Word: olga
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...American friend who knew Olga for nearly a decade says that when Svetlana got angry, she too hit her child in the face over and over again: "Svetlana did not break her bones, but she ruled her with an iron hand." The violence started, the acquaintance recalls, "when Olga began to have a mind of her own, which was pretty early, at about five." Svetlana apparently could not grasp that the child's displays of independence were perfectly normal. Says the friend: "Olga is a very spirited, independent girl, and her mother could never tolerate that, ever...
Svetlana complained constantly about what she considered the lack of discipline in U.S. schools; indeed, her main reason for moving to Britain in 1982 was to put Olga into a strict boarding school. Arriving too late in the year, however, to enroll the girl in the kind of traditional institution she sought, Svetlana had to settle for a Quaker school in Saffron Walden. The mother moved into an apartment in Cambridge...
Leaving the U.S. was a wrenching experience for Olga, who invariably introduced herself by saying, "I'm an American." As it happened, her new school was exceptionally liberal--and Olga loved it. Svetlana was horrified to discover that students were allowed to wander around town by themselves after classes. She forbade Olga to wear tight jeans and bright tops like the other girls. During vacations, she kept Olga from playing with the children of Cambridge acquaintances. Says Fay Black, then a part-time teacher at Olga's school: "Her mother clung to her like a warden to a prisoner...
There were further incidents of violence. One appalled English family remembers a visit to their home by Svetlana and Olga. Then twelve, the slender adolescent, who wore large square eyeglasses, was almost a head taller than her 5-ft. 4-in. mother. But the mother, at 190 lbs., pulled all the weight. "Stop whining!" she suddenly told her daughter, and struck her in the face with a clenched fist...
Last year Svetlana's upstairs neighbors, Lynne and Peter Mansfield, heard her hectoring Olga nearly every day when the girl was home for summer vacation and - on weekends. "We could hear her even when we turned the television up and closed the windows," Mrs. Mansfield says. "Once she carried on for hours because Olga had put red polish on her toenails...