On February 14, a jubilee was held for Alla Timofeevna Rudenko in Kara-Balta, who turned 90 years old. She is a woman whose life path has become a symbol of an entire era, filled with trials, hard work, and devotion to music.
Alla was born on Sakhalin in a large family with nine children. From an early age, she had to face hardships and learn responsibility.
“One of my brightest childhood memories: we are sitting with my mother on the shore of the ocean, surrounded by stunning beauty, and a white steamboat is rocking on the waves. I still keep this scene in my heart,” shares the jubilarian.
In 1938, her father, the chairman of the collective farm, was declared an enemy of the people, and their family was repressed. They were exiled to a logging enterprise in the Irkutsk region. “We lived in wooden barracks, surrounded only by taiga and mountains, far from cities. That’s where we grew up,” recalls Alla Timofeevna.
After finishing school, she worked on the construction of a narrow-gauge railway and helped adults, and then got a job in a cafeteria, the atmosphere of which she fondly remembers, comparing it to the film “The Girls.”
After studying at a trade school in Novosibirsk, in 1953 she was entrusted with managing a store in the under-construction Angarsk. She remembers her first working day: getting up at five in the morning, in winter — heating the stove, then opening the store for workers who needed food and tobacco. After six months, she was transferred to organize a new trading point. She decided to get married in 1958, calling it the boldest step of her life. Together with her husband, a native of Chuy region, they moved to the Kyrgyz SSR, to the village of Kosh-Tegirmen, which was later included in Kara-Balta.
Gallery: Alla Rudenko. City of Kara-Balta.
After moving, her husband got a job at a mining and processing plant, while Alla faced difficulties in finding work. Despite her experience and active participation in Komsomol life, she could only get a job in the labor supply department of the mining and processing plant. “I had to get up at four in the morning to reach the base through the steppe; there were no buses,” she recounts.
Alla worked in the labor supply system until retirement, combining her work duties with family care. Their life began in a small room of nine square meters, without furniture or dishes, but colleagues helped them settle in. To provide for the family, they kept a small farm and cultivated a vegetable garden. “When my friends invited me to dances, I preferred to take care of the household — I wanted to provide for my family,” she says.
The House of Culture named after Lenin in Kara-Balta held an important place in her life, where she joined the folk ensemble more than fifty years ago and still actively participates in its life. “Since childhood, I loved to sing. A song for me is strength, spirit, inspiration, a desire to live and work,” admits Rudenko.
The ensemble "Veteran" has repeatedly become a winner of competitions, and Alla Rudenko herself has earned respect and recognition as a senior participant and mentor.
In 1980, she experienced a bitter loss — her husband passed away at the age of 48 due to cancer related to working with radioactive materials. Despite this, Alla raised two sons and now enjoys her three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “When I look at my children and grandchildren, my soul fills with love and pride,” she says.
Now, at 90 years old, Alla leads an active lifestyle: every morning she does exercises, attends choir rehearsals twice a week, and walks around the city. When asked about strict diets, she just laughs: “Not eating meat and bread, not drinking wine with friends — yeah, right.” She considers the main principle of her life to be the ability to find common ground with loved ones, avoid conflicts, and “make way for the young.”
