Personal Stories
The Story of Faina Ivanova - Senior Assistant of the Laboratory of Drying-and-Wrapping Workshop of the Solikamsk Pulp and Paper Combine
Until July 1941, Faina Vasilievna Ivanova worked as a chemistry teacher in one of small towns of the Leningrad region. Soon after the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, she was evacuated to the city of Solikamsk, Molotov region, where on July 22nd, 1941, she was hired at the Solikamsk Pulp and Paper Combine, where she became a senior laboratory assistant at the Drying-and-Wrapping Workshop.
Work in the laboratory was not easy for Faina Vasilievna. They had to work with ether, acetone, dichloroethane and other chemicals, and there was no extractor hood in the laboratory. Laboratory analyzes were always required to be carried out very quickly, delay could lead to disruption of the entire production process in the workshop. Since there were not enough workers at the Solikamsk Pulp and Paper Combine during the war years, F.I. Ivanova and other employees of the laboratory often had to deal with the work of loading bales of cellulose onto trolleys and delivering them to the warehouse, and sometimes they were sent to unload wood at the enterprise's timber exchange. There were also alarming situations not directly related to production activities.
In May 1942, head of the laboratory Elena Barashkova urgently gathered all the employees of the laboratory and showed them a piece of paper that was randomly picked up from the floor. It was a small piece of an unknown newspaper in German. None of the laboratory staff brought German newspapers to the combine, and did not speak German well enough to translate the words of a newspaper clipping. This discovery caused great excitement among the laboratory staff: it turned out that on that day a person who spoke German well and had a connection with Germany in the recent past entered the laboratory, otherwise where did they get a German newspaper. In the conditions when there was a war with Germany, such a situation was very dangerous. After some consultation, the laboratory staff decided not to inform the authorities about the find, but to try to identify who could have left a scrap of newspaper in the laboratory. F.I. Ivanova and her colleagues talked with several people who came that day to the laboratory of the workshop, but none of them had seen that newspaper. Head of the laboratory Elena Barashkova was about to go to her superiors when F.I. Ivanova recalled that early in the morning another employee Lidiya Veresova, who recently came to work at the combine, brought some samples for analysis. Faina Vasilievna urgently went to that employee, talked to her and found out that that day she took a piece of bread with her from home, wrapped in a newspaper that her sister had brought home from work. It turned out that Lidiya Veresova’s sister worked at a city post office, where for a long time there was one issue of the German Central Newspaper, published by the German section of the Communist International Organization in the 1930s. That newspaper was mistakenly delivered to Solikamsk back in 1938 and since then it has remained in the post office. Since nobody needed the newspaper, Lidiya's sister took it home to be used for household needs, and Lidiya Veresova wrapped a piece of bread in a newspaper sheet and went to the combine in the morning. After eating the bread, she tore a piece of paper, but one of the scraps remained in her pocket and fell out when she was in the laboratory.
Later F.I. Ivanova and her colleagues often recalled that memorable day when they were looking for a "German agent" at the Solikamsk Pulp and Paper Combine.
Memories from the museum of JSC "Solikamskbumprom"
Lysva
Solikamsk
Berezniki
