Grunya Moiseevna Khazanskaya

Grunya Moiseevna Khazanskaya

         Grunya Moiseevna  Khazanskaya, 97,  resident of Albuquerque, passed away peacefully in her sleep on February 21, 2018, at Manzano del Sol Home Care. 

            She was born on July 26, 1920, in Gorodok, a small town of Vitebsk province in Belorussia (Soviet Socialist Republic, now Republic of Belorus) with a large Jewish population, to Doba Piratinskaya Khazanskaya and Moisei Khazansky, a shoemaker.  Grunya was the youngest of four children.  The family moved to Ekaterinburg, the major city of the Urals region, in 1924, the same year as it was renamed Sverdlovsk and soon to become a central city in Stalin’s plans for industrialization of the early USSR (1928-32). The city was perceived as a safer place for Jewish people and also provided broader new opportunities.   Her relatives who remained in Belorussia perished in the mass killing of 2,000 Jews from Gorodok during the German Nazi occupation and were buried in a communal grave now preserved by the Jewish community.     Grunya finished high school in Sverdlovsk and in 1937 was admitted in the Uralskii Politechnicheskii Institut in the Department of Electrical Engineering.  She graduated as Engineer in 1942 and began her career at the new hydro-electric power station in SUGRES, near Sverdlovsk, where she met Afanasy Spiridonovich Grigoriev, a fellow engineer, and they married in 1943.   Daughter Tatiana was born in 1945 and son Mikhail in 1949.  After transfers to various posts in the Urals, the family returned to Sverdlovsk in 1961 when Afanasy rose to a high post in the Soviet Ministry of Energy.  Grunya continued her career as the rare woman in the field of electrical engineering at the Research Energy Institute there.  In 1966 with new professional opportunities, they moved to Moscow. 

      After her daughter Tania married and immigrated to the US in 1983, Grunya visited Albuquerque to help care for her two small granddaughters, and she herself came to live here permanently in 1992.  She moved to David Spector Shalom House in 1993, where she made new friends among the small Russian-speaking community, enjoying life in an apartment of her own with a view of the Sandia Mountains, and became an American citizen in 1999.  She renewed her Jewish faith, unfeasible in the Soviet Union, joined nearby Congregation Albert, and was happy at last to celebrate Jewish holidays freely. A vivacious and vigorous woman, her first priorities were always the support and well-being of her family.  She was a loving and caring mother and grandmother and will be deeply missed by all.

    She was preceded in death by husband Afanasy S. Grigoriev.  She is survived by daughter Tania Lindsey and husband Byron, son Mikhail A. Grigoriev and wife Elena; granddaughters, Mariana Grigoriev and Eugenia Lindsey Gonzales and husband David, all of Albuquerque, and Daria Lindsey of San Francisco CA; grandsons, Denis Grigoriev and wife Natalia, of St. Petersburg, Russia, Mikhail M. Grigoriev and wife Stacia, of Los Angeles CA, Grigory M. Grigoriev, of Erfurt, Germany; great-grandchildren Ekaterina and Elizaveta Grigoriev of St. Petersburg, Russia, and Aleksei Gonzales of Albuquerque; niece, Lyudmila Shenker of Smolensk, Russia, and nephews, David (Dodik) Khazansky of Toronto, Canada, and Boris Gudkov of Kiev, Ukraine.   

Grunya Moiseevna was buried on February 23 at Sunset Memorial Park, and the family celebrated her long and colorful life with a Russian style “pominki” the following day. 

Daniels Family Funeral Services

7601 Wyoming Blvd NE

Albuquerque, NM 87109

505-821-0010