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There were two water taps in the garret. Tenants cooked on primus stoves10 in the corridor and there was a toilet in the yard. When I was 12 there was a toilet installed in one end of the corridor and a year later there was another toilet installed. There was an electric bulb in each room and there was a power consumption meter. All tenants paid their fees based on their bulb’s capacity. The corridor was lighted through glass door windows above the doors and there was some light produced by stoves. Tenants of the garret hated electric irons, boilers and radios that appeared in the late 1930s since it was impossible to control the power consumption.
My father joined the Party in 1926. He wasn’t interested in any Party activities, but they said at his Arsenal plant: ‘You are a worker and you must be a member of the Party.’ –My father was also obliged to subscribe to Party editions and study works of ‘classics’ [Editor’s note: by classics here Lenin, Marx and Engels are implied]. Therefore, he subscribed to the Lenin’s library11, an edition of works of the leader of the world proletariat in blue binding, and to the popular daily newspaper ‘Pravda’ [the main newspaper of the Communist party] that had a million’s circulation. My father got up very early. His working day at the plant began at 7 am. He liked staying in bed later on weekends and I liked to climb under his blanket. He used to read Lenin’s articles in bed and I was learning to read by book titles. However, he never finished one Lenin book. He never had enough patience.
My father joined the Party in 1926. He wasn’t interested in any Party activities, but they said at his Arsenal plant: ‘You are a worker and you must be a member of the Party.’ –My father was also obliged to subscribe to Party editions and study works of ‘classics’ [Editor’s note: by classics here Lenin, Marx and Engels are implied]. Therefore, he subscribed to the Lenin’s library11, an edition of works of the leader of the world proletariat in blue binding, and to the popular daily newspaper ‘Pravda’ [the main newspaper of the Communist party] that had a million’s circulation. My father got up very early. His working day at the plant began at 7 am. He liked staying in bed later on weekends and I liked to climb under his blanket. He used to read Lenin’s articles in bed and I was learning to read by book titles. However, he never finished one Lenin book. He never had enough patience.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Leonid Kotliar