Galina Skakun
Galina Fedorovna Skakun was a Belarusian cattle breeder and milkmaid. She began working when she was a child, helping her mother Lidiya Osiyuk, run their own farm and the Zhdanov collective farm. Skakun was a deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. She was a recipient of the Medal "For Labour Valour", the Order of the Badge of Honour, the Hero of Socialist Labour, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the Order of Lenin twice.
Early life
Skakun was born in the German-occupied village of,, Brest region, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic on 10 October 1943. Her family was made up of farmers. Shakun's mother was the milkmaid Lidiya Osiyuk, while her father died of tuberculosis in prison in 1944 after refusing to join the German auxiliary police, a few months after Skakun was born. She received a secondary education.Career
From an early age, Shakun was introduced to hard labour on a farm by her mother while she was attending school. She helped her mother run their own farm and also did work at the Zhdanov collective farm. Shakun was on the dairy farm but also on the adjacent plot, on which forage crops were grown, alongside adults. Growing up, she observed how her mother worked. Shakun extracted or more from each grow, which increased to by the end of her working life.Following her graduation from school, she continued to work on the farm until early 1965 when she began working independently as a milkmaid and then as a machine milking operator and a livestock breeder at Zhdanov collective farm. Shakun was given a group of 16, first-calf heifers that were chosen from her mother's group of cows. She exceeded her pledge to extract of milk from each cow; her personal record was from one cow. Shakun introduced new intensive technologies and advanced labour management methods into production at the farm. She was a frequent winner of the district and regional socialist competitions and took part in the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, winning three gold medals, three silver medals and five bronze medals. Shakun also introduced family labour to the farm during the twelfth five-year plan from 1986 to 1990 and the average milk yield in her group in 1987 was for each cow.
Shakun was a delegate to the Fourth All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers in 1988. From early 1989 to 1991, she was a deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union from collective farms united by the Union Council of Collective Farms. Shakun was also a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union as well as a deputy of the local. She and two delegates visited Czechoslovakia and Poland on business trips, discussed agricultural development issues and shared personal experiences. Shakun retired in 1993 but continued working on the Belarus collective farm as a milking machine operator until 2006 when she left to care for her husband.