This photo of me and my daughter, Alvina Shevyolkina, was taken in 1953, when we were on holiday in Anapa on the Black Sea coast.

My daughter was born in Vladivostok in 1937. I left Vladivostok when Alvina was six months old. I “wanted to go to Europe”, as it was called there, and left for Minsk. That was in 1938, and in 1939 I came back to Leningrad.

My daughter didn’t get married for a long time. Until she was 27 years old, she turned everybody down. Finally she married a fellow from Vologda, a man like my husband.

Alvina graduated from the Medical Institute and worked on the artificial kidney project. She was very talented and spoke English fluently. She died in 1985 from diphtheria. My husband died in 1997. I keep contact only with my granddaughter and a woman who is my neighbor.