Acknowledgement

I am so happy to have this saved on the blockchain. No other website would allow me to be so confident that the history of my family, which I am proud of, will stay for a long time (if not forever). I used to use https://www.copy.com and it has gone. That proves how unreliable all the centralized services are.

Disclaimer: this is original, not a stupid copy-paste. All the pics are from my family's archive

Introduction

I have probably annoyed you with the introduction of myself. I did it several times because of the validation issues that I found weird. Here you go, in case you are interested:

This one will not be about me. I have seen people introduce their pets, sometimes their spouses and children. But I have not seen anyone introduce their ancestors. I decided to begin. This post will be about my grandparents from my mother’s side. Maybe, sometime later, I will write about my father’s parents.

My grandparents

All my grandparents have already passed away. Due to my mom giving birth to me at the age of 40, I enjoyed little time knowing my grandparents in person. Most of what I know about them came from the stories of my mom and grandma (she died in 2010). This, along with the quality of cameras in the USSR, explains the poor quality of the photos.

From left to right: my mom (Liudmila), my grandma (Lidia), and my uncle (Anatoly)

My grandparents with my mom

My grandma

My grandma, Lidia Kurkina, (1924 – 2010), was a college teacher. Her major was Chemistry, but due to the lack of teachers in the USSR during 1940s – 1950s, the time of WW2 and rapid industrialization, she also taught German, which was in huge demand for the obvious reasons. Moreover, as you might know, the Soviet Russia, a communist state, fought hard against religion. Many churches were exploded. And in schools there was a special subject called “Scientific Atheism”. So, my grandma had been also teaching that. However, she was christened in her childhood and she had been telling her students that the Bible should be on every educated person’s desk, regardless their beliefs.

My grandpa

My grandpa, Peter Kurkin, (1924 – 1985), was a bookkeeper. In fact, his passion was cryptography, which he had studied during the War against the Nazi Germany. He was quite good at cryptography, the top performer during his studies, and he had always wanted to be a military cryptographer. (Maybe, that’s where my passion for cryptocurrencies is coming from?) However, he was not accepted to the army headquarters because it appeared that his father was a “public enemy” (more on that below). So, my grandpa could not join the military. But, he had been secretly helping his friends who were able to enter the headquarters. I believe the Red Army managed to carry out several successful military operations in 1944-1945 thanks to this help. Those were operations in Belarus, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Many cities were saved from destruction and many prisoners were freed from concentration camps.

My great-grandfather

Finally, my great-grandfather, Ivan Kurkin, (1896 – 1990), was a farmer. He had completed 4 years of elementary school, which was considered a good education at his time. He was very hard-working and had managed to build a nice farm. But in 1930s, during the Soviet industrialization and collectivization, the government confiscated almost all his property. He was never angry at them. He was a patriot and even called himself a “communist without the party”. The rudest curse he used regarding the government was “chatterboxes”. For this very word, because someone had reported on him, my great-grandfather was announced as a “public enemy” and sentenced to imprisonment in GULAG, where he spent 4 years, from 1932 to 1936. He was lucky enough to get freed before 1937. So, he left alive.

More photos

My grandpa in the military uniform

My young grandpa with his sisters

My grandpa in the 1980s

My grandpa and his car - VAZ-2101

My grandparents and my great-grandfather

My mom (bottom-left), my great-grandfather (bottom-right), my grandma (top-right), and my great-grandfather's daughter (top-left) at my great-grandfather's 90th anniversary

Thank you for taking time reading this! I agree with you that the War was horrible. There is no family in Russia who have not lost their relatives there.

I did not write here about my great-grandfather, the father of my grandma. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of him. His name was Nikolai Bulavin. He was a stove-maker. He kept up with politics and early in 1941 knew that the war was coming, despite the Soviet officials telling the opposite. He guessed he was going to be recruited for the army with little chance of survival and there was going to be a shortage of food supply for civilians. So, he sold almost all his clothes (clothes used to be quite expensive at that time), bought wheat, and buried it under the floor of the house. In July 1941 he was recruited and shot dead shortly thereafter. Unlike many other Russian families, his family had never suffered from hunger during the War.

My family: a public enemy, a Christian atheist, and a bookkeeper who might have saved the lives of your grandparents