Tatiana Tarasova and Vladimir Krainev: The Soviet Power Couple of Figure Skating with a Story of Starting Over in Germany

Already in Soviet times, figure skating coaches Tatiana Tarasova and her husband Vladimir Krainev the whole world knew: Tarasova’s students won everything, including the Olympic Games, and Krainev gave concerts at the most prestigious institutions. Even their contribution was appreciated around the same time: Tarasova became an Honored Trainer of the USSR in 1975, three years later Krainev was recognized as an Honored Artist of the RSFRS.

In 1990, Krainev became a People’s Artist of the USSR. And after the collapse of the Union, he was offered to move to Germany – in Hannover, the Soviet grand pianist signed a contract with the local conservatory.

At first, Krainev moved with his mother Rakhil Moiseevna, then, when Tarasova got a break from tours, she came to them. Since Krainev’s contract was initially two years, we decided to rent a house.

The pianist was busy all day at the conservatory, so the task of creating comfort in the home fell on Tatyana Anatolyevna. In this she was helped by the family friend Jacob Neuhaus, who by then had lived in Germany for a while.

“Yasha put me in his small car just for my size and drove around town with me, but the house had to be equipped. And in those ten days of my free time, he undertook to help me: paint something in the house, arrange something properly.

The house is completely empty, although we brought some things from Moscow. Some things are usually books and sheet music, furniture, of course, nothing at all. Good thing we brought our forks and spoons. How do you start life in a new place, not by reading the home library? My husband’s contract was for life – that’s how it came later – but for two years. But even for two years you had to sleep on something. And in ten days I had to go to all the stores and buy the most useful furniture. “There has never been such a practice in my life history: it is one thing to put an apartment in order, and gradually, and quite another to build a house from scratch,” – Tarasova recalled.

The property has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a lounge and a kitchen. From nine to six, Tatyana Anatolyevna went shopping and looked around. Since Tarasova had not been in foreign furniture stores before, at some point my head started spinning.

“I had neither taste nor money, nor, on the contrary, money nor taste.” The first few days I got to know everything that was sold there. Finally, on the fifth day, everything got mixed up in my head. After all, everything that I chose and noted in stores, I kept in my head, without writing anything down, relying on my memory, which had not been dropped before . But my memory was clearly not ready for such an acquisition. I jumped up at night, bedside tables, cabinets, towels were spinning in my head. And I screamed in delirium: “Vova, Vova, we don’t have enough money!”, But he has his own business, he has no time for furniture. But you have to sleep on something, sit on something?

However, when I was buying furniture, I made several mistakes, thank God, small ones. Now we had to move urgently. There are stores where they will accept orders for anything you want, but the order will only arrive in eight weeks. What eight weeks, I didn’t even have three days. The boys were about to arrive (Krainev students – approx.), the kitchen had to work somehow. The house was supposed to be loaded with everything from a stove to a washing machine. Then, a few months later, when there were already boys living with us, five of us, and there were three of us, we sat at the table at least eight people, and now Volodya jumped up on the night … For the first six months, and we didn’t know why, we only paid half his salary. Now he said again at night: “Tanya, Tanya, we don’t have enough money, we won’t be able to feed everyone.” Every day there are an infinite number of bills that need to be paid. Neither Volodya nor I knew the rules of someone else’s life, and we looked like complete idiots. Of course, then life went into a rut, I organized the house, they made an office for Volodya, everything fell into place, everyone was working. And Ilya, Volodya’s mother, was spun in a way that is simply unimaginable for an old man who, moreover, went through the war. She was 75 at the time. Washed and ironed all the boys so the boys felt at home. They all got the most useful things. The sight of me leaving the store with the required number of towels was not for the faint of heart.

Two years later, Krainev was offered a lifetime contract; it was decided to look for a new house, but to buy it. Tarasova found it and liked it at first sight: with a rotunda opening to the garden, a heated marble floor, a sauna for two. At first the owners offered too high a price, the couple refused and left. But a month later, they still managed to agree on an amount acceptable to both parties.

The material used words from Tatyana Tarasova from the book “Beauty and the Beast”

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