The interview took place in April 2021.
Marusya was born on December 15, 1937 in the village of Mets Tagher, Hadrut region, in a working-class family. There were six children growing up in the family, 3 boys and 3 girls. She was the third child of the family and she was only eight years old when her father died and the care of six minor children was left on her mother’s shoulders. She worked as a dairymaid in the village collective farm.
Due to difficult social conditions, after graduating from the seventh grade, she had to drop out of school and start working with her mother on the collective farm in order to somehow alleviate her mother’s worries.
In 1959 Marusya got married a fellow villager and had a daughter. Her husband was very caring for both his family and his daughter. They raised the girl, educated her and married her at the age of 25. However, life was cruel for them: the girl died at the age of 28 during childbirth. After that she cannot remember any happy day in her life and now she tells about it with great sorrow. After some time, her husband also died suddenly, not accepting the death of the daughter. Marusya stayed with her mother who passed away in 1996 and since then she was left all alone.
In 1980s Marusya worked in the branch of the Stepanakert carpet factory opened in the village, enjoying the love and respect of both the management and the staff.
During the third Artsakh war in October, 2020, Marusya’s neighbor moved her to Yerevan with his family. Until the end of the war, they hoped to return to their native village, but after the ceasefire agreement, they realized that they had lost their homeland and were left homeless, leaving their earnings accumulated over the years in Mets Tagher.
In December 2020, the family returns to Stepanakert, bringing Marusya with them. This young family has 3 minor children, and the father of the family has a first-degree disability. While a conscript in the Defense Army in 2008, he received a cerebral contusion from a grenade blast and it was later complicated by epilepsy. He says that they could not leave that old woman alone in Yerevan and brought her to Stepanakert.
Now Marusya lives with that family in a rented apartment in Stepanakert. Her pension is 58 000 AMD, of which 9 400 AMD is provided by the Government as a single pensioner benefit, and 11 000 AMD from the ICRC.
Marusyan suffers from hypotension, often has severe headaches.
Hanganak NGO has registered Marusya in its list of beneficiaries since February, 2021.