Coecrates of Soviet telephone operators

No one knows about the work of telephones: the young ladies are fighters of the invisible front with the advent of mobile communications almost completely disappeared in modern Russia. Samizdat “Batenka, you are a transformer” and “ Tinkoff Mobile ” not easily found the last witnesses of the great telephone era, when a call to a friend was a whole adventure. Work for right -handedness, anthracite mine in Bukachacha, Vysotsky, wiretapping and human secrets.

Their professional disease was an inflammation of the middle ear, which occurred due to a dense headset. “Under it always sweat ears. And if February or March in the yard, be sure to blow. So the girls suffered, ”says Vera Stepanovna. This work was considered harmful, but not because of the boor on the other side of the wire, but because of the electricity, so all the telephones retired at 50 years old.

Now Vera Stepanovna is 66 years old, and at 27 she came to work at the city telephone station of the district center of Chernyshevsk in Transbaikalia. It was 1979. In 1981, the old manual switches were replaced by new, but also manual. So the principle of work remained the same - like a century ago. “Everything looked exactly like in films about the revolution. Telephoners are sitting, in front of them are manual switches. Only not “young ladies” turned to us, but “girl”. And I answered “the second listens”: the second is my personal number, ”recalls Vera Zhilinskaya.

As it worked, it was shown in old Soviet films or in the series "Television". Each nest in the switch corresponded to one number. When someone in the city picked up the phone from his apparatus, a light bulb lit up near his room. There were paired cords below. One of them Vera Zhilinskaya inserted into the nest and listened to the subscriber. He said where he was calling: for example, in the village council the villages of Kurlych or to the apartment of some Petrovs. Then Vera Stepanovna took the second wire from the couple and stuck it into the nest, belonging to the village council or, accordingly, to the Petrov apartment. “I hear that they started the conversation, and I’m turning off.”

The party and police were served, of course, in the first place.
- If a call is from there, then you immediately rush to connect. This is already at the level of instinct, ”recalls the telephone operator.

Only for right -handed

There were four switches at the station. One intercity and three city for numbers on “1”, “2” and “3”. Vera Zhilinskaya all the numbers were three. More precisely, on each switch there were all the numbers of the city network, just below - three rooms to make it easier to accept calls from them. And everyone else is upstairs, so any telephone operator could connect any two subscribers. And if one of the girls was leaning off, colleagues could replace her without leaving his workplace. It was not easy to stretch. Vera Zhilinskaya is short, so she always put a pillow on a chair.

In total, each of the three city switches had 20 pairs of cords. So, only 60 residents of the district could speak at the same time. This was enough: there were only 400 rooms at the station. At the very top of the switches, the numbers of district villages and villages were concentrated. And in many of them there were their small telephone stations with their telephone operators.

- In the village of Bukachach, for example, there was a large mine, anthracite was mined. There they already had their own telephone operator. I connected the subscriber with her, and then she already connected it with the right number, ”says Vera Zhilinskaya. - There was also a telephone operator in the village, but only 30–40 numbers.

Today, mobile operators in any region have one or two switches. There is no maximum load for them: even if all subscribers want to call someone, the network will withstand.

It is profitable to call Tinkoff Mobail in Russia. If you have a Moscow SIME, and call you from Sterlitamak to Cherepovets, the call will cost as much as from Moscow to Moscow. With the Internet, the same thing.

International roaming is cheap and predictable: in Europe, one minute of conversation costs 11.9 rubles, and 100 MB of the Internet - 149 rubles. The operator turns off background loads, and roaming will turn off automatically when you return to Russia.

In the evenings, jokers called from the village. Usually asked Smolny.
- The main thing here is to answer very seriously: "Who are you - Lenin?" - Laughs Vera Stepanovna

It happened, and rude.
-If someone was completely climbing out, I could answer. And so you close the microphone with your hand and just say with a whisper: "Yes, you go." And immediately calm down.

Only two girls did not smoke at the station: Vera Zhilinskaya itself and one more. However, smoking at the workplace was not accepted. We went to the window, and colleagues at that time replaced. The profession of telephone operators did not assume any tough selection. Education could be any - at least eight classes. Strange as it may seem, there were no special requirements either, if only the girl did not stutter. One strict: this work was not taken left -handed. Because the switch was made under the right hand.

The new one was immediately planted with an experienced telephone operator. If there were a lot of calls, the senior colleague could take a job. And so the student worked from the very first day.
- First, everyone taught the numbers. What number is the hospital, what is the clinic, what is the Ivanovs’s apartment or the Petrov apartment, who has a paired phone. A month later, all this bounced off the teeth, ”says Vera Zhilinskaya.

The change consisted of three parts. First from 14:00 to 20:00. Then, the next day - from 8:00 to 14:00. Finally - in the night: from eight in the evening to eight in the morning. And then for two days they rested.
“I loved this work very much,” Zhilinskaya admits. - You will sit down and understand that through you the whole Chernyshevsky district is talking.

Order table

The first to automate the villages so as not to keep the telephones for the sake of several dozen numbers. And in 1991 in Chernyshevsk, the PBX was also set up. But the girls themselves did not disappear. They just now served intercity calls. And in the same way as before: in manual mode. The loads became smaller, and the telephone operators were reduced: from twelve to eight people.

Even when in large cities it became possible to call the intermoda automatically, after eight, the inhabitants of the USSR always had the opportunity to do the same through the young lady. To do this, it was enough to dial the number "07", to name the city and number of the subscriber. If you are lucky, they connected it right away, no - in order of live queue. The painful expectation process is well described by Vysotsky in the song “Zero Seven”.

But how it looked if you look from the other end of the telephone wire.
- The subscriber called, say, Arkhangelsk, I dialed the code of Arkhangelsk - “818”. There was a telephone operator at the station, I informed her the number. She asked: such and such a subscriber in place? If in place, then they connected it, ”says Vera Stepanovna.

The connection took place in the same way, in manual mode, on a manual switch. It happened that another telephone young lady wedged into the chain. Let's say the call was not in Arkhangelsk, but to the village in the Arkhangelsk region. Then the faith of Zhilinskaya had to talk with a village telephone operator. This was called a transit conversation.

All Siberia called through the Novosibirsk telephone station abroad. By the way, the inhabitants of the USSR was only through the telephone operator, no automation. Here, even Muscovites (and in Moscow on the ATS moved back in 1930) they had to communicate with abroad through the mediation of the young lady.

The average duration of the conversation for Tinkoff Mobail subscribers is 2 minutes 30 seconds. The longest bell lasted 2 hours 4 minutes 51 seconds. Another 9 seconds - and the call would be interrupted automatically: the operators do this in case both subscribers forgot to put the phone.

The package of 200 minutes at Tinkoff Mobayle costs 99 rubles, 1200 minutes will cost 299 rubles, and the full unlimited - 999 rubles a month. Packages operate throughout the country, except for Crimea and Sevastopol (there are other conditions)

Inside the country, automatic and manual intercity communications for many years existed in parallel. It was possible to find out the necessary intercity code by the reference number “09”, by which the same girls usually answered.
-Each telephone operators had large, large folders of codes of all district centers. I still remember them all. For example, I have a code in the entrance 423 - the code of Vladivostok, ”says Vera Stepanovna.

For each call it was necessary to fill out the form and put the time of the beginning of the negotiations. There was a large alarm clock in the hall, on which all the girls were guided. The shortest bell was three minutes, the longest - six. 30 seconds before the end, the telephone operator included in the conversation and warned that the time was running out. And then, already asking anyone about anything, disconnected.

On the night at a small station in Chernyshevsk there was only one telephone operator. Three were on duty: a telephone operator, a telegraphist and a mechanic from a radio node. After twelve in the morning, they sat down to drink tea. I always put food under the left hand so as not to interrupt work. All telephone operators knew how to eat very quickly and treat any food with one spoon. Vera Zhilinskaya loved to work at night:

- 35 kilometers from Chernyshevsk we have a military airfield. And there were a lot of people from Ukraine and the European part of Russia. And here is the difference in time. Therefore, Ukrainians came from the airfield at night and called home. And they said so meltedly - you hear. Never swear. And from the Caucasus they always promised something: “Tell me what you need, I will send you. I have a nephew there, connect. ”

There was a Georgian in Chernyshevsk, one for the whole area. He always called Tbilisi. He asked to connect it with the telephone local, and then he was explained with them himself, in his own way.

In a small village, the telephone operator was a respected person. After all, everyone knew her voice.
“Once the second secretary of the party’s district committee came to me, he liked it as I work,” recalls Vera Stepanovna. - I came to our station. And I'm small. I say: "You probably thought that such a Korolev woman was sitting there, and then such a mouse is a little mouse." He smiled and kissed his hand.

On March 8, local Chechens came to the station with roses. And close friends often asked the telephone operator about a small favor. “Vera, will you be on duty today? You will pick me up my grandson. ”
-Someone, for example, in Kansk, a son serves. And they ask to help him to find him, ”says Zhilinskaya. - You go to Krasnoyarsk, to the Kansky district. Then they switch to a military telephone operator, and he already helps to find this guy.

In 2004 alone, at the Chernyshev telephone station they finally abandoned manual labor. The telephone operators were fired, but former colleagues are friends and regularly meet.

Instead of a mobile phone

It would seem, why at the end of the 20th century living telephone operators, why could not be done with automation?
- There were no mobile phones. And in order to be guaranteed to talk with the right person, the call was ordered in advance, ”explains the former special engineer Viktor Otavin, and now the guide at the Voronezh Museum of Communications.

It was possible to order a conversation, for example, per day for a specific time. After this, the task of the telephone operator was to organize this call at the right time. She contacted the telephone operator at the place of stay of the second subscriber. If he had a home phone, he was simply dialed and warned of the upcoming negotiations. And then, at the ordered time, he had a long -distance call. The call was special - even the beeps were short and frequent. And if there was no phone?

“Then this person was sent a telegram with a request to arrive at such an hour to the negotiation point,” says Viktor Otavin. -Although the intercity PBX in our Voronezh appeared in the 1970s, a special switching shop in the House of Communications on the Revolution Avenue-worked until 2000. Then it became irrelevant: it became possible to get through the mobile phone to anyone.

The intracity network in Voronezh became automatic back in the late 1940s. When Nina Andreyevna Shcherbina in 1956 got a job at the station, the telephones worked only in the Interskind and in the district centers. Even in such a big city, getting a telephone operator was quite simple: the same eight classes of the school were enough. In general, the organization of work was about the same as in Little Chernyshevsk. Unless the schedule shift was slightly different. So, at night, Voronezh telephone operators took turns sleeping for two hours - the benefit of them was on duty several.

Well, Nina Shcherbinin welcomed subscribers more officially: "Personal five listens." Five is, of course, her number. Pretty soon, Nina Andreevna became a senior telephone operator and worked on the key - Moscow - direction:
- We had four channels in one direction and four in the other. So only eight residents of the Voronezh region could simultaneously speak with Moscow, ”says Nina by phone.

In general, intercity communications were in some way a deficit. And as any deficit in the USSR, it was distributed unevenly. For example, the editions of the Union newspapers were connected with subscribers much earlier than ordinary mortals. Party organs too.
- There was a whole system of categories. But I'm not sure that I have the right to tell you about it. I need to consult with the leadership, ”says Nina Shcherbina.

Nina Andreevna and now in the ranks: she is the chairman of the Council of Veterans. And many questions carefully bypasses many questions. For example, the most important: did the telephone operators listen to thousands of calls that passed through them?
- Yes, we were obliged to listen to the conversation. The quality of communication was checked and subscribed to non -disclosure of this information. Why do you need it? Excuse me, but I will no longer answer your questions.

And puts the phone.

Bonus from Tinkoff Mobile

For the transition with his number, the operator will give 1000 rubles to contact. With this money, you can connect 4 GB of Internet for two months, 600 minutes to calls and unlimited traffic in instant messengers and social networks.

And if you are not ready to change the operator, arrange the second SIM card Tinkoff Mobilee - for this the operator will double your first payment.