This photo of my sister Nina Gerttevna (née Shulyakovskaya) and our grandfather Abram Kulakovsky was taken some time in the late 1920s.

My maternal grandfather lived in Baslovitsy, a village in Slutsk district. He was a peasant. He had seven daughters and a son. The eldest daughter was my mom.

When Grandpa came to Slutsk he sometimes took us to the village to show us the small house where they’d lived before, and we also saw his new house with a wooden floor, good roof and big windows. It was before the Revolution. There was neither electricity nor a water supply system in the village. They kept a cow.