Albert Tsessarskiy

This is me on my 50th birthday. Moscow, the year of  1970.

In 1947 I went to work for the system of Moscow health care. I did not want to work in the office or in the operating room. The country was being swiftly restored and I did not want to be kept aside. I began to work in the field of the hygiene of the labor and occupational diseases. The industry was being restored and such occupational diseases as radiation sickness and all kinds of toxicosis were very serious. The lethal rate was very high and the labor conditions were terrible. I took an interested in that. First I worked in the district, then I was invited for a position of the chief industrial sanitary doctor of Moscow, in charge of military medical institutions. There were 3500 plants in Moscow. Many people came to the devastated city from evacuation, There were 2000000 workers among the evacuees. I had a lot of tasks to do. I traveled throughout the country, visited construction sites in the remote corners of my country. I actively worked with scientific and research institute of occupational diseases by the Academy of Science of USSR, was the member of the academic council, deputy editor-in-chief of the specialized magazine. I was always focused on the issues, though it was hard as many of them were secret. Health care system was very influential under conditions of Soviet power. We were the experts in all industrial construction projects in Moscow and all over the country. Very many standards introduced by us were the most rigid in the world. It was good and there were much less occupational diseases.

My wife and I have lived a long, hard, but at the same time very interesting and friendly life. Our house was always open for relatives and friends, no matter where we lived. My parents, sister's family often came to see us. I liked sister's husband, an intelligent and interesting man. My friends- partisans and participants of the theatrical studio very often called on us.

I retired in 1990. It was physically hard for me to combine medicine and literature. I have been the member of the Council of Writers since 1975. I wrote two books about war. I wrote a novel "Reminiscences of partisan doctor " and a play 'Eve and Irene' about young workers. It was staged in Leningrad Theater -Lenin Komsomol. I wrote 18 books for youth, children, adolescence. It was something that I was most worried about.

I suddenly found out that there was new cooperative house constructed in the yard of our house. By that time our family had grown. Daughter was married and had a baby. I entered that building society. At that time I got the emoluments for my published book, so I could afford to have my apartment built.  My wife, son and I moved to that 3-room apartment, and our daughter remained in previous apartment in our yard.

At that time one of front-line fellow Lev Ermolin talked me into building a dacha [summer house] next to his place in Borodino[about 120 km to the west from Moscow]. It was pretty far away from Moscow, but it was a spectacular place. I was hesitant, but when my second book was released and I got an emolument, my wife and I decided to build wooden house. Both of us did it with our hands. We are really pleased with that dacha. Almost every summer we spent there and children grew up there as well. Now my elder grandson is having a plush house built next to my dacha and I hope that my great grandchildren will be raised at my dacha.

My life worked out to be good. I always did what I like. I have a great family: loving and caring wife, wonderful and close to my heart children and grandchildren, a lot of magnificent friends, who do not forget about me. We live in different towns, but we meet on every Victory Day, have drinks and remember the years of your youth.