At the behest of the soul

“Brave, cheerful, fighting... You can’t say anything else about Ivan Petrovich Vodolazkin. Although he is already 90!” - these are the words, on such a note, that the essay about the honorary hero of the day, published in Metrostroevets on January 28, 2011, begins. The hero of the essay “May my head be gray…” is a veteran of the Great Patriotic War and Mosmetrostroy. He worked at our Cherkizovsky plant, in the artistic casting shop, for more than half a century. The author of the essay is Nina Nikolaevna Solovyova, a career journalist with a large circulation. She, of course, did not miss the opportunity to mention Ivan Petrovich’s father, since Pyotr Dmitrievich Vodolazkin was the first builder of the metro.

Now it’s time to celebrate the anniversary of Nina Nikolaevna herself. Even two dates. Last year she turned 70 years old, and she came to the editorial office of Metrostroevets in 1974, that is, half a century ago. If we subtract the last seven years and a period of approximately the same length of forced departure from the profession at the turn of the 90s, then we still accumulate an impressive 36 years of metro construction experience. Moreover, she worked as a newspaper editor for three and a half years.

It turns out that Nina Nikolaevna missed the move of the Mosmetrostroy Administration to a new address. She sometimes came to Kuibysheva Street with her daughter Lyusya, and to Tsvetnoy Boulevard with her granddaughter Sasha. The technology of journalistic work has also changed. Newspaper workers moved from pens and notepads to voice recorders and computer typing. But the lines had to be issued as before - in each issue and on time.

In dozens of annual files of “Metrostroevets” you can find many hundreds of publications by Nina Solovyova. She wrote, of course, on a variety of topics - from production to, for example, reports from concerts of our Palace of Culture or stories about tours of metro construction workers along the Golden Ring. It happened that the topics were combined. Thus, in the large article “The Second Life of Mayakovskaya” dated May 21, 2010, there is a historical excursion, and the words of Yuri Petrovich Pogudin, who led the restorers from the USR, and the team of plasterers Zoya Borisovna Sukhorukova is named.

Basically, Nina Nikolaevna gravitated towards the “social sphere”. In her field of vision there were always trade union problems, dormitories, the medical unit, and the pioneer camp. She also kept in touch with the Metrostroy search squad “Memory”, which excavates the remains of our soldiers on the fields of past battles.

According to Nina Nikolaevna’s colleagues and her readers, she was best at writing essays about people.

• “Defender and Builder of Moscow” dated 12/09/2011 – about the Hero of Socialist Labor Pavel Andreevich Novozhilov.

• “Our reporter - Tonya Semyonova” from 08/03/2007 - about the first builder and machine gunner, SMU-5 veteran Antonina Vladimirovna Borisova.

• “But life always remains beautiful” from 05/12/2009 - about the Galkin dynasty of Metro Construction, whose experience reached 225 years by this year.

• “Everything that is in your heart” from 04/16/2010 - about the labor front veteran and TO-6 veteran Alexander Arkhipovich Novozhilov.

Nina Nikolaevna’s interview “I’m a little sorry for the past” dated March 26, 2010 turned out to be very heartfelt - this is the result of a conversation with the deputy general director of SMU-11 Vladimir Ivanovich Butko, whom the correspondent knew as a foreman.

A long-known person at Mosmetrostroy, Pavel Yuryevich Kalinin, back in 2007, wrote about Nina Solovyova: “She loves the heroes of her essays... Her materials make many people feel warmer in their souls.” Since then, another ten years of Nina Nikolaevna’s journalistic work have confirmed such a high assessment.