Alexander Paskov's father Moisei Paskov with his colleagues from work

Beginning in 1930, my father worked in the Gipromez
Institute for the ferrous metal industry.
In this photograph he is among his work colleagues.

Cut out from the photo is the portrait of the director of Gipromez,
who was termed an 'enemy of the people.
Earlier he had been a secretary to Vladimir I. Lenin.

The picture was taken beneath a portrait of Stalin.

In 1924 my father graduated from school. He and his twin brother, Mark,
the youngest sons of the family, left for Leningrad
He worked as a carpenter in the Volkhovstroi, at Timber Processing Factory #3,
on the Okhta River, and at the Avrora plywood factory. While working,
he attended evening classes in the Polytechnical Department of the Builder's Academy.

He changed his job often because he had no specialized education.
One year he was even unemployed.
Not working was not possible for him,
as his parents were poor and couldn't help him materially.
By the end of his education, however, he was already working
as a junior technician on the construction of a paper plant
and as a draftsman at the Tekstilstroi, the Institute for the Growth of Textile Building.

In 1930, Father finished technical college and started to work as the head technician at Tekstilstroi,
which, by then, had been merged with Gipromez (Black Metallurgy) and renamed Stalproekt.
From that time until his retirement in 1966, my father worked at that institute.
He took part in the creation of the most important centers for black metallurgy in the USSR:
Magnitogorsk, Krivoi Rog, Mariupol.