Khodorkovsky’s parents Marina and Boris tell Novaya gazeta about their life, their marriage and how they met

Zoya Yeroshok, Novaya gazeta, 9.10.2008

On Thursday Marina and Boris Khodorkovsky celebrate their golden wedding. We agreed that they would tell me separately about the day they married, 9 October 1958, and their reminiscences would then be freely interwoven in the publication.

They did not just talk about their wedding. From time to time Boris Moiseyevich called out: “Marina, where have you got to? What if I get something wrong?” In passing Marina Philippovna commented, “I was young for a long while.” She meant just that, not that she looked young but that she was young.

Running ahead I may say that not once did either use the word “love” during the interview.

Boris Moiseyevich (BM): We studied at the same technical college, the Moscow instrument-making college. I was a year ahead of Marina and had only just come out of the army. I was in the army for about five years, not five exactly, rather less. Then, unlike the present army, we had to train up those who replaced us. So we were very attentive to the young. There was no bullying then! If the new intake were not ready we stayed longer. That was under Zhukov. He introduced such practices and they were very effective.

Well, I was demobilised in the winter. I came to the technical college and they told me: “If you want, you can take the exams. And start from the third year.” They’d taken me into the army when I was already in the third year. I did well in the exams and began my studies. Then I saw Marina.

She was standing in the corner, a very attractive girl. (Shyly). What immediately made me like her? Well, Zoya, she was standing there, self-assured ... And so was I ... I’d just come out of the army and wasn’t bad looking, better than today. (Laughs.) So I pursued her and would not give up.

I got rid of all the others. Many were interested in her but since I was young and healthy they backed off. Then I said to her: “Marina, let’s get married.” “No,” she said and for two years she kept on telling me, No. Once I called her from a public phone and we talked and talked, and after we’d talked about everything and there was nothing else to say, I asked again: “Marina, why don’t we get married?” I thought she’d say no again. “Well, all right,” she said, “I agree.” I collapsed, there and then, in that telephone booth.

Marina Philippovna (MP): I didn’t pay attention to the boys. I was indifferent to them all. They were friends and nothing more. I only remember that I was in the workshop, towards evening, and the girls said to me: “Look, Boris is standing at the door and won’t take his eyes off you.” And then ... I didn’t have the strength to screw and fasten the spindle onto a lathe and he came over and did it. That’s my first memory of him.

BM: Many, many years afterwards I once asked, “Marina, why did you pick me? You had such crowd of admirers following you around.” She told me: “You were your own man.”

MP: Yes, he was his own man and also chaste. Others made advances or got drunk. But he was very proper. I knew that I could go anywhere with him, day or night, and had nothing to fear, no male nonsense.

But my feelings towards him were simply of friendship. Then Mama said: “Listen, either you stop seeing him or marry him. Why are you stringing the lad along for two years!” Well, it seemed a pity to stop seeing him (smiling) ...

Sunday. I woke up that morning and Papa said, “Look your boy’s standing beneath the window.” He was waiting for me to take the dog out for a walk. The evening before, it was night even, when I took the dog out he also went for a walk with me. Then he walked home (the metro had closed already) from Usachova Street, near metro station Sportivnaya, all the way to Taganka. How could I stop seeing him?

But I didn’t want to get married either. I had no wish to get married. I’m telling you the truth: if Mama had not then said that to me I would never have got married.

BM: 9 October 1958 was a weekday. It certainly wasn’t a Sunday. They took me to the registry office. I wouldn’t have got there by myself, I was too nervous. I was afraid, of course. She came with my sister Galya. I remember that we drank a little champagne after the ceremony.

MP: The registry office was not far from the Park of Culture metro station. Boris’ sister Galya came to the registry office from working on a construction team, straight from the station, in dirty boots which she tried to hide under the bench. Next day my mother-in-law rang: “Galya caught dysentery at the construction site. Boris must spend the night at your place until they’ve disinfected us here.” I said, “Spend the night?? No one knows we’re married. What will the neighbours say?” I was horrified. We were living in a communal apartment then.

BM: We married and lived with our own families. For another month we used to visit each other and our mothers were there when we met.

MP: Once Boris was visiting us and we were sitting at the table, busy writing and reading, when suddenly his mother came in. He was so disconcerted by the unexpected visit that he shot up and smashed the lamp.

BM: You see how Marina was eating just now? Knife and fork together. As for me ...

In 1941 my father went off to war and was killed immediately. Mama worked at the factory, for two or three shifts in a row. She was hardly ever home. My sister and I wandered the streets and I dug in the refuse, looking for food. There was no question of good manners then. Then for five years in the army I ate everything with a spoon.

And today, more than sixty years after my scavenging days, I first cut up my meat with a knife and then eat it with a fork. But then, we married ... I ate like that in their home and her mother asked with her eyes: “Whoever have you brought back with you?!”

MP: I thought it was not the most important thing. Others appeared clean and smart but if you dug a little more deeply, they were so objectionable. And now he knows how to do everything, to use both a fork and a knife. He’s telling you that for amusement’s sake.

BM: We married on 9 October. That was merely a technicality. Our wedding took place on 3 November. We submitted our application in good time, the date arrived and we still did not have authorisation to get a room in our communal apartment.

MP: People now celebrate weddings in cafes and restaurants but it didn’t happen then. But we had an acquaintance who knew someone in the café on Kirovskaya Street, not far from the Sovremennik theatre. We went there, they had a very good chef and the food was good. It’s an old two-storey building. The café was on the ground floor and I remember very tall windows.

A wedding then, as I say, was very rare and to celebrate it in a café was something ... So people stopped and looked through the window. A wedding, how interesting. And there I was, the bride, in white – I’ll show you the pictures later.

Then we saw there, standing outside that tall window, a very cultured old lady. She just stood and looked. Probably she’s remembering sometime before the Revolution, Papa said, her own wedding perhaps. Papa went out to her and said, “Please, come in, I can see that this brings back memories.” She said, “Thank you very much.” She entered and congratulated us. We offered her a place at the table but she refused. “It’s such a pleasure, I was simply recalling that it’s years since I’ve seen a bride wearing white.” She would not sit down or eat one mouthful. Probably she didn’t want us to think that she was interested in the food. But I remember her. She was somehow very kindly disposed towards us.

BM: There were many people at the wedding. Relatives, friends. Marina’s parents, my mother and sister.

MP: Boris’ mother Yevgenia Abramovna had green eyes. A lively face and such large green eyes. Boris also has green eyes.

His mother was always rosy-cheeked and merry. A very dashing woman. She did everything she could to provide for her children. After the war she worked as an accountant.

BM: My mother had a hard life. She was born in 1911 and was widowed at 30. She never married again. Papa was born in 1909. He died at the age of 32. So they never reached a golden wedding. But we have lived that long.

MP: After the wedding I can only remember a feeling of terrible tiredness. We had received authorisation to get our own room in the communal apartment. We looked for a car, and moved our belongings and I was so tired that I couldn’t think of anything else. A honeymoon!? Where would have got the money? I remember we were standing at night with our belongings and could not flag down a car. A policeman came up and asked: “What’s your problem?” We explained. He said, “One moment.” He stopped a car. The driver was a soldier. “Soldier, do you want to earn some money?” he asked. “Certainly!” The policeman told him, “Take these young people.” It was that soldier who helped us move.

BM: After I finished at the technical college no one would employ me. Then I was taken on at the hydraulic engineering institute. It was Uncle Kolya who took me on: that’s what we called the head of department behind his back, he wasn’t my uncle, just a kind and decent man.

MP: Those were years of persecution for Jews. The rector at our technical college was Salkov. He was Russian. but he employed Jewish lecturers when people were being sacked from the aviation institute, the Bauman institute and the physico-mathematical department of Moscow University.

We used institute textbooks at the college and when I came to the factory I had a better training than those who had been to the Bauman institute. There were also very good workshops at the college. We worked on the lathes for 2-3 hours each day. When I went to work at the factory it was a great help. Those who’d been to the institute knew almost nothing. Workers like to make fun of young specialists. One of them said to me, “You go and show them!” “Okay, I’ll go and show them but your wage scale will go down. Because if you don’t know and I do ...” It also helped that I could work with either left or right hand and when you can do that you can make a ball of metal on the lathe.

Then I finished at the institute and worked as a technological engineer. Boris graduated from the engineering institute.

BM: Let me show you my diary. I keep it at work with me. I say to the students at the lyceum, “If you don’t want to, then don’t study. I also did not want to study. I also got bad marks. But after that you either spend your life sweeping the floor or you must study. After those bad marks I only got good marks.” All the time I tell our students: “Study as well as you can. Go to the institute and become good specialists. It’s very important.”

... Yes, fifty years have passed since we married. As I remember all our life together, I can say honestly that our characters are, in a certain sense, alike. And this is what I mean:

We have never longed to have money; we have always sympathised with other people; and never – never! – have we envied anyone else.


Some biographical notes

Boris Moiseyevich and Marina Philippovna Khodorkovsky:

Married on 9 October 1958; celebrated their wedding on 3 November 1958; their son Mikhail was born on 26 June 1963;

They left the communal apartment and moved into their first self-contained flat (a cooperative flat built on their money) on 15 January 1971;

Their first car was a Zaporozhets, which they acquired in 1983;

They worked together at the Calibre factory for 35 years.

In 1992 Mikhail Khodorkovsky suggested to his father that they organise a small school :

- Let’s set up a small lyceum in Koralovo, for 20-30 children. We’ll take in orphans, there are so many of them now. You take charge.

- Are you crazy? Children are a great responsibility!

- You and Mama will live and work there.

- No.

- We’ll take in small children.

- No.

- Orphans, I’m talking about!

- No!

- Remember your own childhood.

In 1994 the Podmoskovny Lyceum was opened in Koralovo for orphans, children from socially disadvantaged families, children who parents perished in terrorist attacks and air crashes.

Since then, and to this day, Khodorkovsky’s parents Boris and Marina work at the lyceum. There are no fees and almost all those who have graduated have gone on to higher education.

Marina and Boris have already attended the first weddings of their graduates; the lyceum’s graduates already have children of their own.