Ivan Vasilyevich Morozkin But let’s get back to the school.
For our whole lives we will all remember yet another pedagogues by the grace of God, our math teacher, Ivan Vasilyevich Morozkin.
We were afraid of him during our school years, and fell in love with him after we graduated. His trademark expressions were memorable: “Wipe out this abomination, write another one.” Or, in urging us to remember the formulas of trigonometry: “To miss or lose the 2 in this formula is impossible, for it’ll immediately reappear on your report card.” (Soviet schools used a 5 point grading system).

And here in this photo is a group of classmates right after graduation: we are in the school yard, the year is 1951.

The campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans” is in full swing. We don’t yet know that some of our friends, upon entering college, will be exposed to ignoble and humiliating discrimination because of their ethnicity. The case against “doctors-poisoners” is in the works. In these last school photos I am the one with a cigarette butt. Since there was no one to whip me, I started smoking in 7th grade during all-night chess battles, poetry readings and our first drinking parties. I smoked for more than 50 years – a lot and with pleasure. It’s been almost two years since I quit – sort of.
 A year after graduation we found ourselves in our classroom once again – not for long, only for one night in 1952, attended only by a half of us.

The double photographs of Moscow views that I’ve presented to you have been lent mostly by the Moscow Time collection that belongs to my Dynasty fund. The photographs that date from the turn of the 20th century, taken by E. V. Gottier-Dufaillet, as well as the contemporary photos that were used in creating the collection, were subjected to computer restoration. The collection’s main creator is my college friend Geliy Pavlovich Zemtsov.
Here is our first double portrait, made in boot camp in our second year at the Moscow Aviation Institute. The place is the town of Slonim, at the Belorussian border, the time – 1953. At one of our political briefing sessions the sensational news of the arrest of Beria was announced.
 In this photo, our mugs were alarmingly retouched by the regiment photographer, to the point of piggish good looks. I deemed it too unseemly to put our contemporary portrait together in this context: the contrast would be far too great.

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