Tag #152061 - Interview #103542 (Elena Orlikova)

I went to an ordinary Russian school. I had no problems with my studies. I liked mathematics and physics. My favorite teacher was Elena Ivanovna Kolotushko, a Ukrainian. She was a teacher of Russian language and literature. Now I understand that there were quite a few Jews in our class and at school: Lyusia Epshtein, Ania Greenberg, Raya Zaltzberg – they were all my friends. However, I had Russian and Ukrainian friends, too: Tania Ivanova, Tolia Morkachov and other children. We became young Octobrists9, then pioneers: we were Soviet schoolchildren. We didn’t feel our Jewish identity at school. Nobody paid any attention to such things. The information about the nationality was written down in personal files that were stored in the archives. However, teachers could identify the nationality of any pupil by his last name or appearance, but still nobody segregated people by nationality at that time, all people were equal. I don’t think we realized that we belonged to different nationalities then. We went to all kinds of performances at the Palace of pioneers located not far from our house. I went to the singing club and my sister went to the dancing class and we were enjoying ourselves. We lived our own life and we didn’t listen to what adults were talking about. We celebrate Soviet holidays at school, but it was just a holiday, a game, a party for me rather than a political event.