Лариса Одаренко Larisa Odarenko

The Pani club (The Lady Club) — we had Yuvelir-servis (Jewellery Service company), I think, with Evropa Plus (Europe Plus), I don't remember. We also started holding beauty contests called Pani Donbas (Miss Donbas). I took part in the last one, the third one. And then, the girls realized that they needed to communicate somehow. So, we merged into one organization. At first, it was purely for ourselves, for the girls, to meet, to talk, to solve some issues, maybe urgent, but those that concerned ourselves. Then it began to grow, probably around the ninth or tenth year, when the need for some kind of social fulfillment began to emerge, and we began to do some things related to children. The focus shifted a little bit outward. From an internal one, personal. the focus shifted to something more general. But after 2014, the focus finally shifted to doing socially useful things. Klub Pidpryiemtsiv (The Entrepreneurs' Club) <...> also initially gathered more to solve some personal issues, just to communicate about business, some matters. Then the focus also shifted towards the need to do something more community-based. And when in 2014, after Kramatorsk was liberated, these first steps of some social <...> events were probably started by these two organizations. I mean, in terms of some kind of urban activity, the involvement of the authorities. <...> And it was also connected with fostering, probably, of some patriotic things in the city.

My dad had this story, he was maybe five or six years old. His father did not live with his mother at the time, he went to Moldova to serve and somehow stayed there for a while. He later returned, but he was not around at the time. My grandmother worked at a factory, and she also [passed on the entrepreneurial streak to me], she sewed things for herself and also sewed things to sell to other people. But there was still not enough money. And they were walking together, and he saw something: some old lady was selling grapes, you know, small grapes, the blue ones, the simplest ones. And he asked his mom to buy some, and she couldn't buy him any, she said no, she didn't have any money. This was probably a trigger for him for the rest of his life because he wanted to be independent, to be able to eat whatever you wanted, especially when it came to fruit, he liked them. And he started growing everything himself. <...> That's how we have a lot of different trees, different fruits, different berries.

I have this entrepreneurial streak, and I was wondering where it came from. I found it in both my dad's and my mom's side of the family. My mother's great-grandmother was a merchant, <...> and they had a store, and they sold ironmongery goods, they had a factory. And when <...> after the revolution they were dekulakized, they took it away, they even had two shops, they took away these two shops and left them a little bit, some part of their house. And it turns out that my <...> great-grandmother, the Bolsheviks took her away, held her <...> like in some kind of shed, and did not feed her, or rather, they fed her only herring, and did not give her water so that she would tell them where the silver was, <...> as if there was money in the family so that she would tell them about it. After she was released, my great-great-grandmother [her mother] sent her <...> to the Bryansk region, to the forests. <...> And there she got married and gave birth to my grandmother. And my grandmother came here to Ukraine during the war, she was already married, <...> and my mother was born here. Although her father was also a very hard worker, he had a smithy in the village, he was an Unteroffizier [an outdated term for a non-commissioned officer], and they were literate. And my grandmother was brought up, well, quite [educated], <...> and she was interested in music, interested in various sciences. And on my dad's side, that's also great-grand[parents], they also had some land, employed people there, they were employers, and they also grew something. But also, with the advent of the Soviet regime, all this was dekulakized. And this is probably why I have such an entrepreneurial streak. <...> Since childhood, my father taught me to work. And then it continued with my own business.

When we were leaving, since we had our own production, we still had some goods, <...> we closed the salon, and a girl stayed at the flower market. We loaded her up with the remaining goods. She sold everything quickly and said, "Give me some more". We had everything in the greenhouses, and the woman who helps us with the greenhouses stayed in the city, and didn't leave. So a man from the Carpathians came here and gave her the keys. Well, for some reason, we left like that, without leaving her the keys. And so she went around in this way, taking care of things, pruning, delivering. And she earned money this way, and the girl earned money, and we earned some money too. So we could get by, so to speak. <...> It was April, about two or three weeks into April. And already in May, our employee, who was selling flowers, said, "Let's get some imported flowers, something else, because we've run out of them." So, my husband and I decided to [return] from the Carpathians. We left. I had just called my suppliers, and they were from Kharkiv and were also leaving. He said, "I want to bring you something." So we came from the Carpathians to Kropyvnytskyi, where they were based at the time, bought flowers from them, and brought them to Kramatorsk. We stayed here for three days, quickly, very quickly, and did everything because we had a lot of work to do. Something to water, something to spray. And then we quickly returned back. A couple of weeks passed, she said, "Give me some more." And my husband and I were like, okay, we need to come back on business, to work. And then we came again, across the whole of Ukraine. Back and forth. We came again. <...> it was already in late May. We arrived to Kramatorsk somewhere around May 30th, I think. No, probably a little earlier. At first, my husband also thought that we would quickly do everything and leave. And then it turned out that some other friends of ours came, they had a place in Dnipro at the time, but they also came home to visit. And we met once, sat down, and met again. And they did not want to go back to Dnipro any longer, and we were like, "It's so good at home, <...> home sweet home, after all." And I think we stayed for a week. And when we were coming back, we decided for ourselves that we should probably go back.