Tag #146561 - Interview #78019 (Rita Kazhdan)

We lived in a good two-room deluxe flat, which was bought for my parents by grandpa Grigory Vselubsky after their marriage. The flat was heated with firewood. After the reduction of living space per person by the Soviet authorities, before my birth, a Latvian lady was accommodated in my parents' flat. She was a government official and was given one of our rooms. Before this reform, our flat was considered a luxury one because everyone around lived in communal apartments. We had a dining room of 30 square meters and our bedroom was 18 square meters plus a small corridor and a kitchen. We had meals only in the dining room.

Amongst the furniture we had a walnut couch - a small sofa made of walnut padded with green velvet. We had a dark oak sideboard with nice wood engraving, and on it there was a pink tea set, a 'Kuznetzovsky'. [Kuznetzov was a famous pre-revolutionary owner of porcelain works.] It was of magnificent beauty, a superfine one.