Interview with Timoschenko Viktor Mikhailovich

From the interview taken by Aleksandr Levintov (Moscow) for the newspaper “Zapad Vostok” (USA) 2006.

I was born in Belarus, from where my grandfather was by origin, in the village of Makeyevichi, Klimovichi district, Mogilev region. Of interest is the fact that all the surnames in the village were Ukrainian: Timoshchenko, instead of an ordinary Belorussian one Timoshchenok. Maybe, there used to be some resettlement of people from Ukraine to this place. My grandfather was called that way in the village – Timoshchenok.

It so happened that in 1958 my mother died, and I even did not know my father, that was what I wrote when I was entering the Party: “no contacts with father”: mother did not manage to register any relations with him when I was born in 1947. Up till that time when my mother died we were already living in the city of Unecha, Bryansk region, that very Unecha, where Shchors formed his Bogun regiment. Besides, that was a junction at the cross-roads of the roads Orsha-Kharkov and Moscow-Gomel. I was brought up by my grandmother – the aunt of my mother, the sister of my grandfather. She brought me up, as well as my sister, who was born in 1957. After the eighth form I entered technical school of light industry in the neighbouring textile town of Klintsy, finished it with all excellent marks, with diploma with distinction in 1966 and to the question where I would like to work I answered to myself that it was all the same to me. But the romance of far-away places brought me to Kazan, where Lenin had studied.

In Kazan my life was quite a good one. In 1967 I entered the department of evening studies of the Faculty of Physics of Kazan State University named after Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov-Lenin. Why the Faculty of Physics? – right, physics was in vogue then. In 1973 I finished the university in the specialty “physicist-thermal physicist”. There was going to be one very interesting story there.

In 1968 I found my “second half”, Galina Nikolayevna who was born in Brest, but whose mother was from Tataria. And we have been living hand in hand for over forty years. I worked for 17 years in Kazan. I started as a foreman of raw materials warehouse, went through all the steps of the carrier ladder, was the head of the raw materials warehouse, that is I got to know all the technological nuances of our production from the very beginning of it, then I became the head of some production department, including the one at the final stage of technology. It must be mentioned that our industrial complex in Kazan was an important company of the branch. It was opened only in 1932. It produced both valenki and felt. It was also the main supplier of valenki for the army. For the army, the Ministry of Interior and KGB we produced 630 thousands of pairs of felt footwear per year. I was the head of all the production of footwear for the army, later – chief engineer of the industrial complex. In 1969 I entered the Party and in 1983 I was invited to work in Moscow as a general manager of the Moscow Industrial walki-mill union.
That was the situation.
Right after I moved to Moscow, since I had been quite active in public work in Kazan as well, in the first two years I was elected member of the district committee of the Party, then when in 1987 the Board of Directors of Moskva-reka district was organized and then that of Southern Administrative District, I was elected head of the Board, and for already almost twenty years I have been holding the position.  
A great work is also done in the Ministry of Light Industry of the RF: we are members of that joint stock company, and I am member of the Board of Directors. In Moscow there is a confederation of manufacturers and entrepreneurs which signs tripartite agreements with trade unions and government of Moscow on behalf of employers – I am a member of the Board of Directors of that organization. In Moscow there is also Bryansk expatriates’ community (zemliachestvo) of which I am member, I head Unecha division, take a patronage over children-orphans of the orphanage in Unecha – that is the situation.