Читать How the Iron was tempered - Владимир Рябушкин

Vladimir Ryabushkin

How the iron was tempered

ranslation from Russian by V.Y. Lymarev

Logically, this book should have been the first one. It would tell you the story from the very beginning and move smoothly to the continuation (and I hope there will be a continuation and not an end), but, as is often the case, it turned out the other way around.

This book was the second I decided to write. There may be a lot of questions: how am I different from other people, how am I better than other people, do I have any extraordinary abilities, and so on and so on?

Why am I writing a book about myself?

I’m not a celebrity, I didn’t steal a billion, and didn’t make a billion, and hadn’t become president or at least a minister, and I’m not a genius.

I’m a humble man, an ordinary middle manager, doing generally well, as they say, I can’t complain. And I actually become president by chance, though not president of a country but a regional triathlon federation.

That was a recent one. If you read my first book, you already know that this is my favorite sport. So, it makes sense here.

And I thought, why not, who said that creative work is a privilege for some special people?

After all, I have the opportunity, the desire and at the very least the right to write a book and tell about myself, and you always have the choice to read it or not.

And in the end, after all of my internal conflicts and disputes with myself, I won.

I will start from the very beginning, I mean, with what I remember from my very early childhood.

I was born (pay some attention) on April 22, 1969. Do you recognize the date? Does it have any importance for you?

For any Soviet citizen, it had. Each and every one of us knew it as the birthday of our first leader, Vladimir Lenin.

And now guess why they called me Vladimir? That’s right, after Lenin.

At those times, it was very exciting and honorable to be associated with Lenin in any way.

I’ll tell you more, I was a very curly sweet little boy, a little angel of a child, as people often called me, at least those who saw me for the first time and were not familiar with my personality and temper.

I used to get special affection in adults with my disarming smile, I knew it and used to take advantage of it as hard as I could.

The most interesting thing is that I was a spitting image of Lenin as a child, as he was depicted on our Little Octobrist badges.