In 1963, my mother Medvedeva Anastasia Alekseevna already received social security, 29 rubles, and 20 kopecks. No one at her work received such a small pension. According to the records in her workbook (trudovaya knizka), my mother did not have enough work credit, for less than 20 years. When my mother said that 8 years of her work in the Tula Artel were not recorded in the workbook, the Krasniy Luch social security (Bureau of Complaints of the City Executive Committee) replied: "We do not add work credit by words. We need a certificate from the Tula social security." My mother went to the city of Tula in Russia. She came to the village of Ivanovka (where my stepfather Ivan Yakovlevich Medvedev and us lived before the war until 1937), found two witnesses and the three of them went to the social security of Tula. The witnesses confirmed that this is indeed Fadeeva (maiden name) Anastasia Alekseevna, she worked in the Tula Metalware Artel for eight years. The social security worker looked at the workbooks of both witnesses and it turned out that they received their workbooks later than at the time when my mother worked there. The documents about my mother's work in the artel were not preserved. Where else could she find witnesses, some people since 1937 moved away if they survived at all. Consequently, the work credit was not confirmed by documents, and no one believed the words, everything was done according to the Constitution, according to the law approved by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In fact, my mother had 31 years of official work, since she started officially working after leaving the village of Nizhneye Kolchurino in 1933. Before that she worked, since childhood, at her family farm, then on the farm of her husband, together with his big family, weaving homemade fabrics and raising cattle, taking care of a garden and a field of corn, sunflowers, and wheat, so altogether 46 years of hard work). Of course, she could not go to all the other places where she officially worked, scattered throughout the country.
That's how my mother received a terrible blow to her heart, which before that was also hurting from bitter experiences of her life. The death of her husband - my father in 1930, dispossession, had to live and work far from the children - me and Lena, either in the Urals or in the Moscow region. In the suburbs of Moscow she did not earn anything, everything that she obtained with difficulty was stolen from her in the dormitory. Who needs such earnings? The package from my mother with sugar in the 1930s, which almost killed me - I overate that sugar, and for a whole year I was ill with scrofula, and scars all over my body, who needed us? Mom knew about it, but she was far away. Later, forced, back-breaking manual labor of a milkmaid. Everything was done by hand. Each milkmaid milked 20 cows three times a day. They carried heavy baskets with beets, bundles of straw, as well as corn silage from the silo pit, and mixed fodder. They cleaned from under the cows. The manure was taken out, and the cows were given clean bedding, straw, or shavings from the carpentry workshop. Until the very retirement and later, my mother did not know mechanized milking. And now, for all this, she got only 29 rubles per month.
In 1962, she still hoped that she had enough work credit, but when in 1963 she was credited (starting from December 19, 1962) 29 rubles, she quickly packed up, took the last money, bought gifts, took a bucket of seeds for relatives of Ivan Yakovlevich, as they wrote that the sunflower harvest got spoiled, and off she went ... My poor mother! My heart had never been calm even before, but since that time, looking at her, I simply did not know how to calm her down. She hoped so much, she was sure that she would bring a certificate from Tula and would receive, like everyone else, at least 60 rubles, but she returned without the certificate. How did she get home in such a terrible shock? She did not look like herself. It was a miracle that her bag was not stolen on the train. She was putting things out of her bag, saying: "Here I went in vain, they didn’t give me any certificate, and no court would help me, because of such a law." In the 1930s, there were still many illiterate and semi-literate workers who not only did not know such laws, they did not even think about it, all thoughts were about their daily bread, where to earn money, and how to feed their families. It means that the Supreme Council saved money on such cases. People were looking for better jobs, they moved, and if they were given a work record, they took it, if they didn’t get it, then they left without it. How many of us, even literate, thought about retirement in our youth? Nobody! Youth, love, zeal for knowledge, marriage, children, and bang! Retirement .. Who collected documentation - received the correct pension, but if not - that's it! Don't cry, no one can help. It's a shame ... There is anxiety in the heart and hopeless grief in the soul. -"Why am I so unlucky? I earned all the work credits, but they gave me so little. When I was quitting a job, I should have demanded that they write it down in the workbook... eight years of service are gone. But how was I supposed to know? Whom was I to ask? I didn't know anything... And now I have to work all my life to death, so as not to drag out my miserable existence on half a pension."
Milkmaids had an average salary of 90-100 rubles. The pension was 65 percent. Mom had a salary of 90 rubles, which means that the pension for the full service was 58 rubles and 50 kopecks. And she was paid for part-time credit.
I got sick looking at her. Knowing that, unlike me, my mother is a pessimist, I was determined to take control of her mood. "Mom, it’s useless to cry and be heartbroken. Firstly, no one but I can hear you. You are proud, and you don’t want people to hear your misery, people would tell you that "you are to blame, Alekseevna, you yourself. It was necessary to write down eight years in the workbook earlier. What were you thinking? You never once inquired to see how much work credit you have. The workbook was always in the personnel department." You, Mom, would not be able to answer anything to these people. Secondly, you can cause yourself a heart attack. Try to cure it then ... on our salaries. And in general, you are a clever person. People live without legs, without arms, crippled, and they don't cry anymore, they're used to it. That's enough. Here Slavik will soon go to vocational school and start working, he does not want to go to college, and later on, he will go to the Army for two years. And we will live with Toma and Gulia. Don't cry anymore, forget about this pension. I will work hard, and get bonuses at work. You'll be busy with the garden as long as you're healthy. We'll be ok, Mom!"
That's how I told her in 1963, and then, in 1966, Danilovna died, the wife of old man Cherniy Timofey Timofeevich, the watchman of the state farm in Petrovsky. He, after becoming a widower, began to pay attention to my mother as if she was a young lady, and she really was 17 years younger than him. A year has passed imperceptibly since the death of Danilovna, and Grandpa Cherniy and my mother decided to get married. Timofey Timofeevich knew my mother well since 1960. Back then Danilovna brought my mother home, they lived at central state farm, to a newly built two-room cottage and said: "Timosha, I got to know this woman, her name is Nastya, she can stay in our house until collective farm gives her a room in a barracks in the village of Stepnoy. What do you think, are you not against it?" "Is that up to me? Of course, she can stay." - answered the old man. Mom lived with them for a year and in 1961 she was given a room in the barracks of the village of Stepnoy. I arrived there in September of 1961 with my children Slavik, Toma, and Gulya from Shymkent - this was our first arrival/escape to Ukraine from Kazakhstan. Until September 1963, we lived in Petrovskoye, when I got a room there next to my job, and my mother lived in the village of Stepnoy nearby. Slavik was 12 years old, Toma four years old, and Gulia two years old.
I'll return to talking about retirement. When I barely soothed my grief-stricken mother, she finally opened the bag and showed the gifts given to her by Maria Ivanovna (the sister of my stepfather Ivan Yakovlevich Medvdedev) and her daughter Nyura. They gave her: a white dress with flowers for me; a white sheet embossed with a pattern, pillowcases, a duvet cover, and yards of fabric for dresses for Toma and Gulia, and for Mom, and Slavik got pants and socks. Then my mother untied the bag and poured out a bucket of potatoes and explained: "This is the Tula White potato, we must plant it right away before it's too late." Then she took out a treat: Tula gingerbread cookies and distributed them to all of us. We ate them with great pleasure. This is how the relatives of Ivan Yakovlevich saw off my mother, that is, their legal daughter-in-law - Medvedev Anastasia Alekseevna, back to her home in Ukraine. It was not possible to find out from them about the grave of Ivan Yakovlevich( January 12, 1906, the year of birth, colonel). They did not know. It is not known who received the posthumous commander's money, because my mother did not receive it. His brother Dmitry Medvedev also died in 1943 near Leningrad.