I told her before the wedding - Elena Shevchenko or Elena Shpakovskaya? “Elena Shpakovskaya is somehow more sonorous,” she said. Well, what a woman wants is God wants! So we organized a surname for ourselves. You know, I did not expect that anti-Semitism would flourish in such a magnificent color in the country of proletarian internationalism.
The same building from the side of the entrance. Deserted because it was filmed on Saturday evening. Usually there are a lot of cars here. But some workaholics, as you can see, are still working! Cars are waiting for them!
But then I had to go to college, and they took my mother and father, and left to rest in the south, “so that no one would say that I went to ask for you and you did it by pull!”, And after that they completely changed their place of residence. And I ended up alone in an old wooden house with my grandmother and grandfather in my arms, whom I had to constantly look after, call ambulances for them, go to the hospital with parcels and … much more to do. Actually, I got used to it for a long time, because my mom, arranging her career and personal life, in my opinion was simply absent all the years of my studies at school. That six months in advanced training courses in Minsk, then six months in Leningrad, then three years in graduate school in Moscow, and again courses in Rostov-on-Don, then Riga, then … in general, so I learned how to cook and manage. And when I entered the institute, I saw how many … girls around me! Specifically for 50 students - 25 girls, both from the city and from the village. Of course, many of them were just crocodiles in a skirt, no skin, no faces, no intelligence, no fantasy. But one of them - somehow I found out right away, had the whole library of adventures, including those books that I hadn’t read yet !!!
Remains of the plant management of the plant. Frunze. Once upon a time, life was raging here, chandeliers were shining, carpets were laid on the stairs. And now there is not even a monument at the entrance. From time to time fell into disrepair and dismantled. But under these blue Christmas trees, babies in strollers sleep very well, and dogs play on the lawns to the left and right.
I began to walk her home, visited her and found out that her dad was the head of the workshop at our … plant, and from here she had a large apartment, a summer house, a car, and my longed-for library of adventures. She studied - it could not be worse (and it is not clear how she entered the institute at the same time?), But still somehow she studied. Naturally, I didn’t even have “nothing like that” in my thoughts, but when the young blood boiled, I found myself among the crocodiles both a clever girl and a beauty, and in order not to delay, I married her immediately after the second year, and, By the way, I do not regret it at all - we have been living in perfect harmony for 43 years.
But her family was of a "lower rank" - her father was a simple engineer at a research institute, not a boss, her mother was a primary school teacher. And my wife told me how hard she got into our university. She studied well, with grades, but in a regular school. Therefore, I didn’t pass the language exam very well, but I passed the points. However, they took not her, but another girl - the daughter of the director of the plant! They said, however, that if you work at the plant, we will take on one-year courses, and from them there is a direct road to the university! I went to a factory, or rather to a research institute, worked as a laboratory assistant, came to courses, and they told her - “they are only for workers,” and a laboratory assistant is an engineering technician! It's good that her father was able to identify her as a winder-winder by paperwork, and thus she found herself in a course for workers. Well, after a year of study, the social elevator took her to the first year of our institute, where we met by the will of Providence. Destiny, huh? After all, there were so many obstacles on the way to that, but … all of them, as it turned out, led to one main goal!
Modern view of the checkpoint of the plant. Frunze, where 40,000 people worked in my childhood. The plant was called a bicycle plant, but we joked that if it produced only bicycles, the entire population of the USSR would ride only on Penza bicycles. And all of Vietnam in addition …
And as for the one with the library of adventures, it was like this: after graduating from our university, having received the specialty “teacher of history and English”, she did not go to teach in the village. We went with a small child, and then laughed for a long time: “Lenin and Krupskaya went against the tsar and they were exiled to the village! And we received diplomas of higher education and also there, and even under the threat of criminal prosecution in case of failure to appear at the place of distribution. We have a pretty "free higher education".
But this is us, and she ended up as a teacher in one city school, where she also worked for exactly three years and ruined relations with everyone there. And then dad arranged for her … as an engineer at his plant! Well, what kind of history teacher and English language teacher to hell is an engineer? But … he arranged it. And she began to work. And she worked until he died, after which she was immediately fired.
Now there are only horror films to make. It's good that at least the doors were boarded up with plywood!
By this time, I had already completed my postgraduate studies, worked at the department of PR and advertising, and, meeting her on the street, and learning about the plight, offered to work with us as a head office. Not God knows what the salary is, but … a lot of free time, comfortable working conditions, a good team. What else does a woman with children and who is married need?
She began to work. And … declare that "it's bad here." That she also has a higher education (!!!), and all these associate professors look at you as if you were nobody. I tell her honestly: "and you are nobody compared to them." Offended! And then I had to offer her to quit, because the person filled up the job thoroughly and even made the wrong schedule.
The D-3 howitzer testifies to the contribution of the workers of this enterprise to the victory in the Second World War.
Later? Then there were courses for elevators, and the work of elevators. But after someone got stuck in her elevator, she was fired from this job. Now she is retired and works as a cleaner, which once again proves that God sees everything and “gives out earrings to all the sisters”. Someone, according to his will, the social elevator takes some time upstairs, but if in fact you are nobody, then, despite the former dad of the head of the shop, it sends you down. That is, while dad was alive, everything was fine, dad was gone and "the collective farm was over" - everything immediately became bad. Of course, I feel sorry for the person, but how can you help him? No way!
The whole area around the plant … a continuous "collapse zone". It is interesting that on the territory of the plant itself there is a water tower (circled in red in the photo). What's interesting? And the fact that exactly the same tower in the city of Zelenogradsk in the Kaliningrad region was turned, firstly, into a hotel - the very top, and secondly, the entire spiral staircase leading upward - into the original "Museum of Cats". I wonder when the plant will finally turn into ruins, what will be built in its place and what will this tower turn into? I personally propose to arrange a chic "Amusement Park" here, although, of course, this project is not cheap.
And here it is just right to say how right was none other than Karl Marx, when in his essay "Reflections of a Young Man in Choosing a Profession" (1835), he wrote exceptionally well about how exactly this should be done, and what help a person here and circumstances interfere. So, probably, it is precisely this composition of his that should be given to read not only to young men, but also to girls today. It has not lost its relevance! *
* K. Marx and F. Engels. From early works. M., 1956.-- S. 1 - 5.
