Published in: “Byvaet, v sudbe odnogo cheloveka prochitaesh istoriyu tseloi epokhi. Galina Aleksandrovna Beganskaya–takoi chelovek-epokha.” European Urban Institute: 

http://euimedia.com/ru/menu/teoryia-i-gistoryia/arkhitektar-galina-bieghanskaia

With courtesy from Hanna Sieviaryniec and European Urban Institute.

I came to rural construction by accident. I could have worked at both Belproekt and Minskproekt, but I was assigned to Grodno, despite the fact that I was already pregnant. It was my own fault, I forgot to write an application for Minsk, my husband was still studying at the medical institute, he received good grades, and I thought everything would be solved by itself, but it was not.

So there I was, sitting there with my tummy, with no application, and no one present wanted to take me in. And only Selproekt:  why don’t you come to us.

Later, I received invitations from other organizations in Minsk, but I considered it wrong to leave Selproekt, because they saved me at then, during the allocation. Although Selproekt was, of course, considered non-prestigious, and at the institute I focused on industrial construction. But it was what it was. And then the Institute actually became a progressive one: they started building experimental farm–Vertelishki, Lenino–developing new solutions, looking for new ways…

Take, for instance, Lenino, a village in the Mogilev region, which I designed. We had to build a clubhouse. What was the custom back then? The village council – one house, the post office – another house, the club – a third house… Why should we be so small? I suggested: let’s build the village council, the club, the library, and the post office all in one building.

The result was a beautiful multifunctional complex, organized space, and interesting architectural forms. Today, this has become a custom – many small services in one big interesting building. At my suggestion, shopping centers also came to be included in large complexes – with consumer services, stores, canteens, hairdressing salons. This is convenient for people, interesting for the architect, and profitable for the builder.

Or, for instance, I always wanted to build a high-ise. Can you imagine? A rural project and a highrise. I decided to erect a five-story hotel in Lenino. It was brave, but well justified for Lenino: there was a big farm, a museum, many guests, business visitors. I did it. It turned out to be such a beautiful dot in the overall picture.

…

And how did such a delicate woman manage to communicate with the construction workers? Did they obey you?  

How could they not?Take the marble crumb. It turned out that marble crumb has two shades of color. It should be all white, but sometimes it gives another shade.

Without consulting, the workers put it as it is, mixing different shades, and then, to even out the color, they painted the stains with olive oil. Can you imagine?

… But that was terrible – the olive oil on the white marble! I came running – and they have a foul language on the site, not knowing what to do. They saw me – they got quiet of course. knocked it all down, and made it all over again. Oh, I swore!

Did you use foul language [mat], too?  No, I cannot use foul language. My grandmother said that foul language came to us from Russia, before that we didn’t have any worse curses than “psya krev”.

….

Grandpa moved here, and just a month later the newspaper already had his picture – the best railroad worker. He came back to his homeland, he wanted to work here as much as he could… But a month later…

This is my first childhood memory. At night, my ear hurts, my grandmother puts a compress on me, and the house is being searched.

That night the railroad workers disappeared from practically all the houses on our street – and the street was all built up with houses.  What happened then was that the railroad had to transport the dispossessed peasants. They were simply put in freight cars, these dispossessed families, with small children, with old people, and taken to the taiga. There, they simply dropped them off in the middle of the woods and the train drove back. Winter, freezing temperatures. No food, no tools, not even a barn to sleep in. It is clear that people just froze to death.  I was told later: one family survived only because the owner had an ax and a saw with him for some reason. They built a hut somehow and got along as best they could. So one of our Minsk railroad workers – I don’t think it was my grandfather, by the way, but it is unknown today – refused to carry the dispossessed. They said later that there were a few of them who refused. Ah so? And the same night, just in checkerboard order, they went down the street – and took them away. Kalinin ordered that two thousand railroad workers be shot for this refusal.

Just recently I read a short article: in the Kamennaya Gorka area, when large-scale construction was going on, a cattle graveyard was excavated, and in it – a lot of human remains. A journalist – I cannot remember her name, she was so shocked – she looked up the documents and found out: there were bones of executed railway workers in this cattle burial ground. They were shot there.

And my mother, Joseph’s daughter, Jadwiga Byaganskaya, had been walking around the offices for months: “Release my father, he’s not guilty of anything.”

– I read about it in Yanka Bryl, how Jadwiga Bieganska tried to save her father… 

– Yes, she tried, and was told: “Don’t go, you’ll be there yourself”, but she went anyway – and, of course, she ended up “there”.

She got ten years in camps and Kolyma. She came back in 1948. She was not allowed to live in Minsk, so she settled in Rechitsa. This is where she started to write, she could not let it all die out and remain unknown. After her rehabilitation, she was allowed to publish all that. But the story “Daleka na poinachy” refused to be printed in Belarus. She translated it into Russian and printed it in Moscow.  

Of course, I don’t remember my father at all. Just one epizode: how he wrapped me up in a sheepskin coat and took me for a ride on a sleigh, you know, a wicker sleigh, like a basket. I do not remember his face or his voice. Already during the war one day a bomb fell on our yard. Not in the house, but very, very close. It tore up the roof, blew up the sand. And I looked and saw some papers out of the sand. I dug it up. Dad’s archive – his poems, his drawings. My mother, when my father was arrested, buried them in the sand. 

…

Did you survive the occupation here in Minsk? 

Here, of course, in the same house at the beginning of the street. At first, when they were bombing, we went to hide in a brick house next door, there was a nice basement, then, when the front was gone, the bombing stopped, we didn’t run anywhere anymore. I went to my first school – our artist’s mother Zvirko taught there. We learned there the Belarusian hymn “We’ll go out in joy” and sang songs and “From the native land, from the native house” in Belarusian. But then my aunt’s teacher whispered to my aunt that the Germans were watching over the children and taking blood for the front, so she took Galya away and my aunt took me away, and I did not go to school with the Germans. So I read and wrote in Polish much better than in Belarusian or Russian – the fruit of my grandmother’s home upbringing.

And then how did you live – your mother was subjected to repression, your father was subjected to repression, how did you study, how did you work? 

I was brought up by my aunt. A holy woman. Thanks to her I graduated from the music school and got a higher education. At school there were no particular questions, and at admission I managed not to indicate that I had parents, but then somehow – at this time I was already studying, my portrait appeared in the “Banner of Youth” as that of an excellent student – called me to the HR department. “There’s a letter for you.” The HR manager even showed me who the letter came from. From my neighbor across the street. Like, here you are printing photos of honors students, and you would look closely at her. The manager asks: Who’s your mother, and who’s your father? Of course, I told him: my father was shot in 1937, my mother was arrested and exiled in 1937. By then, 1937 people did not pay much attention to 1937 anymore. The HR manager breathed a sigh of relief: thank God, I thought somebody had collaborated with the Germans during the war. Then it would have been necessary to take measures. But as it was, there was no need.