Dmitry Pogorzhelsky biography. Mikhail Pogorzhelsky

They lost each other in the war and might never have met. If not for their profession, one for two. The fate of these wonderful actors is inextricably linked with the Mossovet Theater. Irina Kartasheva served here for 70 years, until the last day of her life. She also asked Yuri Zavadsky to hire her husband, Mikhail Pogorzhelsky, who immediately joined the troupe and subsequently played many leading roles on this stage. And they also had one life for two for 46 years.

Happy childhood and bitter youth of Irina

Her childhood was filled with light and happiness. Irina’s parents were from the nobility, and their daughter was for them a natural continuation of their love. The girl was raised very gently and, of course, spoiled. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina and entered the Leningrad Choreographic College, but Irina was not destined to graduate.

The terrible year 1933 came, when my father, who served as the chief economist of a design institute, was arrested. In 1937, my dad was shot. The wife of the “enemy of the people” was not allowed to live in Moscow and Leningrad; she and her daughter were sent into exile. After graduating from school, Irina returned to the city on the Neva, entering the theater school. Here she met her first love, Mikhail Pogorzhelsky.

Failed builder

Mikhail was born in the south of Ukraine, and soon his family moved to the northern capital. The future actor’s mother was a famous psychiatrist, and his father worked as the chief accountant of a large enterprise.

Mikhail, having received a certificate, entered the Institute of Civil Engineering. But after the first year he took the documents and successfully passed the exams at the theater school, where a meeting with the beautiful Irina was already waiting for him.

War

On June 22, 1941, the war began. All the young men immediately applied to the front, but Mikhail was temporarily excluded from the list of conscripts due to lack of registration. Irina dug trenches, and then left Leningrad to visit her mother in Saransk, where she got a job as a letter carrier in a hospital. At the same time, the girl took part in amateur performances, where she was noticed and invited to the music and drama theater.

A month after her departure, Mikhail went to the front. In 1942, he was seriously wounded in the leg and almost died. An unfamiliar soldier saved him at the cost of his own life.

Mikhail was offered to amputate his leg, but in the hospital the future actor met a young doctor who turned out to be a student of Pogorzhelsky’s mother. After the prescribed course of treatment, Mikhail Pogorzhelsky was able to even move without a cane. After being discharged from the hospital, he was discharged, he went to Tomsk, and then to Novosibirsk, where the Leningrad Theater Institute was evacuated.

In 1944 in Novosibirsk they met Irina. By that time, the girl also managed to visit the front as part of a concert brigade. After returning from the front, she received a call to the institute, but in Novosibirsk she was offered service in the troupe of the Alexandrinsky Theater, which was being evacuated.

In the same year, Irina and Mikhail returned to Leningrad, he studied, she worked. But the girl had no time for a romantic relationship. She was torn between work and trips to Moscow, seeking permission from her mother to return to her hometown.

One destiny

In 1947, Irina completely moved to the capital, joining the troupe of the Mossovet Theater at the invitation of Yuri Zavadsky. She was also indebted to him for the fact that soon her mother was allowed to settle in Moscow with her daughter.

Irina and Mikhail met by chance in 1949 during a tour of the Moscow theater in Leningrad, where a meeting of young actors from Leningrad and Moscow was organized. From that moment on, they never parted.

Irina asked Yuri Zavadsky to watch the young actor Mikhail Pogorzhelsky, and he was not only enrolled in the troupe, but was immediately introduced to the play. From that moment on, the couple's happy life and acting career began.

In 1951, the only son Dima was born into the family. Of course, his grandmother, Irina Pavlovna’s mother, paid him the most attention. The young parents were always busy in the theater, and later began to leave for filming.

Happiness for two

Happiness and harmony came into their lives. After all the trials they endured, they had a warm home, bright joys and many friends. They loved to relax near Kostroma in Shchelykovo, where a large company of colleagues and friends gathered. Neither Mikhail Pogorzhelsky nor Irina Kartasheva ever took part in theatrical intrigues, they simply did their job well. Both the audience and the directors loved them.

Unfortunately, in the 1990s, Mikhail Bonifatsievich began to be bothered by an old wound. It became difficult for him to walk, the actor underwent surgery, but he was getting worse. On March 6, 1995, he was hospitalized, and on the 8th he asked his wife for jelly, for which Irina Pavlovna ran to her friends. When she returned, she saw a lifeless straight line on the hospital monitor. In the evening she played Madame Bovary, because she had no replacement in this performance.

Irina Kartasheva lived without her husband for another 22 years, constantly feeling his presence nearby. It seemed to her that her husband was invisibly protecting and supporting her. Irina Pavlovna passed away in May 2017, 5 months before her 95th birthday.

Irina Kartasheva was grateful to Yuri Zavadsky all her life for his help in reuniting with her mother. The director generally felt a special responsibility for the fate of the actors. Even after breaking up with his wife, he always took an active part in her life and acting destiny.

Dmitry Pogorzhelsky, NTV staff correspondent, does not need to be introduced to viewers. And his conversation with our special correspondent Andrei Kobyakov, who is now in Berlin, I think, will interest our readers.

— Where did you learn the language?

— In an ordinary Moscow special school. This was many years ago, but when you find yourself here and need to work, you remember everything and learn quite quickly and even unnoticed by yourself. Moreover, it is very interesting to work here - both for journalists who write and film.

- Is there a big difference between them?

- In my opinion, very much. Firstly, television is an extremely superficial medium of mass media. Secondly, the efficiency of television labor is extremely low. And thirdly, you forget how to write for a newspaper, and even if you sit down to write, you catch yourself thinking... in pictures. And this is despite the fact that we, Russians, work on stories in a fundamentally different way than, for example, Germans or Americans. First of all, they look at and select the filmed texture, then they edit the video sequence and only after that they write texts for the “glued” pictures. We do everything the other way around, and I think that this is correct and better. It also happens to me that I write texts as if blindly, without seeing the footage or the pictures that will be used, taken from archives or other sources. In general, our work is, of course, crazy, especially during visits here by famous Russian people. Time is compressed to the limit, sometimes there are only a few minutes left for editing and... I realized that I like this kind of reporting work, constantly on the road, more. Moreover, only after becoming a TV reporter in Germany did I start traveling so much. After all, cameraman Tolya Vaskin and I still have Norway, the Czech Republic, and Austria to cover.

— Dmitry, what topics and subjects does the center require?

- Everything that is interesting! And, naturally, everything that has the slightest significance for the development of relations between Germany and Russia. The ratio of “orders” and “offers” is fifty fifty. I will not hide that sometimes Moscow catches some news before me, which is understandable - they have a powerful system of working with agencies.

— Were there “rejected” topics?

— In the three years of my work, only one story failed. And this was the only moment when I had a great argument with the editor, who, by the way, no longer works for NTV. We are talking about Zyuganov’s visit to Germany, it was two years ago. The editor did not miss the story, indignantly asking: “Where is the scandal?” And I replied that there was no scandal, it was just that the leader of the largest faction in the Russian parliament came to Germany and was received completely normally. Moreover, this man had a real chance of becoming the head of state, and the Germans were well aware that they might have to deal with him.

— There was a time when a whole galaxy of journalists left NTV...

- Yes, these are Dobrodeev, Revenko, Mamontov, Masyuk, Luskanov, Medvedev. But I will leave this without comment. Let me just say that I personally cannot understand how it is possible to leave an independent television company under the sovereign’s eye. Usually the opposite happens. At least I never carried out any social orders. Yes, it’s no secret that NTV supported Yavlinsky, Luzhkov, Primakov. As for the first, I still maintain that Grigory Alekseevich is a very worthy person, and his failure is a consequence of his miscalculations in the election campaign. Perhaps our mistake was an excessive tilt towards the other two politicians. However, this is just my personal opinion.

— How many stories do you usually broadcast per month?

- If two or three a week, then that’s good. It happened that they transmitted it every day. And once we published three stories in a day.

— Do you buy video footage from private individuals?

“I remember about two years ago our warship rammed some Danish schooner and it was necessary to make a story. By some miracle I found a person who had these shots. There are people who live by this, track down such cases, hire boats or planes, film emergencies, and then sell the footage. So, this figure asked for 5 thousand dollars per minute. Naturally, I politely thanked him, but refused. I still wonder if anyone bought this crap from him...

— Are relations with the staff correspondents of ORT and RTR normal, of course?

- Certainly. Firstly, we do one common thing - we collect and transmit information for our Russian television viewers, and secondly, both Oleg Migunov and Slava Mostovoy are simply wonderful guys.

- And where do you all live?

— RTR journalists live in the most respectable district of Berlin - Grunewald. ORT - in a good old “Soviet house” in Karlshorst. In this area, which is still called Karlovka, there were the headquarters of the GRU, the KGB, and all Soviet journalists always lived here. And I live on a small quiet street at the very end of Kurfürstendamm. We moved from Bonn quite quickly; we had exactly one day to look for housing. They quickly found a broker, and he began to offer options, they say, one, two, three. We answered simply: “One!”

- You have to live here, pay utilities, eat, drive a car... But this is Germany, moreover, this is Berlin!

— We are given a certain estimate for the year, which we choose in its entirety. Here, in Berlin, it is, of course, larger than in Bonn, but there is no need to show off.

-Are you here alone?

— No, with my wife and youngest son. My son studies at the gymnasium.

- Don’t feel like going home to Russia?

- Home is home, you always feel drawn there...

Houses are being built in Kutulik according to social programs

On December 3, a long-awaited event occurred in the Pogorzhelsky family: they moved to a new house, which, by the way, did not cost the new residents a penny. The Pogorzhelskys were first on the list to move out of dilapidated and dilapidated housing. Currently, a number of government programs are operating in Kutulik aimed at improving the living conditions of villagers. The results are visible to the naked eye: throughout the village there are roofed houses, finishing work on them will begin in the near future. A correspondent from Okruzhnaya Pravda visited the new residents of the Alarsky district.

East street

The regional program for relocating citizens from dilapidated and dilapidated housing has been running since 2006, says Andrei Botyakov, head of the Alarsky district. - At first, we bought ready-made houses in good condition for people and provided them to families in need. After the process of unification of the Ust-Ordynsky district and the Irkutsk region began, it was decided to build new buildings. On December 1 of this year, the first house was put into operation, the happy owners of which were the Pogorzhelsky family. For these purposes, 1 million 11 thousand rubles were spent from the regional budget and 142 thousand from the budget of the Kutulik municipality. Next year it is planned to build several more houses. There are now more than forty families on the list to move out of dilapidated housing. The preliminary amount was stated to be 9 million 937 thousand rubles. Perhaps due to the financial crisis this amount will decrease, but not by much. So in 2009 construction will continue.

The construction of new housing will also continue under the federal program “Social Development of Rural Development until 2012.” The program provides for receiving cash certificates. These funds can be used to improve living conditions. Documents for assistance are allocated after verification by a special commission and submission of an application to the local administration. Several families have already taken advantage of this program. The construction of new houses in the Alar region is in full swing: in 2008, 1,202 sq. m. m of housing.

Due to the large number of future new residents, it was decided to begin construction of a new street, which was called Vostochnaya. Now there are only three unfinished buildings on it, but their owners can proudly say that the houses have a new address: Eastern Street.

We build not only houses, but also social facilities,” says Edik Dilbarchi, developer. - Central district hospital, schools in the villages of the Alar region, a kindergarten - this is not a complete list of buildings that will be commissioned in the near future.

Hurricane aftermath

Dmitry Pogorzhelsky has an ordinary family: a wife, a little daughter and a son. Their mother-in-law lives with them. But due to the lack of necessary living conditions (everyone had to live on eighteen square meters), the family seemed very large. A bad roof added to the trouble. In 2004, it was torn down by a hurricane. It was impossible to make major repairs - the house in which Dmitry was born was in disrepair.

Construction of the house for the Pogorzhelskys began in May, says Edik Dilbarchi. - Then the foundation of the future building was poured. The main work began at the end of summer, when the promised funds were received. The future owners were announced about their occupancy in September. Before this, they had no idea about the upcoming move.

We couldn’t even dream of such a house,” says Dmitry Pogorzhelsky. - It was built in compliance with all modern technologies. It has three rooms. The building is now drying out. We'll start gluing wallpaper soon, but for now we'll finish transporting things and get used to the comfort. I have two small children. Previously, in cold weather we had to wear warm clothes, the kids often got sick. Now children have the opportunity to freely play and run around in the house and in the yard, which occupies as much as 16 acres.

Administration representatives promised to build all the necessary courtyard buildings. The bathhouse is almost ready. It is difficult for the family to cope with the construction. Dmitry works as a caretaker at a local recreation center, his wife Tatyana is a salesperson in a store. Mother-in-law Galina Fedorovna helps as much as she can - she works part-time in retirement. But it would be impossible to find money to improve living conditions on our own.

The Pogorzhelskys plan to celebrate their housewarming widely in the spring. Then a lot of people will gather at their table - Dmitry alone has six brothers and sisters. The most important guest will, of course, be Edik Apitovich. During construction, he became part of this family. He especially became friends with Dmitry's son, Pasha. Next year Pasha will go to school, but for now he attends kindergarten and helps raise his sister Valya.

“I really like our new house,” says Pavel. “There’s enough room for everyone, even my beloved rat Vasya.” It’s good that we moved now - there will be somewhere to put up a Christmas tree and celebrate the New Year.

Articles brought from business trips or nostalgically written at home;-)

11/2000 Berlin – Kazan

Speaks and shows... from Germany

NTV viewers do not need to introduce Dmitry Pogorzhelsky, a staff correspondent for one of the largest Russian television companies in Germany. And a conversation with him will certainly interest readers.

I started my journalistic life at Komsomolskaya Pravda,” says Dmitry. - Then he worked for the magazine “Novoye Vremya”, for which he came here as a correspondent in 1991. But three years later, funding for the magazine stopped; I found myself a free shooter, working, however, for the newspapers Ekho Moskvy, Segodnya and Itogi. And in January 1997 I was invited to work for NTV. This was a complete surprise for me, since I had never thought about working on television... In general, there is some cyclicality in my “German destiny”: I worked for a magazine for three years, for newspapers for three years, and now it’s autumn again...

- Where did you learn the language?

In an ordinary Moscow special school. This was many years ago, but when you find yourself here and need to work, you remember everything and learn it quite quickly and even unnoticed by yourself. Moreover, it is very interesting to work here - both for journalists who write and film.

- Is there a big difference between them?

In my opinion - very much. Firstly, television is an extremely superficial medium of mass media. Secondly, the efficiency of television work is extremely low. Somehow, out of curiosity, I calculated the difference between the duration of one ready-made plot and the pure working time spent on it. I got a ratio of 1 to 200!
And thirdly, you “forget how” to write for a newspaper, and even if you sit down to write, you catch yourself thinking... in pictures. And this despite the fact that we – Russians – work on stories in a fundamentally different way than, for example, Germans or Americans. First of all, they look at and select the filmed texture, then they edit the video sequence, and only after that they write texts for the “glued” pictures. We do everything exactly the opposite, and I think this is correct and better. It also happens to me that I write texts as if blindly, without seeing the footage or the pictures that will be used, taken from archives or other sources. In general, our work is, of course, crazy, especially during visits here by famous Russian people. Time is compressed to the limit, sometimes there are only a few minutes left for editing and... I realized that this is exactly the kind of reporting work that I like better, constantly on the road. Moreover, only after becoming a TV reporter in Germany did I start traveling so much. After all, Tolya and I still have Norway, the Czech Republic, and Austria on our plate.

Are newspaper people more spoiled by technical, purely communication capabilities? They don't have to be present.

Yes, progress corrupts. Some of my writing colleagues, for example, still work in Bonn, although almost the entire government is already here. After all, this is how many people work: they got up in the morning, stretched, and looked through the local press. Yeah, I already found something. Then I had breakfast, turned on the computer, went online, and rummaged around the web. More has been added. Well, the phone is always at hand - here’s direct speech, information, so to speak, first-hand. And you can also finish your working day in your apartment - typed text on the computer, turned on e-mail, two keystrokes, and an hour later the material was already in the page. You understand that this form of work is in no way suitable for us.

- How big is the NTV “island” in Berlin?

There are two of us working here: me and cameraman Anatoly Vaskin. Tolya is a wonderful person and professional from whom I am still learning. After all, I, a newspaperman, at first did not know anything about the “kitchen” of being a TV reporter.
My predecessor Vladimir Kondratyev worked in Berlin for 12 years, and he, in fact, matched me to NTV. And when we met here, he immediately showed us the basics of installation (this is a terribly difficult task!), and then we had to swim out on our own. And in this journey Tolya, who, in my opinion, knows everything related to video, including computer graphics and working on the Internet, helped me a lot.

- Dmitry, what topics and subjects does the center require?

Everything that is interesting! And, naturally, everything that has the slightest significance for the development of relations between Germany and Russia. The ratio of “orders” and “offers” is fifty fifty. I will not hide that sometimes Moscow catches some news before me, which is understandable - they have a powerful system of working with agencies.

- Were there “rejected” topics?

In the three years of my work, only one story failed. And this was the only moment when I had a great argument with the editor, who, by the way, no longer works for NTV. We are talking about Zyuganov’s visit to Germany, it was two years ago. The editor did not miss the story, indignantly asking “Where is the scandal?” And I replied that there was no scandal, it’s just that the leader of the largest faction in the Russian parliament came to Germany, and he was received completely normally. Moreover, this man had a real chance of becoming the head of state in the future, and the Germans were well aware that they might have to deal with him.

- There was a time when a whole galaxy of journalists left NTV...

Yes, these are Dobrodeev, Revenko, Mamontov, Masyuk, Luskanov, Medvedev. But I will leave this without comment. Let me just say that I personally cannot understand how it is possible to leave an independent television company under the sovereign’s eye. Usually the opposite happens. At least I never carried out any social orders. Yes, it’s no secret that NTV supported Yavlinsky, Luzhkov, Primakov. As for the first, I still maintain that Grigory Alekseevich is a very worthy person, and his failure is a consequence of his miscalculations in the election campaign. Perhaps our mistake was an excessive tilt towards the other two politicians. However, this is just my personal opinion.

- How many stories do you usually broadcast per month?

If two or three a week, then that’s good. It happened that they transmitted it every day. And once we published three stories in a day.

- Where do you get the video footage from if you don’t have the opportunity to shoot it yourself?

There is such an international organization - European News Exchange. Various television companies, by joining this organization and contributing a certain amount, in return receive the opportunity not only to exchange video materials with other members of ENEX, but also the technical capabilities of this kind of company. Our bureau - previously in Bonn, and now for a year now in Berlin - is based on the local private television channel RTL, which is part of this organization. So, RTL mutually provides us with its archive. And in general, I must tell you that we were very lucky with our partners; the journalists and technicians from RTL are excellent guys, real comrades. So, their archive is in perfect order, every frame is painted, and finding the right picture by time code is a matter of minutes. We also use the services of Reuter, whose local office is located in the same building. From the same building, which is very convenient, we transport the stories to Moscow. We also have the technical ability to transmit stories via satellite autonomously, but this is very expensive.

- Do you buy video footage from private individuals?

I remember about two years ago our warship rammed some Danish schooner, and it was necessary to make a story. By some miracle I found a person who had these shots. There are people who live by this, track down such cases, hire boats or planes, film emergency situations, and then sell the footage. So, this figure asked for 5 thousand dollars per minute. Naturally, I politely thanked him, but refused. I still wonder if anyone bought this crap from him...

- Are relations with the staff correspondents of ORT and RTR normal, of course?

Certainly. Firstly, we do one common thing - we collect and transmit information for our Russian television viewers, and secondly, both Oleg Migunov and Slava Mostovoy are simply wonderful guys.

- And where do you all live?

RTR journalists live in the most respectable district of Berlin - Grunewald. ORT - in a good old “Soviet house” in Karlshorst. In this area, which is still called Karlovka, there were the headquarters of the GRU, the KGB, and all Soviet journalists always lived here. And I live on a small quiet street at the very end of Kurfürstendamm. We moved from Bonn quite quickly; we had exactly one day to look for housing. They quickly found a broker, and he began to offer options, they say, one, two, three. We answered simply: “One!”

You have to live here, pay utilities, eat, drive a car... But this is Germany, moreover, this is Berlin!

We are given a certain budget for the year, which we choose in its entirety. Here in Berlin it is, of course, larger than in Bonn, but there is no need to show off.

-Are you here alone?

No, with my wife and youngest son. My son studies at the gymnasium.

- Home, don’t you want to go to Russia?

Home is home, you always feel drawn there...

People's Artist of Russia Irina Kartasheva was born in 1922. Almost his entire creative life he serves in one theater - them. Mossovet. An unsurpassed master of dubbing, she has more than 300 foreign films in her arsenal. The heroines of the films "Roman Holiday", "Rocco and His Brothers", "The Lion in Winter" spoke to us in her voice.
Widow of theater and film actor Mikhail Pogorzhelsky. Mother of NTV special correspondent in Germany Dmitry Pogorzhelsky.
I did a big interview with her for three magazines at once. In two - Story and Psychologies - small excerpts are printed. I think it will be interesting to read the whole thing.
I deliberately removed my questions from the text, turning it into an almost unedited monologue. It seems that this would better convey the everyday intonation of the story against the backdrop of monstrous events.
In fact, the biography of Irina Pavlovna is the biography of our parents.
Yes, I can’t help but notice that Irina Pavlovna is still a beauty. Superbly dressed and well-groomed. Witty and open to communication.

Irina Kartasheva - a nineteen-year-old girl from Leningrad

Even before the war, our family suffered to the fullest: my mother was exiled to Kuibyshev, and my father was shot. All repressive campaigns took place in our family. Yes, only because we are nobles.

When the war began, my mother could not live in Leningrad, and she lived in Luga, 128 km away.

And I lived with my aunt in Russia. June 22 was a sunny, bright day. At 11 am Misha Pogorzhelsky came to see me. He and I studied together at the theater institute. In the first year.

We heard Molotov's voice with the message that the war had begun. I remember: we gathered at the house of one of our classmates. They talked all day about what would happen to all of us. In the evening we all walked along the embankment together. And there was a vision that remains for life: the brilliant sun illuminated the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, and from there a huge black cloud crawled, like an image of horror approaching this city.

Our boys immediately volunteered for the front. And we were mobilized to dig trenches near Pulkovo. One day my mother called me from Gatchina for some reason. I went to see her, and it turned out that the Germans were already in Pskov. What they were wearing with their sister was what they were wearing when they fled from Luga. I brought them warm clothes. We didn’t meet, we missed each other, she had already left for Kuibyshev - we had friends there (we lived there during my mother’s exile, and I finished school there).

I asked for time off at the institute, they gave me leave for a month and assured me that they would send a call. I left Leningrad on September 8 in a heated vehicle, and on the 9th there was already a bombing and the Badayev warehouses were burning.

In Kuibyshev we were greeted well, but for some reason I began to insist that we move on. She couldn’t explain why, but she didn’t want to stay there. My mother's acquaintances from Luga, two very nice ladies, left for Saransk. And I began to persuade my mother to go there. Since I was literally furious and mad, my mother gave in to me. And soon the entire government moved to Kuibyshev, the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was there, and everyone was driven out of there.

This is how foresight came to me for the first time.

I still cannot forgive Stalin for all the ordeals of my parents - my mother could not live in large cities for 18 years, and my father simply died. But, you know, neither my mother nor I ever had even the slightest feeling that we could remain traitors to the Germans.

We ended up in Saransk. And, I must say, I did not bravely withstand all the tests. My mother was a very persistent person, never a word of reproach. And I found myself frozen, as it were - the institute that had been so brilliantly started was lost, Misha was at the front, Leningrad was under siege - it was all over. My life is over! But I had to live. Mom got a job as a manicurist at a canning factory. Yes - she did not have a suitable specialty. And I entered the evacuation hospital as a postman. The head of the hospital laughed and said: “Look what postmen are like during the war.”

In general, they treated me so ideally at the hospital. The deputy chief was from Gomel, he had lost his wife and children, and was always waiting for me with the hope that I would bring news from them. So he later found them. And then he found me through the credits. I did a lot of dubbing back then. I come to the theater, and they say to me: The Minister of Health of Belarus is looking for you here. I thought I was being played, what does the minister have to do with it? And at home, my mother tells me that the former deputy head of the hospital is really looking for me. That's it.

And during the war, I became the most desirable person for the wounded, because I brought letters from relatives. I looked strange then. I didn’t have any winter clothes, I was wearing some kind of filthy padded jacket, some kind of hat, Red Army boots, and windings. I didn’t know anything about my institute; it was evacuated from Leningrad.

One day I run to the post office for letters, it’s freezing, I’m in my shabby look. I looked - there, sitting on the benches were several pilots who were resting in Saransk from some combat missions. And they began to say something humorous to me, some compliments. And then I thought: “Oh my God! But life goes on! And the men laugh and look at the girls.”

And, oddly enough, such a friendly attitude towards me allowed me to thaw out. I began to take part in amateur performances. I was even invited to the Musical Drama Theater in Saransk. I refused, citing the expectation of a call to my institute. And suddenly I receive a call from the institute in Kislovodsk. And then I was a donor, and my first blood type suits everyone, and I was never even sent to a donor station, and they often gave direct blood transfusions to the wounded.

So, I’m a donor, and they take a test from me, as always before drawing blood. And they say that my ROE is 40, and a phlegmonous sore throat has begun. As a result, I'm not going anywhere. And at this time the Germans are seizing the Caucasus and my institute is being evacuated to an unknown location. And I stay in Saransk and agree to move from the hospital to the theater. I remember how I trembled in the costume of Viola from Twelfth Night, put on a white wig and cried, because I couldn’t do anything - I only had one year at the institute.

In 1943, I joined the brigade of the Mordovian Theater, and we were sent to the front. We ended up in the 1st echelon, where brigades were not sent later because one died there. And we find ourselves in the Orel-Kursk Bulge - July 1943 - Plavsk, Mtsensk, Belgorod... I remember when we entered one city - it was bombed to the ground. And in the forests there are these centuries-old trees, lying with their roots up after artillery bombardment.

At concerts I read Lench's stories and Simonov's poems. There were six of us - a singer, a dancing couple, and another reader.

I didn’t have any concert outfits, although the military always asked me to wear civilian clothes. And in Tula I was completely robbed, my suitcase was stolen, where I had everything, literally everything. I was left in what I was wearing on stage. All our ballerina's jewelry was stolen.

We were in Orel three hours after our capture. It was very scary - summer, heat, the stench over the battlefield, and a huge number of flies. And there are mines all around. We left for a concert, but we couldn’t go back to the house where we were staying. And we spent the night in some field.

But somehow fate protected us, and we returned from the front. It's very scary…

But I’ll tell you now, maybe the terrible thing - the fear that we experienced in the late thirties - was worse than this. It was physical fear. But we were all patriots; it never occurred to anyone to accept the Nazis. Or then emigrate. And I could never live anywhere else.

Do you know how life turns upside down? Many years passed, and my son ended up in Berlin, broadcasting from the Reichstag. And he is the son of a man awarded the Order of Glory, who actually lost his leg at the front.

We returned to Saransk, and there a call was waiting for me from the institute, which had already been evacuated to Tomsk. And I left without being persuaded to stay. But she came to Novosibirsk and met Misha there. There was the Alexandrinsky Theater there at that time.

So I remained ignorant for the rest of my life. I am now a People's Artist. When I wrote earlier “neokonch. Higher,” the personnel officer told me: it’s nothing, and Lenya Markov doesn’t even remember what school he graduated from.

But let's go back to the war years. Misha was wounded in the leg near Vyshny Volochok in 1942. At the field hospital they wanted to take away his leg. He didn't give it. Then, luckily, another doctor came in who knew his mother - ch. doctor at the Voronkovskaya psychiatric hospital. And he saved Misha’s leg. American worms were used to treat his leg. This was a unique method back then.

But osteomyelitis still remained, and all his life it reminded him of itself.

On Victory Day every year Zyama Gerdt called Misha and, congratulating him, said: This is the call from the one who made you disabled.

But the fact is that after being wounded, my husband was hospitalized with ostyemyelitis. But the laws were such that he had to undergo an examination every year. And he stopped doing this - one would think that this could be cured. And he was deprived of the title of disabled person.
And when some benefits were introduced for disabled people, it was no longer convenient for him to go anywhere again. And so Gerdt, as a colleague who was wounded, also in the leg, and also at the front, who remained, in Gaft’s apt expression, “unbowed on his knees,” kept threatening that he would take him by the collar and take him where he needed to go. “Did you lose your leg at the dance?” And he forced him to go to the military registration and enlistment office and certify his disability. And every Victory Day he called with the question: “Who made you disabled?”

And then I stayed to work in Alexandrinka, in 1944 we returned to Leningrad. The city has not yet recovered from the blockade.

Victory in '45. We were at an evening at the House of Arts when Germany's surrender was announced. I had some kind of ladle in my hands, and I walked, pounding with all my might on fences, walls, and everything that came across on the Fontanka. We shouted to everyone we met: “Victory!”

This is incomparable.

Misha and I had crazy love. But when he arrived from the front in Novosibirsk, I, who was involved in the theater, in companies, in fans, looked at him with different eyes. He was somehow distant.

I am entirely to blame here - I committed a very great stupidity and am atone for all my sins. I ruined the lives of myself, Misha and my first husband Seva Davydov. We returned to Leningrad, and somehow broke up with Misha.

Mom lived in Saransk, I call her to Leningrad. She receives a summons to appear at the police station. I went to work. Some police captain advised me to take my mother somewhere, to come up with something. And so, imagine, we went with enterprise performances around Leningrad and took my mother with us. But it couldn't go on like this for long.

And I had already arrived in Moscow to work, and then a friend told me that Zavadsky was looking for an actress for Desdemona. I came, didn’t read anything, and he took me, said that he would send a call in September. I came by his telegram. Since then I have been serving in the Mossovet Theater.

And my mother was settled near Moscow, not even in Dmitrov, but in Kuminovo, a village like that. And she lived there with the owner. And Misha joked later: you need to write memoirs - “From Nice to Kuminovo” - our grandmother had a villa in Nice - the photographs have been preserved. But they sold it even before the revolution. Then Andron Konchalovsky egged me on to return her, but it was too late.

And so Zavadsky and Nikolai Cherkasov, although this is the 50s, and this is not at all fashionable, are starting to work hard to at least allow their mother to register in Dmitrov.

And then I accidentally meet Misha. I’m walking along Gorky Street, and he’s crossing the ground passage from the National to the Council of Ministers. I was walking with one actor, and suddenly I saw him. She screamed: Misha! And he stopped in the middle of the road, looked around and froze. He reacted very strangely to me. Then he explained: I’m walking and thinking: Maybe there’s something like this in life - after all, she’s in this city now, can I meet her by chance? And suddenly you call out to me.

We met, and after 3 days we were no longer separated. I divorced my husband, he was already divorced from his wife. I recommended him to Zavadsky without explaining our relationship. He took it immediately.

And now it’s the 50th year, a tour to Poland is being prepared. Misha and I are not going anywhere - my mother is in a settlement, and Misha’s father is Polish. Here an old Jew, who was in charge of our personnel, suggested that Poland in 1905 was part of the Russian Empire. That's all.

And I wrote the truth about my mother, but I didn’t write what she was arrested for.

Everyone began to fuss over my mother. Cherkasov made an appointment with Minister Serov. I came to the reception pregnant and almost persuaded him with my acting talent. But then this Serov is removed.

And suddenly Zavadsky obtained permission to register his mother in Moscow. Here's another miracle.

We all lived at Sokol’s then, in the same room with my mother, husband and little son Dimka.

Well, that's the whole story.

This is so ingrained in me - war. I only recently stopped being scared of night calls. My heart breaks and falls.
I pray that my children and grandchildren never have to experience this.