Lidia Josifovna Granič

* 1954

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  • "We didn't know how to go on living. What do we do? All the people were... What's next? How will things be? Where are we going to do? What will we eat? How will we live? There is no kolkhoz, no nothing. They gave the land... there was no tractor, so it was how much you can dig with a shovel. They divided it up but didn't know how to make it right. " "How was the USSR better than Moldova is today? " "The work was organized. The future was planned. We always knew what was coming next. See, my husband and I knew that we had to teach, dress, and feed our four children. We both worked, we weren't lazy. We had everything at home and we got money enough to even save some. During the holidays, I worked in the fields with the children for extra money that we put in a savings account. We did that for ourselves too. We lived in the same house with my inlaws. I wanted to buy new furniture, a new kitchen, a bedroom. The inlaws were sorry about that; they wanted to keep the old furniture because they'd had a hard time making money for it. I said to my husband, 'They're getting old, let's wait for three, four, or five more years, save more money and then buy it.' And when the Soviet Union collapsed, we were left with nothing." "There was no money in your savings?" "We had 5000 rubles, 4000 rubles... and that was some money!" "And you lost that?" "We didn't get anything. They gave us a thousand lei."

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    Holubaja, Moldávie, 06.08.2024

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    duration: 56:21
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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After the collapse of the USSR, we didn’t know how to go on living

Lidia Josifovna Granič in 2024
Lidia Josifovna Granič in 2024
photo: Post Bellum

Lidia Josifovna Granic is a member of the Czech minority in Moldova. She was born Lidia Karásek in the southern Moldavian village of Holuboye in the former USSR on 3 August 1954. Her family experienced Stalinist persecution before her birth; her great-grandfather Václav Karásek was deported to the Altai as a “kulak” in the 1940s. Her father Josef Karásek chaired the kolkhoz in nearby Tătăreşti, was a member of the CPSU and for a time a member of the Moldavian Union Republic parliament, while her mother was a housewife. Czech was spoken in the family but Russian was the language of instruction at school. Lidia studied mathematics teaching in Chisinau and married Ukrainian Dimitri Granič with whom she has four children. Lidia Josifovna perceived the collapse of the USSR very negatively, as a disruption of values and social security and the end of what she considered to be a well-functioning economy. At the time of the interview, the memoirist had been a teacher at the Jaroslav Hašek Primary School in Holuboye for almost fifty years. She has visited the Czech Republic twice, and is active in the Perličky (Pearls) group founded by her sister Marie.