The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Zoia was the daughter of a hardy Siberian peasant, an energetic and capable landholder in spirit (and perhaps by blood)—the descendant of courageous Siberian explorers. When the children became adolescents, the father decided to move to an absolutely out of the way place, far into the taiga, a few dozen kilometers down the Lena River from Iakutsk. There they built their home with their own hands and developed a large farm. Zoia told me in detail how much livestock they had, the kinds of vegetable gardens, outbuildings, etc. The house gradually acquired a cultured, urban appearance. The dining room even had a large painting and store-bought furniture. And all of this was created by the hands and labor of one family.

The wild taiga was mastered. Gradually other people began to settle near the Zhigalev homestead. New homesteads appeared.

The steamship lines on the Lena turned their attention to the new population center and established a landing there. The children began to go to school in town. But Zoia managed to finish only three grades. After the collapse of the White regime in Siberia and the end of the Civil War, the first wave of liquidation of private farms began. Zoia’s father, having created a blossoming household in the Iakutsk taiga with his own hands, was declared a kulak. A tax of 10,000 rubles was imposed on him. Of course, he was not able to pay such a tax. Having understood with his sharp and practical Siberian mind that this tax was only the beginning of future misfortunes and that they were not to farm the taiga, he declared to his family that they had to abandon the homestead, give it up, and move to the city.

Zoia’s voice trembled when she spoke about parting from her beloved place. The homestead passed into the hands of the government, and when Zoia went back after a few years to see what had become of the homestead, she found a frightening desolation. Some people still seemed to work there, but there were almost no cattle and no vegetable garden either. The house had been gutted and had fallen into complete decay, and even her favorite painting in the dining room hung in tatters on the dirty wall.

Zoia formed a definite worldview, well-considered and shaped by suffering. Rarely did I meet among educated women such clarity of mind, such comprehension, as possessed by this young Siberian woman with a third-grade education.

Mariia Shapiro, A Soviet Capitalist

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In her first years of marriage Zoia did not work anywhere. There was no necessity and not even the desire. The war began. Zoia’s husband was registered at his plant and was not subject to being dispatched to the front. But Zoia with her sharp mind realized that she, a young, healthy, childless woman, would sooner or later be mobilized for some kind of, perhaps unpleasant, work. And she decided to take the bull by the horns. Zoia proposed to the administration of the plant where her husband worked that she take charge of the supply of provisions for the workers of the plant. The proposal was accepted and Zoia began to work.

So here was this young woman, not having had the slightest trade or business experience, not having ever worked even as a simple sales clerk, not having had even a high school education, beginning an undertaking under conditions of war and great shortages. And this very person took upon herself the task of supplying hundreds of workers scattered throughout the taiga and along the Lena under the conditions of the severe North, of the spring mud and the impassable taiga roads.

And the work went well. Zoia sent shiploads of products up and down the Lena, and entire convoys into the taiga. Her organizational talent and ability to direct people emerged, the talent of a guide, of a leader, inherited from her father and, in a larger sense, given to her by nature.

The plant’s administration, seeing how well Zoia managed the acquisition and distribution of food, put her in charge of all the vegetable gardens and the creation of new gardens. And she was successful here as well. Then they entrusted her with the organization and supervision of the renovation of workers’ and employees’ living quarters. And she successfully organized this as well.

“But I didn’t forget about myself,” Zoia openly declared to me. “My apartment was first in line for the renovations.”

The war ended. After her enormous achievement and the joyous awareness of knowing her revealed abilities and strengths, a series of humdrum days set in. The former, quiet pre-war life spent in the shadow of her husband and the reading of books no longer satisfied Zoia.