Russian Geese, Soviet Army Day and Missilemen 46

Russian Geese are still on Lulu making their final preparation before long migration to Russia for summer breeding:

I do not know why this sample is walking lonely:

And I remembered occasionally that February 23 is the Day of Soviet Army, Air Force and Navy. What a day! They still celebrate it in Russia as a Day of Fatherland Defender and tomorrow Monday is official day off in Russia. Good reason to continue my story about time when Soviet Union was strong but Army Day wasn’t statutory holiday. Therefore, Missilemen 46

Half empty PAZ bus is running along uneven road. Budylka village is stinking with distillery refuse grains. The spirit manufacturing is going well. We drive dodging by country sandy tracks and reach Gadyach-Poltava highway in approximately one hour. The distance from this place to Gadyach is something like ten miles, and I ask driver to drop me off here, knowing that Gadyach-Poltava bus starts now from Gadyach terminal.

I am waiting this bus staying on the side of the road. GAZ-51 truck from the nearest collective farm goes by. I am not trying to stop it, knowing that it is commuting locally. Calm and quiet. Friday night. Nobody is in a hurry. I see LAZ bus from afar, put my bright yellow travel bag on the road and start to wave my arms in advance. Driver stops the bus, opens forward door.

“Where are you heading?” – is the question.

“Poltava”

“Come in” – driver proposes with pleasure.

I give him three ruble bill.

“Do you need a ticket?”

“No”

My negative answer adds joy to driver’s mood. All traffic controllers are his friends. He will shear this three rubles giving one to them and leaving two for himself. Couple of such passengers like I am and bottle of good vodka is secured for the driver’s weekend.

I pass into the cabin. There is empty sit above rear wheel. I like this particular place, which is considered like not very convenient as you have to place your foot above the floor on the wheel fairing. But you are sitting higher than others and have a good look not only in the nearest window but to all other windows including windshield.

LAZ is running fast on the good asphalt road which goes between fields and gardens. White cottages of daub and wattle can be seen sometime on the right, sometime on the left. Ponds, willows above the water, rows of pyramidal poplars that divide fields, these are the pictures that still sit in my memory.

We turn from the highway into Oposhnya. The streets of this small country town are decorated by cherries and plums in blossom. Drupes are peculiarity of this region. The best plums are Oposhnya’s ones. We reach bus terminal. The twenty minutes stop is announced. I enter terminal yard that is surrounded by apricots. The blossom gone and the trees have fresh leaves and small ovary. I like these sour berries with white core which will be the stone soon.

Dikanka, small green Ukrainian town, is the next stop. Not very steep rise is near the turn from highway. I know this place very good due to my school-time cycling training. Going further to Poltava you can see on the left in the low place the straw roofs, palings with earthen pots on the pickets and white walls of the khutor huts. It looks like this is the place where the known events happened on the Khutor near Dikanka described by Gogol. For many years I have a desire to visit this place and check the idea. But there was no appropriate time yet.

Then we approach Yakovtsy. The big stone cross that is installed on the grave of Sweden warriors killed in Poltava battle is seen from far away. The battle field is around. The redoubts have clearly shaped ramparts. Stella monuments are installed in the middle of every redoubt square yards.

Railway crossing, Octyabrskaya Street, Kievsky terminal – the trip is finished. But not, now I have to use city public transportation. I take trolleybus #1, put 4 kopeks into slot, tear off the ticket, and sit down. Huge chestnut trees, spinning-weaving factory club, Leningradskaya Street are on the way. The circle road around central park and this is my stop, Artillery Institue. Night Poltava stuns me. Park alleys are lit by lights. Chestnut leaves are big and flower candles are ready to open their blossom soon. Friday, and military students are on the leave. May be this is a reason why so many well-dressed and pretty girls wander around. Laughs, sounds of music are coming from café opened doors. The smell of heated by day sun city and fresh greenery create peculiar for spring Poltava mix, which is pleasant and common for many southern Russian cities, nice air cocktail.

I go by Glory Monument column, which is installed in the park center in 1809 to celebrate 100 anniversary win in Poltava battle where Sweden were beaten by Russians (this is the way how they explain this monument in Poltava). The golden eagle on the top is brightening by projectors. All buildings around the park were designed by St. Petersburg architects and constructed in the beginning of the nineteenth century. My home is in 200 meter distance from this column. The concrete five store apartment building of Khrushev era was erected by military constructors in the beginning of the sixties of the twentieth century. I go upstairs to the third floor, see my door and press ring button.

Quiet river and one more jubilee which was almost forgotten and Missilemen 45

Timber-raft is pulled by tugboat:

Very quiet place:

Walking here I remembered that 35 years ago in the middle of February 1974 I defended my diploma project in Kuibyshev Aviation Institute. The event is described in my Missilemen stories. Exactly this is Part 3, Graduation, as I remember. What is really remarkable that whole composite crop-duster plane was a subject of my diploma. And whole composite frame structures are a subject of my current consulting work again. World is really developing in spiral.

And I continue my story. Missilemen 45

7. Visits to Poltava

When I came out of forest to the road the first thing I had seen was a cloud of dust on the Milkhailovka hill slope. Shaby truck, ZiL-130, created this cloud, was approaching my place very fast taking between pits on the regional road. I put on my hand and stepped a little bit on the road to attract driver’s attention. He braked the truck and without questions invited me:

“Climb in”.

“Will you give me a lift to Lebedin for fifty-kopeck piece? – I asked him.

“I have no need in your fifty-kopeck. Let’s have a talk better” – Not very sober driver replied.

“What about?” – I started our conversation, climbing into cab.

“What are you doing in the forest?”

“Fight with Americans. Shoot them” – I am trying to surprise him with my reply – “Not very serious way, yet. Mostly training”.

“Rocketeer. OK. No purpose for this. We have enough scum here. It would be good to catch and kill them first” – driver continued.

We were passing by the burial place with wooden monument to the Soviet military and partisans that were killed during the Great Patriotic War (the way we called WWII in the Soviet Union).

“Look” – driver nodded his head in monument direction – “Do you know that betrayers are still alive, former fascists policemen are still fattening in our region?”

This is the way how we discussing local population, which driver, Nickolay, arrived here from Voronegh, doesn’t like at all, arrived to café near bus terminal.

“Let’s go and drink. I am buying” – Nickolay proposes.

“Let’s go. But I will pay myself for my drink” – I warn him.

Nikolay ordered 100 milligram of vodka, one pint of local beer and belyash, Russian meat pie. Such combination of vodka and beer has a name “with trailer”.

I am examining the bottles of dry grape wines that they have on the shelve: Rkatsetelly, Aligote, Fetyaska, Cabernet, Sauvignon and Riesling. The salesgirl is surprised. The most popular wine in this shop is “White Strong”, what is Bilo Mitsne in Ukrainian, or Biomitsin.

“Is this all you have” – I continue to surprise her – “Do you have something else?”

“Yes, we have” – she replies with pleasure and starts to put out from under the counter bottles with Crimean port, sherry and Madera bottling in Massandra.

“May be you have Red Muscat too?” – I started to jeer.

“No, not yet. But we can order it” – the salesgirl keeps the mark of her shop.

“OK, one glass of cherry, perhaps” – I am making conclusion – “And one chocolate bar, please”.

My bus “Lebedin-Gadyach” is leaving terminal in 15 minutes only. There is some time to continue our conversation and discuss national relations of khokhols (nickname of Ukrainians) and katsaps (similar for Russians), the problem, which I never had personally and never understood. Frankly speaking, I never have seen and never felt the difference between Russians and Ukrainians. Yes, the language is a little bit different, but not much, some kind of Southern dialect. The problem existed, if it existed in those time, only in the Western part of Ukraine, on the former lands of Poland and Austro-Hungarian Empire, like in Lvov and Zakarpatie.

“OK, it’s time to go. Be careful behind the wheel” – I said goodbye to Nickolay.

“Will be. Have a good trip” – he wished me.

Signs of spring and Jubilee of SSAU leavingn

The first snowdrops are arising:

I like this place. I like to watch boats leaving the harbor:

And my today story is about one of such harbors I left 10 years ago:

SSAU leaving jubilee

I remembered that exactly ten years ago approximately in these late winter – early spring days it happened. Strange time: after several years of PERESTROIKA and economical turmoil Russia finally was in default and deep depression with ruble crashed down, banks closed and other delights of crisis. The nation started its new circle or, it’s better to say, continued spiral of surviving. The SSAU Rector announced that the only valuable stuff the SSAU has is its facilities: office and stock areas for rent. Not professors, not students, not curriculums and lab equipment, not knowledge and technologies accumulated by scholars but premises only! Strange people started to run across in the university campus. In one of those days I met policeman armed with Kalashnikov. This machine-gunner was idly walking in the corridors of the building #10 where for many years mainframes were situated demanding special power supply, air-conditioning systems and staff of 12 engineers and 20 operators that worked in this computer center. Mainframes were gone because department head sold them as scrap metal to criminals who were interested only in golden contacts. Now this clear territory was occupied by furniture stock and furniture owner hired machine-gunner for guarding this valuable stuff.

But why this is happening and other kind of such problems didn’t take my thoughts. I still were enjoying new possibilities that we got after iron curtain fall: install links in the world scientific community, research in new areas, compete for international grants, travel abroad, take part in the best world conferences, and gain international recognition, not only for me but for the SSAU too. My university bosses do not pay attention to what I am doing because everybody was busy with his/her own way of surviving. And I was so naïve that believed that everybody, including my bosses, recognized and appreciated my modest but still successes. No way! If I started to resale, for example, cigarettes, nobody would pay attention to me. But I got individual grants and traveled abroad for my own money and in my own time (on temporary leave as a rule) when my bosses stayed home. Again, I would like to repeat, that I was so naïve and thought that what I am doing is exactly what university professor has to do: teach students effectively, create and lead a research team, write reports, publish papers, travel to conferences, develop courses, get grants to support all of these activities, provide good international reputation for the school, and, as a result, make good marketing for the university.

My naiveté was finished one of these days ten years ago when my head of department advised me to start my own sail in the sea of research business without SSAU brand on the flag. They didn’t need my success because they were jealous and hated me! And they believed that without SSAU name I will sink very fast.

This was a pivot event in my life. I opened my eyes and had a look around: what I am doing, what is my point of destination, where I am now, and how my harbor looks like. The university with its stink lavatories, shabby auditoriums, unfriendly bosses and pauperism multiplied by corruption in everything – do I need this harbor as a base for my future? The Russian aerospace industry which is in deep diving to nowhere – do I tie my future to this decaying substance? Do I want my children and grandchildren live in these conditions of social degradation and unhealthy environment?

Now, being on the opposite side of the earth (12 time belts) and looking back in time I am very grateful to my former SSAU bosses for the good advice I got from them ten years ago.