Valentina Lebedeva

Valentina Lebedeva was born in 1942. She recalls her mother’s story, who gave birth to her in a trench during evacuation to Chechnya. 

Originally, her father’s family lived in Krasnodar, where her grandfather and father owned a post office business. In the Soviet times, the local government confiscated her grandfather’s business and house.

Her mother's family lived in Shakhty, a town in the Rostov region. They had a mining business. During the Nazi occupation, the Germans killed her mother’s family and buried them in one of the mines.

Valentina's mother and grandmother later visited Shakhty. Their former house was turned into a music school. After the war, they moved to Lviv. Valentina married her husband, Oleksiy Baglayenko, in 1958.

Illustration by Sergei Asmar