I was born in 1968. I don’t have pictures to prove it, but the word must have some points. This year is infamous for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. I went to a kindergarten and gymnasium in Moscow. My parents were both engineers, although the prestige and salaries of engineers in the Soviet Union were far below Western standards. We lived in a communal apartment (a 3-room 1 bathroom apartment shared with two more families), none of us had a car, and there was a limited food supply. But I would not say that we were poor – we were the same as everyone around us.
High School
I graduated High School in 1985. I have good memories of my childhood and youth. Under the Communist regime, we were limited in choices, but memory keeps just the best moments.
A big part of my early life – is a sport. I used to play in the rugby team “Slava” up to the Junior level.
University
In 1985 I went to Moscow Aviation University. I was not a good student, but I had a lot of fun in campus life. In the summers, I worked as a counsellor in the Summer Camp for kids.
Student Theater
I was not a good student but got a wonderful experience participating in the student theatre. It was almost a full-time job – some years, we performed up to 300 shows per year.
Showmen and party organizer
If I went to school again, I would devote more effort to my studies. But 30 years ago, I did not have time for that tedious activity. Among other fun, I used to lead student shows and parties. My job was something between showman and party organizer.
Mechanical engineer.
As you can see, I was pretty busy person, so I graduated from University in 8 years instead of 5 as was for ordinary students. Although, if you read the list of study subjects below, you would not blame me too strongly.
We studied, for example, the History of the Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist philosophy, Political economics, Socio-political theory, planning of enterprise, Soviet law etc. Most of the “science disciplines” disappeared with the collapse of the USSR, which happened while I was a student.
I am very grateful to my other teachers, who were geniuses, pioneers in aviation and the most significant minds of the last century. Despite my reluctance, they instilled in me a fairly solid knowledge of some technical disciplines, math and statistics. But I still would not recommend that you fly an aircraft of my design if any will exist.
Three-Week Hungry Diet
The most robust physical and spiritual challenge I had – was a 21-day full-hungry diet in the Altai mountains in 2005. I did my path under the control of experienced yoga teacher, doctor and healthy lifestyle expert Olga Shved.
Inventions and entrepreneurial activities.
I did try to utilize my engineering knowledge by developing some new devices. I’ve made design and prototypes for some data input devices and to some patents of different levels. I have made several attempts to commercialize my devices, so far unsuccessful – but realizing the commercial potential of past inventions is still on my list. Pretty long, I must admit.
On the picture I represent my invention at the Inventors Show in Geneva, Switzerland.
PhD and MBA
From time to time, I tried to change my life entirely. I got a Ph.D. in economics in Moscow and later MBA from the Imperial Colledge of London University, which is in the top 15 European MBA programs. My MBA specialization was Entrepreneurship, and Imperial college kept 1st place in this specialization.
I can’t say that the additional degrees had the expected effect, but they certainly changed my life in many ways. I won’t claim to have gotten smarter or got the practical knowledge to help me survive, but I’ve gained many friends around the world and the ability to compose a long and pointless presentation instantly.
Work and sports.
From the beginning of the 90s until 2003, I had many different activities, finally as an employer of a large state corporation. It was a very turbulent time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so corporations took on many tasks, mainly exhibition organization, property management, property development, and later innovative projects.
All our bosses belonged to the Soviet-style management school, so any project involved numerous meetings, excessive drinking with long speeches, a little sloppiness, random planning, and somewhat miraculously profitable results.
We used to work 24/7 but still had time for activities, so I tried some extreme sports but had not become a fan of any of them.
The Teacher.
During my last years in Russia, I used to work as a professor’s assistant at Moscow Aviation University.
Language Skills
My English conversational skills have been perhaps the most notorious victim of my “ quickly and everything” approach. In 2001 I decided to get MBA from the best European university. I didn’t know any foreign languages then, but that didn’t bother me. I discovered fast track – a technique that invites you to memorize foreign words by their consonance with words or phrases in your native language. I learned by heart a whole book of “English” words compiled by one unscrupulous author. The approach worked for passing tests. The problem was discovered later – the pronunciation suggested in the book had nothing to do with the real pronunciation.
I seem to have studied well – my vocabulary has remained the same, although I have been living outside of Russia for almost 20 years. This creates a lot of problems. After a while, people start talking to me like I’m disabled, or at least deaf, and I can’t blame them.
I can only be grateful to the people who tried to understand my barbaric speech and improve my language skills.
Immigration to Canada.
I moved to Canada in 2006 and bought 74 acres of old farmland in Ottawa Valley. From 2007 to 2019, I lived on Golden Lake. I executed a few development projects, including land severance, construction and operations of a cottage resort, design and construction of a new house, and renovation of the old farmhouse. In spring 2022, I sold my latest project on Golden Lake and moved to Ottawa.
The Writer.
I am a professional amateur. Jack of all trades, master of none. But I believe I can do one thing well. Better than anyone can do. Write. I had not left literary works since my student days when I wrote plays and miniatures for the student theatre. Later, I completed several academic courses, and in 2016 my short story “Hot-Cold” was published in the reputable literary magazine Znamya – in Russia, at that time, there were only a few publishing houses of a similar level, comparable to the prestige of the New Yorker magazine. Later, other publications appeared, and in 2017, the Eksmo publishing house published my first big book, Element 68. In the photo – I present a book in a store in Toronto.
Since that time I published numerous short stories and
