Press Release, 1.11.2023

On 1 November, the Moscow office of the Yabloko party hosted a launch of the first volume of Engelina y memoirs, “How I Lived in the Soviet Union”.

Engelina Borisovna Tareyeva is one of the oldest members of the Yabloko party; she was born in 1925 in Ukraine into a family of professional revolutionaries. The book is a collection of memoirs about life in the Soviet Union, published in Engelina Tareyeva’s LiveJournal in 2009–2021. Tareyeva writes about different generations of her family, recollects Kyiv before the Second World War, life in evacuation in Kazakhstan, Moscow during her years of study at Moscow State University and further. A separate chapter contains memories of Stalin’s death and the events that followed.

“For almost a hundred years of her life, despite all the difficulties and hardships, Engelina Borisovna retained faith in people, love for those around her and remained a person whom many can look up to,” Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, said opening the event.

Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the party, called Engelina Tareyeva “a rare example of a person who checks every step, every word with truth, sincerity and honesty and at the same time has a deep understanding of what is happening.” “You can trust her every word, her every word is imbued with love for her country and her people. Today we are present at an important event – a book of truth about the history and life of our country has been published,” Yavlinsky added.

Due to her age, Engelina Borisovna does not leave her Moscow apartment, but was able to take part in the event by phone.

“I am a living witness of almost a century, and I cannot quit this life without leaving a testimony – this is my duty. In our time, I feel like a signalman who holds two ends of a broken wire in two hands under fire and connects them. And while he connects them, information from the past enters the present, and will also pass into the future, and when his hands fall, the connection of times will be interrupted,” Engelina Tareyeva said.

Those who worked on the collection of memoirs – the compiler and editor of the book Irina Osipova, the editor and proofreader Alexander Polyakov, the compiler of the name index Yuri Shein – also spoke at the book launch.

In recent years, Alexander Polyakov has been helping Engelina Tareyeva maintain her blog on LiveJournal, the memoirs from which were collected in a book. They call each other almost every day, and Engelina Tareyeva dictates new blog entries to her assistant. In his speech, Alexander Polyakov spoke about this work:

“Engelina Borisovna has an endless level of trust in the world, in God and in people. Everything is interesting to her, everything is new, everything surprises and pleases her. <…> As theater director Roman Viktyuk said, “age is the tactlessness of nature,” and these words can be fully attributed to Engelina Borisovna Tareyeva. She is internally younger than many of those around her. At the same time, she has a deep and wise mind, a deep vision, which perfectly matches her respectable age. A wonderful addition to her intelligence is her memory, which allows her to write a most interesting blog for a long time to the delight of her many readers.”

At the end of the evening, actress Tatyana Parshina read excerpts from the book.

The second volume of Engelina Tareyeva’s memoirs will be released next week, after which the book will go on sale.

More photos are here