Book I My Extraordinary Destiny Leningrad...New York ...1932 ... 2024... Book II Following You Barefoot...

Yelena Olshansky (Elena Yefimovna Olshanskaya) was born on April 12 1928 in Leningrad. She spent her childhood on Vasilievsky Island and along the Griboyedov Canal in building 2B which belonged to the Russian Museum where her father began his career as one of the curators.Yelena survived the Siege of Leningrad during World War II losing many relatives. In 1945 she married Moisey Olshansky an Air Force officer and gave birth to two sons - Vladimir and Yury. In Baku where her husband was stationed Elena graduated from a music college with a diploma as a choral conductor and as a teacher of solfeggio and music history. In 1963 she divorced and returned to Leningrad where she began working at a music school in the town of Pushkin and met her second love during the First International Youth Festival. In the 1970s Yelena became actively involved in the nonconformist movement organizing one of the first art exhibitions in her apartment at 19 Khalturina Street. She became friends with many of the artists who participated in the exhibition including Nikolai Lyubushkin Anatoly Maslov Viktor Volodin and others from their circle (such as poet and critic Konstantin Kuzminsky and Valery Valran). Among the invited guests were foreign diplomats serving in Leningrad. In particular Elena became friends with the U.S. Consul General Tom R. Buchanan and his wife Nancy as well as with the French Consul General and cultural attaché. During the exhibition Elena's apartment was under constant surveillance by the KGB. Ultimately Elena became a prominent supporter of the nonconformist movement that opposed official Soviet art.In 1979 she emigrated to the United States where she graduated from the New York Institute of Finance and worked as an accountant at Lord and Taylor department store until her retirement. In 2019 at the age of 91 Yelena received a U.S. patent forinventing a new model of corset. The texts of Yelena Olshansky a contemporary of the century include: My Extraordinary Destiny and the epistolary novel Following You Barefoot... covering the period from 1932 to 2024.This is an intimate story of a restless spirit constantly searching and yearning to uncover the truth in everything.The path of Yelena Olshansky described in this book is illuminated by the gift and grace of Love which she has been carrying throughout her entire life.