Which of us in childhood did not watch the film “You Never Had A Dream”? This kind film about love that broke out between two teenagers still attracts the attention of thousands and thousands of viewers. And the script for this film was written by the writer Galina Shcherbakova, whose biography is full of creative ups and tragic falls. Let's talk about it in more detail today.
Writer Biography: Childhood and Youth
Shcherbakova Galina Nikolaevna was born in Ukraine in 1932. Its small homeland was the Donetsk region. As a little girl, Galina survived the German occupation, the difficult memories of which accompanied her all her subsequent life. In particular, Galina Nikolaevna recalled how in early childhood she became friends with a Jewish boy who was their neighbor. After German troops arrived in the Donetsk region, the entire Jewish family (the parents and relatives of this boy, as well as himself) disappeared. Later, Galina learned that they were all brutally murdered.
Later, Galina Shcherbakova wanted to tell about many of these events to her readers. Her biography allowed this to be done.
Galina studied well at school, and upon graduation she entered the prestigious Rostov University. However, he did not have to finish it, since she and her husband were transferred to Chelyabinsk. There, the future writer completed her education at the Chelyabinsk Pedagogical Institute. She was awarded the qualification “Teacher of the Russian language and literature”.
Years of work and first professional success
For some time, Galina Nikolaevna worked as a teacher at school, then worked as a journalist with a newspaper, but all these professions did not suit her, since a young woman dreamed of writing.
However, the first works were not published, which sometimes led her to despair. The editors of large literary journals pointed out the fact that Shcherbakova’s prose was of little interest to the general reader.
Success came to Galina much later, along with the work “You Never Had A Dream”. This story appeared in print in 1979.
By the way, the name of Shcherbakova was the pseudonym of Galina Nikolaevna. This surname is her second husband. Galina Nikolaevna herself carried the name of her first husband all her life, with whom she divorced quite early.
After long wanderings in different cities of the USSR, the writer settled with her husband and children in Moscow, where her name and work found its readers. She died in 2010 from a long serious illness, which she endured very courageously. They buried her in the capital at the Miussky cemetery.
Galina Scherbakova: biography. Writer's Family
The writer admitted that her family played a big role in her life.
Immediately after birth, she had to experience hunger and poverty, and then her grandmother sold her engagement ring through Torgsin, so that with her money she could buy semolina for her little granddaughter. The adult girl carried this incident through her whole life as an example of sacrifice and selflessness.
She later told how her parents fought for her life during the occupation, which caused so much damage to the country. How they gave the last and were afraid that something would happen to their daughter. This attitude to the family and her children as the highest value, Galina Shcherbakova carried through her entire family life.
Her personal happiness was not easy, although she managed to be married several times and give birth to two children - a boy and a girl.
Galina Shcherbakova rather early married Yevgeny Rezhabek and gave birth in marriage to the son of Alexander Rezhabek. After a divorce from her former husband, she remarried the journalist Alexander Shcherbakov and gave birth to a daughter, Ekaterina, who now lives in Israel.
Creative work of the writer
About thirty books were published by the writer Galina Shcherbakova, these books are dedicated to the fate of a person who fell into difficult circumstances for him.
The writer uses various genres - from sentimental drama to the ironic detective. Her frequent trick is a naked and soft sense of humor, with which she describes the actions of her heroes.
The stories of Galina Shcherbakova are distinguished by a thoughtful and serious attitude to a person with his difficulties and doubts. Many of the heroines of her works are women with their difficult fates and stories.
The stories of Galina Shcherbakova are also full of charm and attractiveness. And although many of them were never published in the general press, all the same connoisseurs of her work say that such stories inspire hope and optimism in them.
The most famous works of the writer
We list the most famous works of the writer.
This is a story with the famous title “Ah, Manya”, published in the Soviet years, as well as the story “The Year of Alena”. In addition, there are numerous works that the writer has created over the past 20 years of her life: The Wall, Actress and Policeman, Spartans, Wooden Leg, Angels of the Dead Lake, etc. All these works enjoy the well-deserved love of readers.
But, of course, the most famous story was brought to Galina Nikolaevna Shcherbakova by the novel, which was originally called “Romka and Yulka” (later its name was changed). The product, after some hesitation, was published in the journal "Youth". This story was dedicated to the first love, which burned and brought great happiness and pain to two teenage schoolchildren. The story was written with such talent and courage that she could not leave anyone indifferent.
Consider this story in more detail.
Galina Scherbakova, “You Never Had A Dream”
This story was most successful. Galina began to receive letters from enthusiastic readers immediately after her publication in the famous Ogonyok magazine in 1979. And when, according to this story, the film of the same name directed by Ilya Frez was shot, then the literary fame came to the author of the script!
It should be noted that the story and the film are different from each other. It's all in the finale of the work. In the story, it is tragic: Roman, jumping to his beloved from the room of a multi-storey building, crashes to death. In the film, the finale is softened: in his last shots, viewers see that Roman remains alive.
This was done on purpose: with her story, the writer wanted to attract the attention of readers, so she made her look like the famous Shakespearean story about Romeo and his lover. In the script for the film, she had a task - to show adults that they are often wrong, condemning their children for their first and timid feelings.
But why did this work make such an impression on contemporaries?
The semantic meaning of the story
First of all, a huge interest in the story arose because the author posed to the readers the urgent problem of the importance of first love in the formation of a person’s personality. Her story of modern Romeo and Juliet, called Roma and Julia, is full of tragedy. Adult people - parents and teachers of teenagers in love - not only do not believe in their future and true happiness, but also do everything to kill this erupted love. This is due to personal grievances of adults: Roma’s mother is madly jealous of her husband for Yulia’s mother (the girl was named Katya in the same movie), because Roma’s father was hopelessly in love with Lyudmila - Yulia’s mother. Adults, having lived a whole life, take out their complexes on children, which creates new Montecchi and Capulet, new meaningless tragedies.
This story that adults often consider children as their own property, denying them the right to personal choice and personal freedom. The tragedy occurs because parents lose true love for their children.
Galina Shcherbakova wanted to tell about all this in her story to readers. “You never dreamed” became a real manifesto of first love in Soviet art.
The value of the writer's work
Galina Shcherbakova pleased her readers with many: her books were included in the annals of the history of Russian literature. Until now, many teenagers are reading these stories about first love, about the meaning of life, about the tragic vicissitudes of a person’s path.
Galina Shcherbakova shared many with her contemporaries. The biography of this woman is similar to the biographies of many of our contemporaries: in her there is a place for family life, joys and sorrows, conjugal and maternal love. Perhaps that is why her stories and stories are riddled with such realism. They coexist with the harsh truth of life and the warmth of human relations, which makes the works attractive and unique.
Therefore, everyone who wants to plunge into the wonderful world of the works of Galina Shcherbakova, we wish you happy minutes and hours of reading, good thoughts about the world and the place of man in it.