From Tatyana Timofeevna’s handwritten notebook “Our genealogy: the Samsonovs”. First person. [?] = unclear passages. Page numbers (p. N) are given in the comments.
After the chapter “My mother”:
Mama used to tell how at first they were given a flat on Brestskaya — a large, grand apartment. They spent the night there, and in the morning Father was told they had no business being there and were offered a place in the 1st House of Soviets (the Metropol Hotel, cabin 405 or 407).
It was Father’s second marriage, and from the first marriage there remained a two-year-old daughter, Lelya. Her mother left her with Father. Father worked a great deal, and a nanny looked after the little girl. Mama was very afraid of how the girl would receive her. When Mama entered the room, Lelya was sitting on a bed covered with a red blanket; she looked and looked, and then said: “Mama.” That was how they met. So we children did not know that Lelya was Mama’s[?] half-sister.
In April 1923 a son was born; he was named Timofey after his father, and in September 1926 a daughter, Tatyana, was born. Father loved the children very much and always bathed them himself. He would telephone from work asking whether the water was ready (he worked nearby), and come over; he would not entrust such a serious matter to Mama. When the son was born, Mama left the Cheka and worked in other state institutions.
In time the hotel was cleared of residents, and our family moved
first to a house on Maly Vlasyevsky Lane (Arbat), and then to a house on Vozdvizhenka. Later it was called the 4th House of Soviets (M. I. Kalinin’s reception office was there as well). Our flat was on the 4th floor; the window looked out onto Vozdvizhenka. It consisted of 5 rooms: the nursery, Grandmother’s room, the bedroom, the study, and the dining room. And there was also a large kitchen with 2 windows and a back stairs. And in the kitchen there was also a large stove faced with tiles. It was heated with firewood; there was no gas then.
We were taken for walks in the Alexandrovsky Garden, and sometimes Father took us into the Kremlin (he had access there). Sometimes on winter evenings after work Mama took us sledging in the lane behind the Pushkin Museum. We called it “the little cul-de-sac.” There were no cars; the sledge ran well, and it was very good for all of us together.
We came home, drank tea, and Mama would say to me: “Call the children to tea.” I would run down the corridor shouting: “Children, tea!”
Mama very much wanted the girls to learn music, and she took a piano on hire purchase (in those days you could buy a piano by making monthly payments). And at Father’s work they were organizing a club, and the instructor
On the sheet: top and bottom — notebook text; in the middle — a pasted/inserted leaf (“How we lived”).*
Notebook (top)
was. And he gave that piano to the club. Mama was very distressed; they did not even return the money she had already paid.
Mama wanted to write her memoirs, but she never managed to. Here is her beginning. And nothing more.
Insert (leaf, mother’s manuscript / beginning of memoirs)
How we lived.
I.
At the very start of Vozdvizhenka, below Kalinin Prospect, stands a small but handsome five-storey house. In this house. (In the house with which my whole life is bound, [struck out: of a mother / daughter / motherhood?], and that only until 1926.)
× × ×
On the site of the new Lenin Library building, on the site away from the Rumyantsev Museum, old spreading limes grew. From six in the morning the boys went to poison[?]; the ringing[?] of them could be heard all hours[?]. At that time my daughter was four years old. She was a plump, lively little girl with large blue eyes. With a blue[?] ribbon[?] tied[?] around her neck, and a big red bow usually fluttering, and she often ran into[?] the boisterous sturdy lads[?].
On 3 November they fall seriously ill[?]; the daughter [ink corrections: daughter / children] (also a complication) came down with tonsillitis, and here something happened to her to which this chapter will be devoted.
Notebook (bottom)
In 1928 Mama joins the ranks of the VKP(b)
In 1931 our family moves to a new house, the one on Serafimovich Street. House No. 2
Entrance 12, flat 223, 4th floor
Father was a member of the commission for settling this house (the “House of Government”). The flat was large: 6 rooms. Father decided the flat was very large, and since at that time he was Administrator of Affairs of the CEC[?] VK[?], he gave up 2 rooms; the corridor was partitioned with a brick wall, and the result was a two-room flat with a separate entrance. For a time the Filovs[?] lived there.
In later years Mama was in Party work. She worked in the Railway District Party Committee. First as an instructor, then she headed the schools section, the Party study room, and then became head of the agitation and propaganda section.
Our parents worked a great deal; on weekdays we rarely saw them; they came home late. Even our grandmother used to say: “And what kind of work is that of yours? One dawn drives you out, the other drives you in.”
In the summer of 1935 something happened in our family: my sister fell ill with purulent pleurisy, which then turned into tuberculosis. And this is how it came about! It was the beginning of summer; the river water was cold; we were not allowed to swim, but we very much wanted to. Then Grandmother said: “Take a trough, set it in the sun, haul water from the well. The water will warm up, and you can bathe.”