LITMIR.BIZ

      We submitted all the necessary documents for registration of our departure to Germany, and after six months a confirmation came, on the basis of which we handed over our foreign passports to obtain a visa for permanent residence. And then the moment came when it was necessary to get ready for departure. We had to sell our four-room apartment in Miass, all the furniture in it, a Niva car, a land plot for building a house near the village of New Andreevka, and it was not clear to us what to do with a huge amount of everything that had been accumulated over the past nineteen years and remained in the reserve at the cordon: agricultural machinery, all kinds of tools, boats, outboard motors and the like. We distributed a huge amount of all this to our relatives, including Father’s brother Nikolai. He lived in the village of Turgoyak, in his private house on the shore of a unique lake with the same name – the pearls of the South Ural. My father had three brothers – Gennady, Victor, Nikolai – and a sister Tamara. Only Nikolai and Tamara survived until the nineties. Gennady died in a fire, and Victor died at the age of 52 from tuberculosis. Tamara’s husband died at the age of 40 due to a heart attack, and ten years after his death she moved to live in the village of Upper Crucian Carps, in the house of her parents.

      My ancestors on the line of my father moved from Murom to the South Ural, to the village of Upper Crucian Carps in 1938. In these, at that time deaf, lands, it was possible to feed the entire large family by hunting and fishing. The village is located on the shores of one of the largest lakes in the Southern Ural – Big Miassovo, and the southern border of the Ural Mineralogical Reserve lies seven kilometers from the village.

      In the late summer of 1994, I quit my job at the UralAZ automobile plant and was finishing my last unfinished business deals. I sold the apartment to one entrepreneur, collected all my cash and agreed to buy currency at a special rate thanks to my friend Vadim, who was then working at a bank in Yekaterinburg, in a branch of this bank in our city. The amount for us at that time was considerable. My brother and mother and I arrived at the bank in two cars. My brother and I had the same sports bags with us. Despite the fact that no one except the bank employees and our family knew about the deal, I prepared and implemented some security measures. Times were not very calm. They were waiting for us at the bank, we promptly completed the transaction, packed the currency into one bag. I put my jacket in the second bag, which I was wearing in the bank. We left the bank and got into two different cars with my brother. Mom got into the third car, which was parked at the bank and was waiting for us even before our arrival. The road to the reserve was calm, no one followed us, everything went well. Two weeks remained before our departure at that time.

      The next day – I don’t even know how to express my feelings – the default happened in Russia: the ruble exchange rate collapsed four times in one day! If we had delayed even for one day, we would have lost a colossal amount of money for us at that time.

      What was it for us then – luck or accident? Today I would say – a pattern, or, in another way, our thoughts, goals and actions led to the outcome of these events.

      On October 10, 1994, the whole family boarded the train at the Miass station and set out for our new life. We didn’t know what it would be like. We drove with the hope of saving our father – that was the first. Everything else will definitely be there – I thought so, I spoke about it aloud, reassuring my parents, who, for their part, also worried about us in the first place.