“The school time is over, had echoed the graduation ball. There stayed in memory the favourite teachers: in mathematics – Nina Nickolaevna, Fedor fedorovich; in English – Valentina Vladimirovna; in the Russian language and Literature – Israel Isaacovich; in Physics – Ivan Gerasimovich. Scattered away friends: girls and boys. The completely other life began. Mom insisted that I should enter the Novozybkov Pedagogical Institute. I did not want it badly. First, because I did not like Novozybkov very much: at that time it was remote provincial town in spite of the presence of pedagogical institute; secondly – I did not like the profession of a teacher at all in spite of the fact that in Mom’s family this profession transferred from generation to generation. In our family my brother and I broke this tradition, nevertheless among our relatives it was kept on by my cousin – she became a very good Russian Language and Literature teacher.

So, by my Mom’s wish I started to prepare myself to enter the Institute, but I did reluctantly and carelessly and to my joy I failed to enter without achieving not enough points (one point was missing). I had to think about job. At that point my musical education was in demand. At that time the new production started of manufacturing pianos, there was in need the instrument tuner at the factory of keyboard instruments “Desna”. I was employed as an assistant and sent to attain the profession and study in Leningrad at the oldest in Russia factory of keyboard instruments “Red October”. It was situated in Line 8th of Vasiliyevsky Island.

Perhaps, those were the best six months in my life. My teachers, tuners-young men, related to me wonderfully! They showed me around the city, we visited museums and concert halls, went to watch football games. Simultaneously I entered the extra-mural department of Forest-Hold Academy. In six months I returned to the factory as a master in tuning pianos and had worked by this profession for six years, and after the graduation of the Institute I worked as a designer-engineer three more years.

In 1960 I got married to Mahov Evgeny Ivanovich, building technician by profession, delivered daughter Irina, and five years after – daughter Valeriya. Marriage life did not go well from the start, and after six years being tortured each other we parted, which I never regretted about.But I never allowed anybody to talk badly about my husband: yet he was the father of children. By the way, the children who were healthy, clever and beautiful. I quite understood that the happiness in marriage is not my lot and kept on living calmly and with confidence, work and raise up kids, relax after work, travel within the limits of my income and never consider myself deprived of something.”

Here I want to add up my comment “Deprived of what? Emma! You lived your life in full as I did, and as I know, many other our classmates.

Yes, indeed, it would be nice to have a husband around as a support and a big help. Alas! It did not happen. So we celebrated the feast of life and are still celebrating to the best of our abilities, with the feeling of deprived of nothing.

The photos of city of St. Petersburg (former Leningrad) are to the right and to the left and a few songs dedicated to that city.

“Leningrad Waltz”