Family

Now I have only father and sister, not counting a few distant relatives who live far away. I haven't been married yet and I have no children.

My father and sister live in Fedyukovo, a village near Moscow, in my family's two-storey house.

Dad

My father, who is 67, has a college education in heating engineering. Recently he worked as an engineer in Gazprom's R&D institute (Gazprom is Russia's gas monopoly). He dealt with heating, compressed gas, ventilation and fire safety of the institute's building. His salary was $180 per month (then an average salary in Russia), the work was stressful, and he had to commute to Moscow.

After I left Russia in 2003, he briefly worked in a similar job in another company in Moscow, then retired.

In his spare time he builds or fixes things about the house and reads - usually the newspaper Izvestia, which I find too conservative.

My mother also studied heating engineering, but she didn't work long in that profession. She died in 2002, at the age of 56, of a mental illness, which developed after the death of her parents in the conditions of general instability in the country.

Father's nationality is Chuvash (Chuvashia is a small republic in the Volga region). My mother was Russian. My sister and I chose to be Russians, because we do not know the Chuvash culture and language.

Sister

My sister, Yulia, is 1.5 years younger than me, and she is also unmarried and has no children.

She worked as a book illustrator/designer with the Publishing House of the Moscow State University for several years, but had to leave because the salary was too low. Then she was unemployed for a year.

Now she works as a teacher of drawing/painting in the "house of culture" of our village. From time to time she also gets freelance assignments from the previous employer. Her income is very small, but at least she doesn't have to commute to Moscow.

Neither my father nor my sister speaks any foreign language. They have never been abroad, except Mongolia in the early 1970s.

I also have a half-brother (my father's son), but neither I nor my father have ever seen him and we do not know whether he is alive. His name is Vadim Berezhnoy (Вадим Владимирович Бережной) and he was born in Kazakhstan in 1965. Please contact me if you know anything about this person!

I have three uncles and one aunt on father's side; they live in Siberia and Chuvashia, I haven't seen them for many years.

On mother's side I had one uncle who died in 2002 at the age of 53 (of too much drinking). His teenage son now lives in an orphan's house.

You can see a few pictures of me and my family.

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