LITMIR.BIZ

      Our subsidiary farm consisted of two cows, two piglets, up to eight bulls, up to fifteen fine-wooled white sheep, about two dozen chickens, sometimes there were big black turkeys. We also had a service horse named Savras, as well as two dogs: a Siberian Laika and a German purebred shepherd named Bars. Bars, at the age of five, was shot by a resident from the nearby village of Novaya Andreevka in a shootout during the arrest of the poacher Stepan Vorsov. Vorsov shot a large elk, and if not for this shootout, he would have got off with a suspended sentence. As a result, he received five years in prison. But traces to this character led my father one more time after eight years. Vorsov ordered the murder of my father to his former cellmate. The attempt was unsuccessful thanks to the strong physique and incredible strength of Yuri Alekseevich. Despite the fact that the father was already seriously ill at that moment, he did not give up and worked as usual.

      Our chores in the summer were complemented by the care of a huge potato field of sixteen acres. At least it seemed to me and my brother that way. And if not for the Colorado potato beetle, which appeared around 1979, when I was about ten years old, the hassle might have been much less. Harvesting forest berries was also time-consuming. We had to stock up on: three three-liter jars of wild strawberries and blueberries; up to ten liters of candied red viburnum; up to three buckets of lingonberries and cranberries; dried porcini mushrooms – depending on availability; about a fifty-kilogram bag of dried fish. The lake began to feed us with fish five years after our arrival. At first we lived in another cordon, Savelkul, in the very wilderness of the Ilmensk reserve, and the nearest town of Chebarkul was about thirty-five kilometers away. When I went to the first grade of school, we moved to a new place. At first, when we first arrived, there were practically no fish in the lake. It took about five years to restore fish stocks in it. Fish stocks were in poor condition because of fishing by poaching – nets and electric trails. My father and I were fishing by spinning in the summer, sometimes using nets when there was no bite at all. In the winter season, there was only one opportunity for fishing – live baits, which were installed on the ice up to ten or twelve pieces. As a result, three or four pikes could be caught per day.

      Everything that I described, my brother and I knew how to do. We didn’t have much free time, as I said, so we really appreciated it and learned to use it as efficiently as possible, which I still do today, after forty years of my life.

      The list of my brother and I’s tasks also included chopping birch firewood, bringing water from the river, cleaning the barnyard, watering the beds, driving livestock from pasture in the forest at the end of the day, and so on, but all this – only in the summer. When classes began at school, priorities changed, and the emphasis was on doing homework and attending sports clubs. I was fond of volleyball, skiing, was engaged in the boxing section, participated in many competitions and social life of the school, worked with a personal trainer, my father’s friend – Alexei Malolkin, the champion of Russia in karate in the 70s.

      Alexey worked for several years, like my father, in the neighboring cordon. And he would still have worked, but once, as a result of a clash with violators of the protected area regime, with a group of former convicts – there were six of them – Alexey was forced to use his service weapon, a 7.62 mm carbine. As a result, a criminal case was opened against him and almost sentenced to imprisonment. This would be the end if he, despite his recognizance not to leave, had not gone to a personal meeting with the USSR Prosecutor General in Moscow. The case against Alexei was closed after this meeting in Moscow, and he was acquitted. My father helped him get an appointment in Moscow.

      Meeting the right people is one of the essential prerequisites for success. Look for and keep in touch with people who can teach you something. Maintain contact with those people whom you would like to be like or have those traits that you may not have yet, but these people already have.

      I will cite several examples of outstanding personalities who respected my father very much and who often visited us: Major General Karpukhin – the head of the special forces group “Alpha”, twice Hero of the Soviet Union; Viktor Petrovich Makeev – General Designer of KB Miass-20; cosmonaut Pavel Romanovich Popovich from the group that trained in the first team together with Yuri Gagarin; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Professor, Doctor of Sciences Viktor Alekseevich Koroteev and several other very bright and famous personalities.

      How did my father’s acquaintance affect me? – you ask. When I was five years old, General Karpukhin brought and presented me with a suit of a cadet of the Suvorov Military School, which was tailored for me, and I proudly put it on sometimes. I felt and imagined myself to be a very courageous and significant person. I am already at this age to the question of cosmonaut Popovich: “What do you want to become, fighter?” – Immediately and clearly answered: “I want to become a general, comrade general!” To which he smiled broadly and replied: “So, you will definitely be!”

      Our guest is cosmonaut Pavel Romanovich Popovich, 12/22/1975, second from the left (in the center – mother Lydia Aleksandrovna, in front of the left – brother Dmitry, I am on the right, next to me is father Yuri Alekseevich)

      From the words of my father – the story of cosmonaut Pavel Romanovich Popovich:

      “In 1959, by a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, a decision was made on the selection and preparation of cosmonauts for the first flight on the “East” spacecraft. They chose from fighter pilots because they are the most trained and have the characteristics suitable for this. The

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