Soviet star Tatyana Antsiferova survives on 23,000 rubles a month

Now Tatyana Antsiferova is 69 years old. She has not sung for a long time, lives on a modest pension and is struggling with a serious illness. Antsiferova openly told MK correspondents about her difficult everyday life.

“Nothing new is happening in my life,” says Tatyana Vladimirovna. — I am a pensioner, I am not involved in concert activities. I don’t communicate with any of my colleagues. I only congratulated Olga Zarubina on her 65th birthday. We are in touch with her – we know that we exist.

— They say that you were also offered to participate in a vocal show, in which she won. But you refused…

– Naturally. What should I do there? Everything has its time. I should have been called when I was in shape. But when I performed, they didn’t let me on television. I believe that every person should have his own king in his head. A person must prove himself if he can progress all the time. It helped Olya that she lived in America, she was able to accumulate and ground herself. Our people don’t know how to do this. With the last of their strength, already degrading, they constantly position themselves, show off… It’s actually a shame, to be honest. If you get old and can’t progress, then you have nothing to do on stage.

– But our divas are getting younger: they do operations endlessly!

– If you’ve had a lot of plastic surgery, it doesn’t give you a ticket to the stage. What is there to do? Walk around and show off your outfits? You need to be on point, sound good, not choke, not wheeze, and not sing off-key. I especially don’t like old rockers who are already falling apart, they have a bald spot on their heads, their stomachs, nothing can hold on anymore, but they still sing. A man must sing in such a way that every woman sitting in the audience wants to have the same husband, friend, life partner. And exactly the same – vice versa. This is a very important process. When you own it and you know how to do it, you are satisfied with yourself. And when you lose this due to age, hormonal problems, health conditions, you don’t suit yourself, you don’t fall in love with yourself. This is a very dangerous period. People climb onto the stage, but they spit on themselves inside. If I can’t be better than I was, then I have nothing to do on stage. I had a period when I was always better than this and that. This state of affairs lasted for more than a decade. But everywhere I was rejected, they didn’t let me in. And now people write to me every day: “How did it happen that under Soviet rule you were not allowed anywhere? What injustice! But what am I going to tell them, how and what happened…

— Morally, it must be very difficult to withstand this moment?

“When you’re young and in shape, you have a lot of other things to do. There are tours, and life, and family… For five minutes you feel sad that you weren’t invited to the concert again, but then you forget. I was on the black list of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. I was banned the moment I didn’t show up, when no one knew me. The film “June 31st” was also not completed. And I was already on the black list. They told me about it right away. There were TV editors who knew about this.

“Couldn’t you somehow remove yourself from this list?”

— It was in the late 70s. In order to cross it off the list, you had to have great power. But, unfortunately, I did not have such strength.

— They said that Alla Pugacheva had a hand in this. By the way, how did you react to her departure from Russia?

“I accidentally saw someone write that I was supposedly talking about Pugacheva’s departure: “Why are you attacking the singer? Leave her alone! This is a lie. I never said that or asked her to leave her alone. I don’t remember her at all. Each person knows what to do. If it’s better for you to live on the Moon and you have a spacesuit, there is provision to live there, why not do it that way? I don’t think it’s necessary to talk about those people who left. They have their own reasons, everything is different for them. I don’t blame anyone at all: neither those who stayed here, nor those who went abroad. Everyone is free to make their own choices and live the way they want.

— Is it true that you also had your own tragedy in your family in connection with the Ukrainian conflict?

— Yes, my stepdaughter died in Kharkov. She would have been sixty years old at the beginning of September. She is the sister of my son, the daughter of my husband, who is no longer alive. Louise was going to come to Moscow to live with me. And so she died. This happened on February 10th.

— Did the funeral take place without you?

“Naturally, no one went anywhere or buried anyone. It is very difficult and very difficult for me to talk about this topic. This is personal pain and personal suffering. An additional and very heavy burden both in terms of health and everything else. My closest relatives live in Ukraine. All my ancestors are buried there. This topic is very sensitive for me.

“I’ve been taking hormones for many years”

— Tatyana Vladimirovna, what do you live on now? What is your financial situation?

– Bad. I don’t work, I only have a pension.

– Small, perhaps?

– Small. I get 23 thousand a month.

— Do you have any supplements?

– No. I don’t have the title of Honored. At one time, in the 90s, an acquaintance suggested that I make a title for money. I don’t remember now how much I had to pay. Or three thousand dollars, or five… For us it was a lot of money. And then, I thought it was strange. I worked for so many years in the Union, then in Russia, and suddenly I need to buy a title with money? In general, I didn’t do it, and now I regret it. It was necessary to find reserves.

— Maybe they’ll give you a title for your anniversary: ​​you’ll be 70 next year!

– Nobody will give me anything. Yes, it will be a anniversary year. But at least live until the anniversary year. Health is not so good. So you think about how to survive. I have not been in very good health for a long time. If it weren’t for these problems, I probably would have allowed myself to perform. And so the last time I went on stage was October 1, 2010.

— Thirteen years have already passed… Do you miss performing?

– No, I don’t miss you. I’m more bored because there is no material suitable for me. I want to experiment, make some notes. But what I have been offered in recent years is not interesting. They always send endless female melancholy…

– Why doesn’t Zatsepin write for you?

— He hasn’t written songs for a long time. Now he is working on music for musical plays and musicals. We communicate with him. He called me the other day. I asked him what he was doing. He said that he was currently writing music for the full-length play “Ivan Vasilyevich is changing his profession.”

— Tatyana Vladimirovna, how do you live in Moscow on 23 thousand?

– This is how I live. I don’t have a sponsor. For my recordings that are played on the radio (I hear them on various radio stations), no one pays me anything. Nobody cares about this issue. Then, there are films in which my voice is heard. They are shown periodically on television. Naturally, no one pays me anything for this either. Therefore, you just have to be upset. I think that if I lived even in some Czechoslovakia, I would probably get paid for the fact that my songs are heard to this day…

— And people believe that artists only eat oysters and black caviar!

– Anyone who has been on TV and worked all their life can probably afford it. I just don’t know how they eat oysters. In my opinion, this is very tasteless. And anyway, how can you eat something that is trying to move and squeak in your mouth? It has to be something… For me this is unacceptable.

— Tatyana Vladimirovna, I can’t help but ask you about your health. Comments by Alexander Zatsepin appeared on the Internet, where he says that you had oncology…

“Zatsepin couldn’t say that.” I never talked about these topics with Alexander Sergeevich. The fact that I have an endocrine disease is yes. But, thank God, there was no cancer. My illness has been going on for decades. For me it is in one phase, then, after the operation, in another. Since I have been living with this disease for more than forty years, I have had many phases. The phase I am in now is the final one. There is no other one yet. Although anything can happen. Rod Stewart had thyroid cancer. He had surgery and everything ended well. I was horrified when I found out about his diagnosis. And then, understand… When there is a serious illness, there are also accompanying illnesses that pull the strings.

— They say you are forced to take hormones?

“I’ve been drinking them for many years.” This caused a weight problem. Naturally, this is ballast for the voice. I try to watch my weight, there are some things I don’t allow myself to do. But I understand that any hormone, when you take it every day, affects your weight. You have to take the hormone and then exercise all day so as not to gain weight. But this is impossible.

“Living with a businessman is sheer hypocrisy”

— Your marriage with your husband, musician Vladimir Belousov, was considered a standard one. How is your personal life now?

– No, I’m not interested in these things. When my husband passed away in 2009, a neighbor told me: “Yes, you can still get married!” I was surprised: “How do you imagine this? The person must be from the same basket as me. He must be a musician, a talented composer, and he must be tall and handsome…” This is very important to me. “I’m unlikely to find anything like this,” she answered the neighbor. “And then, I need this person to admire me.”

– So, how did your husband admire you?

– Certainly. “What if he is a deputy, a businessman or an engineer?” – the neighbor continued. What will I do with such a person? I can’t last half a day with him. It will be difficult for me to even talk to him. It will be complete hypocrisy. I need it to penetrate each other. And not knowing where you end and where the other person begins. I lived like this for 38 years with my husband. He and I were one being.

-Who is surrounding you now?

— In principle, I am very limited. I understand how tense the situation is around. All conversations end with finding out which side you’re on. And all the time you need to find fault with someone, discuss them, say that he is this and that, that way… But such conversations have always been uninteresting to me. I’m used to learning something new in music every day: discovering a new singer, an orchestra or an ensemble.

— Who has been discovered recently?

— I liked the latest Depeche Mode album. I even follow performers who are not very young. If they succeed and release an album, I listen.

— Which of ours do you like: Gagarin, Zivert, Buzova?..

— No, I never listened to Soviet, much less Russian music. Only if it accidentally came into your ears at group concerts or on television. What can I learn from our performers? Musically, nothing. That’s why I don’t listen. But I do not intend to criticize Gagarina and Zivert. As for Buzova, she’s great.

– Why?

– She has outlined a path for herself and is following it. And then it depends. They cut down the forest – the chips fly, you know? She’s basically a good person in her own right. I just realized that I live in such a time that if you scream louder, laugh and make some sounds, then people will pay attention to you. She got it right. Not everyone can do it like she does. There must also be talent.

— What do you think of Kirkorov’s new appearance? We heard that he made cubes for himself – he became Apollo!

– I don’t know how to talk about such topics. I love real men, like my husband was. He had a big hand, like Rachmaninoff. So that he could improvise on the piano, so that he could speak in a velvety male voice… So that he would have all the signs of a real man. Philip has a good voice, he got Jewish-Armenian roots. All Armenians sing well, I think so. Although he says that he is Bulgarian. But on the Internet they generally call him a Romanian…

— Tatyana Vladimirovna, what makes you happy today?

— It makes me happy when I see that Barbra Streisand has performed somewhere. I look at her and am happy for her. Or Cher or Diana Ross. Yesterday I listened to Tom Jones, albeit from 5 years ago, and thought to myself: “Wow, how he can hold his breath! His note doesn’t vibrate, he doesn’t slow down!” I sit, smile and understand that I couldn’t do that now. I only rejoice at such victories of outstanding performers. Among our team, Olya Zarubina has shown herself to be excellent lately. I looked at her numbers on the Internet and realized that she was great. This makes me happy.