Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Dasha Varfolomeyeva in Ilya Averbukh’s Master Class"
Dasha Varfolomeyeva, a nine-year-old schoolgirl from Buryatia who Vladimir Putin invited to Moscow after she addressed the Prime Minister during his Q&A session, had never seen a proper skating rink before.
As Dasha and her mother and sister were admiring the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell at the Kremlin, GUM (Central Department Store) was preparing to meet them. Head managers' daughters were appointed to greet the guests. One of them, Katya, age ten, rehearsed her address in the presence of a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent clutching two cuddly toys-gifts for the Varfolomeyev girls.
"Dear guests, we are glad to welcome you to the Central Department Store!" the child chanted cheerfully.
"Dasha, the girl you are waiting for, wants to be a doctor. What do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked her.
"I'll have Daddy's job at GUM after he retires," Katya replied assuredly.
The child of a prosperous and trouble-free family, she has her future mapped out before her eyes. She and her friend, who also greeted the Buryat guests, are accustomed to flood-lit shop windows and an excellent skating rink that appears in Red Square every winter. The Varfolomeyev girls, on the contrary, gaped at it all as if at a miracle.
As salesgirls accompanied Dasha to the Olympic gear department to equip her for skating in Red Square, the blushing child looked like Cinderella during the Royal ball-this after she asked Putin to give her a "Cinderella-style dress". Dreams occasionally do come true.
She put on a smart red-and-white skating suit and stood glued to the mirror, admiring her new elegant self. As her sister Anya was busy in the fitting room, she exchanged her white plush stuffed animal gift for Anya's red one, which she liked more.
"Have you got a skating rink at home?" I asked Dasha.
"No," she sighed.
"We made a rink near our house, but it isn't the real thing, no matter how hard we try. But we watch all figure skating shows on the TV," her mother added.
At that time, the exemplary Red Square rink was tidied up before opening.
"What figure skaters do you know?" I asked, continuing with my interview.
"Navka, Averbukh, and Basharov," Dasha said, as everyone around burst out laughing-the last name she mentioned belonged to a television presenter.
"Why, there are also Zavorotnyuk and Galkin!" a GUM salesgirl cut in with the names of other television anchors.
The two sisters stood spellbound near the rink as none other than Averbukh approached to meet them.
"Never skated before?" he asked. "You are lucky-it's good to start in a good rink."
He started expert explanations as he helped them put on their skates. "Make it tight over the instep and loose round the ankle," he commented as they were lacing their boots.
Mrs Varfolomeyev had never skated before, but her top-notch trainer worked wonders. Several minutes later, she and Averbukh were whirling in a simple dance, holding hands.
"Don't be afraid of ice!" Ilya said to the little girls. "Relax! Don't keep your legs straight and tense! The body must be a bit in front of them."
"Do you give similar advice to stars?" I asked him.
"Definitely! Skating is like swimming-the less you are afraid the better you do," the champion replied.
It took him several minutes to show Dasha basic movements: "Look, this is an attitude, this an arabesque, and this is a spin," as she carefully imitated him.
"Good!" he said, and added for me:
"A gifted child! So quick on the uptake!"
Dasha did not conceal her envy as she watched her new friends, the GUM bosses' daughters, dancing beautifully by her side.
Many say with a smirk that it was easy for Putin to make an unforgettable holiday for two little girls from the backwoods while millions of similar children had no one to give them a treat. It would surely be wonderful to give all village children an opportunity to skate in Red Square but, if this is impossible, should he miss his chance to make a fairy tale come true at least for two children?
"I want to see a real skating rink!" Dasha said as soon as she got out of the plane in Moscow. Now, she was laughingly repeating, "My dream has come true!"
It was hard to take her away from the rink yesterday. With shining eyes, all smiles, bewildered with happiness too great to hold, Dasha spent a minute or two at GUM to get warm and spurted out again and again to repeat the movements Averbukh had shown her-pathetic in her childlike eagerness.
Vladimir VELENGURIN's photos
Larisa Kaftan
