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Dilber Ejeke, [1] who is half Tatar and half Uzbek, was born in 1941 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. After graduating from a university there, she moved to Kyrgyzstan, to live with relatives. “The Crimean Tatars were … the first ones who brought the technique of canning to our area. They introduced the greenhouse to local agriculture. The first cucumbers and tomatoes were also harvested by Crimean Tatars,” she recalled. Dovlet Hojamuradov and Gulzara Hayytmuradova interviewed her in Bishkek on March 9, 2009.

We lived with my mother. I lost my dad in the war and my mother did not marry again. She was busy with her job so I would come home and just take care of myself. Sometimes she would be on the night shift. So waiting for her so that we could eat together did not make sense. I guess I matured early. I could take care of myself from an early age. In the second or third grade, I could already cook.

The war was devastating. The war zones like Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia were destroyed. I know about this from the media and from my own experiences in Minsk [the capital of Belarus] and other places, after the war. There were some proposals to rebuild Minsk in another place. But the people wanted to rebuild it in its old location and that’s what happened.

It was a hard time – not only for those people in the European part of the USSR, but for everyone. We were all in one state. Since we had fewer men after the war, we – the women – played a big role in the reconstruction. There were lots of female workers in the factories and in the fields. My husband was raised in a rural area, unlike me – I was brought up in the city. So he was used to seeing women doing hard jobs, like carrying heavy things. Thus, he had believed that women could do all kinds of jobs. Once he told me to go get a heavy sack. I was shocked and looked at him with a confused look. He gave me a confused look right back. I thought about the period he grew up in and then I understood his confusion and his expectations. He was born in 1938 and, by 1943, he was five years old. He was raised in a social environment where every woman did hard work.

We worked our land, we raised potatoes in our backyard. They are, as you know, known as “the second bread.” We also raised fruit and vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, salad, and cabbage. Our vegetable field was not very big. The majority of the arable land belonged to the collective farm and was used to grow grain.

We dried almost everything to preserve it. This was an especially good way to save fruits for the winter. Crimean Tatars were deported to Uzbekistan during the war. [2] We never had Bulgarian peppers [sweet, light-green peppers] before they arrived. They were the ones who added Bulgarian peppers to Central Asian cuisine. Thanks to them, we have traditional dishes like goluptsy – Bulgarian peppers stuffed with rice and meat, in broth.

The Crimean Tatars were also the first ones who brought the technique of canning to our area. They introduced the greenhouse to local agriculture. The first cucumbers and tomatoes were also harvested by Crimean Tatars. In the 1950s, my friend and I were invited to Piskend, the region in Uzbekistan where all the Crimean Tatars lived. We were invited to the house of my friend’s brother, who was married to a Tatar woman. She said that her sister-in-law could cook Bulgarian peppers and could also can them. So we went to see how she did it.

We arrived after a long bus trip. My friend’s brother’s Tatar wife prepared those famous peppers in a delicious sauce and served them in a huge bowl. After we were done eating, she took me to watch the canning process. They took champagne bottles and filled them with tomato juice. Then she closed the opening with sealing wax. Later, in 1960, mass canning started. Everyone was canning with the special jars and lids that we use now. Muraba [jams] had been in Central Asia for a long time already, but the techniques and materials for canning them only arrived in the 1960s. Before that, they were always saved in cool places, but then people started living in apartments and things changed and one way of preserving fruits and other things was canning.

Kyrgyzstan was always good for growing fruits. Almost all regions of the country can produce fruits. Therefore, there is no scarcity of fruits to can for the winter. Furthermore, it’s possible to can fruits for future winters. For example, we still have canned jams from a year ago.

My grandmother lived in rural area and, in the summertime, my mother would take me there while she helped my grandmother with her work on the collective farm. My parents worked in the collective farm fields and they would take me there because there were few kindergartens, especially in the rural areas. So I would be in the field with them while they were harvesting. They made me a small bag to play with. Well, I played with it in the field where the grain was gathered. I filled the bag and then emptied it, filled it and emptied it. This cycle of self-entertainment lasted all day. At the end of the day, I hid the little bag of grain inside my shirt and carried it home.

Taking grain was a serious offence and could lead to a cruel punishment, like being sentenced to jail. So everyone was checked – except for the kids. So that’s how I gathered a half a bucket of grain in one season. I was three or four years old, so I know this about myself from stories my parents told. One of the other stories about my childhood is that I got so used to going to the fields and playing with the grain that when I lost that little bag, I panicked and cried.

In the post-war period, there were few men. I remember, in the 1950s, when my mother and her friends would gather, there were no men at all. If there were one or two, then they had definitely been wounded in the war. After the war, the men that survived were very nervous. The local pivnushki [pubs] were where men gathered and drank. When they got drunk, they would always fight and make a lot of noise. Nowadays, people drink but, unless they’re youngsters, they don’t fight. But, back then, the pubs were associated with fighting. I realized later that the men were nervous and that those fights were “post-war wars.” Since they were wounded – they had lost hands, legs, and other parts of their bodies – it was a difficult, depressing time for them.

The women worked. The ones who lost their men got a certain amount of money from the government. I went to school and my mother worked and earned money We were not living in luxury but we were not hungry. I studied at Russian School No. 65 in Tashkent. The school had two shifts: the first-shift classes started in the morning; the second-shift classes started in the afternoon. All elementary school children studied in the first shift.

Well my academic years started in 1949-1950. There were separate male and female schools for younger students at that time. However, in the seventh grade, the male and female classes merged. Half of our school was transferred to the boys’ school and half of the boys’ school was transferred to the girls’ school. This change was problematic at first, since the boys and girls were embarrassed and avoided one another. As time went by, though, the division disappeared.

My first language is Russian. I went to a Russian kindergarten, a Russian school, and a Russian institute. I also worked in a Russian environment. Kyrgyz people are nomadic, so they didn’t create cities. Bishkek was founded 140 years ago by Russians. Therefore, there was only a small indigenous population in the city. However, [Kyrgyz] young people would come to the city to study and they would stay in the city and become russified. Shepherds’ children would come and study and live here. This began the process of russification of the whole population.

Although my first language is Russian, I also know the Turkic languages. I understand Turkmen, I know Kyrgyz and Uzbek and Kazakh. I never learned them on purpose – I just began to understand them through social interactions throughout my life. Foreign languages were taught in the schools. For instance, I learned French in school. There was English at the institute and everyone who studied a language other than English in high school was taught English at the beginners level.

In schools everything was in Russian during class, but the rest of the time, everyone talked freely in his or her own language. It was a normal thing and no one was embarrassed about it. It was natural. At work, it was the same. There was no requirement that you had to know Russian, but everyone knew it because of the educational system. I would talk to Russian people in Russian and to local people in their own languages. I guess I didn’t even think about it; it just happened so naturally.

We got used to each others’ languages and cultures during our university years. When we saw each other, we would greet each other in our own languages. For example, when we were building our dormitory one summer, I was exposed to Azeri culture. Now when I see my Azeri neighbors, I greet them in their own language.

There were diasporas of different nationalities in university. They would gather together and hold on to each other. I guess the blood binds people and their place of birth did matter after all, once they were outside of their motherlands. I could never take part in their parties and, thus, I was never fully introduced to any of their cultural traditions except language.

All sorts of people came to Kyrgyzstan. I know Volga Germans, [3] for example, who were sent to Kyrgyzstan, and Crimean Tatars, and people from the Caucasus and from Uzbekistan. I didn’t know any Karachays, Chechens, or Kabardins, [4] but I later found out that they had been resettled to Kyrgyzstan. There were also Adyghes [5] in Uzbekistan. When I moved here and started working, I found out more about the nationalities that had been resettled in Kyrgyzstan. There were also Koreans [6] and Jews in Uzbekistan.

And there were lots of people who had been evacuated from the war zones [during World War II]. For instance, Dora Pavlovna and been evacuated from the war zone and told to live with my aunt. The authorities said she would live with them and so she did. There was another elderly couple who had no place to stay and was ordered to stay with us. My mom said that they had been on the road for so long that they were dirty and covered with bugs.

There were no conflicts among all these different types of people; everyone was tolerant. I guess trouble brings people together. Lots of the people who moved here back then, stayed here. For instance, Dora Pavlovna stayed. But the Jews migrated to Israel after perestroika. Lots of Jews I knew from work left to Israel, like Yashka Sigalton, and others.

I remember when Stalin died, someone put the radio in the hallway. Even before he actually died, his condition had been broadcast. Everyone was crying and in a bad mood in those days. It was such a tragedy. I cried, too. There were funerals all over. I remember that, in the square in Tashkent, there was a huge memorial in his honor and I remember, at one event, there were artificial flowers, but on the day of his death, the elders prepared a special wreath of violets for him. Back then, there weren’t as many real flowers as there are now. I was 12 in 1953 and was amazed to see that wreath. The violets were so beautiful and they were surrounded with big green leaves.

When I was in school, from time to time, we were taken to the Theatre of Youngsters, the Opera House, and concerts – especially Children’s Concerts – and to exhibitions of children’s crafts. I liked needlework. It was poplar then to do needlework with simple crosses and Bulgarian crosses. In the theaters, there were interesting shows in Russian and Uzbek. The concerts would be performances by artists from all over the USSR. On our own, we would go to the cinema. We enjoyed these things mostly during our student years.

The first-shift classes started with physical exercises every day. We were not allowed into the school until we did our exercises, so we did light exercises every day and then we would go inside and study.

Since we were from the post-war generation, there were lots of students from the orphanage. The kids who lost parents during the war were evacuated to Central Asia. There were lots of orphanages built. They stayed there, but studied with us in the schools. We didn’t realize that they were orphans because they dressed the same as us. There was no indication that they were hungry or anything. For example, the kids from the orphanage would bring cookies and offer them to us, but they would never take any cookies from other kids, because they were too proud. Our efforts to share with them were always rebuffed.

Our school was very international. However, there weren’t ethnic divisions. Besides, those times were so harsh and controlled that there was no chance for things like that. There were Russians, Tatars, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Jews. Lots of languages were used around us. We also studied a foreign languages after the fourth grade – it was French in our school.

There were no clubs in our school. However, if there were any students who were not good at their lessons, the teachers would work with them outside class. Students from the first shift would stay after their classes. Students from the second shift would come the next morning to catch up.

There was a Dvorets Pionerov [Palace of Pioneers [7] ] in every region and every city. There were lots of clubs there, including dancing, drawing, sewing, and music clubs. I went to a dancing club, which affected my life later. I liked to waltz best. There was a piano in the hallway and I don’t know why, but our French teacher would play waltzes every day and we danced. Maybe that was the reason why I liked dancing and, especially, the waltz.

We did not avoid boys then, but the boys mostly wouldn’t dance. So girls paired up with each other and danced. We had graduation balls as well. We would order special dresses and walk in the parks. For girls, special dresses were part of the ball. Back then, it was less common for factories to make special dresses, so we found private seamstresses to make them for us.

After the seventh grade, we were taken to pick cotton. I think it was like that all over the USSR. The city students were taken to work on the collective farms after the seventh grade, but the rural kids started collecting cotton even earlier. The city students would be taken to the rural areas on a big bus. During the harvest, we lived near where we worked. We took sheets to sleep on and would live in the schools out there, which were closed for the harvest. We got our food from the collective farms. We didn’t have any classes, we just worked during the day and had fun in the evening. Locals would present different games and performances for us every day. We liked it, since we had no school, no quotas, and good weather, since the work started on Sept. 20. But they didn’t pay us – I guess they spent the money for our food, instead.

While I was studying at the institute, too, they would take us to pick cotton to help fulfill the government plan starting Sept. 20 – but then they would pay us. It wasn’t very much money, but it was enough for students. The collective farm fed us well. They would bring the food to the fields. It was mainly lunch. Breakfast and dinner were provided in the rural schools where we stayed.

The Kyrgyz students were taken to the farms to work, too. For example, the students from the Medical Academy were taken to Osh oblast [province] to collect cotton; the students from the Polytechnic University were taken to the Kemin Valley to collect potatoes; and other students from the Medical Academy were to Talas oblast [province] to pick tobacco. I know this because my peers told me about it after I moved to Kyrgyzstan. One student who went to the Kemin Valley had an allergic reaction to the tobacco leaves. Picking cotton was not so bad. The weather would be cool and we would pick until October or, sometimes, November.

My father was an educated person, so my mother was always telling me to study hard and apply to the institute. She always told me about the advantages of education and advised me to study and read a lot. So I read lots of literature, especially about the war. Also, I read western literature like [Theodor] Dreiser, [Guy de] Maupassant, Jack London and, of course, [Alexander] Pushkin and [Mikhail] Lermontov.

We were raised on patriotic literature. I read Povest o Zoye i Shure, [8] Molodaya Gvardiya, [9] and Chetvertaya Vysota [10] (about Gulya). They affected me so much that I would cry while I was reading them. Once, my mom came home from her job and found me crying. When she asked why I was crying, I told her I was crying about Zoya, the hero from the book I was reading, who had been hanged.

In the summer, we would gather in Uzbekistan and make salads from cucumbers and tomatoes. We ate fruits like melons, watermelons, peaches, and grapes. During the day, we would eat fruits and, in the evenings, we would have something hot for dinner. Bread and fruit – like grapes or watermelons – were my favorite meal in the summertime. I still have the habit of eating watermelon or grapes with bread. These days we usually eat fruit after the meal, as desert. But I still eat it with bread, even if I am full.

Dating was different when I was young. Boys took us to the cinema and treated us to ice cream and soda. Later, when my son grew up and started dating and asked me for money, I told him, playing the part of a mother who is trying to be economical with the family budget: “Buy her an ice cream and let her lick it once and then you can lick it once and you can both be happy.” He laughed, knowing I was joking. Dates in our time consisted of walking in the park, and that’s why the Russian word gulyat [to go for a walk] has the connotation of dating. The only time my husband and I went to a restaurant was after we registered our marriage at Zaks [the state marriage registration office]. There was a restaurant near the World War II memorial called Druzhba [Friendship] and he took me there.

When I was younger, we would go to the cinema. There were no TVs until the end of the 1950’s. The first TVs were small and you placed them behind big lenses filled with some kind of liquid. The lens would enlarge the picture. My first movie was Mat [Mother], based on a work by [Maxim] Gorky. At the cinemas, there were lines everywhere: for getting a ticket, for getting into the cinema. It wasn’t easy to get in.

People would also roam in the parks in the evenings. Nowadays, people don’t understand parks, but our generation was different. Our parents would take us to the parks for ice cream, soda, and dances. There was always live music in the parks. The elders would dance and the kids would run and play. They had different kinds of music, like folk music and waltzes.

The parks were beautiful. Bishkek’s Panfilov Park, especially, was so green and full of flowers and it always had music. The Ala-Too Cinema was part of Dubovy Park back then. There were two cinemas back then – Udarnik and Ala-Too. There were also ice cream vendors and flowers in the park in the 1950s. Erkindik Street was Djerjinski Street back then and it was a place for gathering. It was very beautiful – there were lights that looked like bells and they were so bright.

In the post-war period, there were often gatherings in the evening. In the cities, especially, the lights made it as bright as daytime. My husband once told me he had been surprised to come from his village to the city and find that, at night, it was as bright as daytime. There were fountains everywhere. Panfilov and Dubovy parks had fountains and, nearby the Udarnik cinema there was another fountain.

There were parades on November 7, [11] May 1, [12] and May 9, [13] with grand marches and bands playing. Each organization presented its products and had its own band. They would all carry slogans like “Forward for the victory of communism,” “Way to go – KPSS [Communist Party of the Soviet Union],” “We will give our country a certain amount of coal or a certain amount of cotton,” etc. That’s how we lived under socialism. Everyone presented their products on moving vehicles that were colorful and beautiful. Everyone was dancing and singing – it was fun. Victory Day was a triumphant celebration of our veterans. November 7 was the day when the country’s military might was put on display, followed by civilian organizations, and sportsmen with their performances.

It was hard to get into a university through the formal procedure, but I would not know about any informal procedures, because I got accepted in the regular way, by passing the exams. But there were people who could not get in. For example, my friend was short by one point on the entrance exam, so she became a “reservist.” Well, the first semester at the institute was harsh and there were no second chances. Once you got disqualified, a reservist would take your place. So she was lucky and got in in this way, without getting the required score on the test.

Cheating always existed. People cheated on essay exams, especially. We would make cheat sheets –folded pieces of paper – and hide them underneath our watches so that no one would find them. Not everyone was given the essay writing test, though. There were exams in math, chemistry, and essay writing. I applied to the Department of Chemical Technologies at the Tashkent Textile Institute.

You could get a regular stipends or a high stipends. The high stipends were for excellent students. The regular ones were 35 rubles. That was enough back then, since bread cost 10 or 12 kopeks and piroshki [savory pastries stuffed with meat, cabbage, potatoes or other fillings] cost 3 kopeks each. Students with families would go to the train station to earn a little extra money by loading and unloading goods – the men, that is.

We did not have international exchange students at that time. Students could move around within the borders of the USSR, but not beyond. As we were finishing the institute, though, a group went to Czechoslovakia, which was a socialist state at the time. It was such a sensation, but it only happened as we were leaving. Leaving the Soviet Union was unusual when I was young. It wasn’t until the 1970s that people began to go outside the Union’s borders to travel and work. Then they would go to socialist states like Finland, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia, but certain documents from the regional committee were required. So people preferred to vacation within the borders of the USSR, for example in the Baltic states. I visited all three Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

You could go anywhere and work, but you could only work in the specialty that was on your diploma. There were a lot of workers who came from Russia. In the Konvolno-Sukonnom Kombinat [factory], there were lots of specialists from Russia. Those specialists had graduated from universities in Moscow, Kiev, and Leningrad. This was during the period of “mass graduation” after the war and light industry was just developing, especially in Central Asia. Thus, we didn’t have indigenous people who were specialists in light industry. So specialists came from Russia. They weren’t only recent graduates; more experienced workers also came. They worked in administrative and key specialist positions.

Later, the local people were sent to study these specialties, too. For example, lots of Kyrgyz students studied in Tashkent to prepare for careers in light industry. Turkmen and Kazakhs did the same. In the other republics, there were no institutes offering that type of education, so Tashkent was the center for light industry specialists. These specialists learned about refining cotton and wool, and about textile technologies. Students came to Tashkent from all over Central Asia and the Caucasus. The distribution of educational opportunities was based on nationality and on the available post-graduation work opportunities.

I remember when Khrushchev was in power. It was when I was studying at the institute. He got interested in growing corn and, after that, there wasn’t much wheat. I remember that people had to stand in long lines to get bread. That’s what I remember about Khrushchev.

Then came the Brezhnev period. That was when I started work. As young specialists, my husband and I were given an apartment. There were lots of jobs and the salaries were good. We earned enough and the apartment was fine. First, we got a two-room apartment and, later, we moved to a three-room apartment when we had two sons. Under Brezhnev, we worked and saw the best times of socialism.

It was the best time for Kyrgyzstan’s development, too. Light industry was developed during that period. We had 24 different organizations and unions working in light industry. We were providing citizens with clothing. We produced fabrics for suits and for coats, we produced silk and cotton. We produced clothing for people of all ages, from babies and to elderly people.

During the Brezhnev period, maternity leave was extended to three months and a “baby boom” started. Then there was a shortage of children’s socks and long pants, because we had only one factory that produced them. Over the next two years, another factory was built at the intersection of Almatinskaya and Gorkogo streets to produce these goods. Later, these goods were even exported, since they were 100 percent cotton.

We were responsible for children’s clothing, so the Ministry of Health would check our factory and the goods it produced. The shoes had to be made from real leather and everything else – t-shirts, suits, and shirts – had to be made from real cotton. Now things are not the same. Now we have synthetic good from China, which are cheap and not as healthy as cotton.

Imports from other socialist states were in abundance in Central Asia during the Soviet times. So guests from the European part of the Union would buy a lot of those good here: shoes from Finland and Czechoslovakia – everything was natural. We had imports from China then, too. But they were natural, not like the goods now. Everything was natural during those years. One of my wedding presents from my mother was a length of natural Chinese silk cloth. Even other goods like shoes, coats, t-shirts, and dresses were all-natural.

We could satisfy the needs of the republic [the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic] easily. We even sent goods to other republics. We produced 7 million meters per year of fabric. We had two leather factories, two shoe cooperatives, a shoe factory in Kyzyl-Kyyal, and the Frunzinskoye Shoe Cooperative. There was also the Dom Modeli [the Fashion House]. That’s where new styles were created and then, from there, they were sold to the factories for mass production.

We had some professional top models. One was Mila and the other was Iteri, they were beautiful half-Georgian girls. Others were recruited, too – especially kids – for the presentation of clothing. Now fashion is very different. Our styles were very ordinary and simple compared to what people wear now.

Creativity was encouraged in our workplaces. There were special funds for creativity and anyone who offered worthy innovations was granted some of the money from these funds. We took part in presentations and competitions. There were also the competitions between the different organizations for the quality and quantity of products.

Then it was time for Gorbachev’s perestroika. The job cuts started and so people had to start brainstorming about how to survive. Some people started doing business, going to China, Turkey, the Baltic states, and Korea and bringing back goods to sell. Others used of their skills, like needlework and sewing. All these people were was educated, but they were still just hauling around bags of goods. Their education was not enough for survival. Artists, PhDs, and teachers were working in the bazaars. There was one teacher sitting by me in the market and she would always wear dark glasses, since she was embarrassed that her students might see her.

In the beginning, everyone was ashamed of doing business. But a teacher’s salary was not enough to support a family. The only option was to find alternative ways to earn money. The ones who had vehicles started taxi businesses. Foreigners thought that we would die of hunger, but they didn’t count on our 100 percent literacy rate. I think that our literacy level helped our society survive those harsh conditions and radical changes. So that’s how capitalism started here.

The changes under perestroika were very strange. My son broke his finger and we brought him to the hospital and the doctors said we had to pay. I was confused about what we needed to pay for. It took us some time to get used to the idea that we had to pay for everything.

As the capitalism started, local industries lost their customers. Imported goods were of poorer quality, but people were going through a difficult period and they only cared that the imports were cheaper. Thus, the local factories that produced better quality – but relatively expensive – goods went out of business. For example, the carpet factory went bankrupt because of cheaper Chinese and Iranian imports. Other organizations faced the same competitive conditions.

Our generation saw everything from the war to the collapse of the USSR. Nevertheless I think we saw less than our parents saw before and during the war. My uncle’s stories about the famine in Kazakhstan could make you cry. He told us he once caught a live frog and ate it. He used to say that famine was a devastating thing. The famine touched everyone. I remember my parents and my sister crying, remembering the harsh days that they had been through.

Fray

Now my family is fine. I have two sons living in Bishkek. One is married, the other is still single. I have one granddaughter. I am retired. I get a pension and the government has promised to increase it in April.