“It’s a picture of my mom Olga Sadovska (married name Kovalchuk) at 17. Our family then lived in the small village at the north of the Chernihiv region, so the nearest city to make trips to was Gomel and not Chernihiv and certainly not Kyiv. After school my mom entered Instrumentation Engineering College in Gomel with a speciality in diamond-cutting. Her father and my grandfather already died then, so my mom received an increased studentship of 36 rubles as a half-orphan, all of which she gave away to her mother, my grandmother.

In this photo my mom is wearing a dress which she borrowed from her friend Lyuba. They went shopping together to the Central department store in Gomel where they saw this ‘Moryachka’ (Sailoress) dress from pure wool with heavenly blue corsage. It cost 22 rubles making this dress very expensive. Lyuba bought it on the spot. My mom also wanted to buy it but her mother, my granny, didn’t allow her to do it. But my mom liked that dress so much that she wanted to make a photo in it even though it was borrowed for the picture.”

Comment by Halyna Kovalchuk.

This photo is contributed by Halyna Kovalchuk.