Album 12
October 1956 - May 1960

Summary

Euphrosinia switched over to the job of a shooter which was easier than drilling but more dangerous. Colleagues at the shooting workshop took her warily knowing her fidelity to principles but she always helped out anyone who asked her and the attitude changed.

The operating cycle of the mine was common for all the shops but managers more often than not cared for only their parts of the cycle at the expense of the others who feared to tell the truth. Thus, the machine shop refused to produce drilling bits because of unprofitability and the collet holes drilled with worn out bits were smaller than necessary which made shooters' work extremely dangerous. The shooters feared to tell the executives the truth and Euphrosinia alone raised the issue at the level of the Coal Mining Department. She was skinned for that but the drillers got brand new bits and blasting work became less risky.

Euphrosinia volunteered for particularly hazardous work firing in blocks of the third layer (the blocks consist of the coal remaining in the sides of the mine where the works are over) which none of the shooters wanted to take on. Explaining her decision she said that all of them had families while she was single and her death would make nobody suffer. But Euphrosinia simply considered the miners to be her workmates and obeyed the principles of good fellowship.

On the other hand, the work in the blocks was cyclical and allowed having vacation in summer.

In 1957, she started her vacation in Bessarabia so that to visit her Father's grave. Upon arrival in Chisinau she took a taxi to the town of Soroca but did not find her old friends there. Many town residents after returning from the exile in the Narym Area changed home addresses or even moved to other cities. From a conversation with another traveler, a villager, she learned that many of her village friends had died of starvation back in 1947, when they sowed all the grain they had and the authorities took the entire yield away from them.

Father's house and garden in Tsepilovo were devastated, the huge oak trees blown up, sawn and abandoned. Euphrosinia could not look at that vandalism and after taking a handful of earth from Father's grave she went back not along the street but along the path and found herself in a garden where an old lady was making apricot jam. It was Smolinskaya, her Mother's friend. Back in 1954, she had heard in The International Search radio program Alexandra Alekseevna Kersnovskaya from Romania who looked for her daughter saying her plea in several languages. So, Mother whom Euphrosinia believed to be dead was alive.

Euphrosinia sent a letter to a person to whom she had written never before, the husband of her Mother's cousin Theodore Fuchs, the conductor at the Romanian Opera. She asked to send the answer to the address of the Gryaznevs, her friends in Yessentuki, and whiling away the time went to Odessa, the city of her childhood, and then to the Crimea. From Yalta she took a boat to Sochi via Novorossiysk and Tuapse, then moved by a water-bus between resorts to Poti, then to Kutaisi and up the river Rion to its outlet. From there - through the Mamisson Pass. That was the Ossetian Military Road.

Euphrosinia did not take the common route to the city of Ordzhonikidze (Vladikavkaz) but instead turned to the valley of the river Tseya (Tseyadon) and crossed it using a "cradle" tied with ropes hanging on two wheels that rolled along a cable wire. That was when she realized she could not get used to the thought that she had Mother and no right to risk.

After seeing a prison camp in a scenic place Euphrosinia decided not to continue on foot and hitched a truck. It was full of calves dying of thirst and heat and the shepherds feared they would not survive till the truck reached the state farm. Euphrosinia offered help. They re-sorted the calves, supported the weakest with the knees, opened their mouths so that the wind blew there and thus the calves were saved.

Between the cities of Ordzhonikidze and Nalchik Euphrosinia hitched a car. It proved to be a government car with a Soviet Union deputy minister and Kabardino-Balkarian minister of agriculture inside. She used that rare opportunity to tell them many things she had noticed: how ineptly the sick calves were transported, how during the drought the only forage, the straw, was abandoned, how with a shortage of equipment and fuel in the Crimea 60 trucks carried tuff from Evpatoria to Yalta, the site where the mountain palace for Nikita Khrushchev was being built.

Learning more and more about the history of those places Euphrosinia could better understand the causes of the problems in the agriculture. Thus, Karachais she met in Karachay-Circassia told her about the deportation to Karaganda (1943 - 1957), their sheep were transferred the Kuban farming enterprises where they perished and the Karachai breed of sheep ceased to exist.

Coming from Nalchik to Yessentuki by bus Euphrosinia did not find the long-awaited telegram from Romania. The desolation prompted her to the mountains where she alone overcame the Becho Pass near Elbrus. Her route ran from the village of Tegenekli up to the river Yusengi through the Becho Pass, over the glacier, past the mountain of Uchba (Ushba), along the river Dolra to the Svaneti, via the city of Mestiya to the upper reach of the river Inguri and to the Black Sea. She returned by bus from Ochamchira to Sukhum, then by train to Adler, by plane to Mineralniye Vody and by suburban train to Yessentuki.

At the night of her return Euphrosinia received an urgent telegram from her Mother. Euphrosinia sent her a picture so that Mother could see what she looked like 17 years after the parting. Under the Soviet law she could not send money abroad. At the International Inn in Moscow she was advised that she could do that only on request of her mine.

Her vacation was over and back at Norilsk the mine executives allowed Euphrosinia monthly sending a very small amount of money to her Mother and she took advantage of this permission.

Euphrosinia corresponded with her Mother not knowing that the letters from Romania were viewed at the Norilsk KGB, a neighbor from the house where Euphrosinia got a small room in early 1958, took the letters there and put them back into her mailbox.

She spent a year pressing various authorities for the permission to see her Mother. In 1958, she got a vacation in the summer as a special gesture considering that she was going to see her 80-year-old Mother after a long separation. They met in Odessa, in the apartment of Euphrosinia's first teacher Marusya Olszewski. Mother and daughter had a good time at the Black Sea. They took a boat to Sochi and after that moved from one resort to another by small boats staying for two or three days in Hosta, Adler, Gagry, Pitsunda, Novy Afon, Sukhum without much comfort and remembering the past during the walks. By train they got to Yessentuki and stayed with the Gryaznevs for a month. The KGB was displeased with the disappearance of a Romanian citizen from view, being a foreigner she could not move freely over the Soviet Union.

It the last years of her work in Norilsk Euphrosinia joined the mine labour union, the mine overturned her conviction and she got a "clean passport", without paragraph #39. But she was unhappy because all her friends left Norilsk. Margarita Emilievna went to the city of Sumy in Ukraine, Mira Barsky - to Moscow, the Gryaznevs - to Leningrad. She only could draw in her room, read the books and go hiking.

She had no idea that she was under the KGB surveillance even though several events should have alerted her. The KGB raided the place of her friend, miner Garashchenko who wanted to open a church in a small house in Norilsk. A burlaw court staged a trial on paramedic Maslov who listened to foreign radio stations. In March 1960, she herself suddenly got an order of the Coal Mining Department summoning her to a medical examination for "measurement of blood pressure", but a paramedic told her that a true reason was a talk with psychiatrists who had to examine her and find mentally ill giving a reason for her dismissal. The psychiatrists refused to give that conclusion.

It dawned at Euphrosinia that the mine where she worked faithfully and selflessly not only would not protect her from the KGB but would entirely submit to their orders.

The hunt started. The labour union did not thank her for the fast creation of colorful panels to decorate the miners' cinema before the New Year 1960; before the International Women's Day her portrait wasn't on the roll of honor with the pictures of the other best female workers of the mine. Then she was summoned to the mine Communist Party room where a KGB lieutenant briefed her about the facts they had and she gave answers to all their questions. First, she tore raffle tickets parked on her at work being against all kinds of gambling. Second, she added a swastika and the inscription "Goebbels" to a caricature of an overman because he deserves it. Third, in a letter to her friend Margarita Emilievna living in Sumy seized by censors she made witty remarks over Khrushchev's long and oversaturated with statistics speech at the 21st Communist Party Congress because wanted to lift the friend's mood with a joke.

Euphrosinia was summoned to the KGB for an interrogation. Colonel Koshkin added one more thing to the accusations - contemptuous, arrogant and even hostile attitude to the colleagues. Soon after that a notice reading that a "burlaw court will investigate Comrade Kersnovskaya's disruptive conduct"

On April 4, 1960, a lot of people gathered in the club. With a show trial being planned there were journalists in the hall and everything was filmed. Euphrosinia was cauterised by a KGB colonel, the leader of the Communist Party cell and average communists, the leader of the Young Communist League cell, the leader of the labour union, a member of parliament, the mine executives and a representative of The Zapolyarnaya Pravda newspaper. Ordinary workers of the mine stood up for her and thanked her for help and understanding. Euphrosinia refused to stand in a white sheet and ask for pardon even though her and her Mother's future depended on the outcome of that meeting. If the burlaw court found Euphrosinia guilty she would be dismissed without privileges while seven and a half years of work in Arctic were an equivalent of 15 years of work under the ground and that gave her monthly pension of 1200 rubles (in that time nomination). Only being that wealthy she was entitled to take her Mother from abroad and support her.

People liked Euphrosinia's behaviour, they felt that she defended dignity of everyone in the hall who faithfully worked and decided to bring censure but keep her at the job of a drilling a blasting foreman until the retirement.

Under the KGB pressure the mine director transferred Euphrosinia to the job of a machine operator, it was the easiest job in the mine but she decided to make a choice herself and became a loader. It was a hard work on the surface usually done by the delinquent. In May, she quitted and was waiting for the pension card. With the burlaw court did not went on the KGB scenario they decided to discredit Euphrosinia through the press. Norilsk The Zapolyarnaya Pravda newspaper on April 17 and May 11 published defamatory articles commissioned by the KGB and affecting the honor and dignity of Euphrosinia and her parents. She wrote to the City Prosecutor but he could not bring a KGB colonel to account being afraid of him and hinted that Euphrosinia had to be more cautious.

After receiving the pension papers Euphrosinia left Norilsk where she lived for 16 years and bought a semi-detached house in Yessentuki. Her Mother gave up Romanian citizenship and pension and came to live with the daughter. She died in Euphrosinia's arms in January 1964. Euphrosinia told about that time in the Prologue.

Euphrosinia's notebooks close with the epilogue separated in time from the main narration.