When you ask Nina Arkhipova about the old days, the first reaction is unexpected: “I hardly remember anything: I didn’t keep a diary, I just lived as I lived. That’s my character…” And here it’s important not to miss a beat and turn on the recorder right away, because the most fascinating memories begin from the very same second.
She remembers the NEP and life in pre-war Moscow, the old Arbat, and how in 1941 a bomb hit the Vakhtangov Theatre. Nina Nikolaevna was the leading actress of this company, survived the evacuation with it, and later moved to the Satire Theatre, where she served for more than half a century. Fate brought her together with Shostakovich and Pasternak; she was friends with many famous people of the 20th century. However, among all of them, the first person for her remains actor Georgy Menglet — her husband, whose memory this book is devoted to.
All of this, and more, in the book Life in the Proposed Circumstances (Nina Arkhipova).