Valentina’s sober life: how a pensioner from Zabaikalsky Krai helps teenagers other adults have turned their backs on

“My little diamonds”

Children started gathering in our courtyard, around 40 of them. There’s a lot of swearing among them, and some want to show that nothing can influence them. They openly walk around with their vapes and drink alcohol. I confiscated and threw away quite a few [smoking devices — 7x7].

I always talk to children. Once I saw some young athletes near the stadium and reminded them that sports and tobacco don’t mix: “Guys, you’re only fooling yourselves.” Two of them agreed that it really was a problem. We created a chat that I called “My Little Diamonds” and kept adding kids I met on the street in the same way. The name reflects how I feel about them, affectionately, like a grandmother. I don’t think they mind. The participants range in age from six to 18. I regularly send videos about sobriety from Common Cause to the chat. It’s a project where I used to work with young people as part of the Healthy Russia program.

I went to China for 10 days. When I came back, the kids asked why I hadn’t sent them any videos while I was away. That was when I realized they really were watching the materials and starting to think about them.

Later, I started getting my “little diamonds” involved in improving the courtyard. We painted outdoor structures together and planted trees. The children used to damage the flowers, but now they water them. We also held two outdoor events together: Children’s Day and an autumn festival. The program consisted mainly of sports workshops. For the first event, I invited a weightlifting coach I know. He showed the kids how to use different barbells and kettlebells properly, divided them into teams, and held a few small competitions. We even congratulated the participants and gave them small prizes. The second event focused on street workout. After all, we have pull-up bars right there in the courtyard.

I also asked the local supplementary education center to buy some chess sets so we could play with the children outside, and they did. We organized tournaments several times, mostly with the younger kids, around 10 to 12 years old.

I found jobs for some of the older kids. We’ve developed a pretty good relationship with our property management company. Some of the kids say at first that they want to work, but then they show up for only a day or two and disappear. Later, they beg me again: “Valentina Nikolayevna, please help me, talk to them so they’ll hire me again.” And I tell them, “No, go and talk to them yourselves. I showed you the way. You know what to do now.”

The neighbors could also get involved somehow, helping the children and improving the courtyard. But no, they look at me as if I’m crazy and say, “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Well, I know this is worthwhile. If I have useful connections and skills, why should I sit at home?

Local residents think the teenagers started gathering in our courtyard in such large numbers because of me. But I don’t think that was how it started. [They came on their own at first — 7x7.] I simply started talking to them. The neighbors still complained and got angry, and they called in a juvenile affairs inspector. But I defend the children. I’m against punitive measures. Yes, they can be unruly. But when I meet particularly hostile neighbors, I tell them, “Give you a gun and you’d start shooting them.” That expression came to me after an incident when a boy started vomiting in the building’s entrance hall after vaping too much. One woman got angry and said, “If I’d seen [what was happening — 7x7], I would have rubbed his nose in that puddle.” I think that in a situation like that, you should help the child and call an ambulance. That’s what I tell everyone: don’t scold children or make them angry. Love them and help them as much as you can. It’s not the children’s fault. They’re simply copying adults’ behavior. Adults swear, smoke, and drink right alongside them.

Eventually, someone filed a police complaint against me because I had welcomed the children here. They know me at the police station, so the complaint went no further. I don’t know who filed it, but I have my suspicions.

I don’t hold it against my neighbors because things are difficult right now. Everyone is on edge, everyone is depressed. People are affected by everything going on around them, and they take their emotions out through everyday conflicts. So I let most of their complaints slide.

I’m not doing anything in the courtyard right now because of the neighbors’ complaints. And it will be getting cold soon, so the kids will start going into apartment building entrances to keep warm. I understand that this could trigger another wave of complaints. Teenagers really have nowhere to go. State-run youth centers cater only to children from well-off families, the same kids who are showcased everywhere.

No one cares about children from disadvantaged families.

I tried to raise this issue with the authorities. I invited former State Duma deputy Andrey Gurulev here and shared my ideas with him about how these kids could be helped. Gurulev, however, was not elected to the State Duma in the latest [2026] election. Before the election, he told me, “Valentina Nikolayevna, my aide will come see you tomorrow, and you can discuss everything.” But no one ever contacted me again. Two local lawmakers whom I asked to help build a soccer field for the kids blocked me altogether. They don’t want to listen to me, probably because I’m persistent.

Working with children fills me with positive energy. The school year has started now, and I offered my help to the principal. I told them they could invite me to teach life safety classes whenever the teacher was sick. The school is only 200 meters from my home, so I could be there in no time, and the kids wouldn’t have to hang around on the ground floor staring at their smartphones. I could teach them something useful.

“Simply not drinking isn’t enough”

Teaching is my vocation, though I have no formal training as a teacher. I graduated from a construction technical college and later earned a university degree in state and municipal administration. My community work began 30 years ago. When my husband and I first started our life together, I tried to help him stop drinking. We tried various programs and treatments together: Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol aversion coding, and addiction specialists, but nothing helped. In Krasnokamensk, where we lived at the time, there was a sobriety club called Optimalist, so we turned to them.

The club members promoted a method developed by physiologist Gennady Shichko, a follower of Pavlov’s teachings. Through his research, he came to the conclusion that a person could be reprogrammed and that addiction was not a disease but a harmful habit. Shichko’s psychological and educational method is based on truth: when you tell people the truth, they begin to change their worldview. My husband and I devoted a lot of time to fighting harmful habits. He would stop drinking and keep a diary, which is a key part of the Shichko method, but then start drinking again. The longer a person consumes alcohol, the harder it becomes to overcome the craving.

Back then, I didn’t realize I had a problem myself. I drank a little on holidays, like everyone else. I thought it was normal. I was a “cultural drinker.” In my opinion, this is the most dangerous category of people. They’ll insist that everything they do is within the norm: “What am I, an alcoholic? So what if I have a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve?”

I also smoked back then. My husband would say, “If you smoke, I’ll drink.” We decided to attend the classes together. I had tried to quit smoking several times, undergone coding treatment and acupuncture, but nothing had worked. After the first few classes, though, I noticed that I was no longer reaching for a pack of cigarettes. I quit easily, without withdrawal. I kept a diary for a month, and that was it.

Later, I took a course in the Shichko method myself and began helping to spread its ideas. At the time, I worked for the city administration and headed the emergency situations commission. I began arguing that we needed to consider not only man-made emergencies, but also their social causes. My superiors didn’t like that, even though I found many like-minded people among my colleagues. I had to quit, move away, and start over, first working at an orphanage and later in the administration of a technical college. There, I was allowed to talk to the students about sobriety.

Anyone teaching these classes has to be firmly committed to sobriety and have gone through this journey themselves. Simply not drinking isn’t enough. You have to understand the method and truly believe in it.

There are all kinds of classes in schools now, Conversations About Important Things, some Orthodox classes. But no one talks about sobriety classes.

And yet, conversations like these could actually be the starting point for children’s spiritual upbringing and development. Unfortunately, as Catherine the Great supposedly said, “Drunk people are easy to govern.” Still, I have to give the governor credit: quite a lot has already been done. Alcohol stores in residential buildings have been closed, and the number of days when alcohol can be sold has been reduced. I discuss this in the comments on social media. When people argue that they’ll simply start stocking up on alcohol, I tell them, “No alcohol, no problems.” If someone needs to stock up on it for the weekend, they should ask themselves whether that might be a sign of dependence.

“I offer my help, but they refuse”

Of course, most of my work focuses on my home region, Zabaikalsky Krai. Alcohol abuse remains a serious problem for us. We used to rank somewhere around 74th or 75th in the country for sobriety, although we may have moved up somewhat recently, perhaps into the 50s.

Ever since I joined the Optimalist club, I haven’t stopped promoting sobriety. I studied extensively, represented the community at events and conferences, and gave lectures. I was particularly successful in working with schools and libraries. I managed to set up nearly a dozen information stands. I tell everyone I meet that they can come to me for help or advice, and I recommend useful materials. Unfortunately, very few people actually do.

In 2013, a group of like-minded people and I founded a civic organization called Sober Zabaikalye. Having official status makes people more likely to trust us. It also allows the organization to apply for grants. As deputy chair of Sober Zabaikalye, I have written around 40 grant applications and secured three presidential grants.

One of them was for a project called Sober Village. We drew on the experience of Yakutia. Indigenous peoples in the north realized that alcohol was becoming a serious problem and that things could not continue that way, so they decided to give it up. The Sakha Republic has a strong team [of sobriety advocates — 7x7] who have managed to achieve results: around 200 communities where people live alcohol-free.

The most notable result of our project is what happened in the village of Ulyanovka. Local women grew tired of their husbands’ drinking, formed a group, and reached out to us for help. We provided them with videos, visited whenever we could, conducted surveys, and proposed a solution: moving alcohol stores outside the village. Residents voted in favor of the proposal at a village meeting. Of course, some people may still drink at home, but you no longer see drunk people lying in the streets.

While talking to villagers, we told parents that their children looked up to them and appealed to their sense of patriotism. Western countries imposed sanctions on the metals industry, agriculture, and many other sectors, but not on alcohol [there are, however, some EU sanctions restricting alcohol exports to Russia — 7x7]. Alcohol is imported from abroad as well as produced domestically. I find that telling. There is a system that stands in the way of sensible decisions and lobbies for the interests of the alcohol industry in the State Duma.

Sober Zabaikalye worked closely with a correctional facility. I was invited to give lectures at a penal colony. During one of them, I asked the prisoners how many had been sober when they committed their crimes and how many had been intoxicated. Only three out of around 20 people in the audience said they had been sober.

Unfortunately, very few of those who attended that meeting took my advice to heart. But there was one person who did. His name is Andrey. Six months after we met, he finished serving his sentence. When he was released, Andrey didn’t rush off to a store to celebrate, as many people do. He moved to a village and stayed sober. Former prisoners often have difficulty finding work, but he managed to get a job. After a while, he met a woman, and they now live together. That was about five years ago. Andrey still calls me every week or two.

We talk, and I tell him, “I’m proud of you.”

Around the time I met Andrey, we were preparing a grant application for a project working with prisoners, but we didn’t receive the funding. I think this is a promising area for prevention work. Alcohol is behind many tragedies, deaths, traffic accidents, suicides, and fights.

I’m concerned about people returning from the “special military operation.” They leave with the familiar idea that holidays and important occasions should be celebrated with alcohol, and they come back with anxiety, fear, depression, and sometimes serious injuries. There is a risk that after returning, someone could start drinking heavily and be unable to stop. I offered my help to foundations that work on the rehabilitation of military personnel, but they refused. Apparently, they’re wary of it. I wasn’t planning to give lectures to the men themselves. I wanted to talk to their female relatives, their wives and mothers, and explain what they could do.

“There’s no one to replace me”

Three years ago, I had some health problems and decided to shut down the organization. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to prepare anyone who could take my place and lead the movement. I meet young people who get very involved in the work, but there’s still no one who could replace me. They lack the necessary experience and charisma.

I’ve noticed that young people today are pretty smart. They grow up, see what’s happening around them, and draw their own conclusions. Educational materials are available across the country, and there are sobriety educators who travel around giving lectures and sharing their experience.

What keeps me going is the patriotism I inherited from my father. He was a communist, and I grew up in a community where people cared about one another. I feel for people because I understand where the problem comes from and what alcohol does to us.

In Vologda Oblast, many of our people [sobriety activists — 7x7] worked with Governor Filimonov and, in my view, helped change his outlook. He is criticized, people try to smear him, and they say that illegal alcohol sales increased after restrictions on alcohol sales were introduced, but I don’t believe that’s true. He doesn’t just impose restrictions. He offers people help and talks to them. 

Unfortunately, I lost some of my chats with the kids after Telegram was blocked. But we’re still in touch, and we always say hello when we see each other on the street. Once, I ran into a young man who told me that he had quit smoking after our conversations. Hearing things like that really warms my heart. But the most important thing I’ve done for myself is that my children and grandchildren neither drink nor smoke.

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