Tag #114251 - Interview #78243 (Alla Kolton)

Mother was finishing her education at the University of Lyon, and in 1934, after graduation, father invited mum to come to Russia, to Leningrad. The time when people were put in prison for no reason hadn't yet arrived in Russia. [The interviewee is referring to the so-called Great Terror.] [6] Besides father didn't fully realize the insidiousness of the Soviet regime. If he did, he probably wouldn't have made her come at all. But she wanted to join him. Mother arrived in Leningrad in 1934 on father's invitation. During that period there was no obligatory registration of marriage, so they lived in a free civil marriage. Nobody needed a certificate for marriage then, and if you didn't want to you didn't have to change your surname. My parents were officially registered in ZAGS [state bureau for registration of marriages, births, etc.] only after the war - maybe in 1956 or 1957. It simply became more convenient to have one family name, and it was better for my brother and me to have the same surname as both mum and dad.