Portraits of Russia: Aku, Nanai grandmother

Grandmother Onenko Aku is a Nanai woman from the village of Sinda, Nanai region. She is approximately 94 years old, was born almost at the same time as the Soviet Union and remembers everything that happened in her village over the past century. Now Grandma Aku lives alone in a tiny house opposite the two-story brick cottage of one of the grandchildren of the director of the Sinda brick factory .

About age

How did we do documents before? My parents had completely different names. They signed me up and didn’t match my parents’ names. Aku is a Nanai name, but I don’t know what it means. In those years, the Nanais did not have documents, the age was determined approximately based on the teeth, and on May 10, 1935, they decided that I was nineteen years old. So on May 10th I turned 94 years old. I have four children: born in 1940, 1944, 1948 and 1952.

Now I feel bad both in my head and in my eyes. And I became deaf, people said, I couldn’t hear anything. There is no one left my age, the children are all big too. Only Polya, my cousin, is ten years younger. The assistant comes every day for several hours to sit, talk, clean, and cook. And I live alone. I sometimes go to visit relatives.

The authorities did not forget; by May 9, a postcard was sent from Moscow and from the governor. There are no more veterans left here.

Photo: Alexander Sorin

About war and collective farm

I lived on the collective farm from 1936 until my retirement. Before the collective farm, we had artels, mainly fishing ones. It was much harder during the war; there were no men. Almost all the men were taken to the war, only the old and sick were left behind, but few of them returned; they all died.

They didn’t take my grandfather to the war - they recognized a heart defect and discharged him. During the war they suffered, they were hungry, but they still worked. I worked with milk at a separator, in a kindergarten, on a collective farm, in a vegetable garden, and in winter - fishing. We lived in the village of Mukha when the children were small. There were 32 children in the kindergarten and four women worked - they were cleaners themselves, cooks themselves, and nursed the children themselves. Some of the children were very young.

During the war, everyone who needed it kept vegetable gardens; in addition, there were collective farm fields. Everyone had plans, workdays, women were foremen. My grandfather was also a foreman. There was no equipment, they plowed on horses, there wasn’t even a tractor. We did everything ourselves, with our own hands. They even fulfilled three norms. After the war things got a little better. There were several Russian families on the collective farm.

People were forced to go to the collective farm in various ways. Some didn't want to. They took away boats and nets. I was an orphan, I had nowhere else to go. And many were forced to do so. Chairmen changed frequently.

When Komsomolsk (Komsomolsk-on-Amur) began to be built, cabbage and potatoes were transported there. They were transported to Khabarovsk by rowboat - the boats were large, five-oared, with five rowboats.

People here have always fished. And on collective farms they taught us how to work on the land. There was such a word - “necessary”. Try to put you in jail now and take a big boat full of cabbage to Khabarovsk. You will have to row for two or three days with an overnight stay.

Photo: Alexander Sorin

About products

The collective farm pension is now very small, a little more than eight thousand. On the collective farm they used to pay in workdays, but here they were saved by the river, fish, hunting, and there were few people. They didn't die of hunger here. Especially if there are potatoes, cucumbers, onions in the garden... Although instead of onions they mostly collected wild garlic. The wild garlic saved me, such a thin wild onion.

People also collected nettles and wormwood, cooked them, and made preparations. They made green soup from wormwood. Wormwood is very healthy and very tasty; you need to collect the tops from fresh wormwood. At that time, dandelions were not studied, but recently it has been known that they are edible and healthy. We then had enough wormwood, nettles, and quinoa. There was no place to store cabbage in the required quantity, but here you can dry the herbs for the winter. They kept it in boxes, they kept it in bags.

Photo: Alexander Sorin

About children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren

I have nine grandchildren, many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. The children still speak Nanai, and the grandchildren understand, but no longer speak. They no longer sing songs, but the older generation, especially on holidays, drink a little and sing in front of each other. One will sing, then the other! It was interesting that way. Now they've forgotten.

People have been in boarding schools and dormitories since childhood, then work, work, work from morning to evening. In the villages there was school only up to the fourth grade; from the fifth grade they were taken to boarding schools. And then those who were in technical schools and colleges already lived in dormitories. We parted with our parents - we cried, it was all sorts of things. This was a must. And in the thirties, when they were taken away from boarding schools, when they came to pick up the children, the father hid them.

I learned to write and read. She was an orphan. My father was there, but my mother died when I was five months old. I am the youngest, there were six children. Three died in childhood, three survived. Three girls left. The elders raised me as best they could. They dragged us to other houses. We had no cows in the camp, no milk. I don’t know what they fed me. I was born there, above, in Lumami, this is an island. They settled where it was convenient, where there was fish, where the fish could be dried. They lived in mud huts, they wove woven wool, coated both sides with clay, and had a homemade stove. They made a chimney under the stove, slept on trestle beds on top, and covered the window with a fish bladder. Everyone has lived like this since birth. My father died when I was 12 years old, right there in Lumami. My uncle took me to Dubovo. They had a large family, and two years later they had to go to Mukha, to a collective farm. My sister lived there and stayed with her.

Photo: Alexander Sorin

In 1960 she moved to Iskra. That year Olya, the first granddaughter, was born. They brought their house from Mukha. Once upon a time they gave a cow for him. And in 1986, they bought a house in Sindh and moved here with their grandfather from Iskra. The children all lived separately. According to the documents, the grandfather turned out to be younger. They wrote that he was in his twenties. They put it around the age, but boys always look younger.

About alcohol

Now people live on nothing. Who wants and can work. After the war, people slowly began to drink themselves to death. Apparently, the whole of Russia was drinking too much, politics was made on vodka, they were looking for profit. But our people quickly drank themselves to death, and many, many died. Before the war, our old people didn’t drink at all. If you drank, then a thimble. Vodka was brought from China. They sold furs and bought vodka. On important occasions, when they were shamanizing or burying people, they drank a thimble and that was it. The people were so strong, but now you won’t see large, tall people among the Nanais. Everyone became shallow, everyone drank themselves to death. The post-war children in the village can be counted on one hand. There are more pre-war ones left.

Photo: Alexander Sorin

Translated from Nanai by Katerina, a relative of Onenko Aku .