This photo was taken during one of our trips on the car. I think it took place in 1950s and we went to the South, or Black Sea. If you tried hard, you can see not only our first car, but also me and my wife inside the cabin.
Together with Bliznyakov (one of me close friends) we were queuing five long years for small 'Moskvitch' [soviet car, made on Moscow Auto Factory], they had such four hundred first model, it cost nine thousand rubles. When I bought this car, I could not drive any car. But I've been an officer, worked in Lomonosov [town in Leningrad region, before the Revolution was called Oranienbaum], taught the sailors, and I asked one of them to show me how to drive. In few days he showed me the whole process. As a matter of fact I myself learned how to drive in three weeks, or approximately that period of time, and finally I passed the exams without studying anywhere. That was in 1956-1957.
After a week I learned how to drive my new car, (me and my wife) risked to go to Crimea through Moscow [Crimean peninsular is traditional place of rest of citizens of the country]. My wife was brave then, she didn't know what could happen on the road. And how we decided to go to Moscow: I explored the map, and counted that it takes about ten hours to reach Moscow, because Moscow is about seven hundred kilometers away from Leningrad, in that case if you make sixty kilometers per hour. So we sat and departed.
And finally we were driving about twenty one hour. First we drove on the normal asphalt, but in the map they drew splendid thick line, looking like asphalt on all the way to Moscow, and that thick line stopped just in Luban [small village on the road from Leningrad to Moscow], and further there was no road at all, not talking about that asphalt one. So I stop and ask: 'What's going on? What Should I do?' and other drivers replied that till Kalinin [today it is called Tver, that town is the center of whole region, it is situated in 175 kilometers to the North from Moscow] there was no road. So twice they drove us with a track. Later I understood that you'd better make your plans a bit more carefully, with some more extra-time. Anyway, driving this small 'Moskvitch' we went to Latvia and to Moscow too, later on.
I was a brave guy and did everything by myself. I learned to drive a motorcycle on my own. I learned how to drive 'Zighuly' [famous Soviet car] on my own too. I graduated in June of 1945 from Frunze College (I started there and graduated from College of radio connections) with best results; today it is called 'with a first class honors degree'. I often happened to be the first one, for example I first wrote the dissertation from whole my course.
