BlogSharasun, Zabaykalye. 100 years ago.
Ekaterina, the youngest daughter of Nikon and Efrosinia, liked to read and play with dolls.
She was 17 years old, when she gave birth to her second son, Victor, Tanya’s father, but she still loved to play with dolls. It was her secret. In the cellar of her house, where she lived with her husband, Konstantin Roik, she had a hidden corner where in her spare time, which she rarely had, she made those dolls, sewed dresses for them and sang folk songs, as she did for her sons. Some of the dolls eventually moved to the children’s room, but some she kept for herself.
Ekaterina never stopped singing and dressing her dolls. Years later, being a professional singer, she always celebrated New Year with Victor’s family and, overnight, sewed new clothes for all the dolls and stuffed animals of her granddaughter, Tanya. A whole generation later, she continued that tradition for her great-granddaughter, Kristina.
Her husband did not know about her passion. He always knew Ekaterina as a tough, sharp-tongued young woman, quick to respond and always busy around the house. He was much older, but handsome and kind. His job in railroad management required a lot of time at work and gave them a comfortable income.
Ekaterina was 14 when he married her. She lived with her parents and her older sister, Khristina, in Sharasun – a small town in Zabaykalye, built around a railroad station. The sisters were very close, despite the difference in age and temperament. Khristina was calm and reasonable, while Ekaterina was imaginative and explosive. It was said that Khristina took after their mother, Efrosinia, but Ekaterina inherited the character of Nikon, their father.
Sharasun, although growing quickly, was still a small and pretty boring settlement. The girls were few in number and they got married fast. Khristina married first and, soon after, moved with her husband to a big city, Krasnoyarsk. That made Sharasun even more monotonous to Ekaterina. That’s why her secret corner in the cellar became her escape.
When Roik accidentally discovered her secret, he, in an unusual act of anger, threw out everything – the dolls, sewing supplies, even the books.
Ekaterina was in shock. That was the time when she cut her wedding photo into pieces (along with her marriage). She stopped talking to everyone, mechanically performed her daily chores, and ate almost nothing. Efrosinia came to help with the kids, but Ekaterina’s condition became a concern.
A local doctor came along to visit Ekaterina with his colleague, Vladimir Moisseevich Ushakov, who recently came from Moscow to work at a nearby hospital. Before joining the Military Medical Academy to be trained as a surgeon, Vladimir attended medical school at Moscow University, where he participated in psychoanalytical seminars.
Those, who read our story The Man in the Round Spectacles, would immediately recognize him by his signature look. The posters on the walls, in that picture from his time at the Academy, show anatomical diagrams together with the “Schedule for activating lines during brigade’s advances”. A students’ life is always fun, everywhere, anytime, isn’t it?
For the local doctor to recommend psychotherapy, even in that faraway part of Russia, was not extraordinary at that time.
At the end of the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th centuries in Russia, there was a strong and widespread interest in Freud’s theory. Russian was the first foreign language to which Freud’s work was translated in 1904, and more than twenty of his works were translated and published in Moscow during the next ten years . Prior to many Western countries, practical approaches to psychiatry and psychotherapy were developed in several centers of psychoanalysis in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Odessa (although, as often happened in Soviet Russia, those principles very quickly turned in the direction of oppressive psychiatry – even mentioning the term “psychoanalysis” became dangerous).
Vladimir Ushakov had a temporary assignment at the time, while waiting for a permanent position as a surgeon in one of the many Siberian military hospitals. We don’t know if any psychoanalysis was involved when he came by train to visit Ekaterina, but we knew that Ekaterina felt better after each visit. And he came more and more often.
He used to take her for a walk and they talked to one another. Both loved to read, but different kinds of books. Ekaterina liked romantic novels, and Vladimir preferred stories about social conflicts. Ekaterina remembered that when they walked together, they told each other about the books that other had not read.
One day Vladimir came to tell Ekaterina that he, finally, received his assignment and that he had to report there within a week. It would be a hospital in Krasnoyarsk, the same city where Ekaterina’s sister Khristina lived with her husband. He gave Ekaterina his signed photo to remember him, but he did not say good-bye.
Ekaterina went to see him off at the station. Vladimir boarded the train and she was about to go home. She made only a few steps before she ran back and jumped onto the last car of the train to reunite with Vladimir.
Ekaterina came back to Sharasun only once after that, to take her kids with her. She became a surgical nurse and since then she and Vladimir Ushakov were always together – at home and at work, at peace and at War.
But that will be another story.
P. S. Efrosinia also moved to Krasnoyarsk, after Nikon died, to be close to her daughters, Ekaterina and Khristina.
