Inessa Vitkina her sister Lidia

Inessa Vitkina her sister Lidia

My sister Lidia Koshkina and I, Inessa Vitkina.

Lida entered Kiev University. She finished school with a silver medal and only had to pass an interview to enter the Physics department. I visited her in Kiev.

Lida got a job assignment as a teacher of physics at school after she graduated. This school was at the railway station Cheliabinsk-Yuzhny. This whole area was a penitentiary zone where criminals were imprisoned. Lida worked at the evening school there. She was teacher of physics, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and even English due to the lack of teachers. She also had to give few classes a week to the inmates of the prison. The teachers were escorted there but the discipline was excellent there. There were gifted people among the inmates. Lida worked there a year.

Mama had an infarction and Lida had to come back to Chernovtsy in 1959. Lida couldn't find a job at once in Chernovtsy. She worked at school for two years and then she got a job of an engineer at the laboratory at the plant. Then my sister decided to continue her studies. She went to Moscow to take a post-graduate course at the Moscow Institute of steel and alloys. She studied there from 1967 till 1970. She wrote her thesis, but then she fell ill and had a surgery. She didn't defend her thesis. Lida got a job assignment as a teacher of physics in Briansk at the Institute of Railroad Transport. She worked there 3 years. Then Mama got worse and my sister had to go back to Chernovtsy. She worked at a plant and retired from the position of the leading engineer meteorologist with a good salary. But then it was a period of perestroika leaving her with a miserable pension.

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