In 1999, the first and last lady of the USSR passed away. This was the wife of the only Soviet president, and part-time Secretary General of the Central Committee, Rais Gorbachev. Biography, nationality, education - all this is known from many official and not very sources. The wife of the head of state was under the constant attentive and not always benevolent gaze of society. Her outfits and manner of talking were discussed both in the kitchens of apartments of ordinary citizens, and on the sidelines of the authorities.
general characteristics
Most of the people did not like the president’s wife. Various non-verbal signs, gestures and facial expressions unambiguously betrayed a henpecked in Mikhail Sergeyevich, quite pleased with his share. This was understood by psychologists, and just people who lived long enough to understand people at a subconscious level. And the President-General Secretary himself admitted that Raisa Gorbacheva was a very strong woman. Her biography confirms the assumptions about the subordinate position of her husband in their family. The spouse never depended on her other half, she strove for a personal career and self-sufficiency, although she understood that at some point it was necessary to give in, perhaps in order to achieve more later. She was domineering, in part, according to people who knew her, even vengeful and vindictive, and these qualities of a person do not color, especially a woman. The biographies of Raisa Gorbacheva, her life milestones and many circumstances of fate speak better about the character traits of this controversial personality.
Relatives
Before becoming Gorbacheva, Raisa Maksimovna bore the Ukrainian surname Titarenko. Paternal grandfather - Andrei Filippovich - served on the railway, he managed to sit in prison (four years). Another ancestor, according to his mother, the Parade of Peter Stepanovich, was shot at all for Trotskyism and his rejection of the collective farm standing. His wife, Raisa's grandmother, starved to death. It was for what grandfather did not love Soviet power. Who could have foreseen that Raisa Gorbachev would become the wife of the last leader of the Soviet Union? The biography of her relatives could greatly affect her career in the Stalin years. And in the following decades, she would not have foreshadowed anything good (the shot grandfather was rehabilitated only in 1988, when Mikhail Sergeyevich had been leading the whole country for three years). But the granddaughter of the disgraced Trotskyist managed to enter Moscow State University, get a diploma of a philosopher (Marxist-Leninist, what else) and further defend his dissertation. This point deserves a special section.
Thesis and science of all sciences
The topic of scientific work concerned the formation of new features of collective farm life and was based on materials collected in the Stavropol Territory as a result of some sociological studies. A special place in it was occupied by the position of a woman, a Soviet peasant woman. The work highlights the processes of reformation that occurred in the minds of the broad working masses as a result of global shifts that occurred after the victory of the October Revolution. The dynamics of changes in peasant life, lifestyle and thinking in the course of changes in socio-economic conditions. And how does all this together affect the growth of the cultural level of collective farmers in modern socialist Russia. Such a glorious work was defended in 1967 by Gorbacheva Raisa Maximovna. Her biography as a prominent scientist was continued as a twenty-year teaching experience. In two universities of Stavropol (medina and agricultural), she read Marxist-Leninist philosophy and sociology. The students were crying, and if one of them tried to deceive fate and get an assessment from some other, less picky teacher, then he would be paid for at the state exam. And do not wait for forgiveness, you won’t get more oud, renegade.
But it will be later. In the meantime, Raisa Titarenko is a student herself …
Acquaintance with Gorbachev and marriage
I met Misha Raya in a hostel somewhere in the early fifties. He studied law, he was not considered an especially enviable groom, but there was something that distinguished student Gorbachev from all the others. Perhaps there was a sudden outbreak of passion, or Titarenko bribed a livable and gentle character, but the fact remains. At the end of September 1953, after a couple of years of courtship, the couple formalized relations in the registry office. The wedding was played in a dietary student's dormitory at the hostel on Stromynka, and it was unlikely to be non-alcoholic. Thus began the biography of Raisa Gorbacheva, she changed her name and ceased to be Titarenko.
The couple wanted to have a baby almost immediately, but in 1954 this was not possible for medical reasons. Daughter Irina appeared three years later.
Stavropol
After university, a graduate of Gorbachev received a distribution to the prosecutor's office of the city of Stavropol. At that time, his young wife was already a graduate student (she enrolled and graduated from the university a year earlier), and who knows, perhaps she would have written an outstanding scientific work a dozen years earlier, but these plans had to be postponed, if necessary. In the regional prosecutor’s office, Mikhail did not work very long, ten days, after which he became a Komsomol worker, moreover, released in the regional committee. Department of agitation and propaganda, deputy department. The young lawyer joined the party at the university. It was not easy, students were reluctantly admitted to the CPSU - the quota was small, but work on the collective farm as an assistant to the combine operator and the order received for it contributed. In the future, the future general secretary did not return to physical work, specializing more and more on ideology.
The Stavropol biography of Raisa Gorbacheva was, as she believed, not easy. They rented an apartment, then they received two rooms in the commune from the regional committee. There was no work in the specialty, and I had to give lectures from the Knowledge society (there was one of the most popular topics there was whether there is life on Mars). Then, nevertheless, a vacancy was found at the institute and in another part-time job. Scientific work has also begun.
In fact, even a modest position in the regional committee of the Komsomol gave some advantages. The same two rooms and the teaching position for the wife would not be so easy to procure for an ordinary engineer.
First Lady of the Land
In the years when my husband was making a career, he reached the post of first secretary of the regional committee of Stavropol and then occupied it for a rather long time, the biography of Raisa Gorbacheva, apparently, did not contain any particularly interesting facts, but the simplest logic allows you to restore the picture with a high degree of certainty. She taught social sciences at institutes, her immediate superiors, fearing the wrath of a high-ranking spouse or seeking his mercy, most likely allowed her many innocent pranks like being late for work or premature retirement, and colleagues (especially women) furiously discussed her new things. At the same time, a peculiar manner of speaking developed - edifyingly verbose and largely condescending, even in relation to people who are older years and knowingly superior intellectually, repeatedly ridiculed (though subtly) by some cultural figures.
In the splendor of fame
A swift rush to Moscow and a very quick mastery of the main office in the country by her husband revealed all the character traits of the first lady of the USSR — both good and not so good. Here Gorbacheva Raisa Maximovna unfolded in all its glory, her biography was enriched with new facts, pleasing vanity and pride. The creation of some kind of cultural foundations, charity programs, the “named me” club, which promotes the growth of the role of women (directly from the dissertation), showed maximum publicity to the whole world, and especially to Soviet people, the desire to show themselves, and each time in a new stunning outfit.
Needless to say, ordinary workers, not spoiled by foreign wardrobes and not used to the Western secular manner of the “first ladies, ” did not like it very much. They didn’t know everything yet … But the West applauded, the Americans, the French and the Germans admired the carelessly charming manner of spending money in boutiques of famous brands. The couple was delighted with their similarity to foreigners.
