Alla Saldusova, About My Family

Abstract

Alla talks about her parents, maternal grandfather and herself:My mother is a descendant from the noble family of the Taltaevs from Tsagan-Nur. My maternal grandfather graduated from college in Astrakhan where he learned Russian. After the revolution in 1917 he came to Kalmykia where he was appointed to various managerial positions. In the 1930s, when repressions began against the nobility, his younger brother was arrested and sent to Stalingrad from where he was released later and died in 1940. My grandfather himself was Buddhist. He counted his rosaries and never raised his voice. He did not blame the Soviet government, but lived in his inner world. When collectivization started, initially he did not want give away his cattle to the state, but later was persuaded by his brother to change his mind. My mother was a beautiful woman. Her parents wanted her to marry a man of noble origin. Although they found a suitable groom, my mother’s younger brother was against her marrying at a young age and instead took her with him to Volgograd where she entered a medical school. During the war she was sent to Tsagan-Nur where she worked as a doctor. From there she travelled to Kazakhstan, accompanying the kolkhoz cattle that was driven there to prevent them from falling into the hands of the advancing Germans. In Siberia, she was in high demand, because she was a good doctor and knew how to quickly make a diagnosis. Although people around us lived poorly, I remember that in the evening people secretly brought my mother candies and apples. My father Garya Bargukovich Saldusov worked as a people’s judge. He was a war veteran but did not like to talk about the war. I went to school in the village of Ketchenery for 4 years, but completed my secondary education in Elista. Like everyone else I was a pioneer. At the end of grade 11, I entered the Komsomol only because I wanted to go to college. I entered the Moscow Library Institute. There I learned how to write book reviews, and I was the best in my class. Afterwards, I worked as director in a children’s library in Elista. Later I worked at the Kalmyk Scientific Institute where I collected materials on children’s literature and studied Kalmyk poetry.