A Russian woman has crossed the century mark and, in honor of this event, shared how she managed to live to such an age.
Journalists spoke with Maria Kharcheva, who turned 100 in March 2023.
The woman lives in the village of Velikoye in the Gavrilo-Yamsky district of the Yaroslavl region, the portal 76.ru reports. Journalists noted that the pensioner looks great for her age.
However, the years are taking their toll: her hearing is failing and it is becoming more and more difficult to walk with each passing year. Maria Ivanovna admitted that she did not set herself the goal of living to such an age, so she does not have any special recipe for longevity.
The Russian woman believes that she lived a long life thanks to her work.
"There is no secret. I worked a lot - sawed wood, chopped wood, dug the earth, planted potatoes," Maria Ivanovna answered the question of how she managed to live to 100 years.
The pensioner said that the hardest period in her life was the 1940s. The Great Patriotic War began when Kharcheva finished 10th grade. In 1942, she lost her mother.
During the war, she worked on a narrow-gauge railway – clearing snow and helping mechanics, and worked at a peat extraction plant. Later, Maria Ivanovna graduated from a teacher training college and worked at a school.
The woman retired back in 1978, but continued working for another 8 years, after which she finally retired. The long-lived woman has five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
