"I understood that Russian emigrants have their own needs that are not being met. And the state did not realize that Russian-speaking emigrants are a certain category of people with certain needs. Because, as we quickly realized, there are state organizations that are designed to help emigrants who find themselves in trouble, that is, legal help when you are cheated, psychological help - all of this is crisis assistance. Our people who came here - they were not in crisis. To come here to live in 2009-2010, you had to have options, you had to have resources: money, families, strong ties. And the people who came then had all of that: they had apartments that they rented in Russia, and they lived on that. Of course they were in crisis, but they weren't starving. They could afford to choose a well-paid lawyer. What our people desperately needed at that time was the creation of a new circle of quality communication. They were adults, they were not refugees. They were people who had left for a better life. They weren't losers who had failed, they were people who were successful, who had earned the capital to live better. But they were people who had lost all social ties. Because when you move, sooner or later the friends who stayed at home stop understanding you, and you often don't tell your parents about your troubles. And it was this quality communication that people desperately needed. And we created the projects accordingly."
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
"Well, at that time it was foolish to plan anything. Nobody planned anything, we lived one day at a time. There was no stability, and there was nothing foreshadowing the near future. But at some point, life got worse and worse. Maybe because Petrozavodsk is a province, maybe everything there was slower, but in the end it fell apart and not many new good things happened. There was a huge difference between salaries in Petrozavodsk and salaries in Moscow. Good products were already starting to appear, there were already many attractions. There were beautiful ads on television, some beautiful things. And even these things started to appear on sale. But we couldn't afford anything, we really didn't have money even for milk for our child. Because we never had a pen, we never had access to the minimum social benefits - child benefit and nothing else. Then we thought, what is the difference in renting an apartment if there is no work here and there is in Moscow".
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
"Here she said 'Koreans have wild manners', here you can see how her family was affected, for example. For example, the custom was as follows. My grandfather had an older brother, he was also a soldier, a colonel, he had a Russian woman for a wife, his name was Peter Lukic Pak, I don't know what his wife's name was, she was a beautiful Russian woman. They had no children. And when it turned out that they didn't have children, and probably they wouldn't have - according to Korean tradition, the younger brother had to give them his second child. And the grandmother, I think, has a reason to say that it's wild manners because she had to give them her second child. She gave Galina away, they took her into Peter Lukic's family, and Rusalka raised our Korean Galya. And of course, I think that was very traumatic for the mother. And that was the first thing she experienced of all the things she experienced after that."
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
Marina Solovarova (née Shilovskaya) was born on 31 May 1972 in Leningrad, then still in the USSR. Her father was a Russian from a village in the Arkhangelsk region, her mother was a Korean from Priamurje. Her maternal grandfather, Alexander Pak, was arrested as director of the Ural School of Communications in 1937 as a „Japanese spy“ and served 10 years in the Komi Gulag. In 1991, she graduated from the Petrozavodsk Music School with a degree in cello. With the onset of perestroika, she was left without a job due to the breakdown of the cadre distribution system in the USSR. She worked in a commercial art gallery. She became a member of the Protestant Church. In 1993 she went to Moscow with her husband and son to earn money. In 2000, the family moved to St. Petersburg, which was culturally closer to them. She received a second education as a psychologist and social worker and worked in business projects. In 2008 they emigrated to the Czech Republic. She opened a travel agency „Hobby-tour“. In 2009 she founded the Women‘s Club and the public organization More Valuable than a Pearl, organized events in the House of National Minorities. She participated in the European Union grant project „Restart for women emigrants“. For the 500th anniversary of the Reformation she organized a thematic tour of European cities for the American Protestant Church „House of Bread“. Now retired, she is an antiques dealer and family historian.
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
